Chris: Excellent. We should all get on the page to launch this, it would be terrible if suddenly 3 third party sites popped up and our efforts were split. (and startup costs multiplied)

Guys i am up for it with support. Let bring it on

Count me in too.
 
vBulletin is definitely the commercial standard if somebody wants to put the bucks up for it.
 
I have my own forum using punbb software which is secure, stable, extremely fast, and FREE.
 
When one registers with punbb, they can choose from multiple skins for the look and feel the user wants. (On mine I have 60 skins)
 
http://myfreedomforums.com/
 
The skin to my domain above is just my default skin for an unregistered user.
 
punbb can be downloaded here:
 
http://punbb.org/downloads.php
 
- Wayne

I sent a Proposal for developing a 3rd party site to the ViArt Dev team a few days ago, waiting to hear back.

Still haven't heard anything back..
 
Maybe allowing their own customers to make ViArt become a better more successful product isn't high on their priority list?

Come on Viart - listen to what people are saying. You have definitely lost potential customers due to the fact that this software does not have a strong community aspect.
 
I think its fair to say you are working with a bunch of guys & girls who want a bit more out of the software than a quick "wham, bang, I have a shopping cart site" and to that end would really thrive on an active community for mods, skins etc etc.
 
I love the software, but when you come up against a brick wall its great to have some to look - As has been said on numerous occasions, it will reduce your workload in the end and stop your current customers getting downhearted & despondent.
 
Remember we want Viart to be successful as you, so come on answer Colin et al on their ideas

Ok release 3.3.1 supports what I feared all along about modding Viart. Everything gets broken to hell and back.

charleshays,
 
How so?
 
I just started using ViArt and plan on doing custom modding.
I haven't installed the 3.3.1 version yet but can you tell me how everything is now broken?

Same person as above, just registered now so I'm not just a guest anymore.
 
Is there already a site that has MODS for ViArt?

KevinG,
 
I haven't installed 3.3.1 over 3.2 I have just looked at the difference in the files using DiffDog. It doesn't take much comparison to realize that a lot of my mods would have to be rewritten to work with these changes. You see the problem with modding Viart, is that there is no way to add plugins, you have to actually change the core code itself. Many mods require moddifying many files in Viart, because Viart also does not use shared code a lot of times.
 
A good example of this is to look at making a mod for how options calculations work. You will soon realize you have about a dozen or more files to change, some of these your making the same changes to because Viart rewrites the code in different files instead of using a shared library of functions.
 
Also had Viart taken a true OO aproach we could be developing mods as extended classes that would reduce the amount of changes to the Viart source code itself to impliment the mod.

As I see it, Viart is geared towards the serious operators that want a professional shopping cart vs free cart that involves a team of individuals working for free in the development, upgrading and even creating MOD’s.
 
In my experiences most professional carts are developed by in-house team. Who will release upgrades periodically. Also will enhance the software depending on the clients requirements and ensure that the software operates properly. All at a cost.
 
On the other hand, FREE or low cost carts generally have forums with individuals willing to develop mods or plug-ins to enhance a particular software. In this case some the of the add-ons work well, while others do not or crashes the program.
 
So, lets look at this issue in the real world. In building a real brick and mortal business, you hire a professional general contractor. Who then secure plumbers, electricians and so forth, making sure all the components are working properly. All the business owner wants is a solid building that meets the requirement. Done in the most professional manner.
 
For mom and pop I’m sure they would be satisfied hiring a jack of all with his buddies to do the construction. You can guess on the outcome, generally get what you paid for.
 
It’s my personal opinion the Viart team will be taking their product in the direction of a award winning, solid professional shopping cart. I doubt you’ll see much success in bugging Viart about mods.
 
I hope that I have purchase the right shopping cart and professional team - Viart. I really do not have time to mix and match add-ons, testing, testing and more testing. To busy processing orders, responding to customers inquiries, follow-up, research and so forth. At this level you find that theirs not enough time in a day to even play around with the software. You just want it to work properly on the first try.
 
