Sort Order of Products & Child Products

[AISweb]

Hi Milbo, firstly, thanks to you and the other guys for all your hard work.

You can see why there are frustrated users, this thread took 3 months to get a reply from a dev.

You ask what I would want ? I want to be able to pay an annual subscription to you so that you can employ some help and provide an enhanced support service.

I'm not saying VM should be a paid-for product, but that there is an option to join as a Pro member or something like that.

[Milbo]

Hello AISweb,
thanks for your thank. Yes I see that you guys are frustrated and it hurts me, guys, really. VirtueMart is my life and thats not just a phrase.

I work since the last 3 years fulltime for VirtueMart. I exactly created what you purpose. We found a company and earn now money directly with the core, but not really a lot. Our daily bread we get due http://extensions.virtuemart.net/. So if you want to support us, just buy every year, for every shop one extension. I like that more than a donation (we have to pay for both taxes, for donations in anycase, most people can use the shop taxfree).

I coordinate the core development and do it almost fulltime. Of course we had to create some extensions to be able to feed our families, so core development was slowed down a bit. But almost all of my extensions needed changes in the core, which are good for all 3rd party developers. They will see that the new customfield plugins will be a fun compared to the stuff we have in 2.0.16. We also gained some big players, which create 200 stores in a row or really big stores with 100k products already and we plan more than a million products.

But why we did not answer here? because we just overlooked it. We have a lot moderators and they are adviced to tell me threads with unsolved problems. It can happen very fast that a thread is on the third page even answered a day before. I check usually only the first page, because I should not answer all the time in the forum. It is impossible to write things like multiprices if you can only work 2 hours a day, spending the other 10 in the forum.

And VirtueMart is a project, it is still not a company. Often the people create the solutions themself, check the last release notes http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=110743.0 and the credits. So instead of doing everything ourself, we hope that the community also takes part, that is the idea of opensource and a public project. So and how does this sound: "There are 5 people lamenting that something for an investment of 500 euro is not there, they want to make their living with it, their customers want to make their living with it, but 5 people dont have the idea to pay 500 euro for that feature and just spent it. "
There are other people, paying 200 euro that we integrate the mass reference to the core. Of course this speeds up development. If you think a bit about it and agree, I am happy. finally think about it, how much it is worth to change the ordering of some dropdowns. If you have less than 5 items in the dropdown the difference is almost nothing. How much things the shopowner to earn more?

Often they think they need this and that,.. a carousel,.. but studies showed that they should invest the energy in more important things. Like SEO, or performance.

The name of the company is on purpose not virtuemart, because I want to make clear that the project and the company are different things. The company just keeps the trademark and has even written in the constitution that it must support and protect virtuemart.

That means that all people here, except valerie and me are not payed to answer here or to create fixes. All the others do that because they like it. Of course there can be a financial gain to be moderator, because it is easier to get jobs. But not all of them are interested in this. JJK for example is just a shopowner who likes our community. So in the moment someone is lamenting about the community, he should ask himself what he is doing for the community. No one had the idea to write a pn to me asking what we could do?

and to underline:
I stand for the free princip. The core will always stay free.

and back to topic.
I fear I deleted the ordering of products in the table. I had no idea for what we could use it and it confused a lot devs, because of course we have the ordering of products related to a category. But not for it self. So we must add an ordering for the product itself, which is then working, if there is a parent id set.

Not a big deal, but I wont be able to write it for 2.0.16, because we wanna release tomorrow, birthday of vm2,.. 1 year released now.

[clanessa]

i've posted a possible solution waiting for the fix

http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=111300.0

[blans]

Dear Milbo,

I will make my reply very simple. All we want is for VM2 to work. As you can read from the many, many posts here there are three main frustrations. In order of importance...

1. We earn our bread (and feed our children) with webshops running on Virtuemart!!! This means it's time for Virtuemart (and the devteam) to take responsibility. The timing of developing VM2 with J!2.5 means we feel hands choking our throats more and more... What to do? Wait for solutions, switch to an alternative, fixing and patching ourselves? And when we massively post these problems on this forum and get no reply this is not showing responsibility.

