Book Image

TYPO3 4.2 E-Commerce

Book Image

TYPO3 4.2 E-Commerce

Overview of this book

The popularity of online shopping has increased drastically over the past few years. TYPO3 is fully equipped to meet all the challenges of modern electronic commerce. TYPO3 can be enlarged afrom a pure content-based online catalog to a fully-grown shop system with a variety of extensions. It may be easy to plan a website but when it comes to implementing the design and developing a successful e-commerce site, you might come across a lot of difficulties.This book teaches all the aspects of quickly setting up a feature-packed, easy-to-build e-commerce site—from basic installation and configuration of TYPO3 through adding features step-by-step to an example website. It demonstrates the setting up of an online TYPO3 e-commerce site from scratch and walks you through lucrative tips on attracting customers and maximizing profit.This book takes you through the creation of an appealing online shop in steps. It starts with the basics of TYPO3 and TYPO3 installation and shows how to use its standard features to begin construction of an online shop. It will help you improve the selling interface and handling of orders with new modules and other customizations. It discusses various template configurations and plugins. You will learn how to build attractive product catalogs, profiles for registered and unregistered users, and online shop SEO. You will also learn to provide effective search facilities for systematic navigation of your site. Further, various modules for payment and delivery will be discussed. Finally, you will learn how to manage and market your site.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
TYPO3 4.2 E-Commerce
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
Preface

Chapter 1. TYPO3 Installation and Extension Selection

TYPO3 is one of the most functional and powerful content management systems (CMS). Offering both functionality and expansiveness, TYPO3 is a relevant competitor for commercial solutions. Considering that there are thousands of extensions available at the moment ("plugins" are called extensions in the TYPO3 community), this chapter explains how to install TYPO3 and choose the appropriate extension. The topics covered here include:

  • Ways to install TYPO3

  • Extension installation

By the end of this chapter, you will have installed TYPO3 for a particular domain.

Installation of TYPO3

TYPO3 is developed and is in use as GNU General Public License (a free, copyleft license for non-profit and commercial homepages). This software was created in 1997 and is still being supplemented with new functions. The basic server requirements are:

  • A web server with Apache (recommended)—Apache (under Linux, Windows, Unix platforms) or IIS (under Windows platform)

  • PHP—TYPO3 version 4.2 onwards; you need a PHP 5.2 or higher

  • MySQL database

These server extras are also recommended:

  • GraphicsMagick (standalone). ImageMagick will work too.

  • GDlib/Freetype (compiled with PHP).

  • zlib (compiled with PHP).

  • Apache with mod_gzip/mod_rewrite.

  • A PHP-cache (for example, PHP-accelerator/Zend Accelerator, Unix only).

There are a few basic steps to start your first TYPO3-driven shop:

  1. 1. First, you need a copy of TYPO3. In this example, we used the dummy and core package that is needed for a new installation. You can get your free copy at http://typo3.org/download.

Note

If you prefer using the SSH/Shell Access (especially in a Unix server), we recommend downloading the *.tgz package. This package contains symbolic links (symlinks). If you use a Unix server with the ability to create symlinks, download the *.tgz package.

You will find detailed information about TYPO3 installation on different servers at TYPO3Wiki: http://wiki.typo3.org/index.php/TYPO3_Installation_Basics

  1. 2. Choose one of the installer packages if you don't have a web server, or choose the zip or tar.gz packages option if you do have a web server.

  2. 3. Unzip the copy of TYPO3 with a decompressing software such as WinZip, WinRar, or 7Zip—the choice is up to you.

  3. 4. Upload a copy of TYPO3 to your FTP web space with the accordant FTP software. To start the installation you need to add an extra file—the ENABLE_INSTALL_TOOL. You have to create this file independently. For example, you could create the file ENABLE_INSTALL_TOOL.txt and upload this file to your TYPO3 installation folder /TYPO3-ROOT-FOLDER/typo3conf. Then, delete the file extension *.txt.

Note

To be safe, we recommend FileZilla and the SFTP mode if possible.

Base requirements for different operational systems and installation in different operational systems' environments are described on the TYPO3Wiki page: http://wiki.typo3.org/index.php/TYPO3_Installation_Basics. You could also go to the TYPO3 homepage: http://typo3.org/documentation/document-library/extension-manuals/doc_basicinstall/current/.

You can run the TYPO3 Install tool now.