My views - Tony from Italy

Hello Charleshays,
 
Thanks for your input. I was really considering buying viart, but i really need the code to be clean. As i do coding as well.
 
at present, im running oscommerce and i know how hard it is to add modules or make changes which the code is hard coded and its scattered all over the place.
 
Your input has made me hold my decision on buying ViArt, maybe, ill move to Jshop.
 
Lets see what the developers have to say regarding this issue

Ibn,
 
Well I would suggest you try the free evaluation copy first. At least look at the code and see if it is what you want first.
 
It also depends on what type of modding you are interested in doing. If your doing custom pages or payment gateways and the such then you will probably be fine with Viart. If your doing more engine based changes suchas a options, fixing the crazy checkout system, template handling, affiliate tracking mods, adding Ajax... You may be a bit dissapointed.
 
 
Tony,
 
Viart is PHP based, and advertised as a PHP moddable shopping cart. So back to your analogy then we could sue the contractor for breach of contract.
 
If you want a rock solid professional non-program friendly shopping cart there are better solutions, windows systems with various ASP driven carts for starting at $5k+ come to mind. By all means if you have the resources and funding to hire and pay for matinance and development of specialized carts then you are a fool to consider anything like Viart.
 
There are better solutions for an in-house development then PHP and Perl. Software developed with these languages are not aimed at your large professional business. Instead they a targeted toward your low overhead, low capital start-up, and those looking for an easily flexible ad moddable script based program.

charleshays,
  
I noticed that today in the repeated code to show 'blocks' around different areas. Seems forced as to what blocks could be used. If I was to write something to show any block on any page, I'd have a bit of commenting out to do to the code and then just do an include to run a new function to handle this.
 
You mentioned you have quite a few mods done. Did you do them all yourself or is there a site somewhere that has them?
If there is none, I'm thinking of just opening an area on my spare domain to store what I do. I haven't used it much since my custom forum/portal days. Heck, I might even get SMF forum software integrated as well.
 
Ibn Saeed,
osCommerce? I ran from that when I first tried to do a mod for it (mandatory text option on product). That is one mishmash piece of code.
ViArt's does this well but there's a few things I need to add.

I have to go along with Tony on this.
I have decades of sales and marketing experience - I understand html but no more than that.
Viart is for people like me as it gives me an amazing shop at an incredibly good price.
I have already paid for mods which have now been integrated into v3.3 - now free to all of you my friends.
I am now setting up a site for another local business and I have agreed with them that Viart will do any custom coding and that the customer will pay for this.
IMHO - if you want to grub inside the engine, that's your choice, but all the negative comment goes nowhere. It seems to me that you either accept the Viart concept or seek out a freeware set up that can match Viart and give you the scope for your own development.
Charleshays say it is advertised as a PHP moddable shopping cart. Perhaps they do ... I can't see that statement but I do see that it is "97% open source PHP code" - which allows the creative to delve . . . But that is just one feature amongst many and is hardly lauded as a key and important feature.
If you like Viart enough to continue to try to create mods, after all this correspondence, I think it would make sense for you to set up your own mod site than keep complaining here - it does not appear that Viart is interested.
Don't keep giving yourselves all this pain

Hi Charleyeshays
 
 
My comment was in no way target towards the super funded operations, that are able to spend 5K for the top of the line software.
 
Internet businesses generating 2k to 3K income per month will find it extremely difficulty to manage every day sales and service, while having free time to test plug-in or add-ons sources that may work properly or not.
 
My intent was to point out that many shopping carts in the price range of Viart are not promoting add-on or mod solutions including Jshop, from what I’ve seen. In judging if the marriage will have a promising future, one must consider; shopping carts current features, customer service, software upgrade.
 
The bottom line is the customers online experience, easy of use! For minimal amount of investment I believe that Viart have and will continue to meet the challenge.
 
Tony from Italy

Hello
 
People, why are you starting a fight over this.
 
Everyone has opinions, if someone expresses something and if you do not agree, then leave that to him.
 
