Hello and good day to you all! I have been working with Joomla since 2008 and with VirtueMart for about four years *(me and my web agency). Since 2.6.x we really felt that VM had become a really powerful and stable system and we started to build all our webshops on that system.
However I feel that there seems to be a bit of lack of work on the marketing side of the VirtueMart brand. That meaning the website virtuemart.net and also the surrounding websites like this forum, the dev.virtueamrt.net and other things.
Im writing this post as I would really like to help out to help enhance this part of VirtueMart. I'm not established in the VirtueMart team so I don't know to whom I should address this so I thought this forum would be a good place as VM is a community project.
Some points that I feel is not quite good at the moment with the VirtueMart website is in general that they feel outdated and here is a a little bullet point of just a few things that pops to my mind:
- Websites (I'm talking about dev.virtuemart.net, forum.virtuemart.net and virtuemart.net mostly) feels abit out of date in design
- There are old links to changelogs that are very old and in the "Live Store" area there is even hard to find a live site that is working. Usually its better to not show any live stores if they are not working anyway. OR focus on a few that is good looking and active.
- This forum has a lot of forum places and its a bit hard to know exaclty where to post. Some forums (the extra onces in the dev part) seems almost dead. And is Virtuemart 1 really needed still? Could not htat be archived?
- Frontpage of Virtuemart.net could give a more powerful marketing message to compete with the likes of Magento, Prestashop, Shopify etc - its not really pushing the awesome value that VirtueMart gives
- Create like a "graphical profile" -package (there is good parts of the VM design but it woudl be good to have a downmload able package or something so that everyone pushing VirtueMart in their contry or city had the same things (its good for overall branding)
- Then also update old info. How to help out and volunteer. What people are active in the community and what role do they play? Is there a structure and if not would it be a thing to try to create? Marketing leader, Development leader (of course Max) etc
- There are more points here but I think you get the "meat" of what Im talking about here.
In general its better to remove old things that dont work and just keep the things that is up-to-date and correct.
I made a little PDF with some of the more crucial points that I would love to help out with and fix: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6241608/marketing_proposal.pdf
I am not sure Im out of line here but is there room for this kind of help in the VirtueMart community and who would like to help? I am willing to help myself and have some of my developers help out for this. I really think it would benefit all of us if virtuemart and its surronding sites where more up-to-date, modern and functional.
Perhaps a little fundraiser also could be something to consider to at least get some money into it (I again am willing to work for free - but if we could get some more to join for some extra payment then that could be great too! - some of the more boring task sometiems does need a little candy (money) to be done good.
Anyway thats my thoughts and you can all have a look on a quick layout/design proposal I did for an eventual new virtuemart.net here: http://server.wnmedia.se/virtuemart/
Kind regards,
Claes Norin
www.joomlaprofessionals.com
www.virtuemart.se
To be fair, Joomla.org sites need the same things. Community.joomla.org is still running on 1.5. Forum.joomla.org is ugly and outdated. JED has been updated but still looks and functions poorly.
While updating VM sites could be beneficial to its image, there's no point if VM continues to be lackluster. Don't get me wrong, I've been using VM for years too, but let's be honest. While it can be great with a lot of custom work, it's borderline unusable out of the box. It has poor UX/UI and lacks some extremely important features. And it won't get any of them because of VM politics. For instance, VM is never going to have a sensible checkout process because that would "hurt 3rd party extension developers". Nevermind that default checkout is a total conversion killer and 3rd party checkout extension are more like hacks than extensions. Maybe if it was on GitHub, things would be a bit better. Maybe more features would be accepted through PRs.
I also have some comments about your proposed VM site design, if you don't mind. It has really poor accessibility. Some texts are barely readable due to very low contrast. Lazy loading content is never a good idea, can't even search properly. Amount of animations/moving elements is too high and unnecessary at all. Just distracts from content that matters.
That's exactly the point of this thread. No censorship and speak your mind of what you think about the design. The design was made quite quickly. Its a lot of "fancy crap" that I too think is unneeded... but I just added things to show what is possible. Removing feature is the easiest.
I've already got some other inputs and will do some changes that I think most will find better.
About the politics of Virtuemart, I let that be an open questions for more to add their points to I think. My point of view is that the default VM cart needs improvements for sure. But maybe the website could list the different checkout products available to show the visitors whats available. Because of all this we did create a free cart too www.vmonepage.com ... Because we really thought there should be a good free alternative to the default one.
Please readers... add your comments.
Quote from: Ghost on April 22, 2016, 09:09:56 AM
For instance, VM is never going to have a sensible checkout process because that would "hurt 3rd party extension developers". Nevermind that default checkout is a total conversion killer and 3rd party checkout extension are more like hacks than extensions.
That is not true, compare the checkout of vm2.0, vm2.6 and vm3.0
Hello Claes
Great proposal that you have done, and really cool that you want to help to "modernize" virtuemart.net website.
Quotethe "Live Store" area there is even hard to find a live site that is working
true
when we migrated the website from Joomla 1.5 to Joomla 2.5, we added all the old websites of VM1, and some of them are not live anylonger, or they have migrated to another platform.
