Hi Everyone,
 
I'm new to the forum but have been working with ViArt since 2010. I wanted to start a topic discussing what customizations that the ViArt developers have created for each of us. I don't know about all of you, but I've started to request customizations for the software and have paid them to provide it to my site. They do an excellent job with these customization requests but haven't released a new version of the software in a while... so that got me thinking! I can't be the only one that has been paying for customizations so why not start a thread to see what everyone else has done!
 
Here is my list of customizations previously done and Paid for.
 
1. Google SMS module (Works and Completed)
 
Customizations that have been approved: in progress
 
1. Multiple Payment Feature (allows an alternate payment field with a custom value to be applied to call center orders - example - Credit Card Phone Payment - Visa - Amount $500.
 
2. Add attachment options to Orders Notes (add a picture of an invoice, or details of an order, or anything else you want to share with your clients)
 
3. Show Status of Individual orders to client on their "My orders" page
 
4. Add notes to Credits when you manually create a credit addition or subtraction.
 
Pending Approvals:
 
1. Addon of a signature box to orders page
 
2. Admin/Employee Ability to edit all options in an order (Add products, remove products, add payments, remove payments, etc...)
 
3. Multiple Reminders system based on product. Sent reminder x days after purchase with Template "x". Setup specific options per product.
 
4. Advanced Reporting Drilldowns to look into your order attachment rates. Example: Product type A, Accessory Attachment Percentage. So... Computer accessory attach percentage is 15%. So... 15% of every computer type sold has an accessory attached to the order.
 
I don't know about you, but I LOVE the ViArt shopping cart and it's built in features. PLUS! The support team is incredible! Let's keep the software alive and move it forward~
 
Thoughts?

I agree that the Viart team are really competent
I think if the modules they have done to you, they could put in selling the site, would increase purchases and sales.
 
I do not understand why they want to do as they do the other competitors: prestashop, Cs-cart, opencart ...
 
Viart, for me, is the absolute best, but to have custom modules (even the most 'required) costs too much!
 
If any one has special modules for sale let me know ..
info et fierelettronica.net

Sounds good Rinos!
 
Have you done any customizations with them yet?

No, the site that I have is mine, I sell the products.
I am a freelance (non-programmer) .. but I like to dabble.
I needed to send the SMS .. but they want too much money

Yes Riinos you said right, my opinion also is that the Viart is supereb and features rich software there is no any question to compare it with freebies like open cart and prestashop etc. they are non-sense for me.
 
it will be really a nice idea if viart team will agree to develop few most wanted addons and can sell them seperatly in their website.

Where is the list guys/ladies? Has anyone else done customizations with the ViArt team? It'd be great to know what others have completed.

1. Export orders to text file for import into USPS and UPS shipping modules.
2. Print barcode on packing list for reading in order number into USPS and UPS shipping modules.
 
Things I'd like to see in Viart:
1. Mailchimp integration
2. Facebook integration (product image auto select for share)
3. More robust forum or integration with one.
4. A complete separation of code from markup and open documentation for templating.
5. Community developed and Viart developed add-ons and templates available in a store.
 
I see how WordPress has come into its own and now "owns" small to medium CMS. Viart could achieve the same success if their business model changed with the times.

Agreed NTM, thanks for sharing!!!
 
Lets keep it going people - if enough of us show our support, interest, and demand changes... maybe it will happen!
 

Guys, I'm of the opinion that an ecommerce as ViArt, the forum can not be silent for days, no updates, no warning ...
 
This makes me think I will not have much life.
I'm really sorry ..
But if it does not line up with the other competitors .. many of us will go ..

Hi Rinos~
 
I completely agree with you. I am working with the ViArt team now for new features to be added. Hopefully some of the changes can help revitalize the product.
 
Hopefully they can see and hear the "needs" of their community.
 
Change needs to happen and hopefully that time is now...

Any updates from anyone else on customizations that the ViArt team has performed on your shopping cart?

Hopefully there is more than 4 active members in the ViArt forums...

Order No:
2705
 
Order Date:
8 Jan 2008 4:02 PM
--------------------------------
Ability to Export Products by Category
 
______________________________________
 
Order No:
2796
 
Order Date:
11 Feb 2008 4:39 PM
---------------------------------
Ability to create tickets/emails by clicking the customers email address on the customer list (personal, not public addition)
 
________________________________________
 
Order No:
3452
 
Order Date:
14 Jul 2008 5:16 PM
---------------------------------
Adding pre-defined responses to tickets
 
__________________________________________
 
Order No:
3542
 
Order Date:
6 Aug 2008 5:40 PM
----------------------------------
Add full URL to image upload so that it works cross-sites (for multi-site stores
 
__________________________________________
 
Order No:
4297
 
Order Date:
4 Feb 2009 2:26 PM
----------------------------------
Streaming video player for FLV and AVI file types
 
___________________________________________

We are willing to host a ViartShop for the modifications using the download feature whereby the code and instructions on implementation will be accessible.
 
Any suggestions along these lines.
 
HERB
200mph@200mphmedia.net

Anyone out there still using ViArt for a shopping cart?
Is the community still active?
Are you happy you are using the cart?
 
We are considering switching to X-Cart unless we see some major changes... Thoughts everyone???

Hi Chuck ..
You're right
X-cart I already have the license too ..
CS-Cart I also have 2 licenses
 
From September 11 .. anyone who writes.
Then, you'll see that in a few days will respond ...
to this post

I would have to agree Rinos - X-Cart and CS-Cart have come a long ways in the last 2 years whereas ViArt has stayed the same...
 
