The Joomla! Extensions Directory ™

I've had a very interesting discussion with this reviewer (he contacted me the same time he filled in this review).

The bottom line for me is this: At Valanx, we offer a business service with commercial GPL software. There are some concessions that we have to make in order to afford to run our own business and the way we structure our support material is one of them.

We used to have a print-out manual a while ago and we still have problems because of that one pdf - as people somehow use it with our current software and end up messing up their system. That's a business risk for both sides and we don't want to make the same mistake again.

To conclude: We already offer our software at a very low price and we consider the price for getting access to our manual as very affordable and sensible. Nevertheless, because we value the input of our users, we will reconsider our pricing to make a membership more affordable for our long-term members.

Thanks! Just to make sure that this is not misunderstood by others: AEC no longer needs to "patch" and files, like we needed to in Joomla 1.0. These days, you only need to install our plugins.

I have no idea how you managed to miss the manual. Going to Support -> Manual on our website seemed rather straightforward to me.

Yes, if you cannot figure it out by the Manual, the FAQs or the Video Tutorials, there is paid support which, by the way, I don't make any money from as the money people pay for support goes directly to my support staff. Put differently: I have set up the system in such a way that I do not profit from support because that would encourage just the behavior that you are suspecting. And I don't want that to happen.

Next you write that you did not get any reaction to your ticket. Well, I'm not sure how that was supposed to work out - I searched our system and found your ticket - you had closed it right after opening it.

Then, you entered a refund request on the 11th - at 8pm my time, which is not really standard business hours. The next day, you file this review and claim that we didn't answer you. Even more than that, you claim that this is somehow a way in which we rip of customers to make money. I have no idea how you imagine that we have pulled this off for years, now.

Needless to say, you signed up for your account more than a month ago, which technically puts you far beyond our 14day money back policy.

I won't even go into the Forum thing because a Forum that tells you straight away: "Please do not expect support like on the ticket system here" should be rather simple to understand. We do participate in the forum and try our best to keep up. But if you want support, that's just not what it is there for.

Sorry, but pretty much all of this is not true. AEC installs just fine on all of the Joomla 1.6 installs we have tested, which of course includes non-vanilla deployments. (I'm really not sure how you imagine that AEC is the only component in Joomla to require a system from scratch.) The only scenario I can come up with here is that the servers you tried it one were different - maybe your "plain" test was on a local server and the ones you deployed it on before were servers that had a number of restrictions? Did you test with the latest version that ironed out a couple of minor bugs?

Now, I cannot make out what ticket you are referring to as I don't find anybody with a username like yours in our system, but I'm certain our support did not tell you that AEC only works on a vanilla Joomla. I'm even more certain that Jake tried his best to help you on your path, but maybe you were too frustrated to follow up with us. Feel free to email me directly if you want to discuss this in more detail.

As for the matters of support - yes, our smallest "starter" membership comes with 15 minutes of support time that you can spend on hands-on support. Apart from the fact that you are mocking something that you yourself decided to buy, 15 minutes is actually what we have found to be sufficient to get most people on their way. Then, of course, there is the manual, video tutorials, FAQs and so forth that can also help you along. So yes - the direct, hands-on support is kind of rationed. But saying that "if you need any help whatsoever, you need to pay extra for support" is just false.

Next up - I have a hard time figuring out what your real issues were. Apart from your installing trouble in 1.6, you write things like "There's nothing in the settings that will make it work with anything." - How about the "Integrate Registration" setting that does just that, with the Joomla registration (and JomSocial, CB and a bunch of others)? What about the 50+ MicroIntegrations that specifically target other components?

Finally, there is no need whatsoever to "hack" anything in Joomla to make it work with AEC. We do have a file hacker, but that is a remainder from Joomla 1.0 days and largely unused (it's only there to support some legacy integrations with other components that we cannot integrate with unless we modify their code - something we of course try to avoid at all cost).

I must conclude that what you were experiencing really does seem like a bad dream. Do you really think that we have stayed in business for more than four years now, servicing all those clients on thousands of sites, all while selling a software package that does not work?

Selling it, actually, using the very same software that you claim to be so broken to be unusable?

Too bad that you didn't go into details, because of that, it's hard to make out what your issues were. Had you included them, others might have been able to make up their mind on AEC based on your review, but now they kind of have to decide whether they rather believe what you write or what I reply to it.

My blog is a personal blog and yes, it does include frustration with clients. I do not write those articles to rant about customers and I think if you read it again, you will see what I mean - I even explained very clearly that I was adressing a very small number of people, not because I want a fight with them, but because I think a lot of the problems that come up stem from some simple misunderstandings that I would like to get out of the way.

I'm also not sure what you mean that the blog isn't helpful when you seek assistance - that's really not what a blog is for, which is why I'm sorry to see you not even mentioning the support, manual, faq or forums. After all - those are what we have in store for helping you out. And no, we do not expect you to email us. I'm not sure where you have that from - we make it very clear that the place to get support is our support ticket system. I will try to work on making that a little more obvious.

Yes, I do say that for some cases, AEC does not work out of the box - that's just the way it is and it would be disengenuious of me to say the opposite. If another software solved your problem for you right away then I'm happy that it worked out for you. But please don't blame it on us because there are a lot of other users who do have the same experience - with AEC.

Whether any software package works out of the box for you mostly relies on how long that software has been developed for sites similar to yours. You went with RSMembership, so I would guess (again, cannot do much more than guessing here) that you needed some built in (file) access management, which is the biggest difference. In AEC, we try to do as little of that as possible because there are other extensions that are so much better at it and we don't try to be like them - just to integrate with them very well. Now, if you NEED direct management of access controls then yes, AEC will look like an incomplete package to you. But it's really more a question of your own focus and not so much of the software itself - because in both cases, the two packages have good reasons to be what they are.

Membership software is not a simple thing - it has to sit very much inbetween a lot of other packages and mediate efforts between them. It's not like a forum that you just install and that either has the featureset you need or not. In a forum, you might have problems like "does it allow me to send personal messages to other users" and it would either do it or not (and you'd probably know in advance). In Membership software, you have problems like "does it allow me to grant a user access in this document management software that I use to offer premium downloads", which is an issue that cuts through several layers.

What I'm trying to say here is: I can absolutely see why you say that you were surprised that after installing a lot of other components, AEC is the first one that didn't do what you wanted right away. It's very much about what you want to do that determines how simple it is to achieve, but it's by far not as simple as "it either does it or not". Again - I'm sorry, but it just isn't.

You conclude that AEC was a waste of time and money but I don't even know whether you contacted our support at all. That might have saved you some time because we could have either helped you right away, or told you that what you want to do is not possible in AEC and would have recommended you another component to do it or given you a refund.

I really do not want to belittle your efforts and that you spent a lot time trying, I just don't get why you didn't have this conversation with us right away. I also do not rememeber having told anybody that their email got lost recently, but this review has been published 18 days after it was filed, so it might just be that I forgot.