As I researched PayPal/website payment integration packages, I continually asked myself: "Who Shall I Entrust My Online Cash Register To"? After all, I'm talking about an app that will receive PayPal IPN posts, auto-manage users and their permissions on my website. So naturally, I looked for brand name developers. Y'know, like maybe PayPal has a branded application. Nope. Microsoft -- just kidding! So as I go down the list on the PayPal list of integrators, I don't recognize any names. Great! I'm willing to sacrifice "hip" and "bleeding edge" for "stable" and "rock solid" and "covers the functionality I'm gonna need". If my app isn't rock solid assigning site permissions to paid subscribers and keeping out the non-subscribers, then there's no online cash register. So on and on I looked, thanking the screen for all those wonderful people who took the time to post reviews for all those applications. Remembering those after-midnight times, I wanted to post a review of my own. Hey, thanks for all you reviewers! Hey, it's the wild wild west out there! It reminded me of my old Accpac Plus reseller days. Computer Associates had Accpac -- now there's a corporate brand name! But gosh look out below when installing the cash flow module, assorted inventory module, and (feeling dizzy in my reminiscence) the vertical market modules. Because Computer Associates did not develop those modules. Mostly it was an individual putting it together, and I'm still not sure if CA ever officially blessed what those single-author modules published. And so I came across single-author payment/site integration modules. Well, first it was buy-versus-build. Do I build from scratch? Well, no. I'm not that special, my needs are standard-normal. So why not just buy a standard-normal app? Yeah, but look at all these single-author modules! When was the last time they updated them? What do their forums look like? How long have they been at it -- how battle tested are their modules. Battle tested: if the app's been around long enough, and if the developer is committed, then that app is going to actually work! It's going to have the necessary basic functionality and that functionality is actually going to work. Some developers hide the fact that they encrypt their code. And other post-purchase dissonance experience that had me retreating like the coward that I am. What attracted me to aMember? ** I kept seeing this name all over the place. No doubt, aMember was mentioned in more forums (not just this one) than any other app. And not always with vitriol either. ** This forum kept mentioning great support. And I noticed that Alex's responses to this forum were recent. If the last sighting of Alex was in 2005, I'd get nervous. ** There isn't one other app that gave me the impression that support was there, except one that related specifically to Joomla. ** aMember has a trial version. Ah, many don't. One site doth protested to much that they had the best support in the industry -- but no trial version. Red flag! Well, skipping ahead here, we went with aMember. I installed it this week. There really is an Alex and he really does respond quickly, and may I add with out sarcasm to my stupid user questions. aMember (v2.4) is obviously battle tested, and obviously needs some cosmetic work. But I care about the cosmetics? No! I do notice that there is essential verbiage in English without resorting to "help" or "see doc". Ah, the advantage of not having a corporately written app is having this sort of thing. aMember is the app http://www.tobars.ca entrusts (wait a day for DNS change to propagate, my client gladly switched webhosts for one that supported ionCube). -Bob
Bob, thank you very much for your feedback! I'd say more - there are 3 Alex(es) in CGI-Central: me (Alexey) and 2 Alexander(s) in the support team (you talked with one). I hope you will see this cosmetic work someday when you upgrade to v.3. It is very close to production quiality.
Joomla and aMember v3 I'm trying out aMember v3 with Joomla 1.0.10 at http://southlasalle.ca. It works! Yes, aMember v3 has things organized a little better. Again, email support is superb. Thank Alex & Co.! May I suggest a knowledge base at http://www.amember.com. This would certainly keep my email traffic down. Example: keep aMember and Joomla tables in the same database when unable to create same user in two different MySQL databases (I prefer them in the same db anyways). I recommend aMember. -Bob