Enhance and move the Virtuemart brand and websites forward

[franzpeter]

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?

[lindapowers]

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.

[AH]

is obvious waste of time replying to you.

And yet you replied and made an attempt to insult him through sarcasm!

Not great behaviour!

[StefanSTS]

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.

[lindapowers]

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

Look at my hours in transifex and forum before you talk about my involvement in VM, have a nice day

[Studio 42]

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.

[StefanSTS]

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

[PostHistorie.nl]

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.

[jenkinhill]

Please be assured that a lot of discussion is taking place elsewhere between highly experienced VM users, certain contributors to this thread and developers.

[PostHistorie.nl]

Ok, that is good know! From the way the thread was going, I was worried the suggestions were not discussed or dismissed.

[GJC Web Design]

core members like Milbo and GJC Web Design

I'm definitely not core..   

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.

[Studio 42]

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.

VM3 is light years ahead of what early VM2 was

Can you give me some exemple ?

[GJC Web Design]

VM3 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

[claesbas]

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.

[Troels_E]

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.