The Joomla! Extensions Directory ™

This Sudoku has some great features I've never before seen. I found Medium to be a bit underrated as it was slightly more difficult than those I usually play online claiming to be medium.

Additional backend color options would be very welcome. I would also like to see a "new puzzle" button. This would negate the need to refresh the entire page.

My only criticism is the number coloring isn't very defined, so when you have the "warning on evident errors" feature switched on the Red numbers should be very much highlighted. As it is, it's hard to tell there is any error taking place.

Brilliant work overall.

This should have come with Sobi2. A person can go crazy figuring out that you're supposed to find the lat and long.

But with this, you have a quick way to automatically calculate the lat and long.

Very Helpful! Much appreciation to the developer!

Eyashwant says it best. They pack a LOT in to this inexpensive paypal solution. I had it set up in no time. If the developer doesn't have a tutorial vid, I recommend they make one, because there is a bit of reading. But I get paid to read instructions, so the only person to lose points on that is me.

In any case, it was done and set up in no time.

And now I have a simple method of payment on my site without installing an unnecessarily hefty E-Commerce solution.

Thanks.

This works VERY WELL. It is extremely simple and easy to understand. Out of the box this will likely meet your needs. It has at least a half dozen options for appearance.


For me though, I just wanted the latest logos for Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace and I wanted them to be twice as big as the styling allowed.

Luckily this was a VERY CLEAN php doc. I found the size and positioning an absolute breeze to adjust. After that, it was just a matter of dropping the new images into a folder I would never use (green).

5 stars, highly recommend to anyone.

Last update on Oct 16, 2009... this has long been the problem with VM. They rarely update, and never drastically update their extension.

VM is still a decent component offering more features than most competitors, and the community is still active enough that questions are getting answered.

But their promises of an upgrade are becoming a joke.

So here I review the 'latest' release of VM:

Configuration: Not as bad as people suggest. It takes some time, and some youtube tutorial videos.

The problem lies in trying to make any changes once it's live. You can very easily 'break' it. So if you are setting this up to be managed by someone else, make sure they know what not to touch, unless you want to be looking up default settings on the forum.

Management: A breeze. People who imply adding/changing items, taking and changing order statuses, and accepting payments isn't easy are full of it.

UI: Not terrible, but leaves much to be desired. The short answer - it isn't very intuitive. Nothing seems to be where one might expect to find it. Also, many of the settings (configuration issue as well) seem to be poorly labeled - and it's not clear what certain things are for, so you try to leave much of it alone.

Features: Probably more features than any other Joomla eCom Component. The Shipping Modules are fantastic (again - youtube tutorials on the set up), and the attributes (ex: +$20 for XXXL) is great. There are a ton I don't use though. It's well rounded for almost any type of eCom Site.

A bitter-sweet aspect is third party developer extensions. For the most part, I love the stuff people are out there producing, but for things like SEF!... this should have been built in as an option from the beginning of 1.5 native.

Look: Templates and other setting allow much flexibility in the look. I have found and reported some bugs which didn't seem to gain much attention. Oh, well.

The total of this bring me to 4 stars, but with its dwindling community, invisible development team, and the rise of valid competition, it could easily fall to a 3 star rating.

On the flip side, if they release a completely retooled version in the very near future with a slue of new options, easier configuration and a generally improved User Interface, I could give it a 5 star rating.

I'm going to get booed for suggesting this, but I'd be alright with VM going commercial (for a very reasonable price, of course) IF they ever get their shtuff straight!

You can get by without buying the support subscription, and probably be just fine. I mainly bought the subscription as a way of donating. This is a great project, and needs to stay alive. But the support and nightly builds have come in handy. And really, $78 for a year and unlimited domains... not too shabby.

I'm convinced Dave is a genius.
I'm also convinced he never sleeps.

This is getting worked on constantly, that's one reason the nightly builds are important. It offers integration with a number of other products, and a number of products offer integration with HWD, making the sustained existence of this project important.

Support requires patience, but they never failed to answer my concerns, and they even did some of the work for me once when I wasn't able to fix a problem.

They added a video player with scroll bar which was a must... but the look needs to be improved.

An all around great extension(s).

I have been using this on my sites for several months, and the first thing worth mentioning is the Support!

Helix is amazing. Great attitude, Very Helpful. Great response time, Works until the problem is solved and/or the customer is satisfied.

I love everything about OSE. Reasonable price points, great support method, and very flexible well designed extensions. I will definitely be buying from them in the future.

Now, about this product:

Set up isn't for your novice web-admin and requires above average web-admin experience in php. Having said this, note the support feedback up top; they will help you to get it working, regardless of what you know (rather don't know)!

As I'm writing this, they have temporarily removed the Wizard feature from the set up, but have told me that it will be back in future versions. I NEED the Wizard feature! haha.

This suite covers almost everything. Brute-forcer prevention, Additional Password Protection, IP blocking, Virus scanning, PHP locking, and, really, too much to list off the top of my head. Basically a must for Social Networking and eCommerce Sites.

