Auction Factory
- This extension requires registration to download.
Auction Factory supports all common auction types including also Proxy Bidding. Auctions are supporting the usual Bids and BuyItNow features. Also they can be set as Private (bids are hidden to the public) or Public (bids are showed to the public). Among other options there is also the possibility to set up a auction as Automatic (winner will be automatically choosen) or Manual (the offertant will have to choose a winner).
The component is provided with an installation kit; by performing the easy setup you will have in minutes a fully functional Auction Site.
The interface is very user friendly and you can track easily auctions and bids. In the backend panel, various administration features have been provided in order that the site admin can easily maintain control of the site and survey the auctions and bids. As payment methods PayPal and Moneebookers can be used or due to API webmasters can configure their own payment gateway.
This component has a full Community Builder integration including a Plugin pack (5 Plugins!)
Auction Factory is fully SEF!
What do I get buying this product?
The fully functional OPEN SOURCE (no encrypting) component.
Power Plugins: Commission, Pay per Contact, Pay per Bid.
8 different Modules: Popular Auctions, Most Valuable Auctions, Latest Auctions, Category Tree in two flavours, Random Auctions, Featured Auctions, Tag Module.
5 Community Builder Plugins: My TaskPad, My Auctions, My Ratings, My Bids, My Watchlist.
FULL SEF integration, Categories Support and Template Engine!
The site language can be also easily changed since the component is designed with a easy Language Management System. The install-kit comes also with a module that suports three display types: Valuable, Popular and Latest Auctions.
Everything about it was a breeze configuring and i was surprised how fast a fully operational website was online. Also translating the website in multiple languages was needed, they already have a lot of languages available from translations done by the community, saved me a lot of time.
Customization is pretty easy, since you have to edit only the "theme" files that contain no php code.
While i was working on the template (which is smarty) they released a new version and it was quite unnerving since updates tend to be messy on templates. But not with this, it had an upgrade script that didn’t affect the templating at all, pfew!
Overall it was a good experience and a solid application (imho)
The extension is pretty complex and covers most of our needs, the most useful for us was the payment integration that we could customize to our specific needs (the payment processor is quite specific to our client country).
The look and feel is pretty intuitive, most of our needs were covered out of the box, the rest we could change pretty easy.
Regarding support - we had some forum posts that got pretty quick an answer, there was one issue that got fixed, but the update process was pretty simple.
Overall a good experience
The amount of extensions I try and test are just as simple to use and fix if there are any problems. Visiting the developers website usually explains the simple fixes in a manner anyone can follow and understand.
This is not the case with The Factory Team. I think in some cases these developers believe everyone speaks foreign languages. Meaning; not every J! site developer is an extension guru and explaining in a "simple" manner is just not possible to either Erik or Alex (or any of them).
For the amount being dished out for this extension (that we had more of a time getting it to function properly) for poor customer service to help rectify the issues, we (myself and 6 others) have came to a clear decision never to renew this extension ever!
If you decide to waste your money and time with this extension, just know what to expect after you read the low reviews herein.
I have bought this software on 17-May-2011 and today is 8-Jun-2011. I have totally given up on this software and decided to throw it one side. To name a few of my frustrations:
1. Ease of installation is fine but each upgrade will require you to un-install and re-install the whole component. Due to this, I have crushed 1 server and corrupt some files on another.
2. Level of support provided is below average considering the price paid for the software. The forum is totally useless as your questions are usually ignored. The favorite answer is "Please login to your account before posting so that we can identify you". Even when I do login and post, some are left unanswered. As for the support ticket submitted, it takes few days for them to reply. And most of time, it will be thrown back to user, treating the users as fools. For example, if after an upgrade, certain features does not work, the natural reaction for AF is your settings are wrong. Come on, if user can install and use previous version, unless there is major upgrade, such basic should be understood right?
3. Since buying the software till now, there has been numerous bugs and upgrades given. However AF control of upgrades are very bad. The bug can appear in first upgrade, disappear in second upgrade but come back again in third upgrade....
4. No testing of upgrades by AF. The upgrades are thrown to me and sometimes can't even be installed. I have yet to receive an upgrade without bugs.
5. If you have alot of time and money, you may want to consider. You must also be very good in PHP to be able to make your own customizations.
