Genericize Viruemart

A quick post reiterating that the new completely rewritten Virtuemart 2.0 must genericize processes.

For example, we want to customize the checkout process by category, and even by product.

We want to be able to use a specific shipping method for a specific category, and then have a specific payment method for that specific product.

Virtuemart 2.0 must let us specify this, and VM 2.0 must automatically handle a cart comprised of a this category along with other categories.

We want to create our own products. Right now, Virtuemart has 2 products: shippable and non-shippable (downloads).

My clients want to roll their own products. Does a specific product have discounts? Does it have attributes? Is it downloadable? They want to roll their own products because they want to build a cart that makes sense to them.

My clients want reports based on products. Over and over again, I’m asked about reporting. They want a facility where they can build their own reports. Headers, footers, fields, summary columns, summation rows.

My clients want this report writing feature extended to email notifications. Over and over again, my clients want to know how they can change the email notifications.

Heck my clients want to know how they can set up follow-up emails asking clients if they have questions, and including FAQs. How wonderful if VM could talk to a site like aWeber, or perhaps an extension like AcaJoom.

Virtuemart 2.0 must be an ecommerce platform where it provides the building blocks for others to build the actual ecommerce application. Genericize all the ecommerce processes, and let third party developers build VM extensions that build the specific processes.

In fact, build Virtuemart 2.0 for the express purpose of having third party developers development. This will allow an industry of developers to offer a breath-taking array of extensions. Extensions that integrate with other Joomla extensions, and extensions that build-out functionality.

I’m convinced that the Virtuemart development team is thinking along these lines already. The auto-updater feature and the VM extensions website lead me to believe that this, indeed, is where they want to go.

However, just in case they are thinking of this direction tentatively, I want to reiterate that VM 2.0 must be an ecommerce platform, not an ecommerce application.

Genericize the ecommerce processes,  and build VM 2.0 as an ecommerce platform for Joomla.

The result will be a breath taking array of applications (extensions) — both free and commercial — that the current developers could not even hope to write themselves.

-Bob