XCart Has many of the features we have been asking for: http://www.x-cart.com/features.html
 
CS-Cart has a ton of features too: http://www.cs-cart.com/features.html
 
Magento also has hundreds of add-ons and enhancements to their product - basically anything you could imagine that is already prebuilt or ready for customizations.
 
Ebay, Amazon integration - Advanced Order Management (Edit orders after they are submitted)
 
RMA features, Client loyalty points reward system
 
All of these carts have the following:
 
1) Active Communities
2) Regular Updates
3) 3rd Party Developers
4) 3rd Party Add-ons and marketplace
5) Active Theme generation
6) Themes that are modern and editable.
 
One Page checkout with all of these carts (I've seen Viart's One Page Checkout and it definitely is comparable)
 
ViArt! You have users that want to stay with you - Please don't give us a reason to leave...
 
Rinos - How is your experience with X-Cart and CS-Cart so far?

anyone can pm me with questions/comments - I'd love to hear them!
 
thebigman007 (at) gmail (dotcom).
 
Thanks all

I've placed custom orders several times...
 
I've had the Viart PHP shopping cart since early '07, and I bought a license to version 3.0 and the cart has worked GREAT during that time... Over that course of time, I actually learned more functions for it along the way...
 
But I did have some customization work done when I wanted each new customer who just placed an order to be generated a unique coupon code for another additional order and assign it to coupon {tag} so I could put that on the final order page and in automated emails sent.
 
The coupon code has generated additional sales and easily paid for the cost for the customization work done time and again.
 
I also had my self hosted auto responder script as well as other 3rd party auto responders integrated with the final order form at checkout. This automates new customer imports to my auto responders/email follow up services.
 
Version 3.0 has been a really good shopping cart over the past 6 to 7 years...
 
I am currently developing and customizing a new website, in a different niche and using the newest version, 4.1
 
The newest version is awesome and I am still trying to learn how it all works. I've done some customizing to the look and feel working with CSS and custom blocks and pages.
 
I am sure I will use the custom work expertise service in the future, but version 4.1 comes with just about everything I need so far.

I'm just about to make the final decision on our solution.
I've looked at quite a few solutions as our site wont just be 'another shopping cart' but will also use the other built-in capabilities like Merchant and Advert listings.
 
Biggest gripe is the lack of documentation
Simple example was the Banners functionality. Sure, easy to create but nothing in the docs mentions the 'parameters' option for the Banners Block.... eventually worked it out by looking at the code and experimenting..... Not the best use of my time.
 
On that point, Banners, anyone know how to get the Banners Block to lay the banners out horizontally across the page.... I can only get it to list them down even though the block has been placed in the Header section??
 
Is there somewhere out there a comparison of XCart, CS-Cart and Viart?

robdj88... Since you have been using ViArt for many years can you provide a list of custom work that you have had done? I would also like to see your site. Your post sounds a little strange so I'd like to see your shopping cart site and what you have done with it.
 
For new or existing clients of ViArt - It is nice to hear of the customizations that have been done and of the success stories of previous clients/websites.
 
Please provide your website URL and a list of custom work done for you. I think that would help everyone.
 
THanks!

dmOZ - I don't believe there is any such comparison. ViArt has unfortunately not been considered a competitor of these products. I don't think that is because of ViArt's product but because the ViArt cart is not well known or popular... at least not yet. It has been over a year since the last update and has not been visually updated for longer than that. Some of the architechure of ViArt is also very different than XCart or CSCart. ViArt is much more difficult to Skin and has almost no 3rd party addons. The lack of 3rd party addons is not due to individuals not wanting to create them but due to the design of the ViArt system. Addon's are very difficult and generally are only performed by the ViArt team. They are a good team but can take a while for customizations to occur for whatever reason. We've been working with them since July on our customizations, and it has taken a long time to get things done (partly due to our communication delays and designs). The other dilemma that we've had is that phone calls are very difficult due to a language barrier and time zone issue.
 
Overall, we have chose to support the ViArt team (for right now based on how fast/well they perform our first few customizations requests). Based on these successes, timeliness, and accurate completion of our requests... we will either stay on board or jump ship.
 
I hope that helps...
 
ViArt is a very good product - no doubt... but it has its down falls as with every product.

Thanks Chuck.
 
What sorts of things have you had customised?
 
Today I have implemented part of a googlemap in the product details pages (using static 'marker' data) with the next option to pull the marker data from the customer, merchant and advertiser details tables.
 
 
Are you using the banners block??

Hi dm0Z~
 
Our current list of customizations are:
 
1. GoogleSMS integration
2. Show Status of Individual orders to client on their "My orders" page
 
In Progress
3. Device Layer - Attach orders to a specifc registered device - appears in user home
4. Quote Feature - appears in user home
 
Many Many more on the way - Waiting for ViArt to finish up our current customizations before we continue - They are expensive for customizations... and not always the fastest at getting them done... but they are good to work with and do good work as well. Logically and solid team. Again, based on how these "in progress customizations go..." we may or may not jump ship to another cart.
 
On the upside... I FINALLY see more activity in the forum! Which is a good sign - If we invest as much as we plan... they may possible have one most flexible carts on the market - NOW they need to fix the Themes so they are easier to work with...
 
Fix themes, update the look/feel of the cart, and allow for 3rd party addons... and ViArt will be a dangerous competitor!
 

I am struggling to make Google Voice SMS work for me. I followed all the instructions perfectly, and set up all the notifications that I wanted, but my test block still says 'You are not allowed to send SMS'.
 
CHUCK: Can you offer your thoughts on why that would be? Viart is working on the problem with me, but it should be really straightforward according to Vera and others in support.
 
Ed

Did you get this resolved? It worked perfectly for us when we used it~
 
Check your google account and make sure everything is active.