We used Sobipro for the listing, but we are not very happy with it.
QuoteOR focus on a few that is good looking and active.
I agree: focus on VM3 shops with some example for each category , and with different number of products (from 1 to ∞ ;) )
QuoteMove SimpleMachine forum over to Kunena
I don't know about that. May be changing the template of the forum could be enough.
QuoteChange template of the Redmine website (Project Management site).
QuoteAlso gives a whole nice experience of the project.
http://www.redminethemes.org/redmine-themes/abacus-office
agree, it should not be too much work to change the template, and give a better look.
Quotelayout/design proposal I did for an eventual new virtuemart.net here: http://server.wnmedia.se/virtuemart/
I agree it looks more modern.
I recently redesigned the virtuemart.fr (http://virtuemart.fr) website, and i have been through this brainstorming of the home page and i am going to do a compare of both homepage
- virtuemart.fr does not have slideshows: this is a matter of taste: i do not like slideshows. Imho, it hides informations.
- virtuemart.fr has "download now" buttons , and "try it" to test the demo
- both websites have this "SOME OF VIRTUEMARTS FEATURES" sections: i like that. One feature that is probably missing is "create from simple to complex products" May be add a button at the end to "see all features"
- both websites have "showcase" : i like that too :) . May be add a button at the end to "see more examples". virtuemart.fr has more showcases, but i think you are rigth, less is better.
- I like your latest news at the end, it is more visible in your proposal than in virtuemart.fr
For the colors: also this is a matter of taste. Imho, your proposal is too "grey", a little bit "too classic", and i agree with Ghost comment:
QuoteAmount of animations/moving elements is too high and unnecessary at all. Just distracts from content that matters.
may be once this is done, the next step will be to have a nice default template for the demo website ? ;)
If this new template looks good (more colors ;) and if the picture of the man could look good with the new template) , i will be happy to change virtuemart.fr to a more "corporate" template
Kind regards,
Valérie[/list]
Thanks for the comments! ... I have noted down them all and I agree with most of them. There is always a middle point to some things though. SobiPro would probably be a good idea to get rid of. I really think "less is more" when it comes to showcases. 3-8 would be enough. See the frontpageo f my temp site. There are 3 ... if we do 2 rows that would be 6 showcases/spotlights ... thats enough I think.
http://custom.simplemachines.org/themes/index.php?lemma=2836
This template with some of my CSS magic with VM colors and the VM logo would fit quite nice! Simple, responsive template.
There are also redmine templates (new modern and responsive) for dev.virtuemart.net ... That whole site needs some love as in updates too. Newer list of volunteers and updated texts...
Great suggestions claesbas
I also loved your proposed template. Seems clear and user friendly.
Also the Virtuemart 1.1 section of the forum has to be removed or put in another sub-domain.
This way the forum would become much smaller.
I know that some of these changes require man power but i am sure that some people are willing to offer some of their time if asked.
Im thinking we might start a little crowd funding thing. We dont need much just a few taht give some extrae and I/Max can hand it out to those that helps out. Im guessing most more active users here actaully have an income from Virtuemart and giving just a small amount like 20euros or something like that would not be such problems which would help to pay for some tasks. I will see if I can get some more correspondence with Max and make a proper plan. I will of course update this very early template/demo a couple of times so that we can all agree and find a "middle point" where we are all happy with something.
I wish I was able to do polls? Max, is that something I can do here in these forums? A few polls to get the community input on some suggestions would be a great way forward. Then I hope also everyone understands that sometimes everyone will not be 100% happy with proposed decission etc. But lets try "democracy" as far as we can and then of course Max/iStaxx has the final decission as we do not want things to be unhelpful for VirtueMart.
I think that a page about how to volunteer (like joomla does some) would also be good. As I think many people are interested in giving some back to this project.
Quote from: balai on April 22, 2016, 17:02:56 PM
Also the Virtuemart 1.1 section of the forum has to be removed or put in another sub-domain.
This way the forum would become much smaller.
Max: Is there any reson to keep VM 1 stuff? .... We can take a backup and save it. Maybe put something up like a a copy of this forum on archive.virtuemart.net and just delete everything but the 1 stuff. Keep it there but lock it so nothing new can be posted. Is there a reason Max to not remove these? Are you thinking SEO? Or is it that some active memebers do lose their amount of post which puts them back as these "high forum karma" things (which I find a little childish to be honest). Does any grown up person really feel bad for losing some amount of post on these forums? Is there no more important things to focus on than that here?
I think your seriously under estimating the number of active VM1.1 sites around..
I work on at least one "new to me" one every week or so..
A couple of weeks ago I was asked to built a VM1.0 shipping extension.. (ahhhhhhh.... the simplicity..... :) )
so it is still a relevant resource for many.. could be separated of course but I don't see why it is such a "bad thing" to have it in the forum.. where's the harm?
Quote from: GJC Web Design on April 22, 2016, 23:43:17 PM
I think your seriously under estimating the number of active VM1.1 sites around..
