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I am so fed up with developers selling crap extensions and then fighting to not give a refund when their products do not functioned as advertised. If you say your software does something it better damn well do it! If you show screenshots then show the CORRECT screenshots and not from your development version or from an ancient version of Joomla.

In the rare occasions that you do provide written documentation, do a spelling AND grammar check first! If English isn't your first language, get a native English speaker to proof it for you. Also, keep it up to date to match any new versions of Joomla that you support and new versions of your extension.

Better yet, let your customers see your documentation before having to commit to a purchase. If your documentation is sloppy then most likely so is your code.

Honestly the free stuff I have used is far better than most of the commercial products I've paid for.

I agree. But that does leave me to ideas of an open market for the taking

sorry 4 your trouble
unfortunately we can not issue a certificate of honesty


agree
But don't forget that there are a lot of excelent paid stuff too

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Nicola Galgano - Global Moderator
my knowledge is know to not know - www.alikonweb.it
www.joomladdons.eu - joomla free open source addons

There are two sides to this. As a buyer, when you find an extension that works well and is well documented, it is really important that you post a positive review. Half the reason you can't identify the good from the bad is that you (I mean buyers) don't post reviews for the good extensions. It's not all our fault! We (developers) are not allowed to ask you for reviews. But more reviews would help everyone.

Yeah I have noticed so many one the JED lack reviews... and I think to my self well someone had to of used it why didn't they post about the experience.

I do give fair reviews both good and bad. And I have donated money to freeware guys on more than one occasion. I just think that greed overtakes the commercial developers and they put things out their with sloppy code and even sloppier websites and dismal documentation.

Besides the money I have to fight to get back, I'm tired of the time wasted trying to get support for a product that is supposed to function out of the box.

On more than one occasion I have had commercial developers admit that they were having problems getting their own software to work. Really?! Then why the "F" did you put it out there for sale? I did my part in making sure I was using the correct version of Joomla that they claim to support and yet their software doesn't work.

One even forces and additional fee on top of their software price for 3, 6 or 12 month "support". There is no opt-out option.

I used to love open source CRMs but after nearly a year and a half of fighting with them I now wish their was one off the shelf fully commercial product that I could have purchased. At least at that point I would only have one developer to fight with and they could not always blame the other guy their crappy software.

While the concept of open source is good in practice, it fails to deliver in many ways as there is no way to enforce quality or adherence to best practices.

I understand your frustration, but you cannot dump all commercial extensions developers in the same bucket. Read the reviews, and read the documentation before you buy the product. If the documentation is crap, don't buy the code!

The problem is that many don't have reviews and many will not let you see the docs until you pay. Again, not all of the commercial products I have purchased are bad but I'd have to say more than half do/did not perform as advertised.

Partly I agree with the poster. There are indeed bad extensions out there. And also bad support.

But, there are also very good developers who put all their effort into their product to make it work perfect. And even when the problem is caused by other extension.

Take Mijosoft as an example. These guys worked for another company and tried to make their products perfect. After a lot of frustrations they left that company and started their own. In a short time they updated and fixed the old extensions and put it on the market. Also with a 30 day money back guaranty.
I had some small problems with one of their products in the beginning, but they fixed it very fast. Also they changed some other extensions from other companies to let it work smoothly together.
Further I had some problems with a popular Joomla component and MijoSEF. They checked that component and discovered that the url routing in that component isn't according the Joomla rules. So they changed ALL the files for me and made it work. Also they changed the MijoSEF extension for that component in a way I wanted. And they informed the developer and asked him to change this. But.. that developer didn't wanted it, because... their product was good.
So, one example from a company that put all their effort in good products and high quality support.
And there are more companies like this one.

To be honest, I don't make often a review, but when I think the product deserves a good review I do. And sometimes when I am frustrated and don't get any support...yes, I also write a bad review. I always check the reviews before buying a product. And when an extension is working great I also point other people in the forum to this extension when I think this is what they are looking for. In that way I help other people and the developer...

I love the products with:
- public documentation, in that way you can check much better all the options from the product
- a "basic" or "lite" version for free, to test some parts of the product
- a 30 days money back policy without questions. 7 days is sometimes just too short
- a good working demo, with option to check the backpanel. Sometimes I see products in the JED with broken links to demo sites, or developer. That isn't a promising start....
- good support, don't be lazy to blame other extensions first
- Developers who listen to their customers to improve their products

Martin

THIS IS TOTALLY FALSE

this statement is completely devoid of any foundation


just think at lamp

_________________
Nicola Galgano - Global Moderator
my knowledge is know to not know - www.alikonweb.it
www.joomladdons.eu - joomla free open source addons

i hope you report these so the jed team can check and remove

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Yes but even lamp has many flavors and iterations and ways to install that do not allow for a consistent "product". One package may install perfectly while another blows up and fails to work. It's really hit or miss much of the time.

Again, while I am no fan of MS at least if I use Visual Studio, IIS and MS SQL I only have one company to deal with. The IIS people aren't blaming the SQL people who are blaming the Visual Studio people and vice versa.

One of the extensions I was using failed after an upgrade because they only support PHP 5.3. So do I risk wrecking everything else working fine in PHP 5.2 to get this one piece working?

Again, there is no one testing all of the pieces against the other pieces, except for us poor saps trying to piece together a non-profit website.