beededea

Reviews(18)
 
bybeededea, October 22, 2009
Vemod News Mailer (Auto-Compilation and eMailing)
I have terrible problems with VEMOD, I like it in many ways but it has some big failings. I am pretty technical but VEMOD often defeats me. It is completely counter-intuitive as to how to initiate a mail session. It seems to be a case of pull this, ring this bell, turn this tap, tick this box and pull one or two levers from the back end, do some tweaking at the front end and hope like hell that it fires off. Then to find out what it has actually done, when it mailed, who to &c seems to be another arcane science in itself. It is like nursing a old steam engine into life.

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.
bybeededea, October 1, 2009
RedMystic Core Google Base Feeder
If this module could receive 6 stars then it would deserve it. All Virtuemart shops should have it installed. It allows you to automatically feed Google base with no user intervention required. Not only that but it feeds its own product directory. If all VM shops fed into Red Mystic then we would have a Virtuemart-dedicated product site. A head-start over other shopping carts! The support is also first class.

Yereverluvinunclebert
bybeededea, October 1, 2009
AG My Auctions Module 1.0 for J!1.5
This Ebay auction display tool is a useful little addition to your shopping site. Mark Holland's problem is easily resolved. The utility is hard coded into looking at the US site, find '&siteId=0' in mod_ag_my_auctions.php and change it to '&siteId=3'
It will then be looking at the UK site and will display in £/GBP/Sterling.
bybeededea, September 22, 2009
Joom!Fish - content translation for multilingual websites
Some of the reviews below give the impression that this component does not work. I can assure you that it does in every respect. It provides translations to all standard Joomla content and menus.

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
bybeededea, July 21, 2009
GWCoupons for Virtuemart
This is essential functionality for any VM shop to retain customer loyalty. It does not enhance core coupons it adds new coupons that are generated automatically when certain events occur such as the customer reaching a set purchase value or purchsing a particular product, the coupon is then created.
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
Owner's reply

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) !!!

bybeededea, May 10, 2009
Latest Orders VM
This is a lovely little module. It sits in the back end control panel giving you a summary listing of all your shop orders. Easy to install but ensure you look at the 'administrator' modules when it comes to publishing the module. Place it in the cpanel section and remove the 'welcome to Joomla' administrator module and it appears at the top of your cpanel list. This is something I've wanted for a long time in VM 1.1 since I've had to move from good old VM 1.0.
bybeededea, March 23, 2009
Xmap
Xmap is a first class extension for creating good quality, no-nonsense sitemaps for Joomla 1.0 and 1.5 sites. I use it on my virtuemart 1.1.1 sites and it works a treat. I have had a problem getting it to work on a VM 1.1.2 site but I have high hopes that it will be fixed soon! Very few other extensions give you the ability to create a VM tree down to the VM category/product level. It is my standard sitemap tool.
bybeededea, December 9, 2008
Mad4Joomla Mailforms
There is a learning curve for every form builder, some longer than others. I have used facileforms on all my 1.0 sites but on a new 1.5 site I was building I just couldn't bear the thought of wading through all that treacle again. Creating a form using facileforms is like filling a lake with an eye droplet...

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.
bybeededea, November 29, 2008
CSV Improved for Virtuemart
At first I was critical of an earlier version of this offering on one of the Virtuemart forums. I could not get it to import it's own product export file.

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!
bybeededea, October 9, 2008
MetaMod 2 - display modules according to rules
This is an interesting module, with good functionality but not for the faint-hearted. It requires some code changes to a core Joomla script. Easy enough to do but perhaps not for a naive user that wants an application to just work...

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
Owner's reply

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

bybeededea, July 29, 2008
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
JEvents
This calendar is a good-looking product, it is easy to use and fairly easy to configure. (If you want pretty calendar modules look for "Include Events Cal CSS" and set it to "YES") It produces a fine and usable calendar on your site in no time at all.

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
bybeededea, June 10, 2008
YOOiecheck
I reckon that these chaps are rather good. They have released a very good tool. This module makes a very discrete and gentle pop-up that does not annoy.

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
bybeededea, May 8, 2008
JCE
This editor is the best open source Joomla editor there is. It has the ability to link to other content within the site without having to know the full URL.

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
bybeededea, April 25, 2008
A good working drop down menu, what can I say more?

Yereverluvinunclebert
bybeededea, March 18, 2008
0 of 1 people found this review helpful
VirtueMart
I have been highly critical of some joomla extensions in the past. I also had a few problems with Virtuemart, these were mostly configuration issues that have been resolved by someone else. I mostly found the answers in the forum after a good bit of searching which took time and effort.

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
bybeededea, February 17, 2008
From my experience Joomlapack is OK but not perfect. 1.0 It installs easily enough, although under the administration page all my sites have an error message "Warning: filetype() [function.filetype]: Lstat failed for Array in /home/quad/public_html/administrator/components/com_joomlapack/includes/fBUAdmin.php on line 135" which does not appear to prevent the package working as designed.

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)
bybeededea, October 24, 2007
Bookmarks
This module is great, if only I could understand it, or make it work. It is too complicated too configure, too complicated to use and too complicated in the final output. I don't want to waste huge amounts of time trying to figure out how to publish some links. Standard weblinks plus some images is what I am after, not this.
bybeededea, October 21, 2007
JoomlaCloner
I had very little time to get a clone completed as my client wanted his site by the next Monday so I had my work cut out. I was looking for a tool that would help me perform the transfer so I downloaded this hoping it speed up the transfer time. It was able to transfer files, but it was unable to transfer the database and the error message it generated was of no use to me in debugging the problem. As it was very late I had no recourse to on-line assistance so instead I used myPHPadmin to export/import and then a lot of configuring of Joomla to get Joomla working on the live site. In this case Joomla Cloner was of no use to me.

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.
Owner's reply

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!