May 19, 2013

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February 2013 Joomla Toronto “Ask the Expert” – Still the Rebel!

February 14, 2013
Joomla User Group Toronto

Joomla User Group Toronto

I thoroughly enjoyed yesterday’s Joomla User Group Toronto meet-up. It’s not the first time I forgot to take pictures at a JUGT. Excellent to meet Allison and Sheldon. Good to put a face to Facebook!

As happens, the turnout was modest, but it gives us the opportunity to get to know each other and have deeper discussions. For the first time, we played pool (across the road) which was a nice break — certainly for me, deep into debugging this week. A good mental break.

Yesterday was “Consultants talking about their client engagements”. It was very interesting and intriguing. Just about every extension mentioned I had “done something” with it over the years. I was complimented on how casual I was in mentioning this-or-that with obvious knowledge. Well, nothing casual in wrestling with the code to customize it — lots of pain!

I mentioned that I did not like the installation procedure for a small little plugin available for free by a well know Joomla template club.  So, I built my own Joomla installable zip. My consulting peers thought that was great — thank you! But, I have to tell you, I did not program anything in doing it, since it was an exercise in excluding extraneous code. It’s not very mysterious — the only “trick” involved is understanding the installation xml, (sometimes called “manifest.xml”), which is not even PHP. It’s a Joomla specific thing, every single installable plugin, module, component, and library has one. Handy to understand!

A typical ecommerce scenario was posed. Up front, it was clearly stated that this was a super duper easy breezy Joomla ecomm site to set up. I like easy! I always start my questioning from the end of the checkout — what is your payment method, what are your shipping rules, etc. There were a number of modifications that came up. Also, there were different ways of accomplishing the objectives. Not as easy as advertised, but very normal when digging into the real requirements. Because I’m all-in with the coding, including having a Joomla distro ready-to-go, all solution scenarios are possible!

A very interesting question was posed: how do you know what the good extensions are? My answer is, of course, you always have to go through the code. This is the starting point. This is the glory of open source — that the source code is there for you, and that you can do anything to it to use the code as you require for your use.

The “Free” in “Free Open Source Software” = freedom! (you thought it meant “no money”!)

As Michael Douglas said in “The American President”, “America isn’t easy. America is Advanced Citizenship. You’ve got to want it bad”.

Open source is software freedom. But you have to want it bad. You have to exercise your freedom to benefit from it, and to make that freedom work in the real world. In fact, if we do not exercise our software freedom rights (that are enumerated in the GPL), then the software creators have, in essence, proprietary software. And, many sneak in things that impair exercising our software freedom with their code. If we do not reject their code, then we are in fact acquiescing to impairing our freedom. It’s not easy, software freedom. It means you have to Get In The Code!

 

 

I want it bad! I want my software freedom. So much so, I forked a huge full featured ecomm extension, and set up LaSalleCMS, my Joomla distro.

I keep harping on this, because it keeps coming up. Get in the code!

I was asked about Google Analytics and traversing the checkout. My perspective is so different, having revamped the cart. We have the code! Why be reactive? Why have a lag between fetching the stats and the customer who is long gone? Customer service is a huge difference in conversion. Why not “do something” in the code that is pro-active with cart abandonment, that redirects buyers to calls to action, so their sale is ultimately consummated? Can you imagine the RoI of this code!

I’m a rebel with a cause!

Looking forward to our next “Ask The Expert”…

 

 

 

 

 


January 2013 Joomla Toronto “Ask the Expert” — The Rebellious Expert

January 15, 2013
Joomla Toronto in January

Joomla Toronto in January

Upon arrival from the Joomla User Group Toronto’s “Ask the Expert” panel session, I composed this blog post. Might as well have called it “3:00am Ramblings of the Irritated”. I keep thinking I have to stay up at night and do more posts like my “Late Night Thoughts on LaSalleMart“, but in reality not such a good idea!

I thoroughly enjoyed this session at the Oasis Skills Building on the Danforth. New venue, good turnout, excellent moderator (thank you Gilles!). We repaired to a local spot that felt like Thursday pub night at UofT that played great music, than awful ear piercing crap, then good music again.

