Welcome to the Freeway Forums

I learned of Freeway last week. My experience since that time has me asking the question: Is freeway really ready for general use? Especially, as a Joomla "Extension"?

First, there was NO documentation, whatsoever.
Now, the install guide, developer documentation, and osCommererce docs exist, but the basic "User's How-To" guide has no contents other than the table of contents -- not much help.

My Joomla site has SEO enabled. Now, it is looking like I'll have to re-do several hard-coded links after disabling the SEO within Joomla in order to get Freeway to work with it.

Also, the installation procedure for a Joomla site is quite confusing. Should there be a separate Freeway database or can it share the Joomla database? If they are recommended to be separate (this appears to be the recommendation), then is it really a Joomla extension? Or is it just something that can utilize the Joomla "wrapper" functionality?

Even when I attempt to create a new service in the demo certain items appear different than expected -- specifically, when I specified "blocked time" as time that service is unavailable, I tried to specify that the service would be available from 10am - 2pm, and what shows up is 8am - 4pm, so I know it's not just a time-zone shift occuring, since time is added to both ends.

If I didn't need the functionality to book services, and to collect fees for these services, I would have moved on, forgetting about Freeway altogether. But, since I do need this service, and nobody else seems to be offering it, I'm giving you an opportunity to convince me why I should continue to try to figure out how to make Freeway work with my Joomla sites. (Note, that is multiple sites!!!)

Thanks.

Oh, one more thing....

Why when I access "Documentation" or "Forums" do I have to log in again, eventhough I logged in on the main page?

Why, when accessing the forum, and having clicked "remember me" when I logged in previously, am I not automatically logged in again?

And, why did I have to register separately for the forums and the main pages? I haven't registered for the documentation yet, but when I attempt to login it says it doesn't know me, so it appears that I have to register there also, yet a 3rd time.

All this protrays a mixed-up, uncoordinated, unprofessional world view.

Hi,

I will try to address your concerns one at a time. First of all rather than blaming Freeway, the volunteers who help in the forums and take time away from commercial work to improve the product, take a breather, read over the doco, become familiar with the application, read over the forums etc. Having done that, just like other people who rush into the area of service based eCommerce without a strong grounding but then slow down and take the time to learn, you should be well on your way to selling services online.

Production Ready
Freeway certainly is ready for production use. Here are a few sites you can look at which use it right now:

http://www.romance.com.au/shop/index.php/cPath/12 (A bookstore for Ausrtalia's largest dating site. We customised Freeway to provide checkout with only email address required.)
http://www.academystore.com.au/ (Sydney's largest Apple professional training organisation. This store sells products and training services with customers given the choice to load funds into a wallet for greater discounts.)
https://www.dmandsupply.com.au/ (The online store for The Ten Tenors music group and other performers)
https://www.smackbiz.biz/store (Advanced store selling video software packaged to requirement on the fly and made downloadable)
http://www.acs50rego.com/ (Conference bookings including streams for the Australian Cinematography Society)

Documentation
The doco is a work in progress. The user and Install guide are over 300 pages and with the new online twiki, we are ready to invite technical writers to start helping fill it out even further. Video guides are underway as well. This is much more than most Open Source projects at this stage of development.

Joomla and Freeway
There are production Joomla and Freeway sites starting to pop up. We are working fast to align Joomla SEF and Freeway SEF as well as HTTPS. These will be ready in the next two weeks.

Sorry to say it but the installation with Joomla 1.5 is incredibly easy in my opinion. The documentation is very clear. All you have to do is install Freeway inside the Joomla directory, place the link_index.php file inside the Joomla directory, install the extensions, being careful not to forget the component and enabling the Freeway Admin module so you have the Freeway admin link in Joomla.

Services
As for services not working how you expect, well Freeway is a powerful application. The services extension is in use in Art Galleries for visitor tours and other places.

Rather than blaming Freeway, perhaps take a breather, read over the doco, become familiar with the application, read over the forums etc. Having done that, just like other people who rush into the area of service based eCommerce without a strong grounding but then slow down and take the time to learn, you should be well on your way to selling services online.

In terms of the multiple registrations, yes, I agree, Single Sign On between the Forums, website, bugzilla and twiki would be ideal and we will get to it in the next few months. On the other hand, is it really stopping you participating? This is a community project, we are hoping to engender community attitudes. Please consider that.

Damo
_________________
ZacWare, Level 1 iLab, 80 Jephson Street, Toowong 4066, Queensland, Australia

There is at least one elegant solution to every real problem.

Quote:

Also, the installation procedure for a Joomla site is quite confusing. Should there be a separate Freeway database or can it share the Joomla database?

I installed Joomla/Freeway only yesterday and it went very smooth. As for database .. it is up to you.... whatever works for you. I personally created only one database .. Joomla's tables have a prefix so there is no danger for confusion.

Iow, Freeway database can without a problem share Joomla's database
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eva

Well, after typing a quite long reply, that was somehow lost when I must have hit a wrong key on the keyboard, I must just say that I am very disappointed with the current state of Freeway as an
integration or extension of Joomla

You suggest that I read documentation that apparently is VAPORWARE. I have clicked on TWENTY-THREE of the titles in the User How-To document, and every time I get "Topic Does Not Exist".

I have spent HOURS reading thru forums, wasting hours reading topics that I see of being no value now or in the future, just to locate one small tid-bit of info critical to my task at hand. (Search ability is critical, especially at this stage, and lacking the doco above.)

I am not just some prima-dona who thinks they can install and configure software without the necessary skills or experience. I have a BS and MS in computer science from one of the top Universities in the US/World. I have worked in the field of software development for over 26 years. I have written applications in over 10 different languages, in over 8 different hardware/os environments. I have experience with human-factors in regards to developing intuitive user interfaces. I have experience in working with business process analysis and communicating with non-techie end-users and documenting system/functional requirements. AND, I have been developing web sites for over 10 years, having built over 5 sites on the Joomla platform, with multiple different (true) extensions.

The one site where I have installed Freeway, already contained an existing Joomla system. It contains several links to articles within the content, as well as in menus. The search engines have already crawled the site, and now contain SEO friendly links. SO, I'm not willing to turn off Joomla's SEO just to get Freeway working. AND, I have committed a deadline to a paying client to have the shopping cart functionality working by tomorrow morning. So, I'm kinda stuck at the moment.

I hope you take this post as constructive feedback. There must have been a reason my longer post was lost. It contained more specifics that I'm sorry to have lost, but I cannot take any more time providing feedback that is appearing to fall on deaf ears.

My opinion is:
- Freeway is a wonderful tool as a standalone
- Freeway shows much promise in the Joomla world, but is about 6-12 months from realy moving from a "beta" to "stable" and truely usable integration.
- Calling "Freeway" an extension of Joomla is somewhat a misnomer at this time. Yes, there is an "extension" but you need to spell out that the "standalone Freeway" is required first.

Well, now I'm off to find a different shopping cart to implement for my current clint.

I will be checking back every few months to see what progress has occurred. And, I might be incorporating pieces of the Freeway code into TRUE joomla integrated extensions, giving credit where due.

My best wishes for Freeway's future.

Sometimes it is better to let the results of actions speak for themselves. I suppose the proof will come next week when we release the SEF and HTTPS updates for the Joomla extensions.

Damo
_________________
ZacWare, Level 1 iLab, 80 Jephson Street, Toowong 4066, Queensland, Australia

There is at least one elegant solution to every real problem.