Bring Virtuemart back to surface - community help needed

[jflash]

PS. The new Joomla Menu is a disaster - it couldn't be worse and I think that a lot of people have the same impressions as me. Of course, there is also a group of crazy masochists who say it's great, even though after a year of using Joomla they are still looking for the same target item in this sick menu for a long time..

Maybe you know but...

For menu disaster are some lifehacks: open module 'Admin menu' and set option 'Choose preset' to 'Alternative Main Menu'. Now your left menu shows menu items like in older versions of Joomla.

And of course for top menu use Phoca Top Menu Module: https://www.phoca.cz/download/71-phoca-modules/123-phoca-top-menu-module Install package, open admin module 'Phoca Top Module', set position to customtop, choose preset and make it sticky - you are in heaven again

[hazael]

It's almost perfect. I even feel alive.  

Thanks and cheers!

[seagul]

Yesterday, J2Store announced that it is closing its doors.

So, if there is a J2Store to VM importer that would be nice 

But with recreating the whole VM code I would be really careful. J2Store did not survive that move. They wanted to rebuild the whole shop and never finished...

However, I could only support with testing and customer/administrator insights.

[iWim]

@hazael
In my mockups I added the option for you to unpublish the bells and whistles you don't want to use, which I currently do not see in VM. And not everybody can, or wants to, use 3rd party analytics. This way you can choose: use VM statistics or use 3rd party statistics or both or none.

About J2Store
J2Store is/was a wellknown and well-rated extension. I believe to decide you cannot do it anymore and have to stop, for whatever reason, is a brave decission. As many people rely on your piece of software, I don't think this decission was taken lightly.

I don't know who, or how many, worked on J2Store, but I wish him/her/them all the best. Take what you learned and start on a new beautiful journey.

- The Failure Paradox -
It's better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all.
You can fail and still succeed.

About VirtueMart
Just because one (J2Store) tried and "failed", that does not mean another one (VM) will too.
Yes, there are lessons that can be learned.

I see an opportunity for VirtueMart. Max and a small group of developpers (as suggested earlier) could contact (the) developper(s) of J2Store and talk and learn from them. So (the) developper(s) of VirtueMart can turn one "failure" into a success.

I believe aligning VirtueMart more with Joomla 5/6 will also open up development for more non-virtuemart, but Joomla developpers, extension developpers or developpers in general.

[hazael]

Yesterday, J2Store announced that it is closing its doors.
So, if there is a J2Store to VM importer that would be nice 

This is not a reason to celebrate – it's a clear evolutionary trend, and sadly, we must acknowledge that VirtueMart is also failing to keep up with it. With the rise of more advanced, scalable, and user-friendly solutions, the future also seems uncertain for VirtueMart and may soon face the same fate as J2Store.


J2Store is like a small boat—its sinking didn't come as a big shock to anyone. But VirtueMart is more like the Titanic... with the sleeping Captain Milbo ;- )

The eCommerce landscape is rapidly evolving, and platforms like VirtueMart may struggle to survive. While once a go-to solution for Joomla-based online stores, several factors are driving its decline.

WooCommerce, with its integration into WordPress, dominates the market due to its ease of use, extensive plugins, and larger community. VirtueMart, built on Joomla, is losing ground to this more flexible and widely adopted platform.

Business owners are moving towards simpler, SaaS-based platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce, which offer less maintenance and technical overhead compared to Joomla-based systems.

VirtueMart struggles to keep pace with new technologies like headless commerce and API-first approaches. WooCommerce and other modern platforms are continuously evolving, while Joomla extensions lag behind.

One major drawback is the absence of support for WordPress, which could open up a huge user base. Integrating with WordPress would significantly boost its popularity and attract more external developers and plugins.

Another issue is the limited integration with modern payment and shipping solutions, such as automated parcel systems. This lack of flexibility makes it less attractive in the competitive eCommerce landscape. Additionally, VirtueMart's reliance on backward compatibility with Joomla 5 highlights its outdated architecture, which hinders full modernization and further development.

The platform's smaller community also results in fewer extensions and less support compared to larger systems. To regain popularity, VirtueMart would need a complete overhaul to support modern technologies like headless commerce and Progressive Web Apps (PWA). If these changes were implemented, it could attract new users and developers, thereby increasing its appeal and relevance in the eCommerce space.

But with recreating the whole VM code I would be really careful. J2Store did not survive that move. They wanted to rebuild the whole shop and never finished...