It continues to amaze and astound me the fetish Joomla has for WordPress.

Tonight, apropos, the WordPress theme du jour was directed at me about doing ecommerce in WordPress. Inside, that set me off big time. Outwardly, I was just mild mannered Joomla ecommerce guy. So, naturally, all the inward stuff channeled unfiltered to my blog post. Oh boy, to just click publish — on my WordPress blog! Ha!! Oh, dear reader, I’ve learned long ago to write first, publish later.

Now, something very interesting happened on the way to my upgrading two very active WordPress sites to WP3.5. The “Know Your Rights” page that displays after successfully upgrading. This page is sitting at /wp-admin/freedoms.php.

What took me by surprise was the prominence of this message. Not squirreled away in some footer tag, this was slap in your face (must be on my mind) stuff.

My answer to many queries posed was “use your power”. The power vested in you by the General Public License. Here’s what WordPress is telling you:

WordPress is Free and open source software, built by a distributed community of mostly volunteer developers from around the world. WordPress comes with some awesome, worldview-changing rights courtesy of its license, the GPL.

  1. You have the freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
  2. You have access to the source code, the freedom to study how the program works, and the freedom to change it to make it do what you wish.
  3. You have the freedom to redistribute copies of the original program so you can help your neighbor.
  4. You have the freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes.

Don’t you wish all software came with these freedoms? So do we! For more information, check out the Free Software Foundation.

Substitute the word “power” for “freedom”:

You have the POWER to run the program for any purpose; you have access to the source code, the POWER to study it, and the POWER to CHANGE IT TO MAKE IT DO WHAT YOU WISH; you have the POWER to distribute copies of your MODIFIED version to others.

I don’t give a rat’s ass how skilled you are, it does not matter. YOU HAVE THE POWER. USE YOUR

Joomla Toronto in January

Joomla Toronto in January

FRIGGIN’ POWER.

WordPress is shoving it in your face, first thing you see when you upgrade. Are you listening. Luke, USE YOUR FRIGGIN’ POWER.

Joomla is GPL. Same deal. USE YOUR FRIGGIN’ POWER.

Study the code, simply because you can. It’s an act of freedom and power. Using your power is enormously valuable.

I’ve learned that getting an interpretation of the code is not as valuable as understanding the code. So valuable that any understanding of the code is a plus, regardless of how deep your knowledge goes. In Star Wars, Alec Guiness says:

The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.

With open source, the code is what gives us our power. Don’t settle for peoples’ interpretations of what the code does. Look at the source code directly. Joomla’s source code represents millions of dollars — look at it!

The database is open source too. Look at it. Some tables are actually intuitively named! Don’t worry about it being your first time launching PhpMyAdmin — just launch and look. The second time you look, it makes more sense. In fact, by the 50th time, even the field names will become familiar to you.

In a previous life I worked in corporate I.T. I’d have to genuflect and beg and offer burnt sacrifices for the opportunity to be refused to see the database scripts. On one project, I was the very first business analyst to ever be granted a workstation licence for the Oracle database — the first chunks of the castle wall to fall around the DBA guys. They did it to get me off their ass ’cause I was on ‘em constantly for my project.

With the GPL, it’s all there. So take a look. You will be amazed what your eye can pick up.

I was asked what Joomla ecommerce extension I thought was best. What I said, and what I thought, were of two different worlds.

What I said was: “I am biased. You realize I am an extension purveyor” — or something like that.  I referred to the great overview video at the JoomlaDay 2012 by Deb Cinkus:

What I was thinking was, “Oh gee, here we go again, the consumer’s guide to building an online business”.

I just don’t look at things like I used to. It’s been a long grind with Joomla freelancing. Mere days before the JUGT event, I ironed out the last of my LaSalleMart 2.0 builds/downloads. It’s been a tough grinding slog. Plus, I’m going where the ball is being thrown, not expecting to do an inside curl and thinking the ball will be where my feet are planted.