2. Getting your webshop to work in VM2 with stockable children (that every webshop needs!) is for many of us impossible. As a usability engineer I'm trained to swallow my pride when I designed something that no one can use but I myself find very easy to use. It doesn't matter what I think, it matters what my users think! Yeah... It's VM's birthday. While you are celebrating and showing off the new 2.0.16 we are still not able to build a solid webshop with VM2. I am working on a VM2 version of our webshop, I can't get it to work and there are many of these posts on this forum.

3. Maybe you think SEO is more important as a sortable childrens list and maybe it is. However a webshop with t-shirts M, XS, XXL, S, L simply looks cheap and means a loss of income. It's like the car dealer telling me the enginehood is not really necessary and/or a priority and my car will run just as fine without it. I'm sure it will but try to sell it to someone else...

In the last 3 months I have extensively tested Opencart and CS-Cart as an alternative for VM. I must admit both grabbed me mainly because I was able to set up a webshop in a day. However Virtuemart outperforms them both but only if it stops adding more features and makes it's core purpose it's core business again.

We love Virtuemart and most of us have been using it since it's birth. However we have grown up and so have our businesses. I have spoken and seen many VM users switching to alternatives the last months. If you DEV guys misted that (I cannot believe that but ok) then I will send you a PM now to read this post.

We are very anxious to see a version with improved stockable children. Either as real children (with it's own page and url) and/or as checkable options. As long as we can understand and it just works.

P.s. I have bought several extensions so I guess I'm entitled to write this post. This subject also smells like a conflict of interest. We want as little as possible extensions for the continuity but your income comes from these extensions. It would benefit devteam if I would need an extension to do things that should be covered by the core. But that's another discussion...

[Milbo]

Dear Milbo,

I will make my reply very simple. All we want is for VM2 to work. As you can read from the many, many posts here there are three main frustrations. In order of importance...

1. We earn our bread (and feed our children) with webshops running on Virtuemart!!! This means it's time for Virtuemart (and the devteam) to take responsibility. The timing of developing VM2 with J!2.5 means we feel hands choking our throats more and more... What to do? Wait for solutions, switch to an alternative, fixing and patching ourselves? And when we massively post these problems on this forum and get no reply this is not showing responsibility.

lol, thank you for ignoring the work we did last weeks.

There are 2 methods to create stockable childs. It works since september. You can use the stockable plugin or the dynamic child variants. A lot people use it. I know for example one guy he is older tahn 60 years, he is not a professional, he is a musician and he is using the dynamic childs. BHOOMM. Sorry but if he gets it to work without help, ...

Did you read this? http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=110743.msg375646#msg375646

I wrote last 6 weeks around 500 posts. Does not help, people think the same, yeh, nice. this is really motivating

and yes to stay in the picture of a car. For me it looks like that someone says "wuhhah,.. the whole car is not working, because I cannot change the rear mirror with a server motor as I am used to, I have todo it by hand, gentle,. the car is completly shit, I cannot drive with it."

[blans]

Milbo,

Thank you for commenting and I apologize for my harsh comments. I think we are both frustrated which makes us comment maybe harder then we should.

My main frustration however comes from having tried so many times to make a simple parent with stockable children ever since VM2 started and every time there was a problem for which someone thought he had a solution which in turn didn't work out. There are also too many posts on this subject making it very hard to find a good guide on how to properly set up a stockable childlist. Besides that seeing so many (much more experienced) VM users having the same frustrations tells me more then one guitar playing grandpa that does get it.

I am however sensitive to your comments and will for certain try again this time.

Please, please don't let my frustration temper your enthusiasm to improve Virtuemart. Virtuemart is responsible for over 40% of our annual turnover and has done this with minimal costs other then my time. However it's strength is the market potential between Magento and Opencart and it's ability to allow one webshop manager to maintain a companies webshop without the need for an external IT company but with enough power to fulfill all of higher managements online needs. That balance was perfect with VM1 so please keep VM2 from getting to complicated.
I had to fight hard to get our company to use VM where there were many voices towards Magento. VM1 silenced them all and proved to be more then capable of successfully handling our online sales. The significant changes however in VM2 and the timing with J!2.5 were a bit to much and made me and many others pretty nervous on how to achieve the same things with an already good running webshop and less time to step into the learning curve again.

