# using joomla??



## roudystyle36 (Jul 11, 2007)

what do yall think of using joomla to build your website?? My brother has made a website using joomla and kinda showed me how to use it and i was thinking of using it to build my website.


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## Deivid (Nov 10, 2007)

Jam packed with features. Too much for my needs, that is. I installed it, installed VirtueMart on the side of it and played around with it for a while. Takes a lot of time to get the hang of it (if you're not familiar with cms software) with all them features but it works well. You might not be able to mod the layout 100% to your liking but close. I guess what I'm trying to say is - find out exactly what your needs are and what kind of features you're gonna need. Then find a cms that fits you the best. Joomla may or may not be what you're looking for.


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## roudystyle36 (Jul 11, 2007)

yhea ill have to do that. Are are some other good cms's?? And did you like virtuemart?


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## Deivid (Nov 10, 2007)

It was ok. Listen, there's this great site that lets you try many of the most popular cms software and offers plenty of user comments. I highly recommend it;

Home - OpenSourceCMS


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## roudystyle36 (Jul 11, 2007)

Im gonna have to check that out. Do you know if you can install cubecart to your website using joomla??


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## Deivid (Nov 10, 2007)

roudystyle36 said:


> Im gonna have to check that out. Do you know if you can install cubecart to your website using joomla??


I think VirtueMart is recommended on top of Joomla. I don't really see how one can make Joomla and CubeCart work in unison - within the same page, that is...


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## jiarby (Feb 8, 2007)

You could install cubecart as a standalone app and then display it in a wrapper in Joomla. the drawback is separate user databases. The good thing about VM is it uses the Joomla database. Unless there is a cubecart bridge component you will have to have users register in Joomla and also in Cube Cart. BETTER to not use Joomla for user management and only use cubecart for registrations.


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## roudystyle36 (Jul 11, 2007)

so you would recommend using virtuemart?


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## jiarby (Feb 8, 2007)

I am in the midst of implementing it (VM) on my site, so the jury is out for me....
send me a PM and I'll send you a link when it is presentable. 

There is an "ecommerce edition" Joomla installer that installs Joomla, Virtuemart, and a couple other components all in one pass. I was a computer weenie in a past life so messing with the php & css files in VM doesn't bug me, but the average schmoe may find that getting it to do what you expect/want is hard. Hiring a coder online is cheap and easy to do though.


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## Catbox (Oct 3, 2007)

Joomla is really easy... anyone could pick it up pretty quick... They have great user tutorials on the Joomla site also...


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## thereiderfamily (May 9, 2007)

I used Joomla/VirtueMart to build my new site. I had to hire a coder for some of the stuff I couldn't figure out - but I found one in the Philippines that worked for a reasonable rate - costing me about $1200.00 total for his help. 

I like Joomla's component based system a lot. After having a Yahoo! Store and dealing with their rtml or whatever they called it - moving on to Joomla was a breath of fresh air. I am not crazy about VirtueMart. It's a good database component - but it's tricky to customize and I think the checkout is sloppy and confusing. I did the best I could with it. I had to eliminate coupons altogether because of the poor way it handles them. But, it's the best shopping cart for Joomla available, so what can you do?

Overall, I'm happy that I made the switch from Yahoo! Store to Joomla.

Sara


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## kokosmin (Jun 11, 2007)

Joomla and virtuemart together make a good option, i am using it in my gsm store and i want to implement it for a t-shirt store.

The thing is.. i want to have a component for the users to make the t-shirts online, the design that is. That is more tricky.