Joomla Toronto in January

Joomla Toronto in January

The power goes to the code creaters. Create, do not consume, software. That’s where the value is. So use the power vested in you by the GPL. Have a way in which you can modify/fork OSS.

And, always know what you need today and what you’ll need tomorrow. Choose the best tool for the job. Even better, create the tools yourself! Or, at least have the ability to customize.

Looking forward to our next such event.

 

 


Club Commerce & LaSalleMart: Rare Opportunity for GTA Consultants and Site Owners

July 9, 2012
Strong GTA Club Commerce Contingent

Strong GTA Club Commerce Contingent Should Form Core of Club Commerce Members, with Deep JUGT & JUGSWO Connections

There’s an entire level of conversation that happens when physically meeting, that does not happen when working remotely. Let’s take advantage of our living here by having half (or more) Club Commerce Members from the extended GTA.

From Newmarket (Davis Drive) to Lake Ontario, Whitby to Guelph/Waterloo, and Niagara — we have a rare opportunity to develop LaSalleMart through my Club Commerce right here at home.

Working together remotely is fabulous. Getting together, physically meeting, getting to know each other better, is even more fabulous.  It gives us a chance to go deeper, to air out opinions, to  understand the innovation we are leading.

Club Commerce sponsored JUGT and JUGSWO events are a definite possibility.  How do I know? Aired the idea already. A fabulous way for Club Commerce and LaSalleMart to connect to the Joomla project. Certainly no shortage of topics.

 

T-i-m-e-T-o-J-o-i-n

 

 

 


Voyeurism: An Expansive Private Conversation with Zach

June 27, 2012
Zach @ St. Lawrence Market

Zach @ St. Lawrence Market

Interesting morning. Fell asleep at my keyboard this morning. Opened my eyes groggily and it was 45 minutes later. Then I pinged Zach and had an expansive, hour long Skype chat.

Midway through, I said that our conversation would make for a decent podcast. Well, in lieu of the podcast-that-wasn’t, I want to let you in on our conversation.

Zach Atkinson is a programmer-slash-consultant in Whitby, just east of Toronto. He is getting paid zippo-nada-nothing for all the heart-and-soul that he is pouring into LaSalleMart, including the first LaSalleMart Canada live site install (http://KearnsOptical.com). Zach’s sweat equity in LaSalleMart is tremendous.

The pressure today is to fix the existing PayPal Pro payment method.

Reminder: LaSalleMart is a fork of Tienda 0.8.2. At this point LaSalleMart is virtually all Tienda. There are differences, which are more overt now.

PayPal Pro is something that is pure Tienda, and something is fucking up. How else to say it? Not on Zach’s site, but on my old Tienda Distro site at h2oAudio.ca. This site is slated to migrate to LaSalleMart, but before we Press Da Button on that, we have to fix PPPRo. I suspect the problem is really the interaction between the plugin and the component. I’ve already made cosmetic changes to this plugin. Oh well.

We also have an urgent need to create a brand new Canada Post shipping plugin. We can’t wait any longer. The h2o site, and a local client I’ve had since my early Joomla days, need PPPro and Canada Post. Zach has graciously answered my call for help, and has refused offers of $$.  Remember that when you talk to Zach. Like Cab Calloway said, he’s got the heart as big as a whale.

Zach started complaining about checkout. Hey, take a number! He said we should go through the Amazon checkout to get ideas. I started laughing, I’ve done this how many times already? I said Amazon has Conditional Branching in checkout. If you do X, Amazon’s checkout will respond with Y. Furthermore, we need LaSalleMart to handle a matrix of rules. Such as special checkout pathways for certain classes of customers, location of buyers, etc. LaSalleMart is absolutely, completely inadequate to the task. To cut to the chase, to achieve the Amazonian/Magentonian features that are so often expressed to me, we must avail ourselves to all of Joomla, not just confine ourselves to the component-module-plugin paradigm.