I completely understand your point, and you're right to be cautious. However, if VirtueMart's code were to be rewritten, I believe it should follow a structured approach with parallel and independent versions like Alpha, Beta, and Stable, just as we see with Joomla 4 and 5, both of which have parallel support. This way, users can gradually test and adopt the new version without risking the stability of their current stores. While J2Store's attempt didn't succeed, VirtueMart, with its larger community and more significant role in the eCommerce space, could handle such a transition more effectively if done carefully.

[iWim]

Agree with a lot of what you are saying.

I don't think Max is "sleeping" though.
I am thankful for Max' work and dedication so far. But I do believe there is much room for improvement.

I believe Max could communicate more: It doesn't have to be whole novels.
Even if he thinks this discussion stinks, he should say so. Then we all know where we stand.

What is Max' vision for VirtueMart?.

What is the roadmap for VirtueMart?

What can we do to help?

To stay in shipping terms: I think VirtueMart is making water and Captain Max is busy patching up holes to keep it afloat.

VirtueMart has become a rusty old tanker that is adrift.
She needs to be towed to port, stripped, rebuild and retooled.

With Joomla 5/6+ VirtueMart has a stable foundation to build upon.
It took Joomla ten years to develop version 4. Let's not wait that long for VirtueMart.

[hazael]

You're taking my comment about "sleeping" too literally. Max often works on fixing something that is already outdated. It might be worth considering newer solutions. One can work hard and stay awake, but at the same time, it's possible to "sleep through" changes that have already happened.

While I truly appreciate Max's (and his team) dedication and hard work, it's important to recognize that sometimes focusing on maintaining or fixing outdated systems can prevent us from noticing newer, more efficient approaches. The real challenge isn't just working hard but staying up-to-date with the evolving landscape. We shouldn't miss out on potential improvements just because we're too focused on the old ways of doing things.

[andrai2]

Hello!

Lots of good points made.

I am "low tier web designer from Eastern Europe", who develops small Joomla / Virtuemart websites

I would like to add my two cents (observations) on Virtuemart future:

1. First of all, hats off, great software

2. I think that for me "the million dollar questions" to future success is: How could virtuemart make more money to to pay developers and staff full time?.

So i went to chatgtp and asked how shopping cart systems makes money.

I asked: Write why Virtuemart is better than Shopify.? Lots of good marketing points to use to promote Virtuemart

I tried to research via google and chatgtp other shopping cart systems, How many employees ? (shopify has 11 600) What are the business models? How much they earn? and other things to see the bigger picture.


My concern is this virtuemart development work may become to difficult and complex to do it as "voluntary work" and keep up with the competition, so the idea is to have sustainable business model behind Virtuemart to pay developers.


So basically idea is To operate like a company and "sell the product" to have resources for the development.


sorry for the rammble!

[Milbo]

Such statistics and other bells and whistles can be ignored. All you need is a website conversion counting system such as Matomo or Analytics...

What bothers me most about Virtuemart is that it does not support tags that I could use to create promotions for products. Currently, I have to create dozens of unnecessary categories to be able to give unique discounts on products assigned to them.
I have over 100 categories and Virtuemart is becoming an increasingly inconvenient component of the online store for normal operation.

Virtuemart has tags, just called searchable string. I need to answer the other good comments with more time

[Milbo]

Good evening,

I thank you for this thread and your comments. First I wonder if you read the news? If you do not read the  news, then of course it looks like I do not communicate about the project itself. But any news has as main topic my ideas of the future course.

https://virtuemart.net/news/list-all-blogs

In a nutshell, I was heavily working the last year to update the infrastructure of the virtuemart project itself. Proper email server, new hoster, and so on. Also the new forum. All pages runs on j5 latest and so on. Virtuemart.net got overhauled and all other pages. VirtueMart runs on j5 as far as I know without any problems.
and very important, after 10 years, we have new core layout files, written in Bootstrap 5. This is a massive thing, because vm seemless integrates into normal BS-5 Templates. You can use any normal joomla 5 template for your shop and you can easily adjust it with a bit custom css. Just enable the Bs5 native layout.

So I was not sleeping, but yes, not active enough in the forums.

VirtueMart itself is from my point of view technically in a good state.

Our code has kind of layers. Our inner core layer are the tables, models, helpers (language, mediahelper,...). All of that works good, j5, php latest and so on.

Our real problem is Joomla. J2store finished also because joomla update path was too much for them. There is a post on FB describing that. As I decsribed in my news before.

So I took a close look on the hard facts. https://downloads.joomla.org/cms/joomla3/3-10-12

if you scroll down to the zip, you see, it was downloaed 1 Million times. But, j4 less than 50k https://downloads.joomla.org/cms/joomla4/4-4-9 and J5

if you check only https://downloads.joomla.org/cms/joomla5/5-2-0, then around 60k pages, but if you check https://downloads.joomla.org/cms/joomla5/5-1-4 then we see up to 100k updates.