The bugs are driving me crazy and certainly not a usable software in my opinion.
There should be a trial version for users to try before deciding to buy the software. Now I am stuck, there is no refund policy and un-usable software.
Its a very good extension. This extension is very flexible. We can even use it with 'Alpha Point System' as a new Payment Gateway. This is very beneficial for users who wanna use point system.
You can contact me for its integration.
Regards,
intel_steel
Thank you for your review! We're glad you appreciate the flexibility of our extension.
Feel free to contact us in order to feature your Alpha point integration solution on our website too!
ISSUES:
Registration is not demonstrated on the developers website so you never get to see how the registration system works...so when you actually buy it, you end up discovering that the registration system will require some work on your part to be usable. Its not hard programming changes but it can be time consuming. Its not that it is not functional (to be fair) but it is far from a flawless implementation from a usability perspective meaning that your customers would probably leave instead of registering and using the system as it works right out of the box.
The Comments system to ask the seller a question is a bit awkward. The old version (The version demonstrated on the developers site) has a tab and that tab has a box to type in and a submit button below it...pretty straightforward. Well the version sold to me that I downloaded had the same tab for contact the seller...but when you click on it you see a box and a button...you cannot type in the box because it is just a CSS border and the button now loads a popup to send the seller a message so from a user perspective its very weird you think you can type but you cannot so less tech savvy folks might not even try to click the button and just leave.
Lots of words in the system are re-used in the language files and you will have to add some code to create new entries so your clients can see appropriate messages throughout the system otherwise you will have a term that is just out of place here and there.
You buy credits to post ads in this system and don't pay for the listing directly. This is weak! It should just let you pay for the ad as you post it like eBay. Also; the payment tools need some polish...
The Ratings tool does not work on my clients site correctly...they see all the rating stars like every rating not just the clients rating they actually have...in other words you see each image for the rating tool stacked! Too frustrated to correct this now.
PRO's
Its the ONLY solution for Joomla I would buy...it is as far as I know the only system for Joomla.
It has potential to actually compete with the system eBay uses but it needs another 500-1000 hours of development and some usability focus groups to help the developers make it "polished".
SUMMARY:
If you are a strong developer, you can fix everything but for the price $300 USD, being one of the most expensive tools I have bought (even 3X the price of Joomsocial), you should expect NOT to have to fix all these small issues (my opinion of course).
If you don't include about 20-40 hours of development time in your budget and timeline, you will be frustrated when you discover the differences between the demo and the actual sold product and the configuration changes needed.
Overall its very powerful but like I said earlier, it needs to be polished a bit!
Hello,
Thank you for your honest review. we value all reviews and feedback we get, mostly if it points out weaknesses of our products.
We took your review under very serious consideration, as we do with all our customer (or simple user) feedbacks.
1) First of all let me assure you that version on the demo website is exactly the same as the version you purchase. There are different themes you can choose from, and as we cleared it up in a support ticket - you wanted the classic theme, and it installs default with the "demo" theme.
2)We took your registration feedback under advisement and we added it in the 2.1.0 release. You can now set up if you want a regular Joomla registration or a registration through Auction Factory. Thank you for pointing this usability issue to us!
3) We changed a little the way you can comment in order to make it more straight forward. This was added in a version you upgraded to right away after signaling this to us in our ticket system. Thank you for helping us to improve the system.
4) The language files - We did review them after you pointed this matter out to us and i think the wording is now improved.
5) "You buy credits to post ads in this system" - Unfortunately there was a small misunderstanding on your part. You CAN buy credits, but you CAN ALSO pay directly for the auction right after creating one. so you do not have to have credits, just follow the payment checkout in order to get the auction published. I think having both option is a way to allow webmasters to have more auctions published and payed for.
5)"The Ratings tool does not work on my clients site correctly.." - This we discussed in our ticket system (i assume you wrote the review before). It was, as you know a CSS issue in the template you used, and it was not that much of a fix (we pointed out where to adjust 1 line of your template CSS). Since you mean the rating stars were not showing correctly, i think this statement is misleading - since the rating system works and saves the ratings without problems. Anyway, this is issue is solved.
Please feel free to upgrade to the latest version (since you have a 2.0.x version) and i am sure you will find that all this issues have been corrected.