We talked about busting up the LaSalleMart admin for the 2.5 conversion. Discrete components let’s us know that we finished a piece of the admin. Don’t want to do it in one fell swoop. Also, gives us the freedom to stick to the original Tienda code, or start refactoring. Or both! So, looks like we’ll have com_lm_adminconfig, com_lm_adminorder, com_lm_adminproducts, etc instead of just /administrator/components/com_lasallemart for Joomla 2.5.

At first we’re gonna have to install each component individually, and Live Update each one individually. Absolutely irritating and infuriating! However, we are on a road to somewhere, and that somewhere is called “Package Management” — which is yet another reason why Club Commerce should embrace the Square One project, by contributing labour and money to it. We’ll get there!

Not that I pontificated to Zach about this during our call, but I will in this post (!) that the conventional way we perceive Joomla — “we” being my target Club Commerce Members of consultants and site owners — is positively medieval. Owning/running the websites, and vertically integrating into software development opens up wide vistas of opportunities.

We both agree that steering LaSalleMart into mobile is critical. However, first things first: we have to convert to Joomla 2.5. Mobile is where Club Commerce as a funding model is so important. We’re (“we” = Members) going to have to do all this stuff  within my Club and not depend on the emergence of components or technologies to ease our burden. Responsive design is only the beginning. We have to understand buyer behaviour with the different mobile devices, and align our sites to these behaviours. Club Commerce has an incredible potential to blaze the trail with Joomla ecomm on mobile. To me, the first step is to understand the different behaviours people exhibit on different mobile devices. The idea of treating mobile devices like the desktop is wrong wrong wrong!

In the same breath, I suggested embedding media into LaSalleMart. Why not put video into the admin at pressure points where people get frustrated. Why not put video into checkout! What about the advent of Internet TV? Yes, I’m thinking ahead.

Bob @ St. Lawrence Market

Bob @ St. Lawrence Market

Zach asked me pointed questions about builds. Look, there’s something y’all have to understand about Club Commerce: it’s a place where the Members have BOTH the websites AND the software. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Having BOTH the sites & the software is EXPLOSIVE for our online businesses. I’m in the same boat as Zach, because I have clients too! If Zach has 100 sites under his wing, and I have 100 sites under my wing, then how to do we manage the upgrades? How do we do backups/disaster recovery? 100 sites that have weekly updates of 20 separate comoponents needs a management solution beyond “initiate Live update 2,000 times per week”. The solution: we build an pipeline. What will end up happening is all the sites under our wing will be managed as custom Software-as-a-Service sites rather than as traditional Joomla sites –> WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT WE WANT.

Something else Zach brought up was doing seminars. Old fashioned seminars where attendees even pay to get in and then sign up as clients on the way out. Members-only classroom style get-togethers. Joint JUGSWO and JUGT events that Club Commerce sponsors. I’m all for trying out the first, especially if people are vetted. Extremely excited about the second two. Joint events is not pie-in-the-sky shit, both are Very Real possibilities.

I said that the Toronto area could end up being one of the world’s hotbeds of Joomla ecommerce, given that we are here and so can do physical meet-ups. If a third to half of my Club Commerce Members end up being from an expanded GTA area, we could blaze quite a trail to the benefit of my Members, and the broader worldwide Joomla community. And you thought I lacked ambition!

 

 

 


Toronto Joomla User Group Meet-up, April 2012

April 19, 2012

Joomla User Group Toronto

Joomla User Group Toronto

 On a sunny spring mild spring day, we met up at Yorkville. Great day to be downtown.We were all immersed in our own discussion, no Round Table talking this time. You never know, sometimes we all together, sometimes not. I had to change my seating to remain sociable.

Zach and Andrew at the Apil Toronto Joomla meet-up

Zach and Andrew at the Apil Toronto Joomla meet-up

 I’m not even sure what everyone was talking about. I think it was Project night at JUGT. It didn’t help that I was late! There was a short overview comparing Drupal to Joomla.

David and Doug at the April Toronot Joomla meet-up

David and Doug at the April Toronot Joomla meet-up

 There was talk about different business models in the Joomla world, which I always enjoy.Great to see how everyone is progressing.The May meet-up will be in beautful downtown Etobicoke.

