How we achieved (i hope so) a good configuration of VM+joomla

[bobi]

our new VM site

http://www.placedesenseignants.com

Our store is based upon VM1.1.3/Joomla1.5. We had lots of tasks/bugs/glitches to tackle but are now confident in our code base. After much testing we also selected a few really efficient extensions (after all not so much are useful and some are crappy).

All bundled, our process is now pretty much automated and comfortable.
As an after-job-done, I just want to lay on the "paper" some thoughts  about building a VM ecommerce:

- do not hesitate to copy and tweak default VM theme/ idem for Joomla template
- CSVI for automated process of products/pricing publishing
- sh404sef. really efficient for SEO.
- to display categories of product, we rely on category description to either display a customised html, either the classical shop browse product list.
- we have made an intense use of product type parameters. that is useful to enable filters on product combined with cherry_picker/breadz extensions for UI display (those 2 extensions had to be tweaked/fixed in good parts to become great extensions but their concept is really good i think).
- we use metamod extension to control precisely when and where we display some modules.
- we also found xmap, yoo_login, cssjscompress, cc_newsletter, magiczoom_plus to be neat and handy

All this "montage" was somehow painful to build. But I would say it was for a big part due to us making some choices first that revealed erroneous after some time developping it. To sum up, we now have a clear vision but at the start we were kind of lost in the extended possibilities of this platform.

Thx to the team.   
Kudos bobi

[djcritch]

Very impressed with your site!

I take it you made a modifcation to the sh404sef module so that it works with the cherry picker?

Any chance you could share the code it would help me alot!

Many Thanks

Dave

[clinden]

Really nice done !

How did you make the nice registration page with the select images and defaults to new customer ?

Cheers

//C

[IntraX]

Really nice done !

How did you make the nice registration page with the select images and defaults to new customer ?

Cheers

//C

Can all be changed in login_registration.tpl file.

[gbsnutrition]

How did you get sh404sef to work on your site... mine only works on the home page & then had to turn it off because none of the other pages were showing correctly