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## sofakinggood (Dec 5, 2005)

Hi guy,

I am currently setting up a t biz and my developer is using joomla and virtuemart as my e commerce solution. I have nt seen it yet but from what i understand it is not possible to print out sales receipts and labels automatically. Do you have to manually input a customers details every time you want to print a label for shipping and do the sale for receipts? how do those of you do this who get over 50 orders a day?do you have to manually enter this info somewhere else to print out your labels etc? would love to here some suggestions.

cheers
a


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## God Father (Feb 27, 2008)

sofakinggood said:


> Hi guy,
> 
> I am currently setting up a t biz and my developer is using joomla and virtuemart as my e commerce solution. I have nt seen it yet but from what i understand it is not possible to print out sales receipts and labels automatically. Do you have to manually input a customers details every time you want to print a label for shipping and do the sale for receipts? how do those of you do this who get over 50 orders a day?do you have to manually enter this info somewhere else to print out your labels etc? would love to here some suggestions.
> 
> ...


I know this is a little old but I since I'm in the middle of a Joomla and Virtuemart detail I'd thought I would give my two cents. 


When somebody completes a order online it will put a that order into an "order" folder under virtuemart. From there you are able to print out an invoice (automatically created) print lables if you ahve them all configured. It's actually very very simple and I've very impressed.


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## VectorKing (Mar 1, 2007)

I use Joomla and virtuemart and for the most part I am satisfied with it. There are a few issues with how images are layed out, but these are fairly minor. I have a screen printing shop and pricing for the the different possibilties when it comes to colors and locations is very complex and therefore I do not have a shopping cart using virtuemart. Some of the issues I came across at the start of using Joomla were no SEF URLS(you get very long strings), not being able to make page titles & meta data, and making site maps. Joomla has many differnet components that you can install though, and I have since addressed these issues to improve search engine rankings. There is alot of support out there for joomla users but it will take some work to customize it to your liking.


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## lcollado (Dec 5, 2007)

I came across at the start of using Joomla were no SEF URLS(you get very long strings), not being able to make page titles & meta data, and making site maps. 

you can turn search engine friendly to shorten the url paths and you could match page titles with actual keywords in the contents. there are also free third party SEF extensions that can help .


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## afrofusion (Jun 29, 2007)

I use joomla and virtuemart on both my site and it has worked perfectly. I find both applications amazing and satisfactory, but then again, like in any software application, it all depends on the expertise of the coder/designer.


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## scotiabar (Jun 13, 2007)

I havent been in here in ages, but decided to pop back in!

Anyway - i've set up 2 sites with joomla and virtuemart now, and a company intranet (Joomla without the cart) I definately have a love hate with Joomla!

On one hand - the sky is the limit with Joomla add ons, but my experience is - nothing seems to work "right out the box" - once you learn what to hack in virtuemart it's a really nice component -and once you get the product set up the way you want it, it's simple to add new products, change pricing etc.

Depending on your host - "clean Urls" might be a hasle - we're on bluehost and it took a bit of work to get the files working right to get nice clean URL's - but i know other folks that this did work right out the box.

So yes, Joomla is a great system -and even if it has to many features for your needs, looking in terms of future expansion it's well worthwhile.

if yuo need something will still handle your CMS needs on a simpler level -theres a pretty good cart plugin for wordpress too (By instinct.nz i believe)

I'm no Joomla expert but at the same time i'm allways glad to pass on any knowledge i gained during the experience i've had.


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## twohairyguys (Oct 2, 2009)

As a Joomla web designer I use alot of different options to fit my clients needs The site I just converted used an outsource cart http://oneshoppingcart.com/ The site was in html so the conversion to Joomla-php wasn't all that hard look at Personali-TEEZ.Com There are a few modifications the site will go through in time (the addition of a shirt design section and it's own cart) I am discussiong with the owners what cart to use.... Virtumart...CubeCart...OsCommerce are being discussed however no one here has mentioned my personal favorite Seber Cart. Has anyone looked at Seber Cart Seber - Seber Cart for Joomla . John at Seber is great with any tech support questions (takes a bit of time he's on Aussy Time I'm east coast US) Just a heads up people


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## NigelT (Jul 25, 2009)

I was thinking about using Joomla to set up my site. I want something that would allow customers to register an account. Can Joomla be used for something like this?

I already have a shop set up using Zen Cart but want some thing to handle the other areas of the domain.