But we can say in short, Joomla 3 had 1 million pages, but j4/j5 together not even 200k. So there is our big problem. Years ago I prepared VirtueMart already to run with WP. I was able to see the products and do a checokut :-) So I think now is the right time todo the jump.

But I cannot do it alone, I need a team dedicated for this task, people who want it. The current team is quite happy with joomla, but of course, some will join. I would open a new skype group for that.

[Milbo]

About VirtueMart
Just because one (J2Store) tried and "failed", that does not mean another one (VM) will too.
Yes, there are lessons that can be learned.

I see an opportunity for VirtueMart. Max and a small group of developpers (as suggested earlier) could contact (the) developper(s) of J2Store and talk and learn from them. So (the) developper(s) of VirtueMart can turn one "failure" into a success.

I believe aligning VirtueMart more with Joomla 5/6 will also open up development for more non-virtuemart, but Joomla developpers, extension developpers or developpers in general.

From my point of view, the decline of J2Store proves that the membership works and is needed, because without membership, ... we may have written something similar half a year ago, but so we can just survive. We could even invest a good amount into the new BS5 template. But of course the project will never just be closed.

But I work fulltime on the VirtueMart Core, but how we should compete with,.. for example 19k employes on shopify... It is simple, it works. I estimate 75% of them care for customers, others do extensions and templates, and only 20 people or so work on the core. The last core was influenced by 10 people at least. A lot of my changes are fixes or hints on bugs from the community. The point is that webagencies are called todo the care for the customers.

And I think, VirtueMart is since vm4 a real enterprise solution! There is nothing to hide, VirtueMart is a very fast and flexible solution for really big shops. But i also just create very small shops for trainers, just selling courses and there is no big deal todo a small shop.

[razor7]

Hi! will share my experience as J+VM ecommerce developer just in case something comes up to the VM devs mind to take into account for a better and prosper VM future.

• VM uses Joomla as base CMS, you tell that to a customer and it doesn't even know what it is, so make it compatible with WP and I think it will be a real game changer
• Maybe adding a mass import feature as WooCommerce has, will really help to improve the admins experience. That's something you have oob in WC, but for VM you have to buy a component
• One page checkout could be improved, really appreciate the OPC by Virtue Planet
• VM Coupons seems nice but there are features I think are broken, like limiting the coupon to products or categories (at least is what I found by using them, maybe I'm wrong)
• Maybe open a new enterprise services channel to help medium to big customers to have tailored VM instances with DevOps management (that's what I actually do to some of my customers)

About enterprise services, VM should evaluate to open a division for that and hire the right people for the job and do a really big marketing campaign to get new customers.

The idea would be offer enterprise services like:

• Tailored VM deployment (template, extra addons, etc)
• Training courses for customer human resources that will be managing the store
• R+D for integrations to customer CRM, ERP systems (IE stock/prices sync, mass import, order creation, etc)
• Development services on demand for new payment/shipping plugins that the customer may need
• Tailored hosting services (which is not a minor topic this days)
• Support plans
• Customer success speshitpillts

Well, that's my two cents...

[Roderic]

A lot of good points, but Joomla > Wordpress in my opinion. Joomla has a lot more build in, like multi-language. But of course, having VM on both platforms could be helping both. AcyMailing started on Joomla and is also available on both.

[iWim]

Thank you, Max, for your reply.

From a business POV I understand looking at WP.

Even if you manage to get 0.1% of the downloads of the de-facto default WP webshop, WooCommerce, to become a VirtueMart member you can hire several developers.
(#2 shop is at 0.125%. WooCommerce pretty much has a monopoly on WP e-commerce.)

But currently VirtueMart only runs on Joomla.
Hence this discussion on how to improve VirtueMart (with Joomla).

[andrai2]

For me Virtuemart is product for people "who now what they ar doing" - developers, companies, web agencies.

Maybe not realy for the beginners as learning curve is quite a bit as there are other cart systems that "dumb things down" significantly.

So at curent state i think it should be marketed a "product for professionals" who wants to invest some time not drag and drop.

The "easy way to push forward" could be virtumart main website redesign something like this https://www.joomshaper.com/easystore on focus to sell, to have this shiny fancy modern look.

Put subscriptions on the first page like this https://www.joomshaper.com/pricing and run the google ads 

As an outsider is see the Talent in the forum i see dedication and will and if it is complimented by subscription plan sales than Virtuemart will live on for sure.