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Account Expiration Control
Lack of everything
byBuba_Smith2, April 11, 2011
Account Expiration Control
I'm currently working on a few different joomla sites that are in the need of a payment processor. I've been upgrading all of my sites to Joomla 1.6 and, at the time, there were NO subscription services except this that were listed as working with 1.6. That said, I PAID for their software. The first thing I want to mention is that if you buy their software, the base package comes with 15 MINUTES of support. If you need any help whatsoever, you need to pay extra for support. Being a web developer, I use these packages to save time instead of writing them myself, so I'm usually against using any components that aren't free to begin with. I TRIED to install AEC and it simply did not work. Their forums yielded absolutely no developer support, so I reluctantly submitted a ticket and used my marvelous 15 min. worth of support. My question was something like, "This software doesn't seem to install on my Joomla 1.6 website no matter what I do, but when I tried to install it on top of a vanilla installation of 1.6, it worked. You can't possibly be telling me that your software will ONLY install on a vanilla installation of joomla?" To which the reply I got was, "yes". So if you have a website made with Joomla 1.6, Don't bother using this software because you'll have to start from scratch just to INSTALL it. Now, for one site, I hadn't yet upgraded it from Joomla 1.5, so I thought I'd use this purchase for that site instead and installed a fresh joomla 1.6 and AEC. It installed... but never worked. There's nothing in the settings that will make it work with anything. Upon reading further, I discovered that you need to HACK Joomla in a few places in order to get it to work properly. The simple fact that it needs to be installed on a vanilla joomla installation and still doesn't work just baffled me. You sell software that doesn't work and then charge exuberant amounts for support? This is a scam as far as I am concerned and would not recommend it to anyone looking for a subscription component for Joomla 1.6. Luckily, there are a few more options now that will allow AEC to become nothing more than a bad dream.
Owner's reply

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?

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