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## ctekk2005 (Dec 28, 2009)

Does anyone know of a good addin compatible with virtue mart that allows you to upload your image to a product. like cafepress has at their site I have found some sites with vitrumart addins but they have a pay per product fee. i have my own company I order through and dont want to mark my products up! any help would be great.

Thanks


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## in2infinity (Dec 8, 2009)

I run a site in Joomla ... the second link below in the footer. Its very powerful and easy to use. Its really designed as a CMS so its strength is in handling content easily through the backend interface. The advantages are that everything is very structured so if you plant to have a ton of content there is a set way for you and your team to enter that content. Ant the content is then displayed in a set format... so there's no big surprises or big need for tweeking. It essentially forces standardization on the entire process. If you're the New York Times ... thats great, if you not then it may be overkill.

The big downside I've found is that Joomla itself is updated frequently for bugs, security and new features. Most of the additional functionality you can put into it (like virtuamart) are add ons from a third party. You can update Joomla and break an add on ... and you're site is down. You can also update Joomla and the update kills Joomla (or the database behind it). Updates also frequently mess up any customization you've added ... or that customizing messes up the update process. So, the more complicated or customized your site gets the harder it gets to maintain it. There's nothing more frustrating then applying a patch and having your site down for hours (or days) while back peddle to reinstall the version you had to get it working again. Its the sorta frustration you feel when you turn on a PC after one of the "Critical updates" installs and all you get is the blue screen of death.

I'm in the process of setting up a site now for setting t-shirts. I'm using Magento. It's free, its a shopping cart, but it's also a CMS. I've been very impressed with it so far - everything I would have asked Joomla/Virtuacart to do without the hassles of a two part system. I Don't plan to run a blog, message board, or anything like that, but even if I did I could probably hack that in somehow and be fine. 

Bottom line ... determine your needs, then pick the best tool for the job. If you're going to run a big site with lots of features and you're will to accept that part of the job is "running the site" then Joomla may be the way to go. If you just want to sell I would seriously look at Magento.


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## in2infinity (Dec 8, 2009)

I'm going to take back my previous post commenting on Magento. In testing I discovered a two serious flaws with that application. While the interface is awesome, and the overall user experience is equally impressive these two flaws (while probably linked) are a real app killer. First off, they calculate tax on a per item basis. Each item is taxed and the tax is rounded per item to the penny. Then the taxes for all the items are summed up to get a final tax. This can cause serious rounding errors in larger orders. The proper method should be to apply the tax only to the combined sub-total. If you plan to use Magento and something like Quickbooks, you're order total will not match in many cases when the orders are taxable. They may only be off by a few cents but you're being paid on those orders through whatever processing means you use. If it's off a penny ... you get the money a penny off and thats a real pain to try and reconcile in quickbooks. The second issue was that it also sends paypal the incorrect tax value ... again a rounding error so if you plan to use paypal, the amount charged on the paypal account will not match the invoice generated in Magento. This problem actually blocks magento from further processing the order without your manual intervention.

These are apparently issues they've known about for over a year and they are about to release another (about the 4th) revision since the bugs were reported. The latest version does not address them either - even though their support has acknowledged it is a serious flaw.

Bottom line .. if you plan to charge sales tax (and many of us have to) Magento is not the way to go unless you have the time to rewrite their core tax calculations (which is apparently a job to big for the developers to tackle).


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## jocari (Apr 28, 2008)

Did you develop your design studio with Joomla? I guess I mean is it programmed with Joomla. Your site is Sweet man!!!


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## hlc (Dec 7, 2009)

hey guys thanks so much for the info. its great to read such analytics like in2infinity wrote and others. great info guys. 

im in process of setting up my store. i think i will go with zen cart


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## sexfacetshirt (Jun 2, 2010)

I don't like Joomla, I usually prefer Drupal as a CMS.
If you want to set up an ecommerce, I suggest to try osCommerce or Magento!


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