Virtue Mart - the future of frustration

[pixiepie]

OMG you still don't get it do you ??

1. EVERYONE is aware of YOUR "opinion", absolutely everyone.

Everyone?? Really?? EVERYONE.. Wow.. LOL

I don't get it?? I get your point just fine.. I just don't agree with you.. Simple..

So you can point out as long as you want IT WONT CHANGE A DAMN THING !!!!

Well too bad you think that.. I am of the mindset that if you say NOTHING, then NOTHING will happen.. You can choose to disagree with that.. I on the other hand am FREE to express my opinion on this matter just as you are FREE to disagree..

2. Instead of ruining your keyboard pointing out, my friend, once again, you should start asking yourself how YOU can make this better. If you think building a community around a product is easy, if you think providing decent support while developping at the same timeis easy then fine... it's your opinion.

And there you go ASSuming again.. Just becasue I disagree with you, you ASSume I don;t contribute to the community.. I make my own contributions in my own way, and I'm not sure WHEN I ever said that ANY of this was easy.. I think my concern was about support..

3. My opinion is that if it is that easy then you should make it happen pixiepie...if you don't then bear with the dev team because they are doing a great job and I think you should respect that. If the support is not up to your high standards then make it, or at least try, if you eventually fail I will still applause because at least you were trying.

If you can't understand these simple points there is nothing VM dev team or even VM community can do for you...

Again another ASSumption on your part based on things I NEVER said.. Only what you ASSume I meant.. I never ONCE said the dev tem wasn't doing a good job, but merely that there is MORE work to be done.. Mainly in the area of support of the product.. Now again you can disagree all you like.. It still does not change my opinion.. And AGAIN, IMO the PRIMARY responsibilty for support falls on the project leaders not the community members. Many members of the community will assist in the support effort, but that should not be a substitute for the project leaders supporting their own project. Now if you disagree with that, then we will have to just agree to disagree..

Cmon,  you both have your point! This whas ( and can continue being) a very interesting thread with lot´s of different points of view of "what´s up in VirtueMart"

Why don´t you do your personal discussion in a private thread?

Because simply put this is not a personal discussion, and the last time I looked we were still on topic with the original post.. With all due respect, if this back and forth banter disturbs you, you can choose to ignore El Fanjo's and my posts..

[Nirm]

pixipie, I would like to draw your attention to the following quote from aravot today

VirtueMart development (coding) team consist of 2 active members, you don't expect them to do everything, provide email and PM support, forum support, do quality testing (finding bugs), write documentation, write FAQ, do coding, write from scratch new features and at the same time go on with their daily life.

Further if you look on the forum you will find that  Soeren turned to the community in 2005 to assist in this project and to date the dev team is still tiny. That is not to say people do not help, however, VM is a victim of its own success, you only have to look at the number of posts/downloads and the magnitude of the task becomes apparent.

Constructive criticism is always beneficial and you have every right to express your thoughts. Certainly my experience of the forum has been totally different to yours. I have had 99% per cent of my questions answered (admittedly some took time to get answered) and when not I have hired devs through this forum. I have managed to create a bug free site and  through this I have picked up a lot about how VM functions, which I am happy to say I pass on everyday.

It is easy to say that other OS carts do not have similar problems, however I don't think it is fair to compare VM to them. VM exists inside of Joomla and that must add an immense extra layer of complexity which other carts do not have to contend with. This in itself must suck up a lot of time and effort.

Personally I think VM dev team should seriously consider charging a small amount. This will provide valuable funds for the project and further incentive to  improve services.

So in essence lets stop the arguing and download a nightly build get testing and get on with collectively making things better

Cheers

[pixiepie]

pixipie, I would like to draw your attention to the following quote from aravot today

VirtueMart development (coding) team consist of 2 active members, you don't expect them to do everything, provide email and PM support, forum support, do quality testing (finding bugs), write documentation, write FAQ, do coding, write from scratch new features and at the same time go on with their daily life.

Further if you look on the forum you will find that Soeren turned to the community in 2005 to assist in this project and to date the dev team is still tiny. That is not to say people do not help, however, VM is a victim of its own success, you only have to look at the number of posts/downloads and the magnitude of the task becomes apparent.

I understand very well what the cause of the issue is.. Knowing this doesn't make it less frustrating from my point of view.. From what I've read, I've no doubt this project took on a life of it's own, and I do applaud the team for doing what they've done with limited resources.. Software development is no doubt a thankless job. So all I can all wish for is that going forward things will only get better.. So far Joomla 1.5 with VirtueMart 1.1 looks very promising.. I'm optimistic.. Seems like the team has responded to the many requests for certain basic features. This is a good thing..

