Hello,
I'm testing out multi vendor because although there are no real solutions out there yet it is needed by a client and I want to see what can be done to start with. I just upgraded the development site to 2.0.16 so that we are on the same page, newest version of joomla as well.
User wants to be able to allow shoppers to sign up and be able to sell their own products, I guess those products should automatically be posted to a blog layout page similar to a classifieds website or to the category selected. Does that function?
The true problem is allowing users to sign up as a shopper who can sell, we can give them the option to request it upon signup but I'm guessing the only current solution is approving of each one manually in backend to make them 'vendors'? The problem with that is that in the newest virtuemart I cannot simply assign a shoppers 'group' to admin instead of shopper. The only way of doing this is making them a super administrator or going into the database is my guess because I cannot find an option to edit the users shopper group anymore, I used to be able to.. I tested with an administrator account with multi vendor turned on and made that user a vendor and was able to pretty much do everything that needs to be done properly , add , edit, change vendor information in account maintenance but that user has to be a super administrator because I cannot simply set an account to 'admin' without being super admin... I keep repeating myself.
I also need to know if it would be too hard to code or if it is possible to allow a user to have a field upon registration requesting if they want to be a vendor with a drop down box but to make them automatically register as 'admin' under shopper group if they selected that if this could be done?
If this can be settled then I see the main functionality of multi vendor in a working state.
Have you read this? http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=107588.0
There is no automatic sign-up system for vendors - they must be added by superadmin-vendor. The current status is "administrated multivendor" where all products are added by a superadmin and allocated to a vendor, who can subsequently edit those products in the FE. Secondary vendors cannot add their own products. All payments go to the superadmin account.
More functionality could be added using plugins, but I believe nobody has produced any yet.
almost correct, but functionalities cannot be added by a plugin.
You can create shipment/payment/currencies/categories and so on per vendor. But for example the cart is always using vendorId=1, because more than one vendorId needs multicarts. There are 4-5 locations in the code, which must be adjusted according to the used multivendor system. We enhance this, because we need it also for extensions.virtuemart.net.
Then I guess I have no use for this right now. I've seen some limited functionality extensions/integrations out there for cheap and some very rough over $200 softwares that add-on this functionality if you've seen some of the commercial software out there. It's not practical yet and this client needs the facility to allow users to become sellers on the site, post, edit and view their own products, list orders and receive payments for themselves (not to the site owner) like an amazon/ebay but not quite extensive. There are other systems that are highly demanded and would add greatly to a cart system that many other carts have and you of course know this, like a wishlist/favorites system of the carts products where users can visit a personalized page with their favorite items, save that list, share it, send it, etc. I realize the trouble in creating a limited software with some of these capabilities but I need to put this into production soon so I guess I'll have to outsource some work to have a multivendor which could get very pricey. I wish you best of luck in continuing development of multivendor and I hope it turns out good and you choose to profit from so :)
Thanks guys
If I would have time, I could do it within a week. But as long we have errors normal users stumble over, I wanna have fixed this first. just a matter of priorities.
Looking forward to it