Throughout the book, we will follow an example which builds a shop based on Joomla! and VirtueMart. For this example, we have chosen a web site—it's of an open source network. Now let us look into its requirements.
Bangladesh Open Source Network (BdOSN) is a not-for-profit, voluntary organization for promoting open source philosophy in Bangladesh. Like other open source networks, it mainly focuses on promoting open source philosophy through several activities including monthly talks, seminars, boot camps, and so on. It has established a web site using Joomla! CMS and publishes its advocacy materials, schedule of events, and other articles. Now, as part of its advocacy campaign, it also wants to sell some souvenir items for raising funds for this organization. It will sell T-Shirts, caps, and other items with the Tux logo and open source slogans. It will also sell some virtual products like greeting cards, coupons, and so on, to collect money from its supporters.
Therefore, the web site for BdOSN will have two main sections. It will include content for advocacy, and souvenir items to sell. It will also have some other sections such as a help line, forum, and blog. Joomla! is the best candidate for such a web site as it can fulfill all of these requirements out of the box. Throughout the book, we will see how to add e-commerce functionalities to this site.