I work on at least one "new to me" one every week or so..
A couple of weeks ago I was asked to built a VM1.0 shipping extension.. (ahhhhhhh.... the simplicity..... :) )
so it is still a relevant resource for many.. could be separated of course but I don't see why it is such a "bad thing" to have it in the forum.. where's the harm?
That is interesting to know. We do not have that experience that we get people that have VM 1 in our agency. But it does seem to differ from diffretn places then. OK, so maybe a good idea is to keep it! Point added.
The main idea was to "clean" and keep as un cluttered and simple forum as possible.
I agree with some of your points however I don't want the few active developers this software has wasting their time in doing a nice website or cleaning the forum, yes is nasty but it works. That would make sense if this software was commercial.
Quote from: Ghost on April 22, 2016, 09:09:56 AM
It has poor UX/UI and lacks some extremely important features. And it won't get any of them because of VM politics. For instance, VM is never going to have a sensible checkout process because that would "hurt 3rd party extension developers". Nevermind that default checkout is a total conversion killer and 3rd party checkout extension are more like hacks than extensions. Maybe if it was on GitHub, things would be a bit better. Maybe more features would be accepted through PRs.
This is what many of us think here and have discussed in other posts which lead us nowhere.
The VM policy is the worst that VM has. If there is an extension that does something VM won't develope one or include it cause if not the 3rd party developer will loose money and will stop contributing to VM, that is the official answer.
I do consider VM a great software that has evolved and improved a lot in the past year specially but yes it lacks many features and can't be compared to other e-commerce systems.
From VM1 to VM3 I see no big difference in the checkout, I don't know of anyone using the core one, ain't that something to think about?
The 3rd party checkouts are a case worth of study, there are like 5 one page checkouts and even claesbas developed an additional one.
Meanwhile we have a rating sytem that will ashame users of Zencart.
Coupon system or reward system? Never, cause Seiyi has an extension for that so when are we gonna get a coupon or reward system? never.
And e-mails? Never cause we don't want Interamind to get upset. Then we have the shop of virtuemart extensions with more and more extensions that would have made the core better and Alatak has some very interesting extensions.
But Max now will tell you that he spend 100000000 billion dollars in developing multivariants so yes, additions come from time to time but the main policy will always throwback this software against its competitors.
And Github never. This is the private project of Milbers with its good and bad things.
We are happy with the core, but the policy will eventually kill the project, come on, not even a donation button in the forum, let people pay for features in the core.
Right now you say we can join the membership, we can pay 3rd party developers to add code but even paying them most codes get rejected and we users end up with 20 extensions, plugins and modules that cost us thousands of euros.
Maybe no one noticed that there is not even a "feature request" section in the forum, I can't even pay them to add or enhance things. I have to pay 3rd party developers to end up adding another plugin to solve my issues.
All this said, marketing doesn't seem a priority right now.
lindapowers,
you can get all that, just buy some gold memberships and stop complaining.
Wouldn't be a problem to mention these things once, but you keep repeating yourself. Like in a broken loop, get out of it.
1. What are the competitors (those working on Joomla base)? There are some you pay for every payment plugin, shipping plugin a.s.o..
2. You need a good template, a one page checkout but the other 18 extensions are maybe that 'YOU' need them, not everybody.
3. I would recommend in addition CSVI PRO.
What else do you need?
Quote from: StefanSTS on May 09, 2016, 15:30:38 PM
lindapowers,
you can get all that, just buy some gold memberships and stop complaining.
Wouldn't be a problem to mention these things once, but you keep repeating yourself. Like in a broken loop, get out of it.
Yes with your polite words I'm definetly buying a gold membership.
Reading your friendly replies to other users during this years and your defense anti github and vm fanatism etc is obvious waste of time replying to you.
Quoteis obvious waste of time replying to you.
And yet you replied and made an attempt to insult him through sarcasm!
Not great behaviour!
Quote from: lindapowers on May 09, 2016, 17:07:33 PM
Yes with your polite words I'm definetly buying a gold membership.
Reading your friendly replies to other users during this years and your defense anti github and vm fanatism etc is obvious waste of time replying to you.
Nice that you decided to support VirtueMart finally through a membership.
I am not "anti github" that is a misperception, you can be "pro github" and "pro SVN". I don't suffer from borderline syndrom that I say, one is bad and one is good. In this case, SVN is used, and it is a good choice to keep the workload for the managing stuff manageable.
I am also "pro happyness" I am very happy with virtuemart, you might interpret that as fanatism, your choice. Just wondering, how you would call your involvement here?!
Calm down, find something that makes you happy.
Quote from: StefanSTS on May 10, 2016, 09:40:14 AM
Quote from: lindapowers on May 09, 2016, 17:07:33 PM
Yes with your polite words I'm definetly buying a gold membership.
Reading your friendly replies to other users during this years and your defense anti github and vm fanatism etc is obvious waste of time replying to you.
Nice that you decided to support VirtueMart finally through a membership.
I am not "anti github" that is a misperception, you can be "pro github" and "pro SVN". I don't suffer from borderline syndrom that I say, one is bad and one is good. In this case, SVN is used, and it is a good choice to keep the workload for the managing stuff manageable.