Constructive criticism is always beneficial and you have every right to express your thoughts. Certainly my experience of the forum has been totally different to yours. I have had 99% per cent of my questions answered (admittedly some took time to get answered) and when not I have hired devs through this forum. I have managed to create a bug free site and  through this I have picked up a lot about how VM functions, which I am happy to say I pass on everyday.

You get no argument from me.. I understand that the team is taxed, and yes my experience on this forum has been very different than yours.. However that didn't stop me, and like you I managed to get a MOSTLY bug-free site up (just resolved my one last niggling issue this weekend). I've learned a lot, and I too have shared what I've learned when/where it was appropriate. One thing I've decided is that if I take on another VirtueMart site (using 1.0.x), I will not do it without a developer in my hip pocket..

It is easy to say that other OS carts do not have similar problems, however I don't think it is fair to compare VM to them. VM exists inside of Joomla and that must add an immense extra layer of complexity which other carts do not have to contend with. This in itself must suck up a lot of time and effort.

Fair enough.. However, you should understand that I do realize that there are differences between VirtueMart and other open source carts. I was not comparing the products, only the support for those products..

Personally I think VM dev team should seriously consider charging a small amount. This will provide valuable funds for the project and further incentive to  improve services.

And I think this is an excellent idea.. I'm sure that many many community members would gladly pay for development.. I know I would..

So in essence lets stop the arguing and download a nightly build get testing and get on with collectively making things better

I appreciate you sharing your thoughts (minus the accusations..) FYI.. I'm already testing 1.1

[El Fanjo]

One thing I've decided is that if I take on another VirtueMart site (using 1.0.x), I will not do it without a developer in my hip pocket..

It makes a lot of sense now... obviously if you are not a developer I can understand your frustration.
VM is a work in progress and needs a lot of coding to customise (for my needs at least). Maybe VM is not the proper solution for you (not yet) and you should reconsider using it because you will never find any support or any documentation on features that are still to come or that are not working properly...

Arguing for ages will not make it any better... whether you like it or not.

[pixiepie]

One thing I've decided is that if I take on another VirtueMart site (using 1.0.x), I will not do it without a developer in my hip pocket..

It makes a lot of sense now... obviously if you are not a developer I can understand your frustration.
VM is a work in progress and needs a lot of coding to customise (for my needs at least). Maybe VM is not the proper solution for you (not yet) and you should reconsider using it because you will never find any support or any documentation on features that are still to come or that are not working properly...

Arguing for ages will not make it any better... whether you like it or not.

For the record.. I wasn't arguing.. I was stating my opinion/experiences, you were intent on debating the merits of me expressing my thoughts/experience.. I'm gonna leave this as we'll have to agree to disagree..

Nope I'm not a developer.. I am a webdesigner/business analyst with enough knowledge of php to do MINOR fixes.. (and for the record, I'm not the only non-developer using this tool..)

I'm not gonna agree with you that VirtueMart is not for me.. I will decide that on a client by client basis.. It was the right solution for my one client.. I learned some very painful lessons in getting it to all come together, and I know what to expect now.. Now that I've got one VirtueMart site behind me, I know that IF I venture into another VM 1.0.x site to NOT expect support (unfortunately), and to keep a developer in my hip pocket for any new bugs I may encounter (I've got fixes/workarounds for any bugs I've already run into). Featurewise, there are things VirtueMart is lacking (product attributes is awkward IMO), but they are either not features my clients are asking for or I have other solutions for them so I don't anticipate that I'll need any custom development IF I use ver 1.0.x of this tool again.. Personally I'm hoping that ver 1.1 is released before I ever have to do another site with VirtueMart.

[((pete))]

I was asked to help export .csv files from VirtueMart in order to interface a clients website with our software. Having worked similarly with OScommerce I estimated the amount of time it would take etc. and set to the task in hand

I discovered JamboReport and then RokReporter and was really pleased. I managed to get all the fields I wanted to export by joining tables or by creating dummy fields where needed. However, having run the export from my localhost xampp install and being really impressed, I installed it on the client system and it promptly fell flat on its face.

