Throughout this book we are going to use our constantly expanding knowledge of TYPO3 to create a website of our own. We will create a point-of-presence (POP) site for a small business. This will allow us to explore a lot of the features within TYPO3 and to expand our site later.
The website that we are going to develop is for a small fictional electronic goods shop, 'Durham Electrics'. The site will contain the following:
Basic information about the business
Contact details and an online contact form
Search facilities
List of products and services
A dedicated area for customers, with some generic information for customers and support information
Because the shop stocks a large range of products the owners have divided their products and services into sections.
An AV section specializing in MP3 players, stereos, televisions, etc.; a computer section specializing in computers, software, and accessories; and a services section, providing in-store repairs and service agreements with products sold.
Each section has a manager who will need to be able to access, edit, and manage his or her own section's content. Trainee staff members will need to be able to edit content only in their appropriate sections (but they will be able to edit only draft versions), and their changes will need to be approved by the section manager.
These are all things that TYPO3 can manage easily. We may decide later to expand on our customer area by adding extensions to provide more interactive sections such as a discussion forum for customers or customer support or a poll system to suggest improvements for the business.