Introduction Of Virtuemart, This is an introduction Of Virtuemart, What is VirtueMart? VirtueMart is an open source e-commerce component for Joomla!. It enables Joomla! site administrators to build a product catalog, configure payment and shipping methods, and allows the selling of products online.

Like any other shopping cart (such as osCommerce, Zen Cart, Magento, and so on), VirtueMart allows administrators to configure the shop, configure the selling workflow, configure the payment and shipping options, configure product categories and catalog, and manage customers and orders. However, the difference between VirtueMart and shopping cart applications like osCommerce and Zen Cart, is that VirtueMart runs as part of Joomla! CMS. It is fully integrated to a Joomla! site, shares the same authentication and authorization mechanism, and also the same look and feel of the Joomla! site. osCommerce and Zen Cart can run independently, but VirtueMart cannot run independently (it runs as component of Joomla!).

Like Joomla!, VirtueMart is also developed using PHP and uses MySQL as a backend database. It also works with Mambo, the predecessor of Joomla!. As VirtueMart uses GNU and GPL licensing, you are free to download it, distribute it, use it, and also to modify it.

VirtueMart is derived from another shopping cart called phpShop. phpShop is a standalone shopping cart based on PHP and MySQL. Initially, the port was for Mambo and was known as Mambo-phpShop. Later, after the initiation of Joomla!, Mambo-phpShop was renamed VirtueMart.