I am also "pro happyness" I am very happy with virtuemart, you might interpret that as fanatism, your choice. Just wondering, how you would call your involvement here?!
Calm down, find something that makes you happy.
I've been supporting VM since the days where you didn't know VM existed.
I'm happy with VM software and just made a cristicism about the policy me and many others don't understand, is a good practice to respect others opinions.
Before I edited my previous post already told you some ways you could get happier, Im glad you read them :D
Look at my hours in transifex and forum before you talk about my involvement in VM, have a nice day ;)
HI,
I have give more then thousand of hours for the project and when i need some changes and most of time this get ignored or have no answer from team in the forum.
So contributing to the project give you no specific priority, so i understand Manu and other developer, tester or shop owner because helping the project does not mean that any of the team manager thank you and give you more respect.
So buying a member ship? No Thank you.
I already buy time to time in the extention Shop and Max get money back for this. Virtuemart itself should not have any Membership system, but simply try to add the feature needed(or let other add it). And if someone want to contribute, add a Donate button.
Well, I have spend thousands of hours in another VirtueMart forum. I build my first shop with VM1. So I know VirtueMart almost from the beginning, with less knowledge that time.
Intensifying that the work with VM the last four years, I accumulated a little more than basic knowledge around VirtueMart and had some suggestions for features or improvements.
And guess what, if you prepare them properly and test them properly and then suggest these modifications to Max, he is very happy to include them into the core.
But you have to do your homework first, and not only talk and give half prepared stuff, that needs additional 300% dev hours of the hours you spend on it.
You are right, lindapowers, I remember your posts from some time back. You do a lot of posts, earlier years were more positive though. Why don't you get back to supporting what is possible and if decissions are made for a good reason, for example to work with SVN instead of GIT, just accept it and work with it. I have commiting rights on the SVN, but I rarely use it, because everything is already with Max, because it is tested and discussed, so Max commits it. So there is no vast growing of code around the core, that nobody can oversee anymore.
VirtueMart has a small but commited team and time is not there to be wasted on loads of code review that is for the drain later.
Yes, not everything is always taken and sometimes there is also no time to implement a great feature, but nagging and nagging on the same topics over and over just take time off the developement and is the opposite of helpful.
Stefan
To get this thread on the road again, I completely agree with claesbas and he makes wonderful suggestions. Virtuemart is lacking in certain areas and this can be improved with some of his ideas (and yes moving to git/github is certainly part of that too imho, but let's not derail here).
What strikes me the most is how little ON TOPIC response there has been from core, "hero" and "super hero" members like Milbo, jenkinhill and GJC Web Design. And those are exactly the people whose opinion matter the most. What do you think of claesbas proposition? What do you like, what don't you like. Let's have a discussion and provide claesbas some feedback.
Please be assured that a lot of discussion is taking place elsewhere between highly experienced VM users, certain contributors to this thread and developers.
Ok, that is good know! From the way the thread was going, I was worried the suggestions were not discussed or dismissed.
Quotecore members like Milbo and GJC Web Design
I'm definitely not core.. :-X
My only input would be (and this of course has to have the approval of the "core") is that the initial ideas of claesbas to polish up the "public face" of VM is a good one but then the discussion here got derailed on the old Github and wish lists etc etc stuff (as threads so often do)
My take is that a project needs strong leadership and democratic collaboration rarely works as you end up with chaos... (see Joomla)
There is a system of bug reports, bug fixes, testing and reporting that is based around a hard core of testers who volunteer their time and contribute ideas and suggestions..
This is completely separate from the forum here.. and to a certain extent can be said to work... VM3 is light years ahead of what early VM2 was
But the thread here is about " Enhance and move the Virtuemart brand and websites forward" -- not additional features and bug fixes and systems et la..
I don't know Max's opinion on this and obviously the appearance and branding is a lot about personal likes and dislikes.. but if claesbas is happy to "take over" this part of the project and give a more stylish face to VM then this is all to the good. But there is a project leader and IMHO that means something.. so the decision is with Max as to how to proceed with this.
When i said contributing, it was programing stuff in the core team and not forum post.
And in forum, i help more in french forum as here. Virtuemart.fr and Joomla.fr forum > e-commerce, in my local JUG...
I think i help all days 1 or 2 hours since 2011(only for the forums). Do the calculation.
Quote from: GJC Web Design on May 13, 2016, 23:11:47 PM
VM3 is light years ahead of what early VM2 was
Can you give me some exemple ?
QuoteVM3 is light years ahead of what early VM2 was
Can you give me some example ?
I can set up a fully functioning and stable VM3 shop or catalogue in a couple of hours that is fit for purpose...
I can migrate a VM1.1 to VM3 also in a couple of hours without problems
Of course there are always edge cases but the above could not be said for early VM2 releases
But again .. this thread isn't about this.. that was just a comment
I don't really mind the memebership items in the extensions.virtuemart.net - a bigger conceren for me about those is that I think few actaully find them - or more so, more would helpout finacially if they knew how.