Alan and Tim at April Toronto Joomla meet-up

Alan and Tim at April Toronto Joomla meet-up

 

Here are pictures of Toronto on April 18th as I head to the financial district prior to the meet-up:

Toronto Eaton Centre, Yonge & Dundas

Toronto Eaton Centre, Yonge & Dundas

Yonge-Dundas, North Eaton Cenre

Yonge-Dundas, North Eaton Cenre

Toronto Eaton Centre, north mall entrance, Yonge Street

Toronto Eaton Centre, north mall entrance, Yonge Street

Queen & Yonge, looking at Bay Street

Queen & Yonge, looking at Bay Street

King & Bay, looking west

King & Bay, looking west

King & Bay, Scotiatower, looking up at second tallest building in Canada

King & Bay, Scotiatower, looking up at second tallest building in Canada

St. Lawrence Market facing west at BCE Place's double towers

St. Lawrence Market facing west at BCE Place's double towers

Toronto Joomla User Group Meet-up: February 2012

February 15, 2012
Joomla User Group Toronto

Joomla User Group Toronto

So caught up in the discussions, I forgot to take a picture.

Doug, Joe, Alan, Zach, Andrew and Yours Truly upstairs at the Yorkville Duke. Good to meet Joe’s son pre-meet-up. Guelph, Whitby, Richmond Hill outnumbered the 416 contingent.

All but Doug are Founding Members of my Club Commerce. But we did not talk much about LaSalleMart, which was good. It was more wide ranging, including a discussion about NASA, legacy programming languages, Joomla’s history, the JED, and projects currently engaged.

I asked about upgrading from Joomla 1.5 to 2.5 and appreciate the answers — thank you.

Joe had specific problems that we talked about, which led to a discussion about the idiosyncracies of individual extensions. Especially when it comes to templating & views.

Look forward to the March meet-up. Details at http://toronto.joomla.ca.


Toronto Joomla User Group Meet-up, November 2011

November 9, 2011

The North Toronto Gang

Seven of us met at the Frog & Firkin at Sheppard/Yonge yesterday evening, November 9, 2011. A good mix of regulars, new regulars, and about-to-be-regulars.A wide variety of Joomla usage was represented. Joomla acting as a front-end wrapper for a legacy system. Joomla the basis of consulting businesses. Joomla sites being built for others. Joomla sites the basis of start-ups. It’s hard to get into the nitty-gritty of all the sites in so short a time.

Actually, I’m taken aback just by the “elevator” summaries! There are so many different things that are being packed into one site!

I notice that there is one question that is rarely ventured. Perhaps being the son of a pharmacist has something to do with it, hearing about Drug Interactions over the years (anyone read the Merck Manual?!). Add to your list of questions if anyone at the meeting has encountered issues when different extensions & templates reside on the same Joomlas site.

Security, templating, the different Joomla versions, and the oft-asked “what about Facebook” were popular topics.

Over the years of attending JUGT meet-ups, I’m noticing that the questions have deeper contexts now. It used to be general “what template club do you like?”. Now, it’s “I want to do this-and-this-and-that-and-that” and what extensions and templates will achieve it.

We barely touched on security — I want to mention here to delete extensions you are not using.

We talked about Akeeba Backup, and of course I love it. However, it’s better to understand how to backup and restore “raw” first. At least understand configuration.php! I suggested yesterday that one should restore their site to a test site with AB (or whatever!) when their site is humming along. Two reasons: restoring is a skill; and, you should test your backups. If something is wrong with your backup, the time to find out is sooner than later. The time to learn restoring is, ahem, sooner than later!

I’m thinking that, for the December meet-up, those attending with specific questions should should get 15 minutes of clear group time to present their scenario & get quick round-table answers. Out of the seven of us yesterday, four had specific concerns.