As I said, I really like to delve into the code and make it work the way i want it.
 
I think its just the developers look at the products a bit differently from someone who just wants to install and run a product. I am not against anyone.
 
Its just preferences.
 
By they way, free solutions are really bad, first due to the non-existing support.
 
That is why I want to move towards a commercial solution but I also want the freedom to change the code to suit my business needs.
 
So calm down, this is not about that ViArt is bad or useless, its a great product but maybe for those who just want to install and run a store. But for developers, they need more freedom with the source code.
 
That is the reason i posted a thread asking for Developers API guide, and viart responded that they are working on it.

I don't think it is fighting Ibn Saeed, just opinion like you say, everyone has.

Hello,
 
As always, please accept our thanks and respect for this discussion and your ideas. We are grateful to your precious suggestions and can assure you that our main aim which we are striving for is to make our shopping cart as easy and simple in use as possible even for a non-advanced php or html user. In other words, we want to release our user from performing any changes in php scripts, except for slight modifications in design or those which are made via the Administration console. Or simplify the code in such a way that everybody will be able to make necessary modification to attune the shopping cart to his specific needs.
 
In addition, we are in the process of completing the technical documentation for developers which will help them to get an idea of ViArt coding structure and be able to perform changes in the php scripts.
 
In conclusion, we would like to state that we will make all possible efforts to make our shopping cart simple in use, but we will need some time to perform this.
 
Your ideas and comments are highly appreciated.
 
With kind regards,
ViArt Support Team
 

Hello
 
Thanks for the update Anjula.
 
I think the roadmap you have chosen is best suited for both non-developers and developers alike.
 
But may i know if you are going to make ViArt 100% XHTML compliant.

Ibn,
 
As far as I know there are no modding sites for ViArt, some ppl have suggested putting up a forum of their own but as of yet I have seen no link.
 
And as Anjula has stated there goal is not for moddability. I understand his point on this but doesn't mean I have to like it.
 
KevinG,
 
"I noticed that today in the repeated code to show 'blocks' around different areas. Seems forced as to what blocks could be used. If I was to write something to show any block on any page, I'd have a bit of commenting out to do to the code and then just do an include to run a new function to handle this."
 
Yes good luck with that, I gave up on block modding for custom pages. Also running PHP in custom blocks never seemed work well because the eval didn't hand back to the template so you kinda could run PHP but never do anything with it. Not sure if that was ever fixed in 3.3.1 And because the template engine part is obscured you can't really do much with that. But I don't see that it would be much of a challange to add a few mods to Smarty and have it replace Viart's template system.
 
 
christopherO,
 
"Charleshays say it is advertised as a PHP moddable shopping cart. Perhaps they do ... I can't see that statement but I do see that it is "97% open source PHP code" - which allows the creative to delve . . ."
 
That statement seems to be pretty important to me. Actually it was the key reason I chose to actually throw money down on a copy. I wanted something that was moddablity extensible but had some real support and stability not available in truely free open source projects (like oScommerce).
 
I have also stated elswhere that besides the flaws ViArt comes closer to what I want then all the other carts out there. It offers the closest end design and functionality and developed in PHP. From my point of view that means I was hoping it would be the best solution to get to my final goal without actually having to develope everything from the ground up myself.
 
Everyone,
 
This thread started with two objectives.
 
1. To request a mod section and also a plead for integrating a more state of the are forum here.
 
2. To spark an interest for modding ViArt and starting a mod exchange forum.
 
However none of this going to happen apparently so no reason to persue it further. ViArt seems like they can clearly handle every customizable issue every customer has and doesn't need anyone else mucking around with there glorious shopping cart code.
 
Good night, and good luck.

charleshays,
 
Waiting for a link for a MOD site?
Having issue getting php working in custom blocks?
 
Here's a link for both: http://www.yauws.com/discussion/index.php?board=14.0
 
I'll have a custom block up there for RSS feeds from external urls. It's very simple and you can see how php works in custom blocks within ViArt.