What do you guys think of https://flattr.com/ ? or even patreon https://www.patreon.com/ ? (option to give like 20 bucks a month)- This could even be linked in footer or somewhere so its anywhere in the VM pages.
I like the proposed site, looks clean and modern. Does it matter? Well, we all want VM to gain more users (which should give more money for development) so having a website representing VM the best possible way naturally matters.
Forum also could do with a little love, preferably a matching design and I agree that some old stuff should be archived and people encouraged to use latest revisions.
Hope the team is still discussing this and move forward with original posters ideas.
Regarding money for VM development I'd admit that I'm a cheap bastard that has not bought a membership (yet!), if possible I would have made a donation though. I'm running a small niche shop and every EUR counts, so atm. membership is too costly but I ALWAYS try to make donations whenever possible.
Instead of the current membership scheme I'd like to see a Pro developer and a single user membership.
Then I'd like to be able to see which developers is actually active members who pays an annual fee to support VM development. That's where I'd put my money if I had a choice.
Also I'd like to see a forum with feature requests. I suspect some ideas would get so much appreciation that it would be possible to open a bounty to collect funds to accommodate developer time for it, even though it might not be top on the internal roadmap.
Naturally I'd like to be able to just make a donation, whenever I feel like it.
I agree with you guys, I'm currently developing for myself an improved version of VirtueMart with the whole admin interface redesigned and optimized. I hope Milbo considers moving to GitHub the core and websites so all the community could collaborate to improve it.
This is a great project thanks to its community, so please, go ahead with your community.
We all need this, this forum is a chaos, we need GitHub's issues and pull requests.
Milbo you can continue working with SVN but being the project hosted on GitHub.
99% of open-sourced projects are hosted in GitHub, I don't see any positive reasons to keep using things from 2002.
Why don't you host a copy of VirtueMart and your improvements on GitHub? Good idea. Looking forward to it.
Merging code from GitHub, making patches for SVN is easy. Go ahead and let's get it rolling.
GitHub itself on the other hand is getting quite old, don't throw it away soon, just because it is old.
Quote from: StefanSTS on July 10, 2016, 21:38:44 PM
Why don't you host a copy of VirtueMart and your improvements on GitHub? Good idea. Looking forward to it.
Merging code from GitHub, making patches for SVN is easy. Go ahead and let's get it rolling.
GitHub itself on the other hand is getting quite old, don't throw it away soon, just because it is old.
I'm waiting for an answer from Max.
If they don't plan to move to GitHub I will do it.
Moving VM to Github is a request which does come up frequently. However, Max preferes Redmine/SVN for various reasons. Several people had installed mirrors of the VM repository on Github in the past and you can still find one or the other of those on Github, but all of these VM projects were abandoned after a while.
I suppose one of the reasons why a move to Github is unlikely, is to avoid the chaos the Joomla developers are continuously creating on Github. VM is a serious business application, not a developer's playground. So the the project leader can't allow everybody's 'personal ideas' and code preferences into the core.
QuoteVM is a serious business application, not a developer's playground. So the the project leader can't allow everybody's 'personal ideas' and code preferences into the core.
That implies that every project which is hosted on github is a playground where everybody can apply their code?
That means that projects like jQuery, Ruby on Rails or Magento are playgrounds? I suppose no
Nobody can apply his code without this being accepted.
It just requires a shift in organizational structure where project leaders guide other developers and accept or reject their work.
From my point of view attracting volunteers is the only way to go for an open source project. Having no serious funding, your resources are quite limited otherwise.
Virtuemart has some advantages over other joomla based ecommerce solutions on that.
1. It's the most popular ecommerce solution for joomla
2. Possibly has the biggest user base
3. It's free which makes it open to everyone
Those advantages can be used towards involving more people in the project.
The process should be simple, clear and familiar to the candidate contributors.
Quote from: jjk on July 11, 2016, 18:46:06 PM
Moving VM to Github is a request which does come up frequently. However, Max preferes Redmine/SVN for various reasons. Several people had installed mirrors of the VM repository on Github in the past and you can still find one or the other of those on Github, but all of these VM projects were abandoned after a while.
I suppose one of the reasons why a move to Github is unlikely, is to avoid the chaos the Joomla developers are continuously creating on Github. VM is a serious business application, not a developer's playground. So the the project leader can't allow everybody's 'personal ideas' and code preferences into the core.
I agree with you in some aspects, there are more than a thousand PRs on Joomla's repo, but Joomla's community is much bigger than VirtueMart's one. If you know how to work with it, there's no problem with GitHub, developers are able to comment if a PR is a good idea or should be closed directly, they could even disallow PRs, so they won't have a trouble with these 'personal ideas'.
They could keep working the same way on GitHub than in Redmine, because both have the same workflow, but on GitHub you can track easily the changes they're doing daily, and that is so useful for 3rd party developers, and of course don't forget about issues...
I know that it's not an easy task, but hey, improve has never been easy, it requires a lot of effort and we can do it together.
