What's going on with Virtuemart?

Virtuemart has been the largest ecommerce solution for Joomla for a number of years. However, the component has started to show signs of age.

The way VirtueMart was built is quite different from how Joomla is put together, and a growing number of users are feeling frustrated about the system.

In this post I take a look at the current state of the VirtueMart project (as I see it), and the future ahead of us. Will VirtueMart keep up?

Nine months between 1.1.4 and 1.1.5.

One particularly annoying thing about VirtueMart, is the huge amount of time between updates. For instance, it took the VM team nine months to release 1.1.5. This version contains mainly bug fixes and few, if any, new features or improvements. See the change log here.

At least, the upcoming 1.1.6 version will remove Joomla 1.0 compatibility. That’s a step in the right direction for the project.

In the blog post Something about version 1.1.6, written by Konan on August 18th 2010, they hint at a September 2010 release for 1.1.6 beta. We’re now in November, and according to a comment to the post from Francesco Abeni, they are:

Now in BETA 3 and very close to final release. There is still some testing to do, but unless totally unexpected issues arise, i guess it will be out in 1-2 weeks.

However, as of now, there are still 36% open items in the VM 1.1.6 tracker.

Templating in Virtuemart

Working with templates in VirtueMart is a pain, particularly when compared to Joomla or extensions like K2 and FlexiContent. As you know, both of these extensions, as well as most Joomla extensions, support template overrides. Not so for VirtueMart. All of the files for the so called themes in VirtueMart reside in the components/com_virtuemart/themes/ folder. And finding the correct file to adjust is not entirely straightforward. This is the main area where I struggle with VM. Creating and modifying the layout and style of your shop should be fun, not a pain in the...

Also, the user interface of VirtueMart is overly complex, and settings are scattered around in lots of different views and tabs.

What happens to Virtemart when Joomla 1.6 arrives?

As you might know, Joomla 1.6 is in the final stages of beta these days. The version has some neat, new features. Among them is the new ACL (Access Control List) system, which controls who can see and edit what on your site.

For extensions to be compatible with Joomla 1.6, they need to be rewritten, or at least upgraded, to take advantage of the new ACL and other features. I doubt this will happen for the VM 1.1.x series. That leaves us with the question:

Virtuemart 1.5 – is it coming at all?

There has been talk about VirtueMart 1.5 for some time now. Soeren Eberhardt-Biermann wrote a blog post about it in 2009 called Virtuemart 1.5 Development, and there is also a tracker available. However, the tracker does not show much progress. It still has 73% (62) open issues.

They claim there's a lot of work on Virtuemart 1.5, though.

Apparently, there is a separate team working on the 1.5 version. The question is: Are they too late? Other solutions are popping up and threatens the position VirtueMart has had through the years.

Although VirtueMart 1.5 appears to be in development, I miss some clear communication about the progress from the team. One blog post 11 months ago will not do it for me. I guess the VM guys need to be better at communicating their progress and plans if users are to keep their faith in the project.

Fransceco Abeni, one of the new people on the VM team, wrote this in a comment:

To everyone who posted bad comments…you’re right. VirtueMart has done a lot to make life harder for its users. I still am surprised at what a large user base it got to, with such a lot of things which need to be improved.

But i can assure you, really, we are working hard now. Some of us are fixing bugs on 1.1.x so other can spend their time on 1.5. Please remember that if we count all developers for both versions we are no more than 4/5 people and we DO THIS IN OUR SPARE TIME, FOR FREE.

This does not mean we are not taking our responsability; We don’t consider VirtueMart a “hobby”. But please bear with us; give help instead of ranting about; test new 1.5 and report bugs, or better still, contribute some code.

I myself have entered the team only 6 months ago; you just have to ask, we always welcome new faces.