But your direct words and commitment sure have a positive effect and I will put in some more efforts and await anxiously what the upcoming VM versions will bring.

Thank you again although we are still not on the same frequency on the importance of the sorting of the child list. 

[Milbo]

Why you do not enhance vm2 for the feature, sortable childs? the ordering field must be added to the product itself and then go ahead.

[blans]

I'm sorry but I don't understand. Do you mean I should hire someone to do this? Or can I do this easily already.

I fear I deleted the ordering of products in the table. I had no idea for what we could use it and it confused a lot devs, because of course we have the ordering of products related to a category. But not for it self. So we must add an ordering for the product itself, which is then working, if there is a parent id set.

Not a big deal, but I wont be able to write it for 2.0.16

I think I would better just wait for you to develop child ordering in the next version then. Like you state a simple added column with ordering would do. The parent now already shows at Custom Fields - Custom Field Type - Value,  where I can select Product SKU. If I could select Ordering there and that would work (SKU selecting now doesn't work) then that would be sufficient.

[Milbo]

the dropdown is meant for a feature later, that the dropdown takes just shows the different skus, length and even other attributes defined as customfields, that is the idea.

[muguet]

hi guys,

Ihave been reading around for the past hour, my eyes are rolling backwards: it there a fix to the "sorting variants in the dropdown menu" yet or not?
I tried the couple of hacks to be applied in the product.php file and it didn't work.
Hints anyone?? VM2.0.20b

thank you!

[Milbo]

It is now native in vm2.0.18 imho, or maybe 2.0.20.

Just enter the parent product. On the first tab you have a list of the childs, there is an ordering... write it manualy (yeh dragdrop comes later), then store the whole parent. Done.

[smird]

Dear Milbo,

Maybe I am wrong, but I think that Stockable variants Custom filed does not work right. I have described it in a few threads without any answers or comments, so I hope you will see it here.
I have already tried it on new installation on Joomla 2.5.9 and VM 2.0.20b with sample data. The bug is still there.

I will try to give all details for you to check, that it really does not work.

1) Create new custom field 'Plug-ins' and 'Stockable variant'. Add few values.
2) In Configuration in part 'Action when a Product is Out of Stock' choose 'Displays 'Notify Me' instead of 'Add To Cart' button'
2) Create product.
3) Create 2 childs to it.
4) Set 'In stock' of childs to 1.
5) Now try to order 1 item of child product.
6) Then return to product and order 1 item of same child again.

What happend? Yes, you have put same item again to cart (already twice), while there are only one item shall be available.


Can you help me with this issue? Or maybe I am doing smth wrong?

Thanks in advance!

[muguet]

Hi Milbo,

yes I noticed that, but it doesn't seem to be working.

I had a parent product with already 7 children (shoes and its different sizes). Then I had to add one more child, which is the smallest size available. The ordering is correct as I see it first (with number 1) and all the other sizes are following. But in reality the smallest size (19) is at the end of the drop down list: http://www.ankle-biters.com/products/toddler-shoes/boys-toddler-shoes/racing-deep-blue-detail

The only thing I can notice is that from the first tab (product information) they are correctly ordered, but in the tab "Custom Fields" the size "19" is still at the end. Not sure if that means anything.



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[muguet]

hi Milbo, any news for me?

[raetser]

Milbo,

I am sorry man, but this really is not working. I am also creating child products and the sorting only works on the admin product page. No use at all...
I am a .net developer, not php, and I don't want to dive into all the code but how on earth can anyone make a decent web shop with this if a bunch of stuff isn't working?
I am setting up a fashion shop, and I just cannot get the sizes to render properly sorted.

Can someone please let me know how to do this, tried about everything... Ihqave seen that he takes the order in which it was saved in the sutom_param field of the product_customfields table, but it gets overwritten if you save the product.

As far as I can see, not a good setup at all this Virtuemart (or maybe Joomla alltogether) Setting up a producty with child products in 3 different languages takes AGES!

Sorry, but I am getting a little frustrated here...

Erwin