beededea
What is needed is the following:
A simple button to trigger a bulk email.
A simple link to a list showing us what this particular email trigger is going to do, to who, when &c.
A simple log from the back end showing what was sent, when and to whom and if not, why.
Before any bug-fixing, improvements are carried out the above needs to be addressed.
I am NOT thick and I am technically minded. I cannot however get to grips with VEMOD and every time I use it I find myself digging through the pages to find out what I actually need to do. I still do not know to this day whether some of emails are actually being sent at all... Reading the manual seems to have no impact on my ability to be able to send emails.
I want to use VEMOD having invested time and effort in it. When the project went in stasis I really thought about abandoning the tool completely. As it is already installed on three J1.5 sites I don't really want to go through the pain of finding another tool again. I have another three J1.5 sites to optimise, I also have six J1.0 sites to find a mailing tool for.
That's my penn'orth, a response to this on the forum would be really useful as I am doing my analysis of mailing list tools now. I have a bit of cash to point in the develope's direction per site install if that helps.
Yereverluvinunclebert
It will then be looking at the UK site and will display in £/GBP/Sterling.
There is a problem, the problem however, is a strange one. For a component that supports translation the product documentation requires some improvement in it's own translation. It is confusing and counter-intuitive. The chap below who is experiencing the wrong translation has made a standard error that can be fixed easily enough by configuring the component correctly. It is not his fault that it is confusing, he made the same mistake that I originally did... putting a Spanish translation in the English section.
If the documentation was to undergo a review and be translated correctly then I think the product would be much easier to implement.
Yereverluvinunclebert
Note to developer: keep on developing for VM 1.0. I have five shops that will never upgrade to VM 1.1 and they need this component.
yereverluvinunclebert
Thank you for this comment. Many people semms to be interested, so i will bring some very interesting features soon ;-)
But i'm alone on this project and too many tasks on the road-map, so i have to stop the developpemnt for VM 1.0 (sorry about that) to work on VM 1.1+ and VM 2.0 (that will come on early 2010) !!!
I have tried several form tools and what you want is something bug-free and which works without that steep learning curve and without having to build up the form using bits of twigs and mouse droppings.
This tool gets a form going pretty quick, it is not so intuitive in some areas, adding menu links for instance is done the opposite way to all other components, ie. it occurs within the mailforms component and not in the joomla menu tool (why?). However, that issue aside, it is easy to build a simple form and the result works straight away. It also looks good on the page. The advertising is discrete and can be got rid of with some cash to the developer.
I'd say it was worth the money.
For complex forms with complex scripting please feel free to use facile/breeze forms. But I want a life - so I'll be using mailforms for almost all my requirements from now own.
However, the latest version is very good indeed. If you want to be able to export your Virtuemart product and category information to a CSV file for modifying in MS Excel or OpenOffice Scalc then this component is indispensable.
I apologise for criticising the earlier version, I should have waited for the newer version to come out. I will donate a fiver to you if you tell me where the link is to do so!
Once configured there is some simple scripting to do to implement the rules. You will however need to be able to understand very basic or simple PHP scripts but that is all.
It is powerful too being able to display any module in many different conditions.
Not perfect however, it still takes up module space even if the target module is not being shown. On my template it left a white space 'hole' in the middle of the page in the area that I was trying to make invisible according to my rules. Not for me in this case but I can think of many instances when this module would be very useful.
Yereverluvinunclebert
Hi Beededea, thanks for the review. There are just a few points I'd like to pick up on:
1 - yes, there's a patch you can make to a core Joomla script to make a list of modules and their IDs show up when you are editing the module, but it's not compulsory. And, it's only for the Joomla 1.0.x version of MetaMod -- the Joomla 1.5 version doesn't need it.
2 - yes, the ability to do some simple scripting is a bonus. There are some simple operations you can do without any scripting at all (GeoIP country selection and time/date limits on module display). There's also an increasing number of PHP recipes on the home page that need only minimal customisation in order to use them. When I get an enquiry from someone about how to do a particular task I usually add a new recipe to the list.