All I need is a bit of correction but have had next to no help whatsoever and it genuinely seems like nobody reads the problems.

http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=24040.msg107272#msg107272

This question is my latest in a long series (check the previous ones in that thread!) and it is concerned with an issue raised over a year ago - an issue which, i find it impossible to believe, would be any trouble for somebody with more expertise and experience than to handle in no time at all

As the process has drawn on and on and the client has had his patience tested more and more I have to concede that VM in its current state could never be an option for me in the future. OScommerce was trickier to setup initially but I had masses of help whenever I needed it and will most likely be returning to OSc as soon as I've sorted this godforsaken date issue in VM!!!

[Alejandro Kurczyn]

ll I need is a bit of correction but have had next to no help whatsoever and it genuinely seems like nobody reads the problems.

I bet not everybody has time to read each and everyone of the posts made. However by peeking at the thread I wonder if RokReport is really that popular with VM users. You might want to ask the RokReport forums instead.

About the support/no support issue, I believe one must consider the whole package: application functionality, developer support, community support, etc to make the decision of going with a solution for your online shop needs, SPECIALLY if you don't pay for it.

If it has great functionality but poor support, better consider hiring a developer.
If it has poor functionality but great support better consider extra coffee for long nights.
If it has none, choose something else.
If it has both, well, let us know where!!!

The VM product/community is what it is, and no level of screaming is going to change it one way or the other. The way I see it, it will only change when we somehow give something back to it, but for "something" I mean a piece of work that can be used by others. That's how you build a castle: brick by brick. If this is not acceptable, well, you might want to checkout the other castles around.

[((pete))]

You might want to ask the RokReport forums instead.

I did mate, I've tried absolutely everywhere with a silence resounding from all corners of tinternet

Personally, VM was never my choice. After assessing what was out there it was clear to me that OSCommerce was a far more viable solution boasting a very helpful and lively support forum and even companies offering dedicated OSC hosting. Consequently, this client I am helping will be my only contact with VM and I couldn't hope to recommend it to other people as a result of my frustrations with it. The client also commented that it was "a nightmare trying to get it right in the first place" and, from my experience with it, I find it impossible to disbelieve that

[mefromla]

Pete,

You are reversed with me. While you are turn away from VM to OSc, I turned away from CRE Loaded (believe me you will be in great frustration with OSC, CRE Loaded is much better because it is preinstalled with more than 75 major contributions) to VM.

I've been using OSC for quite sometime and everytime I want to install a contribution, it was very difficult. A lot of hacks and even recoding must be done. For example: I want to install BTS v1.5f (the latest), Infobox_Admin_v2.25, QTPro_v4.3 and SPPC_Price_Break_v102. And you know what, I got a lot of conflicts and mess up. Every contribution was made based on clean OSC installation. So once you have installed contributions, it'll be hard to install another contribution.

And don't forget, in OSC and its derivatives, register_global is ON. Believe me, even me (I'm not a coder) can break all OSC sites because of it. Of course there is Register_Global contribution to fix this, but believe me once you install this, thousands other contributions will not work unless you want to recode all the PHP4 coding in all 8000 or so files.



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[Mike C]

As I just said in another thread - Instead of us bitching about not having features in a FREE product, why don't the masses of us start a chip in www.chipin.com and make small donations to the project?? This will certainly free up time for the developers I would think? Heck, we Ron Paul supporters massed together and raised $20 million for him at the end of 2007.  I would think that we could raise a few thousand at least for Virtuemart 

[mefromla]

Good idea. How many will join? My suggestion: Start a new thread to ask how many people will join then stick it on the homepage. I myself will prefer to donate via credit card than paypal. Don't ask why. Personal issue.

[myvirtue]

Shared SSL; that describes how I feel about Virtuemart / Joomla. Someone somewhere really made a bad decision that has sent me back down the Oscommerce route. Until then I was more than happy with Virtuemart. How could such a mistake happen?

[Penn Wooding]

Virtuemart kicks ass, ive used it for about 2 years now, its the easiest and most functional cart ive ever used. I love joomla also.

you cant beat it, i built this on virtuemart - i dont know coding but i can now tell you exactly what file does what, if not exact ian tell u which folder to find it in.

Tell me your exact errors and ill help you fix it, promise.

okay, here's a challenge for you if you think you can fix problems, I hope you can.

I have just installed virtuemart 1.0.15   The e-commerce addition, it actually contains the full Joomla package which seemed quite good.  I have done a couple of other Virtuemart site so it's not new to me.  However, I notice the new addition in the menu item set up, it enables you to link straight to a categorywhich seems really good. however,  after I have written the menu item and selected which category, I then press save, all I get is a message telling me I'm not authorised to view this resource

So I can't go any further at the moment which is most annoying