VirtueMart and Joomla 1.6

As far as I can see, there is no plans for making VirtueMart 1.5 compatible with Joomla 1.6. This means we might have to wait for a 1.6 version of VirtueMart before we are able to use it with Joomla 1.6 or later versions. Considering the upgrade frequency of VirtueMart, I really can’t see how they’ll keep up. Again, a pity if they won’t be able to keep up, as there are a lot of possibilities in a Joomla 1.6 / Virtuemart combo.

What can you do?

As in all open source projects, help is appreciated. If you want to contribute, you can download the Virtuemart 1.5 nightly build and test it for bugs, then report the bugs to the team. If you’re able to contribute fixes as well, I hope they’re willing to accept those as well.

Alternatives to Virtuemart

Fortunately, there are alternatives available. Some of them are new-comers, while others have been around for some time. As of now, however, I don’t see any really good, matured ecommerce solution for Joomla out there. Ecommerce is the achilles heel of Joomla right now - there is no bright star on the Joomla sky. I haven’t tried all of them, though, so don’t arrest me on that one ;)

One VM user I talked to said: "If I had to build a store tomorrow I would use VM because I know it and I don't know what else to use...".

Tienda

This ecommerce component is developed by Diosouri, a New York-based company. I met Rafael Diaz-Tushman at J and Beyond, and from what I can see, Tienda seems to have a bright future ahead. As they’re a commercial company, Dioscouri has decided to create two versions of Tienda. One is the Community version, which is free. The other version is the Enterprise version, which will have professional support and more features than the Community version. The Community version is now in Production beta, the current version being 0.56. The Enterprise version has not been released yet.

Tienda has been updated regularly since the release of Tienda 0.20 back in February 2010, with minor releases every month. Take a look at the change log for Tienda Community.

More about Tienda here

RedShop

RedShop is developed by the Danish developer Ronni K. G. Christiansen. I have not tried it myself, but I hear a lot of nice things about it.

K2Mart

The newest kid on the block is K2Mart from JoomlaWorks. This isn’t a complete ecommerce solution. Rather, it’s a bridge between K2 and Virtuemart. K2Mart lets you work with your products in the familiar K2 environment, and also take advantage of the templating system of K2. If you want to extend Virtuemart, this is the solution to choose. I’m testing it these days, and it looks really good. Merging K2 and VirtueMart in this way is for me a very natural thing to do :)

Virtuemart VMX

Virtuemart VMX is a project by German developer Thomas Kahl. The VMX project is an attempt to move the 1.1.x version forward by adding functions to it. For instance, Virtuemart will be Joomla 1.6 compatible using VMX. Thomas has had some struggles and disagreements with the VM team. He talks about the current situation of VMX here.

Thomas Kahl and myself at J and Beyond 2010 (Photo: Soeren Eberhart-Biermann)

Comparison

Team EaSE has compared the three leading shopping cart solutions for Joomla side-by-side, each extension getting a two-hour evaluation, in a formula that echoes iPhone/Android/Blackberry comparisons, as Rafael of Dioscouri put it. The article includes an audio interview with Rafael Diaz-Tushman, Ronni Christiansen (RedShop), and Francesco Abeni (VM) - a podcast is available at the bottom.

You can read this thorough comparison between RedShop, Tienda and Virtuemart in the October issue of the Joomla Community Magazine.

End note

Although this post has been somewhat negative, I still believe that VirtueMart has a great deal of potential. The future success of the project comes down to three points, as I see it:

• Communication with the users
• Regular updates
• Clear roadmap for the future development of Virtuemart

Which is sad, when you consider the number of sites working with VirtueMart today. Personally, I’m looking for alternatives, as my faith in the future the project is fading. I hope they can prove me wrong.

What are your thoughts on the development of Virtuemart? Please share in the comments below.

Note:
After this post was published on joomlablogger.net, there has been some comments from Francesco. Virtuemart 1.5 public beta 1 has been released. However, I still think the project needs to communicate these things better. I would have no idea there was a public beta out it it wasn't for Francesco's comment. No blog post and no forum post (that I could find, at least). This is the only clue I found after looking for the beta...