The TYPO3 Shop System - What is it?

This overview is relating to the recent version 2.6.0 (status: november 2007) of the online shop system.

This system is an eCommerce software designed for the European trade (EU trade). It was developed to give the medium-sized trade a well designed eCommerce tool.

At the same time the integration in a widespread and comfortable CMS gives developers, designers and editors the best state of the art tools for their special tasks.

The TYPO3 Shop System is an Open Source Shop System. It is an extension of the CMS TYPO3. The TYPO3-internal name of the shop system is tt_products.

The development of tt_products started 1999 with the TYPO3 lead developer Kasper Skårhøj and the developer Rene Fritz.

2005 Franz Holzinger took on the technical lead and the system was changed basically, so a development to an eCommerce system could begin.

The recent development considers pragmatical aspects furthermore. tt_products remains a system with which new eCommerce functions become developed for small and medium-sized companies. The realization of new requirements remains affordable and efficient reachable in projects.

A webserver with:

• PHP version 4 and higher (scsripting language)
• MySQL version 3.23.xx and higher (database)
• GDlib with gif support (serverside image-software)
• TYPO3 version 3.8 and higher (CMS)
• TYPO3 extensions: div 0.0.13, table 0.1.13 , fh_library 0.0.19

• Open Source
• You can take advantage of the convenience of TYPO3 everywhere in the shop (in the administrator's role or/and the editor's role).
• Templating system (there are several available: CSS, XHTML-templates, TemplaVoila, YAML, Smarty ...)
• Separation between shop-content, shop-layout and shop-functions. Because of that a change of the shop-surface can become easyly done (by ready made or self made templates for instance with Dreamweaver).
• SQL-Caching, because of SQL-Caching in the shop database-queries can become minimize and the capacity of the shop-system can become increased.
• SSL-connection for sensitive data (requires SSL-certification/proxy)

• Simple installation with 4 inevitable extensions (see system requirements)
• Arbitrary currency setting
• Amount of categories, depth of category, amount of products unlimted
• Sortation of categories/products eligible in each category
• Possibility to put a product in as many categories as necessary
• Check every product on start page
• Set of notes for every customer (memos)
• Possibility to create several administrators each with different rights
• Advanced banner management
• Simple backup of the shop-records (and backup of the layout/templating files of the shop)
• Several tax-areas can become defined
• newsletter with product-categories
• accounts for customer (customer login)

• Support of unfinite amount of categories and products
• Different layouts for each category (column of products) and each product
• Arbitrary amount of options and variants
• Block prices, special offers (bargain sale)
• Weight for shipping calculation
• Automatic generation of thumbnails by the shop system
• Arbitrary amount of images for each product
• Unique pricing system, special prices for customer groups, block prices relative to customer group
• Right-system for products and categories (connection for special customers)
• WYSIWIG editor for product descriptions and category descriptions

• You can do the settings of the daily business in a graphical interface (the Constant Editor)
• Import/export functionality for products in CSV format
• Full utilisation of the CMS TYPO3
• Perfected methods of content input incl. definition of different layout-scopes for editors-groups
• Customer administration, order adminstration, open a customer-record online
• Functions for statistics (exchange)

• Prepayment
• Cash on delivery
• DHL
• Flat charge shipping
• Shipping costs per unit
• Pickup by the customer
• Schedular shipping (scaling steps eligible)
• More shipping modules possible

• B2B or B2C in a shop (because of separated tax settings per customer group)
• Newsletter system (included by TYPO3)
• Buying and sending vouchers
• Starting a coupon campaign (after the customer put in a coupon he can get a discount or another benefit in the shop)
• Reporting and interpretation of exchange and orders
• Editing of orders (add products, change prices)

The shop is made up of two parts:

• The shop system (Frontend - all what a customer can see)
• The admin area (Backend - all what administrators and editors can see, each role is defined by fine see-, read-, write-, execution-rights)

You can design the shop-database via PHPmyAdmin in the Backend, and the product-records and other important shop-records, also the shop page-tree in the Backend can become defined by copy (or cut) and paste.

It is no problem to spread commercial content between the regular editorial content. This is possible because the regular editorial content can be located on the same entire page tree as well as the shop-elements of the shop. So advertising between editorial content elements can be done by ease.