One of the most common questions we get from Joomla learners is ... How do I set up a shopping cart with Joomla?

For several years the only option was Virtuemart. However, Virtuemart is a very large and complex product that it simply overkill for many sites.

Fortunately, some simpler and easier shopping carts have recently been released and perhaps the best of the bunch is RokQuickCart from Rockettheme.com.

It does have basic tax and shipping options, plus support for either PayPal or Google Checkout. It doesn't have the ability to put products into categories or have custom fields for products (except color and size). Really it's ideal for a website selling up to 20 or 30 products.

Installing RokQuickCart

1. Click here to download the RokQuickCart component.
2. Go to Administrator >> Extensions >> Install / Uninstall and upload the RokQuickCart file.
3. Go to Menus >> Main Menu and click "New"
4. Choose RokQuickCart >> RokQuickCart Cart Layout for your menu link.
5. Give the menu link a title such as "Store" and click save.
6. Visit the front of your site and click on the new "Store" link. It should look like the screenshot below:

Adding Products

The first thing we'll do is add our own products to RokQuickCart. It comes with some sample products that you can use to see how the cart will look.

1. Go to Administrator >> Components >> RokQuickCart
2. Click "New" and you'll see a screen like the one below.
   • Give the product a "Name".
   • Set your "Price".
   • Add a "Shipping Cost" - it must be a flat fee and can't be flexible according to location.
   • You can click "Pick Image" and upload the relevant image.
   • On the right, if you want to set sizes or colors, just click "Add" and enter the options. Unfortunately you can't change the price based on these options.

Choosing General Settings

Once you have your products installed, there's only one more step - choosing the general store settings.

1. Go to Administrator >> Components >> RokQuickCart
2. Click on "Parameters".
3. Here you can configure how your store looks. More importantly, you can insert your Paypal or Google Checkout account details so you can get paid ... after all, what else is a shopping cart for?