I have looked long and hard for a reliable, easy-to-use shopping cart, ecommerce component for the Joomla Content Management System (CMS). More specifically, I looked for a shopping cart, ecommerce component that integrates seamlessly into Joomla. This means that you can administer the shopping cart from within the Joomla administration screens, and that the shopping cart pages blend into the current Joomla template’s design. My conclusion is that such a component DOES NOT EXIST.

Of course there is Virtuemart, the free, opensource shopping cart built to integrate into Joomla. But after implementing Virtuemart for a client, I have to say that Virtuemart is NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME.

Many claim that Virtuemart is easy to use, and it is, at least for the cart administrator. But I found that the installation and configuration of Virtuemart to be full of bugs and gotchas. First, there is really NO Virtuemart documentation. Instead, I had to search the forum and sift through dozens of unanswered questions to find answers to problems and bugs that prevented Virtuemart from working without error messages or failures.

Virtuemart is just too difficult to install and get working correctly. For example, I can install and configure Joomla in about an hour, and that includes installing several components. But Virtuemart took days to work out all the bugs. The amount of bugs in the program is unacceptable to me. Unless I have a client whose bottom line is “Low Cost” I cannot justify using this unstable program. It’s much easier and less stressful to install and configure X-Cart or Ecommerce Templates, two popular commercial shopping carts. And, ultimately, it costs less to install and configure these carts, even though I have to do a LOT of work to integrate them with Joomla, because I don’t have to spend days searching a forum for answers and editing the source code to fix bugs. Plus, the commercial products have documentation to explain how to use them, such a helpful feature.

Virtuemart could be a GREAT program and become the default Joomla Ecommerce component, but the developer is overworked and under-staffed. If this project could get some support, it could be great, but I think someone will develop a more reliable and powerful program before that happens. At the end of the day, Free is not the most important thing, especially if you’re trying to make money on the web: what’s important to ecommerce is reliability, support, and a large and flexible set of ecommerce functions.

I have been keeping my eye on Joomla Equipment’s ecommerce component (joomlaequipment.com/content/blogcategory/13/67/). This component is still under development, but it promises to be a GREAT Joomla ecommerce solution. Because this component will eventually be integrated with their JContentSubscription - Pay and Read Content Component, it could be the ultimate Joomla ecommerce component. I have many clients who want to sell products AND subscriptions using the same checkout process, and this tool might eventually provide that capability. If it does, I’d gladly pay for it.

The willingness to pay for a reliable Joomla ecommerce component make me think that “Free” is one of the flaws of the Joomla licensing structure. Developers need to be paid for their time. If they can make enough money by developing free products, great. But I think the reason that Virtuemart is an unfinished and unreliable product is because its developer has to have a day job to afford working on Virtuemart. As a web designer, I am glad to pay for products that work and that are documented. Whether it’s a subscription payment, like with JCE Editor or JCal Calendar tool, or an outright purchase of the software like Philaform, I don’t care. I just want software that works so I’m not left on my own when I encounter bugs and issues and have nowhere to go for help.

I’ll keep my fingers crossed and hope that someday soon, I can find a rebust, reliable, and full-featured Joomla ecommerce component.

Searching for the best shopping cart software for you ecommerce website can be a daunting task. There are literally hundreds of shopping carts and ecommerce solutions available. How do you know which one is right for you?

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I was working on a fast-paced project, a Joomla website update, and the client wanted a flash-like header on the home page that changed the image every few seconds and stopped after three images. I’m not a flash developer and didn’t think I could complete this requirement within the deadline. Meanwhile, I searched the Joomla Extensions directory and found a GREAT FREE image rotator that did almost exactly what the client requested: Joomlaworks Simple Image Rotator. The only problem was that the image rotator did not stop the rotation. The client was OK with this, but it was NOT their ideal.

I posted a question on the Simple Image Rotator forum; I asked if there was a way to stop the image rotation. pansoru (username) wrote back and asked why I wanted to stop the image rotation. I explained that my client wanted to play three images, each with a message and then end on the last, and most important image/message.

A few hours later, I received an email from the forum:

“Well as panosru, i love to help people, lucky you i love to do it and as joomlaworks!

Replace the mod_jw_sir.js with the one i attached to this post.

after that open the js file and go to line 14. Somewhere on this line i have the totalImages = 4 code, replace the 4 with the number of the pictures that you want to show, in your case the number is 3.

Tested on: IE6/IE7/Firefox 2/Safari 3/Opera 9″

Simply because he likes helping people, panasru modified the script so I could configure it to stop after x number of images had displayed. It worked perfectly. Now that’s service! I was so delighted, I donated $20 dollars to Joomlaworks.

What’s more, Joomlaworks makes several other commercial Joomla plugins that are GREAT:

• Simple Image Rotator Pro (12 Euros) - This is an extended version of the simple image rotator and many great features. This extension allows you to add multiple slideshows to any content page, AND it has the ability to popup a larger image if the users clicks an image.
• Front Page Image Rotator (22 Euros) - This extension allows you to insert a slideshow on your home page that rotates through articles and images. For example, if you sell products, the Front Page Image Rotator can rotate the products and images.

A few weeks ago, I installed WordPress blog software on my site. After using it for a few weeks, I have to say that WordPress is a beautiful piece of software and I give if 5 stars! Beautiful? That’s right. This software impressed me so much that the first word that came to my mind was beautiful.

