I have never written a review for anything before. But I feel compelled to out of disappointment in what could and should be the flagship component for Joomla. I have tried on many occasions to use VirtueMart. Each time I find it to be buggy in areas that I would not expect a stable app to be, such as (Stable 1.10) menu selections in the admin panel. Any questions you might have, indeed is in their forums. Unfortunately, most of the answers are not.

Well it looks good when you first download it.. but from then on, it gets worse. The admin is poor and looks and functions awful. Installation is not straight forward. Support is awful. Trying to work with the code is a nightmare. I'm a web developer and I have NEVER seen code as bad as this. Pointless class methods and too much pointless code. Obviously the people who wrote this were stepping on each other's toes. Guy's, take a look at osCommerce, because that's a real ecommerce package. It worries me that something so popular is written so horrifically.

I have been using VirtueMart for a couple of years and had never really taken the time to explore it's full potential.

We sell the same producs but at a range of different prices to different customers and I was thrilled to discover that you can set up a new Shopper Group for each type of customer and then allocate a different price for each Group - GREAT!

Now I just need it to automatically upgrade customers to a more discounted Shopper Group when they hit a predetermined monthly sales figure and I won't have to do any admin at all!

Thanks for a great product.

With many many changes and bugs fixed, the version 1.1 should be 1.5 :)

The app is awesome. I'm using it for 2 months now, and i can say it works like a charm.
Although i had a few problem like when cache is turned on in Joomla global config, a "Page last modified:" with no date appeared at the bottom of every VM page, but i solved it via their forum....
Great app, good supper, excellent customization and integration...
I definitely recomend it :)

Excelent job dev team. Proud to recommand this component. Glad to be the first user to comment this release!

I am using Joomla 1.0.15 with VM 1.0.15. A check at the forum show there is still a lot of bugs to be resolved (session lockout, unable to verify security token...not fixes). Great if these issue can be resolved. I am still not giving up on VM, only just disappointed.

It's a great product. Easy to install (please note - you'll need to install the different modules in addition to the main module - see the user manual for more information), and it gets working immediately.

It's also very cusomisable and has an active forum that help with questions.

I have been highly critical of some joomla extensions in the past. I also had a few problems with Virtuemart, these were mostly configuration issues that have been resolved by someone else. I mostly found the answers in the forum after a good bit of searching which took time and effort.

But despite what I have just said, I now have to say that Virtuemart when it is configured and working is really first class.

For me the issues that set the component back were the way it displayed in Firefox and IE. both different, but resolved by removing some unwanted code, trivial but time consuming for me - and not for the uninitiated or code-wary.

Would like some of the functionality that exists in OSCommerce, for example, being able to see which users are currently looking at the shop, what they are looking at &c. Would also like better display of categories and multi category products. The back end needs a bit of TLC with regard to product configuration and import/export. Mixing real items with downloads appears difficult to set up. The configuration of tax was not easy nor was shipping but it all worked in the end.

Despite all these niggles it is still first class, as it works and it is free!

yereverluvinunclebert

After researching for why all my products show up in all categories I finally found the answer here in the reviews. As Dragonman117 shows below, replacing some code on line 19 fixes the issues.

I found where to place it and everything works great!
I love Joomla!
I love Virtuemart!

file to fix: /components/com_virtuemart/virtuemart.php

Find:
global $mosConfig_absolute_path, $product_id, $vmInputFilter,

Replace with:
global $mosConfig_absolute_path, $product_id, $vmInputFilter, $category_id;

Thanks Dragonmann117 for the info

I think it's a wonderful mixture:
Joomla and Virtuemart.
With that combination, you can style online-stores with a beauty that I cannot imagne you can build it with other os solutions like oscommerce or xtcommerce.
For me, the shop is very easy to handle, with all functionalities that I need.
Thank you, developer, you did a great thing! I hope that there will be other developers who help you making (or keeping?) Virtuemart the NO 1 ecommerce solution!

We have used VirtueMart for a year now, and got it to work very nicely for our needs. An ecommerce package like VM, totally integrated inside Joomla is unique ( well.. there is a challenger now... Ixxo cart )and makes it absolutely strategic for Estore owners like us. It is so important in fact that we anxiously await every upgrades of the product.

The problem that we see with VM is that the product seems to be developed by one developer. Granted, he is very talented and deserves all our thanks, but such an important product requires a team, a clear road map etc... Just look at the list of bugs on the forum, and tasks yet to be filled, and you realize that there is not enough "manpower" to maintain the product. What to say about developing it ??

My comments are not to be construed as a rebuke, we have been very pleased, that said, we see a red flag attached to the product's future... Businesses need the reassurance that the product is maintained, developed and serviced. If it is not, we look for alternatives, and this is precisely what we are planning to do with the Ixxo cart for Joomla.

We plan to try Ixxo for Joomla inthe next few weeks, and will comment on how the two products stack up when we can make an objective assessment.

The good news is that there is now competition, and even though one product is not free, it is a small price to pay for a business that demands a 100% foolproof solution.

Best,

Michel

Not so easy at beginning, but once learned to use your life and your web production will be very simple and productive. I'm a webmaster and use VM evry day for my job!

This is the best shopping cart around... but I only use it for the catalog and it is fantastic.

The import and product entry section could use some vast improvements - but the core extension is perfect!

There is so much hype about this app and when you look at it, it really does look good.

Problem is, there are severe problems in the core of this app. Problems that have been posted on the developer's forum since last year, yet still not addressed nor even replied to.

The two biggest problems are:

1. Import of CSV product data does not work.
2. If using sales tax, pricing does not work!!!

If you're only having a dozen products or so, you may be able to live with not being able to import your products - but the developer has been aware of this bug for over a year and hasn't fixed it.

Random pricing? Actually, random discount pricing! Sales tax is usually subtracted after being subjected to seemingly random math functions.

I'm a web developer/database guy and have installed hundreds of Joomla (and other) components, plug-ins, etc., so it's not like I'm some newbie user who doesn't read manuals.

One annoying bug in the /administrator/index2.php file will keep loggin you out, but is easily fixed by adding ob_start(); immediately after the first php tag (include the semi-colon).

Unfortunately, the other bugs aren't so easily fixed.

- Hank Castello