Advanced Website Features and Functionality.

Over the years we've developed many custom applications for websites in a variety of industries. With the advent of Content Management Systems like Joomla and Drupal, it just got a whole lot easier.

Joomla lends itself to modularization and makes the concept of 'plug 'n play' functionality more available than ever before.

There are many modules available for Joomla, most of which work pretty much straight out of the box. That's not to say there's zero design time, some modules have parameter sets in the 100's and they take time to configure for operation.

I'm going to rate a few of our favorite functional modules, all of which we've used successfully in the Joomla CMS environment.

These are not listed in any particular order. The links provide access to some working examples, please visit them but treat them respectfully. Do not place test orders to see how things work!

eCommerce

Our favorite module for eCommerce applications is obviously Virtuemart shopping cart for Joomla 1.5

Virtuemart is a work in progress and is evolving into a feature-rich application to compete with the best. I have created online stores for a number of companies over the years, and for a spell, built most of my designs on ProStores. Once ProStores (Kurant) sold to eBay, things quickly changed. The software was 3rd party hosted and license fees became quite high. eBay introduced the policy of charging store owners 0.05% of every sale, on top of monthly hosting fees. One business I worked with had sales of $250,000 per year through the cart and paid upwards of $250/mth in fees to ProStores (eBay). To my mind that's incredible. I setup Virtuemart stores for people nowadays and there are no additional monthly hosting fees for the software, and the features are almost at the same level as Prostores.

Pro's -

• It's free!
• As a plugin module for Joomla it's hard to beat. Quick to install, a broad range of merchant options, hook-up with USPS/UPS/Fedex etc, and with some customization at a basic CSS/PHP level it can provide a professional and intuitive shopping experience for the end-user.

Con's -

• The back office features of VirtueMart leave a lot to be desired. So if you hook-up with other office systems, you'll need to add some modules to the core VM setup. For example, exporting to Quickbooks accounting software is not an option unless you purchase a module, which may set you back $200 or more.
• Reporting is also very basic. If you rely heavily on data from your store, you'll need to add a reports module, and we still haven't found one that we like.

Here's a link to a website using Virtuemart - Hive Club

Here's a link to a case study on a project we're working on involving Joomal / VirtueMart / Affiliate Software