Tienda was a topic of conversation:

  • For those of you who downloaded Tienda 6 to 12 months ago and then did not download it again, go look at Tienda again. It is moving right along;
  • Had a terrific discussion about Tienda vs Magento. Really, y’all should check out my podcasts & blog!
  • I was asked if Tienda cost $100. Absolutely not. Dioscouri.com’s support for Tienda cost $100/month, which is completely optional. Tienda itself is free. There is only one Tienda version, and it’s FOSS. So, go download it!

I cringe when people matter-of-factly say they are installing Virtuemart. I assume they mean VM 1.1.x series. You do realize that this code started as “PHPShop”, then “Mambo Shop”, then “Virtuemart 1.0 for Joomla 1.0″, then “Virtuemart 1.1 for Joomla 1.5″ — note that it’s not VM 1.5 MVC for Joomla 1.5. Maybe you do not care about the code underneath the hood, but you should! Maybe you are seduced by the “Editor’s Choice” logo on the VM’s JED listing, but there’s no article justifying this decision, especially why they are gracing their “seal of approval” on a non-MVC extension. As well, I assume that there’s an implicit decision to migrate to VM 2.0 when it’s released, which is not without its issues. But, Tienda is dismissed out-of-hand! My considered opinion: you are better off building pet features in Tienda than coping with VM issues. So there!

Here’s a good post about Magento from a LinkedIn groupthat I’m adding as a follow-up to a discussion…

Magento is a very capable product should have no issue with handling 3500+ products. However, there are a lot of other factors that you should consider before making a eCommerce platform decision.

Things like: site traffic expectations, product categories, daily order volume, revenue projections, growth potential, on-line marketing strategy, technical capability of your staff, and system integrations.

I’d recommend you take the time to outline your business goals and objectives up-front and make sure that the product you select is a good fit across the board.


Joomla User Group Toronto meet-up, October 2011

October 13, 2011

Yorkville, Downtown Toronto

Guess who forgot to take pictures yesterday evening at JUGT. Seven of us made it through the rain (better than snow!) to meet at the Duke of York in Avenue Road/Bloor area.

Three new people made it down — good to meet you! We had impromptu guests, who saw our sign and asked “What is Joomla!”. My reply was “too vague”, and I was peppered with questions. Turned out their not-for-profit is launching a WordPress site. So we’re two-for-two: two fall meet-ups, two WordPress-vs-Joomla discussions. My answer is always a question: “What-ch-ya-doin’?”, because my recommendation depends on what your plans are. There is no definitive, cut-and-dried, answer.

The reasons people are into Joomla are quite varied. There are an infinite number of paths that bring people to Joomla. Yet, a common theme is: people are now coming from somewhere else. “I was using this, but I need X, which inspired my search, which led to downloading Joomla”. An emerging theme is using Joomla as a basis of custom programming, with nary a word about extensions. Very interesting!

There was mention of Akeeba Admin Tools and Akeeba Backup. The URL is http://AkeebaBackup.com. Yes, Admin Tools has Joomla one-click updates. Can you please run a FULL SITE backup first. Also, if you have not restored a site from Akeeba before, can you please do a restore or two or three just to get the hang of it; and, just to ensure that your backups do actually backup. You do not want to restore for the first time when you are under duress.

Good discussions! Look forward to the November meet-up at Yonge/Sheppard.

I started a discussion about doing a “Joomla 101″ seminar at our December meet-up. Chime in at http://people.joomla.org/groups/viewdiscussion/1354-meet-up-seminar-topics.html?groupid=130.


Joomla Users Group Toronto Meet-up, Sep 2011

September 14, 2011

Doug, Joe, Brian, Bob, Joe

Five of us met at Scruffy’s Pub in beautiful downtown Etobicoke yesterday for what I think was the first Executive Meeting of JUGT.

We had a rather focused conversation about doing Joomla seminars, and talked about other assorted organizational things. My overall conclusions:

  • beer should be at committee meetings;
  • I should drink more beer;

Interesting that it’s possible to do a committee meeting while everyone is looking at their Blackberry Playbook/iPad/itty bitty laptop.

We are on for presentations, followed by meet-greets. Alan will have the official announcements at http://toronto.joomla.ca.