Here’s why:

• WordPress was very easy to install - The basic instructions tell you everything you need to know. Of course, it helps if you are familiar with creating a database on your web server and installing php scripts, but if you’ve ever installed a database-driven php script before, Word Press blog software is a model for easy installation.
• WordPress is easy to use - Without reading any instructions, I created several blog categories and started writing the blog posts to go in them. The text editor is simple and easy to use. Plus, you can view the html code if you want to. A nice feature if you want to insert scripts or html code not available in the editor. One especially handy feature is that you can create a category WHILE you are in the Write/Post editing screen. Often, I create a blog post first and then think of a new category under which to post it. In WordPress, I can easily create the category while writing the post. Plus, it’s a snap to add the blog post the several categories.
• WordPress is easy to Customize - I wanted WordPress to fit seamlessly into my site design, so I made a copy of the default template and start modifying it. Because the code design is so clean and elegant, I was able to create my custom template in a couple hours.
• WordPress has GREAT documentation - Even though WordPress is very easy to use, if you want to change the defaults or add plugins, the thorough WordPress documentation is there to help. A lot of free, OpenSource software, as great as it is, has sparse or no documentation. As a result, the only way to find out how to use it is by searching the software’s forum or by posting a question on the forum. Although you can usually find the information you’re looking for, this method is a slow and tedious way to learn new software. As a technical writer, I appreciate the work the WordPress writers have put into the help files.
• WordPress is designed in CSS and Validates - WordPress pages load quickly and it is relatively easy to make global modifications to the look and feel by editing the template’s css style sheet. Plus, the clean css design makes is much easier for a web designer to read the code. And finally, the default WordPress template’s css validates completely.
• WordPress has a GREAT image upload feature - If you need to add images to your blog posts or pages, WordPress’ image upload feature is easy to use. Again, even though there is documentation to explain how to use it, you probably won’t need it.

I had a VERY stressful website job and was way over budget. The thing that was giving me the most heartburn was a form I had to build with 80 fields! That’s right: 80 fields! I have built some large forms by hand writing php code, but it’s very time consuming. And when you add a database to the form, even more time consuming.

I’d read about a couple form tools in the Joomla Extensions and both seemed to be powerful, complex tools. But I was stressed and out of time and I wanted a simple point-and-click form builder that wasn’t going to take three days to learn. And then I discovered PhilaForm Form Building Component for Joomla. This component was a real lifesaver for me. I was able to install and build the 80 field form and the database in about 4 hours!

This component has an easy-to-use javascript verification script for checking almost any field validation you can think of. Even with 80 fields, the verfication was fast and intuitive.

The only downside to this script is the cost and the support. The component costs around $40 U S dollars. That might seem kind of high, but when you consider the time savings, it’s worth it. Money well spent. But for $40 dollars, I expect at least some reasonable forum response time. I posted two quetions on the forum over two weeks ago and neither of them have been answered. There was an indication that Phil Taylor, the developer, had a heart attached sometime in the last two months, so maybe he’s still recovering from that. Luckily, the software is pretty easy to use.

Joomap is a Joomla component that automatically creates a sitemap of your joomla site. This wonderful, free component is easily configurable. For example, you can exclude specific menu items from the sitemap, and you can configure the sitemap layout. In addition, you can edit the Joomap .css file to change the look of the Joomap unordered lists.

Joomla is the Swiss Army Knife of Content Management Systems because of it’s Components, Mods, and Plugins. The default Joomla text editor is TinyMCE, a web based Javascript/HTML WYSIWYG editor control released as open source. It’s a nice little editor, but it not very user friendly, especially for html novices. And lets face it, many of the people using Joomla are HTML novices. That’s why they use Joomla: So they can easily update their website without calling a web site designer.

The JCE Text Editor, by Ryan Demmer is a wonderful upgrade to the TinyMCE editor.

The following is a list of just a few of the great features in JCE:

• Image Upload and Insertion: JCE’s image upload and insertion is a vast improvement over the default Joomla image manager. With this feature, web site novices can easily upload and insert images into their article and documents and even do right or left image floats just be selecting left or right alignment.
• File Upload and Insertion: Like the Image Upload and Insertion, this feature allows you to easily upload and link to non-html documents such as .doc, .pdf, and .xls. Again, this feature makes is so novice users can easily upload and link to non-html documents.
• Insert/Edit Link: Normally, to link to a joomla article, you have to copy the url from the page you have to link to and then open an article, create a link, and paste the URL into the link dialog screen. With JCE’s Insert/Edit link feature, you can select text or an image, click the Insert/Edit Link tool, and then select from a list of Sections, Categories, Articles, Static Content, Contacts, Menu Items, or URLs. Again, even a website novice can now easily add links.

The license fee for this module is $20 per year, AND you can install it on multiple domains. This is an incredible deal. Plus, Ryan’s support is EXCELLENT. JCE requires very specific server configuration (pretty common for LAMP servers), and I had some problems installing it the first time, mostly because of errors on my part. But I posted my problem on the JCE forum and Ryan answered promptly (I’m in the U S and Ryan’s in South Africa). Even with his email assistance, I couldn’t get JCE to work correctly. Finally, Ryan logged into my web server and fixed the issue in minutes. Now that’s service!

My only complaint about JCE is this: WHY IS THIS COMPONENT NOT INCLUDED IN THE DEFAULT JOOMLA INSTALLATION?

Many of our website clients want the ability to easily add, edit, update, and delete text, images, and pages on their website. A Content Management System (CMS) provides a way for these clients to easily achieve these goals.

A website content management system (CMS) is a computer system used to manage and control a large or small, dynamic collection of web material (HTML documents and their associated images). A CMS facilitates document control, auditing, editing, and management. The beauty of a CMS is that it does not require the CMS user to be an HTML expert. Furthermore, it allows the CMS user to easily update web pages using a simple web browser interface.

Joomla is a free, OpenSource CMS will hundreds of free and commercial plugins that extends it’s already abundant features.

• For more information, see our article on Content Management Systems.
• Also, see the Joomla website.