Breezing Forms Custom Fields for VirtueMart
Version
1.2 (last update on Dec 4, 2012)
Rating
Compatibility
Reviews
1
License
GPLv2 or later
Commercial
Type
Date Added
29 November 2012
Editor's Note
- This extension requires registration to download.
VirtueMart 2 has great Custom Fields functionality for products. But it is difficult to grasp and more than a few people have thrown up their hands and gone to try other shopping carts in frustration.
So what if we told you that we have a way for you to build almost any custom set of fields you want inside of a single form, and present them inside unlimited VM2 product pages with the addition of a single custom field?
With Breezing Forms Custom Fields for VirtueMart, you can:
NEW! Collect ANY information you want as part of the product details page
NEW! Adjust final product pricing based on multiple form responses
NEW! Create conditional fields, complex form queries, and more by integrating with a best-in-class custom forms component, Crosstec Breezing Forms
NEW! Choose which shopper responses from the form should be displayed inside the cart and the VirtueMart order record
-- Limitations --
Please note: This extension will not track stockable variants. It is not a substitute for VM2 child products where stock needs to be tracked for each option.
-- Compatibility -
VirtueMart 2.0.8e and higher; latest VirtueMart 2 strongly recommended
Breezing Forms 1.8 & up
Language file included
Clients have reported that this extension works great within K2Mart in addition to native VM2, but we have not tested that configuration.
Images
This is an excellent extension to VirtueMart from Polished Geek which is designed to address many of the desired features effectively missing from VM2 custom fields. I have found, like so many others, that the current way VM2 handles custom fields is somewhat limiting and confusing. Individually, they work well but when you try to collaborate among a set of fields, many needed capabilities are missing.
For example, conditional fields, where the appearance of one field is dependent on the value in another. Individually defined VM2 custom fields seem to struggle at this. However, features like this are the mainstay of forms tools. In my case, I needed the ability to configure many, many thousands of variations of a single product based on a set of specifications that could vary with each configuration! There are more than 30 fields required to complete the configuration and more than a dozen for the specification. Breezing Forms Custom Fields for VirtueMart (BFCF for VM) provided that ability.
Readers of this review should know that as an early adopter of BFCF for VM, I had some influence on how the product evolved. As would be expected, there were issues along the way. I was very impressed with the experience, professionalism and promptness of the staff at Polished Geek. In the end, there were relatively few issues and all were dealt with effectively.
While BFCF for VM is an excellent extension, it is not without its challenges. You do need some knowledge of web based environments (of which I am a relative newcomer) and the ability, as with all forms products, to write some code (PHP and Javascript, as well as some CSS and SQL, all of which I am much better at now but I certainly wouldn’t consider myself proficient). It isn’t overly difficult to do but attention to detail is paramount!
If you need to work with a set of related custom fields in any capacity within VirtueMart, I recommend heartily that you have a good long look at BFCF for VM. It isn’t for everyone but it truly changed the way I look at VirtueMart custom fields. I believe that the VM community will find countless ways to make use of the capability inherent in Breezing Forms Custom Fields for VirtueMart once they understand its capabilities. The team at Polished Geek is to be commended for bringing Breezing Forms, a popular product in its own right, to VirtueMart.
It may sound a little corny but I believe this is a paradigm shift extension to VirtueMart. It’s the kind of extension the techno-geeks will love but easy enough that even relative newcomers to open source such as myself can learn to work it.
For example, conditional fields, where the appearance of one field is dependent on the value in another. Individually defined VM2 custom fields seem to struggle at this. However, features like this are the mainstay of forms tools. In my case, I needed the ability to configure many, many thousands of variations of a single product based on a set of specifications that could vary with each configuration! There are more than 30 fields required to complete the configuration and more than a dozen for the specification. Breezing Forms Custom Fields for VirtueMart (BFCF for VM) provided that ability.
Readers of this review should know that as an early adopter of BFCF for VM, I had some influence on how the product evolved. As would be expected, there were issues along the way. I was very impressed with the experience, professionalism and promptness of the staff at Polished Geek. In the end, there were relatively few issues and all were dealt with effectively.
While BFCF for VM is an excellent extension, it is not without its challenges. You do need some knowledge of web based environments (of which I am a relative newcomer) and the ability, as with all forms products, to write some code (PHP and Javascript, as well as some CSS and SQL, all of which I am much better at now but I certainly wouldn’t consider myself proficient). It isn’t overly difficult to do but attention to detail is paramount!
If you need to work with a set of related custom fields in any capacity within VirtueMart, I recommend heartily that you have a good long look at BFCF for VM. It isn’t for everyone but it truly changed the way I look at VirtueMart custom fields. I believe that the VM community will find countless ways to make use of the capability inherent in Breezing Forms Custom Fields for VirtueMart once they understand its capabilities. The team at Polished Geek is to be commended for bringing Breezing Forms, a popular product in its own right, to VirtueMart.
It may sound a little corny but I believe this is a paradigm shift extension to VirtueMart. It’s the kind of extension the techno-geeks will love but easy enough that even relative newcomers to open source such as myself can learn to work it.
