Springs Aquatic

Local pond and Aquarium services company with associated dry goods shop.

This was originally a static site with an aquarium showcase section.
Late 2010 was requested to convert it into a CMS together with the option of adding a shop in 2011.
No design changes were planned - just take what was there already and put it into a CMS.
I had not touched Joomla for a while and wanted to pick it up again.
A certain well known shop extension seemed the way to go, but I just found it very frustrating - I am all for getting my hands dirty with the code, but the moment I start thinking about touching core code alarm bells ring - then I found out about Hikashop.

The new site went live January 2011 with the release of Joomla 1.6 and the shop followed a couple of months later.

I have found the view template overrides give plenty of flexibility - for example the tabs in the aquarium product displays are controlled by custom product fields which select a different layout template.

For the larger aquariums the Add to Cart button is replaced by a Contact Us link (again controlled by a custom product field) - practicalities of arranging manpower for delivery, plus also want to promote the installation and maintenance services.

Customised shipping plugins are driven by the user's UK postcode - with free local delivery.
For existing maintenance customers there is also a deliver on next maintenance visit option.

Also added an installation / please quote shipping plugin e.g. for aquarium installation (again custom product field gets used) - does not look like that is being used at the moment though.

Hikashop has come a long way in the short time since it was launched, the team are open to ideas - some go onto the wishlist, a few even get implemented within a couple hours!!!

Would I use Hikashop again? - definitely (I already have).
The free version is a powerful extension, its worth a donation, so I recommend buying a commercial version.

Local pond and Aquarium services company with associated dry goods shop.

springs-aquatic.co.uk

Site has just been updated to reflect business changes, updated to Joomla 3, product displays restructured and now uses RBS Worldpay.

Makes better use of product variants (they call it product grouping - with language overrides) and uses template / class overrides to achieve the required end result.

springs-aquatic.co.uk/shop/aquarium-prod...roduct/juwel-rio-180