3 - module space when the target module isn't showing... sigh... this certainly can be a pain. Sometimes this happens, sometimes it doesn't, depending on the template. Thankfully there are a number of ways to tackle this, but it often depends on the template and CSS that you are using. One quick thing to try if this is happening to you is to add a "module suffix" to the MetaMod instance you are working on. Often, a random suffix added here fools the CSS into not allocating extra space for the missing module. This can also sometimes help if the included module isn't getting its CSS styling right - work with the module suffix for MetaMod, the module suffix for the included module, and the "style for included modules" in MetaMod to find a combination that works.
Sometimes though, if your template makes design decisions about whether to make space for a module position depending on whether there are any active modules in that position, MetaMod fools it into making space, when it really shouldn't (cos MetaMod will later decide not to put anything in there). In that case you need to do some work on the template. As a last resort, of course, you can always get MetaMod to put in an alternative module if it decides not to include anything else -- e.g. a nice graphic, google adwords, a link (advert) to some other page on your site, etc. Be creative! Often we forget that not everything on the site needs to be utilitarian...
beededea, if you e-mail me I'll see if it's possible to get around your spacing issues.
-- Stephen
Don't let the developers website confuse you, it is a demo and nothing else. His site is difficult to navigate and not the best selling tool in the world. Nevertheless his product deserves a mention from me as being highly recommended.
Yereverluvinunclebert
Note To Developer: Can you please modify it so that we can alter the colour of the main text or the background? It appears to be picking it up from the template and the text appears very faint on my site with the default yellow background.
A very useful tool indeed
It has a few quirks, one of which is that when you cut/paste from the JCE WSIWYG editor into an external editor like MS Frontpage using the design tab, the HTML generated has '/administrator/administrator' inserted into every URL link. When you edit that in your external editor and paste it back in, then beware...your links won't work.
I don't know why that is but I've learnt to live with it. I seldom edit externally anyway so it isn't much of a problem.
Another quirk is that the editor is susceptible to the wrong URL, if you put sitename.co.uk in the browser and your Joomla site is configured as www.sitename.co.uk, the editor content pane may not show up at all. This may be a Joomla problem though and not a JCE specific issue.
I have also had problems trying to get JCE as the default editor, sometimes having to de-install all the other editors and re-install JCE a couple of times before it would work.
Once installed and working it is my editor of choice and all my sites now have JCE installed by default.
Yereverluvinunclebert
Yereverluvinunclebert
But despite what I have just said, I now have to say that Virtuemart when it is configured and working is really first class.
For me the issues that set the component back were the way it displayed in Firefox and IE. both different, but resolved by removing some unwanted code, trivial but time consuming for me - and not for the uninitiated or code-wary.
Would like some of the functionality that exists in OSCommerce, for example, being able to see which users are currently looking at the shop, what they are looking at &c. Would also like better display of categories and multi category products. The back end needs a bit of TLC with regard to product configuration and import/export. Mixing real items with downloads appears difficult to set up. The configuration of tax was not easy nor was shipping but it all worked in the end.
Despite all these niggles it is still first class, as it works and it is free!
yereverluvinunclebert
The backup and restore works for a small site. You really need to read the documentation to get it to work. However, it does not back up one of my bigger sites, it hangs mid way with the following message.
"Creating archive file
This might take several minutes. Please wait...
28
14808531 / 25565004"
The admin user is then logged out and your backup is incomplete. I cannot rely on it as a backup solution for this obvious reason. I will try the next version when it is stable and see if the problem is resolved but for the moment backups are done another way.
Dean (yerluvinunclebert)
I have used a lot of 'packagers' in my role as tech support and I feel Joomla Cloner is just not up to the job yet. It needs to be more intuitive, give some support on it's various functions and make some of the field descriptions a little more helpful too. Anyhow, I bought it without the trial and I now regret it. The support bloke will not give a refund even though I told him I have no intention of using it again.
Joomla Cloner was only needed to speed up the process. It didn't work and won't without some support therefore it is of no use to me. The chap wasn't as understanding as I would have liked so he's not getting any more of my money.
The lack of properly reading the documentation or asking for support does not mean JoomlaCloner doesn't work!
While we try to make JoomlaCloner as intuitive as possible, there are some technical glitches that are independent of it, this is why we provide full support to get the client understand and pass them! When importing, you need to make sure you are using an empty database first!
While we regret the clients bad experience, the fact that he doesn't request support although we provide it all the time for all situations related to JoomlaCloner, leaves him with the full responsibility on using and understanding the component!













