Going to give it another shot...(VM)
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- Donnie Maynard Christianson
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Sorry to rant, but I am beyond frustrated. I've basically gone through several cart platforms and a few thousand $$ in the past 18 months trying to get a store online for my music.
I just spent about 4 weeks getting Joomla, an RT Template, and Virtue Mart installed and configured and my products loaded. (all downloadable, and over 1500 of them).
I've got the site (almost) perfect. Previews of audio work great, and even video. Products are loaded. It looks slick. Sales copy is done, and given the stamp of approval by a top copywriter. I've got mega-bandwidth and server space, all paid for for the next year. I have a market that already buys these same exact products from other, 3rd-party sites (except I give up 50% of my sales, which is why I'm trying to get my own store going).
In short, I'm finally almost ready to launch, except...
Virtue Mart doesn't want to send a download ID. The checkout process works fine though - just no download-id is sent in the confirmation email. This one thing not working absolutely KILLS my business. So once again I have a beautiful site with all my content that is completely useless.
I'd pull out my hair if I had any.
I think I've tried every cart out there, all with almost the exact same issue - users are unable to download products after sucessfully ordering. I lost a bunch of customers two years ago for this very reason, when I was using a commercial cart (even the developers couldn't fix it and had no clue why it wasn't working). The ones that DO work in that respect don't really have a "Cart", it's like a single-item purchase, which won't work for my site.
Can someone recommend something that will integrate with Joomla and handle that many products?
If not Joomla-based, any that you've had good luck with? I'd prefer to stay on Joomla so I can have a nice design and RT Templates, but I'm willing to completely jump platforms at this point.
My only two options right now:
1) loading all products into my 2Checkout account (manually...ugh...) and building plain-HTML product
pages with sales copy, previews, graphics, etc. But I might as well use OS Commerce because this completely
kills the seamless user-experience by the user having to go to 2CO, destroying the branding and design. Plus their fraud check "takes forever" in the user's eyes and I used to get nasty-mails over this when I used them once before.
2) spending at least 6 months or so building my own cart platform and site from scratch in ASP.NET. I love .NET, but I'd almost rather keep brokering at 3rd-party sites than do this, as it means spending even more money on .NET hosting, security, changing hosts, SL, yatta yatta...
Am I just being too damn picky about things? Or is it reasonable to expect a platform to work (even if it's free like VM), especially
after jumping through a million hoops?
Thanks.
--Donnie - Last Edit: 15 years 11 months ago by Donnie Maynard Christianson.
- "I've got a theory: it could be bunnies."
Donnie Maynard Christianson
artist+worldbuilder
Worldbuilder Media
www.worldbuilder.io
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- Donnie Maynard Christianson
- Rocketeer
- Posts: 89
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I should add that my preference is to fix the VM issue - I really, really like VM - it's a breeze to install, configure, and manage. I just need it to work.
- "I've got a theory: it could be bunnies."
Donnie Maynard Christianson
artist+worldbuilder
Worldbuilder Media
www.worldbuilder.io
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- Peter Osipof
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Although I am member of VirtueMart team, have always said the right tool for the job even the tool is not yours, I can recommend few alternative shopping carts but they are none Joomla, let me know which you have tried.
As for confirmation not sending, are you sure it is not being blocked by spam program, or you have it configured correctly, I just did a test it worked fine using Joomla 1.5.8 and VirtueMart 1.1.2 - VirtueShop
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- Donnie Maynard Christianson
- Rocketeer
- Posts: 89
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- Hi Peter, thanks. I am receiving the email confirmation for the order just fine, when I place a test order and when I manually change the order status. Does it send the download-id in a separate message?
- "I've got a theory: it could be bunnies."
Donnie Maynard Christianson
artist+worldbuilder
Worldbuilder Media
www.worldbuilder.io
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- Peter Osipof
- Elite Rocketeer
- Posts: 1117
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- Download-ID is send in a separate email.
- VirtueShop
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- GollumX
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I hate it when that happens ... i've gone through that a few times with Joomla and a fancy extensions... spent weeks setting everything up only to find there is a feature missing/broken that is a project killer.
I believe you'll find it much much cheaper to pay a developer a few hundred dollars to either fix it if it's broken or build that feature in if it is missing than to start from scratch on a different platform. - Say no to Internet Explorer 6.
twitter.com/mark_up
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- Donnie Maynard Christianson
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Heheh, yeah, I'm about at that point. I would definitely like to just fix this one since it is SO close. But what's funny - I'm a developer too, it's my day job. I build and manage sites way more complex than mine, but for the life of me been unable to get my own store fully working.
As far as add-ons go, I've tried to keep this one pretty simple, just Joomla, VM, the 1pixelout audio player, and the video module from Hyperion. - "I've got a theory: it could be bunnies."
Donnie Maynard Christianson
artist+worldbuilder
Worldbuilder Media
www.worldbuilder.io
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- Donnie Maynard Christianson
- Rocketeer
- Posts: 89
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Peter Osipof wrote:
Download-ID is send in a separate email.
Ouch, now that's a bummer. I have all my spam filters off - so it must be something on my ISP's end. Is there a way to disable that? Because I know my users will have the same issue.
Well, let me rephrase that - will disabling it be a major headache?
- Last Edit: 15 years 11 months ago by Donnie Maynard Christianson.
- "I've got a theory: it could be bunnies."
Donnie Maynard Christianson
artist+worldbuilder
Worldbuilder Media
www.worldbuilder.io
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- Peter Osipof
- Elite Rocketeer
- Posts: 1117
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- I have not tried it, but shouldn't be an issue if you are a coder however if you disable it how will the users get their download-id
- VirtueShop
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- Donnie Maynard Christianson
- Rocketeer
- Posts: 89
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Yeah, I may have to play around and see if there are workarounds. I'll hit the VM forums some more this weekend and see what I can find. Thanks!
--Donnie - "I've got a theory: it could be bunnies."
Donnie Maynard Christianson
artist+worldbuilder
Worldbuilder Media
www.worldbuilder.io
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