- Details
- Written by: Valérie Isaksen
- Category: Partner
- Hits: 85272
Why certifications
Often people look for hosting solutions, support, template adjustments, core tweaks or other professionals for a whole myriad of reasons to extend their VirtueMart shop.
Certification is designed to help you find highly skilled people that understand the deeper complexities of the core code that makes VirtueMart, whilst most shop owners do not need extending VirtueMart to create a shop or they have the time to find a solution using the forums, other businesses and individuals prefer to hirer certified VirtueMart partners.
main idea
The VirtueMart team teaches and certifies other 3rd party developers, who have obtained a higher level of insight into the specific VirtueMart quality characteristics. Businesses and individuals, who are certified, give back to the community in a number of different ways, further helping the project to keep moving forward.
- Details
- Written by: Valérie Isaksen
- Category: Partner
- Hits: 196863
The project
The VirtueMart project is made up of more than 10,000 likeminded volunteers who all work together towards producing a world class online shopping cart. The sheer volume of active community members in the forums, helping to expand features, fixing bugs, testing, retesting and generally pushing VirtueMart forward, is something not quite obtainable in a conventional business environment and it is this vibrant community that helped produce the very versatile world class product VirtueMart is today.
The seed
The VirtueMart seed was created many years ago. On the 30th September 2005 the website shows "We have 509 guests online and 30 members online" in those days the site offered a free to download and free to use shopping cart solution, exactly like today, in those days there was an active community, again much like today, free of charge and free to use (GPL), free in the sense of freedom and free like free beer.
The difference today is the exponential growth of our community, the numerous version releases over the years, each improving on the last release, regular adoption of the newest available processes, procedures and technology; all helping to evolve todays tried, tested and robust shopping cart solution.
Today the VirtueMart shopping cart is crafted by dozens of 3rd party developers, hundreds of users who have provided excellent fixes, patches and snippets, aided by the vital work of many people in the forums from all around the world, who help others with problems, test and feedback.
The VirtueMart seed is growing into a solid and reliable Oak Tree.
Partners are our key
VirtueMart partners bring further growth to the community in different ways, like templates specifically designed for VirtueMart, hosting solutions, extended Payment gateways, advanced shipment and tax calculations, database handlers, deeper store management to mention just a few.
VirtueMart works out of the box, but when the day comes when you want extra features, or more advanced options, partners are the ones to provide these for you.
We classify these partners into platinum, gold silver and bronze, designed to help web agencies and shop owners to find specific extensions, hosting and support.
Partnerships are offered through taught experience, since VirtueMart 1 we learnt that such a big project cannot stay free without sponsorships or partnerships and this way all partners contribute back to the project.