I am sorry that you did not mention anything about our support, since as you know we had a very good and fruitful message exchange, and i am sure you appreciated our quick and professional replies.
Thank you for this extensive review.
Andy
The Factory Team
Also all my support issues were solved in a timely manner – Forum and Tickets were very useful. I can only recommend it
Hello,
Thank you for your review. Although there is no much info on what exactly your issues were, we tried to improve the usability and functionality of our extension. Since you are using a 1.x version we strongly encourage you to upgrade it to the latest 2.x version since we feel that we added much more then look and feel to it. Also please check out the j1.6 version soon to be released.
Please free to use our forum and ticket system in order to give us feedback and to get help.
Thank you,
Andy
The Factory Team
The latest version (1.6.7) is much improved over earlier versions and certainly does the job but you'll need to make loads of changes to avoid having something which looks like the worlds first ever website.
It gets a vote as the alternative for Joomla is to build an auction system yourself - and that's going to cost more than this component.
Hello,
Thank you for your review. we value all reviews and feedback we get, mostly if it points out weaknesses of our products.
We took your review under consideration and realized that there were some usability and design issues we had to change in order to become better and to provide a good user experience, even thou there were no functionality issues with your version.
We feel that in version 2.0 and above we reached a higher standard in look and feel and we encourage you to upgrade your version.
Also please feel free to use our forum and ticket system in order to give us feedback and to get help.
Thank you,
Andy
The Factory Team
but it hardly to find out some pdf guidance like another components this is my disagree point. because of i prefer to set all joomla on localhost.
i love auction factory but it should has a pdf manual in download package too!!!!!!
Monthon,
Thank you for your positive rating and your suggestion. We tried to avoid adding documentation files to the installation kit in order to avoid having a too large zip file (since the kit is already pretty big )
You are right thou that some users might not want/ not have the possibility to access the live documentation on our website and might need to have a pdf when working offline.
We will take that under advisement and we will try to accommodate this users too.
We appreciate any feedback - positive or negative, especially those that have a constructive approach like yourself!
Thank you
Andy
The Factory Team
For this extension i had high hopes, and i wasn't let down. I had no bad surprises at all, and i can even say the support is better then the average support offered by developers (and i am not talking only joomla extensions).
The extension works as described and as expected, all questions and issues i encountered i submitted per support ticket system and got answered.
Mainly this is a mature, well programmed and structurated extension with a pretty active community on the forums and a working support team.
I sure hope that the extension gets ported to Joomla 1.6, since i plan to expand my site portfolio next year.
Thanks and Regards,
Martin
Pros:
* VERY VERY VERY useful templating system. Ok, at first i was not so convinced, but after my customer started to change that bit, and that little thing, i was grateful for this feature!Saved me a lot of time
* Modular Payment gateway. They use a plugin concept for payment gateways. my customer needed some exotic payment system and with a little help from the support team i managed to add it to the site.
* a lot of configuration options. Many on/off features, that can be adjusted to your needs. I liked that.
Cons:
* Lack of fancy mootols widgets. There are a lot of new mootools plugins that i would have saluted to be implemented in this extension. At least as an option.
* no ajax on the frontend. Althou i can understand the compatibility problems that ajax sometimes carries with it, i would have liked something in this direction. I would trade some SEO advantages of non-ajax to the fancyness of ajax powered frontend.
Thanks to the support for all the help with the payment gateway, since i am not really php literate and had to add that option quick.
Although it really does look nice, it's not really 1.5 Native, supports only one checkout system (PayPal), and to perform anything useful one needs to purchase the clunky commercial version of this product for 220 Euros at over 4 times the price of an actual production system you can trust w/serious sellers.
Our client wanted to implement a niche auction site w/Joomla and the lack of features that Auction Factory has at this time it's not likely that a real auction system capable of handling auctions w/most of the basic functions of checkouts and billing/accounts, shipping, administration, and feedback/dispute resolution, etc., is going to be available for at least a year.
Like I said, this product (and the commercial version of the product) are merely glmpses of what an actual Auction sytem for Joomla might look like when one is available some time from now.
What we ended up doing was wrapping phpuctionpro inside a Joomla install for our client, which provided a true commercial auction site after we built a utility to integrate the user registrtion databases w/some custom fields built w/Community Builder. The result is a fully blown auction site that is of commerical grade, with the auction portion costing 200 Dollars and then labor for the integration w/Joomla.
