In the first chapter, we saw how to install TYPO3 and choose the appropriate extension. And in the second chapter, we explained how to configure the designed template and discussed the most frequently encountered issues. Now we can move onto adding the e-Commerce plugins to the online shop.
This chapter explains how to add the e-Commerce plugins to the online shop that is based on TYPO3. The topics covered are:
- Payment add-ins
- Upgrading to a newer version
By the end of this chapter you should have completed the e-Commerce plugin adding process for the chosen shop options.
TYPO3 e-Commerce plugins provide a payment facility for your online shop. It is possible to use quite a few extensions for TYPO3 at the moment. You need to choose the extension that is suitable for your online shop: one that suits the shop's requirements and extension options.
There are two extensions from TYPO3 TER (TYPO3 Extension Repository) that are popular and typical:
- Shop System (tt_products) by Franz Holzinger: This is the most used (the extension that has the maximum number of downloads in the TYPO3 repository) e-Commerce extension. This extension provides product management, product articles, PayPal/card/bank transfer payments, special offers, product variants, voucher system, and so on.
- Webformat Shop System (extendedshop) by Mauro Lorenzutti: This is a fast-growing extension that provides functions such as product management, color/size variants, order management, VAT management, orders tracking, products categories, multilingual product entries, and so on.
- Commerce (commerce) by Ingo Schmitt, Volker Graubaum, and Thomas Hempel: This is a comparatively new e-Commerce extension (it's in the Beta stage now, which means it will improve further). This extension provides most of the functions that you need for an online shop. Like the other two extensions, commerce provides functions such as product/categories management, stock management, product variants—sizes/colors, VAT management, scaled price groups for orders, and so on.
We can say that the Webformat Shop System by Mauro Lorenzutti is probably more teachable and easier to set up. But Shop System by Franz Holzinger has more functions. If you can financially back the development of the Shop System, you can get access to the newer versions of this extension that support new functions. The Shop System extension that we used from TER, at the time of writing this book, does not support multilingual templates. If you need to use an extension for multilingual content in your websites and you have multiple languages, you can translate templates and add the translated template in the TypoScript configuration using the condition [global]. For example, you can add this line in the code:
plugin.tt_products.templateFile = fileadmin/templates/specialcards/template.html
Add this line into the template:
config.linkVars = L ... config.sys_language_uid = 0 plugin.tt_products.templateFile = fileadmin/templates/berriesshop/shop_english.html ...
And specify the template for an alternative language:
[globalVar = GP:L = 1] ... config.sys_language_uid = 1 plugin.tt_products.templateFile = fileadmin/templates/berriesshop/shop_german.html ... [global]
You should remember that the path (target) for the template location is the same as the main template location.
Note
When you update extensions to the newest versions, files will be modified and none of the changes that were in the extension folder will be saved. Therefore, you can lose the translated template and the configured design of the template, which wastes a lot of time and work. We recommend locating a template outside of the folder of extension installation.
There are several twists and turns for every extension. It is useful to read manuals before you choose and set up an e-Commerce extension.