Quote from: luislpv22 on July 12, 2016, 09:42:48 AM
I know that it's not an easy task...
It just comes into my mind that even the 'large' Magento community miserably failed to establish a working developer community on Github. Looking at the Magento Community edtion project on Github I see the last commit was more than half a year ago.
All the arguments I heard for GitHub are already there in SVN.
Max is guiding other developers and accepts or rejects patches.
Having 10 or 100 changes on GitHub every day, who will follow up on that? So a personal chat with a few developers is much more effective in the case of a smaller team. If you are serious about helping with the developement, contact Max, chat with him and show some good and steady work.
<Citation>
Virtuemart has some advantages over other joomla based ecommerce solutions on that.
1. It's the most popular ecommerce solution for joomla
2. Possibly has the biggest user base
3. It's free which makes it open to everyone
</Citation>
And why is that? Because the project is lead by one person who doesn't accept all small things that destroy some other functionality, but also listens to good reason from many other developers around him.
Max keeps a good balance between accepting everything and allowing nothing.
If there is good code that is relevant for a wide range of users, it will be adapted and tested properly by the devs and testers. As said, small team with less than a dozent regular team members, but a good and stable outcome.
I don't want to compare that with Joomla developement, because I don't have a proper inside to that. But check their issues on GitHub and decide for yourself if that is better or worse.
Stefan
JJK and Stephan.
What are the bug in Joomla ?
I think you don't understand github.
YOu have exactly the same control in the main release, but it's really simple to fork it in Github.
YOu create an account in github and you can do your own changes.
How can you do this with svn ?
I used svn and i use now github, so i can see the diference.
And sorry, since Joomla is in github, now Joomla team have accepted some of my codes. This was not the case before, because they used SVN, and it was time expensive to control each code.
When you do a fork, no one have to follow it, but any can. SO if you have a solution(good or bad) you can test it. You can do a pull request, but some pull request get never in the main code.
Check for eg. font awesome.
You can propose your own icon. If your icon as many votes, this get added in the pack. I think it's really the best way to drive a project.
You know what is democracy ?
You can not have an anarchic behavior, but on github, this is more the way to do open and public develop, because any can propose and give opinions without having to travel on a forum to check current issues.
And about Joomla, but sorry, since the code is in Github, the progress is impressive compared to svn and it's not because some patch break Virtuemart that this are bugs(eg the emails problems).
If you think so, then VM have same problem, i use sometime direct call to some function or get datas from the product and a day, this not work anymore.
You consider this as a bug ? Then VM have many new bugs on each release.
SO if all 2 are developers try SVN and GitHub for a big project for some month and check what is the best. You cannot get opinion from someone that only tried 1 day a system. Of course you have to learn github so changing from svn to github need some time.
And i know that SVN is better for some use(in private little team) but not for a big public open source project.
SO if the team will leave the project private and have minimum help from other then SVN is the best, else if you want that the project growing(or not loose developper and users) then github is better.
I do not want that VM use github for nothing, only to push the project forward to another level, but this is my opinion.
That is exactly what you can do, make your VM repo on GitHub and test your changes. You can keep everything updated throught the SVN. If you have good solutions, instead of sending your pull request, create a patch for the SVN.
Same thing, just another language.
I use GitHub for other projects too. Many projects are on GitHub, so I use GitHub. If a project is on a self hosted SVN, I use SVN. I am comfortable with both.
And you are right, in a little team, SVN has advantages, but it doesn't matter if it is public or private. The VirtueMart SVN is public, everyone can see the progress on dev.virtuemart.net. You can take part in discussions in the forum. And if you show real interest you can get in contact and chat with the other devs and testers, these chats are kind of private, but everyone can ask to join or some are just invited.
The project is having regular devs and testers for years, since Max took over. There are people that don't like the way, how restrictive Max handles things, but there are also some who like the restrictive way for a good reason. "Adding a feature should not break another." Not everything gets into the core, but if you see the huge step, VirtueMart did from the first VM 2 versions to the latest VM 3.x, there is no doubt that the way is right to keep a stable core. And that is the most important for shop owners. They need to rely on a stable shop. That was not perfect in the past, but is becoming better and better, so less adjustments have to be made from update to update.
If you have a good template, there is mostly no work involved to keep the shop running like before.
What you said about democracy, VirtueMart is not a democracy, it is a community project, but the last word is with Max, he is the lead developer and responsible. That might be a problem for some people. I know at least two from reading the forum.
Take Joomla, hosted on GitHub, as an example, Joomla is not a democracy. There is a company that holds the trademark. The community is not deciding on the features. Open Source is not equal to democracy. Open source means open source, nothing more, nothing less.
From that point VirtueMart is maybe even more a democracy than Joomla, because Max gives great value to what others suggest if it is prepared properly. If you throw something in front of him, that you worked on for two hours, and Max has to invest another five hours to make it work, don't even bother. I made that experience myself in the beginning. I offered some code, and most was rejected, rightfully as I understood later.
But learning from experience I prepare my mostly simple stuff properly now and things work out, because the work load on the lead dev is minimal and he can concentrate on more complex things.