Our result wasn't Joomla 1.5 native, and the integration between the true auction system and Joomla is indeed patched together, but considering the only thing that Auction Factory was able to deliver was a very nice cosmetic look over an almost non-functional auction system we think we did pretty good.
I would really like to use this system if they would merely take the actual features of a real commercial auction system and implement them into their product.
The problem with Auction Factory is that even once they complete these very basic neccessities in their products, they still won't be competitive enough at the prices their asking for their commercial version to compete with the stand alone auction systems which can merely be wrapped and integrated with a CB database (You'll need CB in order to actually merge a single user registration regardless of what auction system you use).
On the bright side, this snippet of things to come in a year or so far exceeds, in my opinion, what the operational auction systems have in the way of cosmetics.
When Auction Factory releases a 1.5 Native (1.6 by then) version of their GPL product (the one being reviewed here) that will be the time that a developer can take their product and build a "basic" auction site that is native within Joomla. Even the folks at 'thefactory.ro' (the people who created Auction Factory) say that this GPL'd version is functional - it is only a skeleton for a developer to code and build a real auction site from, which means that you would have to reinvent the wheel because this is only really a demo of a working (and very limited) auction system that they provide for a large fee, and even then we found their support to be too limited, waiting on tickets, etc.
If you're running a club where everyone knows each other and is trusted, you meet regularly, etc., and can exchange the monies in person for your club's auctions, this version might work for you since you don't need any of the shipping and feedback and checkout systems all of the products - not just the GPL'd version here - are without.
For example, we have a client that is a Ham Radio club and are working on implementing this GPL'd version of Auction Factory on their club's Joomla site. But as I just pointed out, these are people who meet once a month, are local to each other, and can make deals based on a handshake, which is all that Auction Factory is really capable of sustaining at this time.
To sum it all up, this is a very beautiful looking auction system, and although it is only a glimpse of what an actually viable auction system is going to require for someone to adopt it, it shows very much promise and I am looking forward to this offering being an actual candidate for entry into the marketplace - since all those other auction wares have the same boring look to them, and this one has an extremely refreshing look and feel - go out and checkout the demo of this offering, you will be very impressed with the way it is laid out in a Joomla System.
Perhaps one of the best ways for the folks at 'thefactory.ro' to push this product is to finish with the 1.5 native integration, release the entire product with every feature and system that a real auction house operator is truly going to need to get people to register and use the auction site, and then charge monies for the checkout systems which must be supported - PayPal, GCO, RME, Authorize.net, Moneybookers, Nochex, Auctionchex, ProPay, 2Co, worldpay, etc., as these are the things an auction site must have in order to do business and attract sellers, and if Auction Factory had all of the Auction features and systems that a serious adopter of auction software needed they could rake in the big bucks for the checkout systems since everyone would truly want this product for their own website.
You guys have a very promising product, but it is certainly not ready for prime time and you released it way before the time where it's actually a viable offering in the auction software marketplace. Keep up the good work and I'll be one of your first customers when you finish building this product!
Bradley,
Than you for your extensive review. We really appreciate any feedback - negative or positive.
It saddens me that you felt we deserved just one star, regardless of the shortcomings you allege our product has. It seems a pretty harsh and unfair rating, since yourself is seeing this product as at least promising.
We also tried to contact you in order to settle some points and issues you claim you have, but in all these months there was no way getting hold of you. Also we cannot find any purchase information regarding yourself in our customer database, so i assume your client purchased the software - since i cannot imagine you would use a warez version of our extension.
Anyway, since we could not get to you, we have to answer you here. In the latest versions of our product we addressed many of your complaints, we added a lot of features that make this review less accurate that it originally was. It would make a huge difference if your customer would request an update to the latest version.
Thank you,
Andy
The Factory Team
The "Auction Factory gpl club vesion" is a native Joomla 1.5 product where the support is limited only on the forum, since the GPL version addresses mostly to developers, while for the Joomla Community we are offering other software versions, with extended support on ticket system and even installations, etc.
Also you wanted to have extended features like templates, payment processing, upgrade script, etc. (for less money) which are only available in other versions, not the gpl club version, fact which is been very clearly explained on our pages.