Alot Right... Alot Wrong

[meowser]

Clearly Virtuemart has had considerable work done and clearly Joomla/Mambo I am sure has created its share of issues in creating this eCommerce package... After all, Joomla/Mambo while it "works" (especially 1.0) showed a complete lack of respect for 3P developers, like Apple used to. Never provide proper developers documentation, blame third party dev's then when "things happen" (such as insecure com's) and pretty much use the 3P Dev community to make the CMS have features while they sell it to corporate entities for licensing and laugh to the bank.

Joomla 1.5, bit different as apparently they learned that businesses want open source that actually is documented and coded well. Hoorah... probably too late given what the Adobe Flex team and Microsoft (via the DNN Group) are planning for CMS/Portal systems.

Virtuemart's lack of documenting things is quite apparent, I understand... Hard to document when the framework your building for doesnt.

While I am now new to VM I am not new to programming, 25+ years, C#, VB, Assembler, PHP, MSSQL, mySQL, IIs, Apache etc etc etc.

I would highly suggest that the VM Team move towards the MVC 3 Tier model, it'll be more stable for starters... I've broke it three times without trying.

Move all presentation logic out of the admin core that has to do with front end presentation, such as product_type for example. Nothing worse than doing an "upgrade" and all the core hacks for presentation that had to be done now need be done again. The simplest way is take a lesson from Zen Cart, check the templating directory FIRST and if the appropriate include is there, use it, otherwise use the core one. Thats a VERY simple way to move ALL front end presentation code to the template area so updates dont "screw the pooch".

Lastly... not to be a drag, but when creating an app such as VM dont just jump... prototype over and over. I've worked for eBay, Atari, Electronic Arts, MS, Yahoo (auctions code), Onsale Inc. (which was the #1 leader of B2C eCommerce in its day). Had proper prototyping taken place VM could have been extrordinary. Instead, app's such as SunShop are far better designed.

[meowser]

Of additional note, does anyone ever test this in web browsers? Under Opera when adding a product it says invalid security key... that is with opera security "wide open"... With MSIE 7 if attempting to add a product type to an item (which is done in a ridiculous way) it just blows up... poof.

[aravot]

Opera is a known issue

We are looking for developers, are you interested?

[meowser]

While I certainly appreciate the offer to work on VM I am not sure it'd be my cup of tea so to speak. I've not looked much at the source code at this point. A client of mine wants integrated eCommerce into a site and VM seemed the logical choice. Instead, I am looking at integrating a differing package and making a bridge between Joomla and it. I really hate bridges. Its another thing that the Joomla team is "a duh" on. Its not even called "Bridge" its called having proper authentication services available to external applications. Nothing new in the enterprise world of engineering.

From what playing w/ VM I have done there are clearly "issues" not only in stabalization for example but the user interface end of things is in need of some therapy as well.

I am doing several commercial ventures as I speak... But I'll take a gander at the sources and get back at ya.

[aravot]

We will be recoding version 2.0 of VirtueMart from scratch, if you have any suggestions let us know.

[klutzon]

How much of VirtueMart 2.0 has been worked on so far? Is it using the Joomla 1.5 MVC model? I wouldn't mind pitching in with some help if it's for that cause...

[aravot]

We haven't started work yet.

[klutzon]

When you do, let me know. I'll sharpen my VM skills in the meantime and take a look at how the MVC model works to see if it'll be a mission to convert the current system into the new model.