Well, enough said for today, some will understand, few will not, and very few just don't want to.
Quote from: StefanSTS on July 12, 2016, 14:40:57 PM
That is exactly what you can do, make your VM repo on GitHub and test your changes. You can keep everything updated throught the SVN. If you have good solutions, instead of sending your pull request, create a patch for the SVN.
Same thing, just another language.
I use GitHub for other projects too. Many projects are on GitHub, so I use GitHub. If a project is on a self hosted SVN, I use SVN. I am comfortable with both.
And you are right, in a little team, SVN has advantages, but it doesn't matter if it is public or private. The VirtueMart SVN is public, everyone can see the progress on dev.virtuemart.net. You can take part in discussions in the forum. And if you show real interest you can get in contact and chat with the other devs and testers, these chats are kind of private, but everyone can ask to join or some are just invited.
The project is having regular devs and testers for years, since Max took over. There are people that don't like the way, how restrictive Max handles things, but there are also some who like the restrictive way for a good reason. "Adding a feature should not break another." Not everything gets into the core, but if you see the huge step, VirtueMart did from the first VM 2 versions to the latest VM 3.x, there is no doubt that the way is right to keep a stable core. And that is the most important for shop owners. They need to rely on a stable shop. That was not perfect in the past, but is becoming better and better, so less adjustments have to be made from update to update.
If you have a good template, there is mostly no work involved to keep the shop running like before.
What you said about democracy, VirtueMart is not a democracy, it is a community project, but the last word is with Max, he is the lead developer and responsible. That might be a problem for some people. I know at least two from reading the forum.
Take Joomla, hosted on GitHub, as an example, Joomla is not a democracy. There is a company that holds the trademark. The community is not deciding on the features. Open Source is not equal to democracy. Open source means open source, nothing more, nothing less.
From that point VirtueMart is maybe even more a democracy than Joomla, because Max gives great value to what others suggest if it is prepared properly. If you throw something in front of him, that you worked on for two hours, and Max has to invest another five hours to make it work, don't even bother. I made that experience myself in the beginning. I offered some code, and most was rejected, rightfully as I understood later.
But learning from experience I prepare my mostly simple stuff properly now and things work out, because the work load on the lead dev is minimal and he can concentrate on more complex things.
Well, enough said for today, some will understand, few will not, and very few just don't want to.
I understand better that situation now, should have been Max who gave us these reasons, but thank you anyways. Despite that, they could try if it works...
I guess these are good reasons for them to stay with this system, but coming back to the topic, everything could be updated and modernized to enhance the brand. They could use GitHub just for issues or similar systems, install a new redmine template and redesign every website. Probably they don't have enough time for that, but I'm pretty sure there are lots of people from this community willing to help them with that.
Quote from: luislpv22 on July 12, 2016, 15:58:06 PM
I understand better that situation now, should have been Max who gave us these reasons, but thank you anyways. Despite that, they could try if it works...
I guess these are good reasons for them to stay with this system, but coming back to the topic, everything could be updated and modernized to enhance the brand. They could use GitHub just for issues or similar systems, install a new redmine template and redesign every website. Probably they don't have enough time for that, but I'm pretty sure there are lots of people from this community willing to help them with that.
Some user had already proposed to update github, but this is stupid.
If you have main code on SVN copy it to github, do not change anything.
Adding patch for SVN from github is stupid too. because you have to update each time from SVN. So it's not a solution too.
It's why certainly noone use github to add patch to vm.
But let's stay so, if you mean SVN is better, but i don't think it's better for the community.
I think the current VM organization has more similarities with the WordPress project organization than with the Joomla organization, on a smaller scale of course. BTW - WP is using SVN too. And for Github lovers their SVN is mirrored on Github. ;)
Just for fun (slightly off-topic): After reading this old article https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/08/how-to-become-a-top-wordpress-developer/ (https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/08/how-to-become-a-top-wordpress-developer/), I definitely don't want to become one of those! ;D
Quote from: StefanSTS on July 12, 2016, 14:40:57 PM
What you said about democracy, VirtueMart is not a democracy, it is a community project, but the last word is with Max, he is the lead developer and responsible. That might be a problem for some people. I know at least two from reading the forum.
VM is not a community but a company owned by Milbers which happens to have a community from the days when this was a free e-commerce solution.
A guy here asks about a "feature requests" section. It simply doesn't exist cause Milbo does not even consider suggestions unless they are highly payed or done by someone he trusts (probably 1 or 2 individuals in the world).
I see here moderators and helpers talking about the "team" and "organisation", about "inner talks". I'm conviced they do believe in the "team" and that those conversations will help however the reality is that there is no team in VM, everyone knows that. There are translators, 3rd party developers which do an ocassional fix and testers. Those are guys helping one man which decides EVERYTHING and NOTHING is done without his approval.
Those "inner talks" in case they existed are as useful as this topic, they know that perfectly but I respect them for helping out users and keeping "harmony".
Each time more people come here or in other posts and you simply have no points to reply to their logic doubts Stefan.