The one thing it doesn't offer is what you get with jSecure plugin, which is an alt-key for your administrator login url.

ex: Without jSecure Plugin - http://billyzanefanpage.com/administrator/

ex: With jSecure Plugin - http://billyzanefanpage.com/administrator/?CrystalPalaceLogin to get to the Admin Login page.

HELIX, PLEASE ADD THIS FEATURE! I don't want to have any redundancies, and being that the new jSecure offers IP blocking, there would be a redundancy in having both.

I can't praise this enough, nor the people behind it.

First: I haven't used the new one. This is based on the non-commercial version by the same name. I understand that sometimes things need to go commercial, so zero points off for that. Also noteworthy, the price point is more than reasonable - especially given the features they are adding.

But, my experience is with the 1.0.9 version (I think that's right). And that experience was uneventful, which given other people's feedback, is the best possible result.

I never had a single problem.

However, I can't give this a 5 star rating. The 'support' people get from the forum is obtrusively defensive. Anyone suggesting they have encountered 'THE' problem seem to receive cold, unhelpful responses.

Never having experienced 'THE' problem, I can't speak to it, but the evidence seems indicate there may be something to it, and for the support to ignore that and give short, perhaps rude, answers puts me off.

I removed the old version from all my sites since it is no longer supported. I'll upgrade one day, but I would like to see a different approach to customer support.

Robert Gavick's team is relatively small, and yet they continue to amaze with extensions like this, and the stunning templates that utilize it.

I originally started using GK Extensions over a year ago, and have since join the template club to take full advantage of what they have to offer.

News Show Pro GK 4 is their greatest advancement thus far. I still use their last version on several sites, so I've been able to compare side by side, and they have made this one much simpler to understand (probably my biggest gripe as I install this on sites I don't manage).

There isn't much to say outside of 'it's great' because what it does and how it works is self-explanatory.

I can't speak to the paid support for the extensions, because my template developer license/support covers this and any other problems. That support has been good for the most part.

What I really want to see now, is an update on Tabs Manager and Photoslide (especially in making Photoslide more user friendly). Also to see them all a bit more integrated would be a nice touch.

But, 5 stars on it's functionality, and utility.

This does fit a need of mine. I don't want to increase the sessions at all unless I'm running a forum. But the backend of a site is where the work gets done, and I take long breaks. The biggest pain is having to log back in, especially when you run additional security.

So, I've been using this since it first showed up. I run it in live sites (because I'm crazy) with no problems. I don't know what bug fixes there have been, but I have yet to update my original.

The good: Tienda is very simple and has a bright future.

The bad: Tienda 'Community' lacks too many of the features you get with VM, and the end cost of Tienda 'Enterprise' will likely be too high.

I ran Tienda 'Community' on a test site comparing it with VM. It's more intuitive, with an all around cleaner UI. However, it lacks many of the basic features you get with Virtuemart. Most notably complex shipping methods. But according to dioscouri.com, Tienda 'Enterprise' will exceed VM in features. 'Community' has no real value to me, whereas 'Enterprise' sounds like just the thing. After some investigation, it seems 'Enterprise' has been delayed sometime (but who knows, it's probably being released as I post this). My concern is the possible end cost of the 'Enterprise' version.

Putting aside the fact that 'Enterprise' will be commercial, one thing I really don't care for with dioscouri.com's products is that their Professional support and updates are done with a separate monthly subscription, and the amount to pay seems outrageous! I imagine Tienda 'Enterprise' will be the same as the others, you buy the product for a high price, and then turn around and pay again for support/upgrades. This is an uncommonly high on cost of doing business.

Of course, it's entirely possible you may never need support. The structure is sturdy and the UI is virtually idiot proof. But what about the upgrades?

"One month of: * Direct support through our Support Center for the community version of Tienda * Access to downloads and upgrades for the community version of Tienda.
This is a one-time charge. Your subscription will expire after one month and will NOT renew. * $99.99 USD - 30 Days"

I can't afford that. I can't afford $99.99 the first month and $79.99 for 11 more months either.

The forum support from the community is the greatest case of blind leading the blind. There are dozens of questions without direct answers. I myself didn't have any need for this as I was only testing the 'Community' version against VM.

And this: http://projects.dioscouri.com/projects/tienda/wiki/ ... is not adequate documentation.

"This site is intended for Tienda development. NO SUPPORT is offered here." ... "In order to develop for Tienda, you must first understand how Tienda works, so this document will provide you with the basics necessary to approach Tienda intelligently. It will also help you configure your workstation for Tienda development." It's more like documentation on how best to support Tienda.

Okay, now that all sounds bad... But, the fact is, in spite of all the above, this is still THE MOST PROMISING E-COMMERCE COMPONENT since VM. It clearly has a talented, organized team behind it. VM has not been updated in more than a year. Their 'news' blog has become a joke. I love them, but I'm about ready to move up or move on.

But Tienda 'Community' is far from meeting the needs of anyone accustomed to VM, and I doubt seriously that Tienda 'Enterprise' will be economically sensible for the average J! store manager.

My main suggestion to dioscouri.com: Restructure your support/update pricing and fuse the plan with your products. There are many successful models to look to. ...'I know, I know' you're already successful... what do I know?