The general purpose of Freeway (or OpenFreeway) is to work as an e-Commerce shopping cart. Freeway uses the essentials of well known shopping carts such as osCommerce, CreLoaded and ZenCart. Those were and still are a preferred choice for many webmasters when building an online store. Still, Freeway introduces several features that are new for this type of software. We will review them in details further below.

Freeway as an eCommerce solution, CRM and a CMS

Freeway provides the default functionality for an online store, as well as some additional features.Freeway has a built-in functionality that would allow you to use it as a CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) for your clients.A simple to use CMS (Content management System) is included by default. You can use it to create a custom FrontPage or add articles and reviews for your products. A powerful WYSIWYG editor is also included by default in Freeway.

A full list of Freeway’s features can be found at the official web site. They are constantly updated and new ones are added.

Our Freeway tutorial covers the following topics:

• Freeway installation : Checkout this part of the tutorial for Freeway system requirements and detailed instructions how to easily perform a new Freeway installation for your web site.
• Freeway administration : In this section we will review the Freeway basics for the administrator backend.
• Freeway backup : In this part of the tutorial we will show you how to backup and restore your Freeway.
• Freeway upgrade : Here you will find simple instructions how to upgrade your Freeway installation to the latest stable version.
• Freeway-Joomla integration : In this part of the tutorial we will show you how to integrate Freeway with Joomla.
• Freeway security : Learn the basics of the Freeway security. How to secure your administration area via password protected directories and restrictions according to IP address.