Hika Shop is a newer shopping cart for use with Joomla. It’s a strong contender as a competitor to Virtuemart 2.0 and we’re starting to get more questions about it. It comes in both a free version and two levels of commercial versions.

When you first start with any shopping cart, getting the products in and configured is the most important task. Since Hika Cart integrates fully with Joomla, you don’t have to create an additional design or template for it. You do have to learn some new ideas on how to enter products, though. We’re going to show you how to get products with options set up in Hika Cart.

The new Joomla Admin template, Blue Stork, that normally installs with Joomla 1.7 is a big improvement over the J1.5 template. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved as well. Several template designers have applied usability principles to the Joomla Administration to make it easier to use, extend its functions, and make it more attractive.

We’ll give you a quick look at available templates for putting a new skin on the old admin. First we’ll check out the default version, and see what we have to work with. Then we can take a quick tour of several representative examples.