If I asked you why VM demo is still in joomla 2.5 you will answer me something which only a crazy man could defend like Max which justifies it till this day... so why even try to find logic in his movements like developing a bridge for wordpress, the memebership crap and other genuine ideas.
This topic is an interesing thing to read that will end up in nothing cause we all know how things work here and others seem to be discovering it in recent times.
Lindapowers
You seem annoyed.
What are you trying to achieve with your statement?
VM needs investment to continue its existence. Under what business model do you expect it to run in order to stay alive?
Quote from: AH on July 13, 2016, 10:24:13 AM
Lindapowers
You seem annoyed.
What are you trying to achieve with your statement?
VM needs investment to continue its existence. Under what business model do you expect it to run in order to stay alive?
I mean, if more use VM the VM shop get more customers.
In the French forum, you had more then 20 post only for VM each days.
Currently you have only one per day.
So Vm loose each year more users.
WHen i check with the users, why they stopped to use VM, most time they think the evolution is bad and that the some changes should be done on the back-end, because it's not friendly, to complex ...
So now suppose you have 2000000 VM shop that need to buy extention in the VM shop compared to current estimate 100000 real shops. Is this not a business model ?
Some stats http://trends.builtwith.com/shop/VirtueMart but you can remove certainlly 50% shop that use old release or sold nothing.
Regarding the last few posts combined.
VirtueMart lost lots of users in the time when the software was rewritten in VirtueMart 2 times, that is right, because lots of features did not find its way back so quickly and lots of things were different from VM 1.
User numbers clearly went up after VirtueMart 3 was out for some time. Users realised that features are back and that it is really stable now. There are migrations from Magento and even WooCommerce, because people don't find the flexibility there.
I have not one customer that would not stay with VirtueMart. They are all very happy about the stability. And that is for Shops running VM 2.x with Joomla 2.5 up to most recent versions of VM 3 and Joomla 3.x. Both are still fine in terms of security, VM 3 offers some more features and is easier to handle.
The backend might not be too easy in the beginning, but for running shops the learning curve for a shop owner is not really steep. Once the shop is online, there is little to do wrong.
Well, there is always place for improvement and the team is working on it. Continuously actually, not many days the dev chat would be quiet.
I wonder how people who actually have no clue about the team behind VirtueMart could say, there is no team. Of course, Max has the last word in everything, that is what a lead developer is for. Just because he rejected some code, that was not thought through properly, there is a big rant here now. Well, your decision.
The same thing, I had to face in the beginning, there are great solutions for a single shop, but you cannot simply use these things in general, because shops have different requirements. If somebody takes such decisions/rejections of code personally, well, that is again that persons decision.
I guess some people don't like/understand that Max/iStraxx is the owner of the trademark VirtueMart, he took over the waggon and is pulling it since he took over many years back. The software VirtueMart has to be financed in some way and the trademark is one pillar of keeping VirtueMart going forward. I guess, most shop owners with a sense for business will understand that and they will understand that an open source software is not building itself from nothing. Open Source software does need developement and developement costs money.
So even the VirtueMart membership should be understood as a means to support VirtueMart. Shop owners who make a reasonable profit with this free software can pool in, and from my point of view, they should in their own interest. This way nobody is forced to buy a license for VirtueMart and can start a business with minimal expenses. I recommend buying a membership to all my customers at least once the shop is working well.
It is very easy to say to make it better without even needing to do anything yourself. From my point of view, VirtueMart is a great system that is successfully competing with companies with a much larger budget. The advertising for VirtueMart and the polished words might suffer from that sometimes, because the main focus is on the software and time is limited resource, but then it is nice to see, people like claesbas offer their help and try to support VM in their way.
I'd rather talk about that topic here again.
Stefan
Quote from: Studio 42 on July 13, 2016, 11:25:36 AM
Quote from: AH on July 13, 2016, 10:24:13 AM
Lindapowers
You seem annoyed.
What are you trying to achieve with your statement?
VM needs investment to continue its existence. Under what business model do you expect it to run in order to stay alive?
I mean, if more use VM the VM shop get more customers.
In the French forum, you had more then 20 post only for VM each days.
Currently you have only one per day.
So Vm loose each year more users.
WHen i check with the users, why they stopped to use VM, most time they think the evolution is bad and that the some changes should be done on the back-end, because it's not friendly, to complex ...
So now suppose you have 2000000 VM shop that need to buy extention in the VM shop compared to current estimate 100000 real shops. Is this not a business model ?
Some stats http://trends.builtwith.com/shop/VirtueMart but you can remove certainlly 50% shop that use old release or sold nothing.
I'm doing a lot of work in the backend now, with a simpler and lighter interface, and of course with some little new useful features, everything without touching a single model, it is being done in the views, with the data given by current models.
One of these features is a live preview on products edit of how the prices will be showed in the frontend, because setting up prices in VM requires almost to be an engineer, so you won't have to login with different users in the frontend anymore to see if these prices are ok.
Another one which isn't done yet, allows you to assign colours to order statuses.
If Max seems interested, I will share everything, but I don't see myself contacting him, so I hope he reads this thread.