Question about new web comparison by magazine Joomla?

[Chacapamac]

http://magazine.joomla.org/issues/item/240-ecommerce-for-joomla-part-one

I was surprise to see in their download pdf comparison chart few fact about Virtuemart that I need to verify....

1— No SEO in VirtueMart (page and Products?
2— No notification on orders
Is this mean that no invoice or quote is send by email to the site administrator, no invoice or quote are send to the customer? I can't beleive this, it seem impossible??
3— No batch download of new orders
4— No discount coupons
5— No tracking codes
6— No translations availabe — Common, how can you make a multilingual shop, this is terrible?
7— No MVC compliance and no css, meaning what you cant css the look of the shop at all......

I'm crush, I was thinking that Virtuemart was bringing a real ability for ecommerce to Joomla and I'm searching for a solution right now....

[mwenz]

In short, I think the writer of the article is misinformed, or didn't simply spend his two hours well enough (2 hours? Geez).

Some of the opinion is technically true. However, comparing redShop which does have some features that are different or in addition to those that install with VM, is an almost apple vs. oranges comparison.

The supposed lack of order notification issue surprised me. Heck, I need Outlook to stuff the buggers in their own folders so I can focus on regular emails I need to deal with.

With every order being sent to me via email, why would I also add the work of batch downloads and have the duplicated orders on my shop's local server? But I suspect there's a way to do it. VM can pretty much be made to do anything.

SEO. True enough on a fresh install. But it doesn't cost money to "turn it on". Which involves a single file (router.php), renaming .htaccess.txt to .htaccess, and a switch or two in Joomla.

The other things you list from the PDF are all available in some form or another, with the exception of the ease of styling the store (other than free and paid templates). But I have changed many things. None of them offer ship tracking as a native ability.

In my opinion, VM is ahead of the other Joomla e-commerce options. And VM is headed the right direction for the future.

Take care, Mike

[IntraX]

Same here, I also read this article and wondered about what this 2 hour check shall represent. Even when they would compare Forum components for Joomla they could not base this on 2 hours of testing. They should have done 2 days for each component.

1— No SEO in VirtueMart (page and Products?
Wrong. First you have the Joomla in-built SEF functions, second there is also an integration with Artio SEF available, third same with sh404 AND there is one other SEF Tool available that simple integrates without any component.

2— No notification on orders
Wrong. For every order you receive a notification about what who when purchased.

Is this mean that no invoice or quote is send by email to the site administrator, no invoice or quote are send to the customer?

Wrong, the same order notification is sent to the customer. With, e.g., Interamind VM Emailmanager and one other component you can also customize ALL emails that you can or will be sent to customers to nice HTML emails (this is a Joomla component). With other Invoice Components for VirtueMart you can also generate PDF Invoices automatically and those will be sent to the customers for example when the order is marked as shipped.

3— No batch download of new orders

None of the other Shopsystems offers a tool like CSVi Virtuemart, which is a very powerful Import/Export tool by Forum Member RolandD. This tool can do like anything from product import/export to, order exports, user imports, all what you need. There is a free version and a paid version available at www.csvimproved.com. Check it out Roland also gives very good support on his tool and alsways releases new updates frequently!

4— No discount coupons

Wrong. VM has a built-in coupon generator. But there are also third-party coupon tools available for VirtueMart.

5— No tracking codes

This is correct. But we currently work on a new extension site and this is one of the extensions we will release shortly, in a matter of 4 weeks.

6— No translations availabe — Common, how can you make a multilingual shop, this is terrible?

The whole shop comes with 20+ languages installed!!! There is a free integration available to run a VirtueMart Shop with Joomfish in many languages simultaniously.

7— No MVC compliance and no css, meaning what you cant css the look of the shop at all......

MVC is coming in the next version 1.5 that will also work with the new Joomla 1.6!
BUT that someone tells the world that VM Themes / template engine have no CSS is a shame, the whole theme region is css based.

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Please check out the VM Extensions directory and the Joomla Extension directory to see what all is already available for VirtueMart!

[franzpeter]

If I read those comparing articles it is always a good idea to take a look where the authors come from and what kind of profit they do have by writing something like that. Indeed I use that question as principle for everything: politics, journalism, studies a.s.o.. What kind of use does someone has, to talk aobut or write something? And that is the way I read the article in the joomla magazine.
I agree that the actual version of VM is not MVC and the templates for VM have nothing to do with the Joomla templates. So what? Those other cart solutions do also need a template, because Joomla is not a shopping cart and the Joomla templates are not made for shopping cart. The VM templates of the actual virtuemart are just not in the template folder of Joomla.
Mwenz, what you say is true, to use sef url (this is just one part of SEO) it is just necessary to add a router.php.
The invoice thing: I use another local software for invoice, because I do not just sell online. So I would have two different invoice numbers. I prefer the way VM does just sending order confirmations and to use my own invoice software for sending invoices.
And I prefer VM, because it is open source. Commercial shopping cart software can only exist, if a lot of users do use those comercial solutions. If not, it is necessary to migrate to something else. We have seen a lot of commercial shopping cart solutions, which came up as shooting stars and did disapper after a short hype.

[Chacapamac]

Thanks Guys, I'm breathing again...
I know VirtueMart very superficially...

I need to do a site and searching between the system out there that really incorporate with Joomla.

So far all the other system out there seem to have serious flaws.
Redshop —> no Joomfish - not bilingual
Tienda —> waiting for answer
HickaShop —> to light-to new

The only problems that make me look out of VirtueMart is few things.

1— the problems (everybody talking about) relating to the templating of the shop itself.

I'm really finicky on my design and I was wandering even with an excellent knowledge in css and no problem to add in php code other id or classes to achieve my goals if I will be able to have a nice shop.

Somebody from the Dev team should be contact to advise those Medias to ask before they publish stupid things.....