Here’s a video of it in action

Keep in mind: The extensions come without support and might have a bug or two.  If someone would like to take the time and get it in a repository like Joomla Forge or Google Code let me know and I’ll post a link here.

Download the extensions

• The main component (com_ecwid)
• Category menu module (mod_ecwid_categories)
• Mini cart module (mod_ecwid_minicart)
• Search module (mod_ecwid_search)

UPDATE

The above extensions are now in an SVN repository on Google Code.  Check it out and contribute here!

From perusing the web, it looks like there are several approaches to doing this. Below is an example I wrote up quickly, to test out the concept.

jQuery.fn.extend({
// Override the core hide() method
  hide : function() { alert('hide method overriden'); }
});

And now to test it out:

$('#test').click(function() {
     $(p).hide();
});

When clicking on a link with an id=test, it will use my overridden method. I know this isn’t a practical example, but does show how overriding jQuery core methods is possible!

Here’s another example (view the source): http://expressionindesign.com/files/jqueryOverride/jquery_override.html

Other References

• A more complete example
• jQuery Documentation Example

I’ve had experience in several real estate websites (one with over 5,000 properties and custom integration into their internal Access database and local MLS).  However, rather than write my thoughts and rebuttal to this company, I am going to let one of my friends, Doug Krum, respond.  He specifically deals with Joomla-based real estate websites.  Here’s his response:

—————————

Upon reading the following link, some items came to mind that weren’t covered. Keep in mind this comes with many years experience in real estate technology with close workings with top 100 real estate companies in the US.

>>Joomla is an open source content management platform. It was built to make building a generic website easier.

It would more accurate to say that Joomla is a php application used for a web site platform. With this in mind, Joomla is a starting point that can be taken into many directions as long as the right people are at the steering wheel. Since one of Joomla’s core values is EXTENSIBILITY this means a developer can add or develop plugins and extensions anyway he or she sees fit taking Joomla into a new direction never thought of before. This, in essence, is also an advantage to using open source software.

Since Joomla already has a correct MVC architecture in place, a developer can automatically strengthen the plugin by using the built-in security. The plugin can’t run unless called by Joomla. Many self-built content management systems (CMS) won’t have very many security features in place and will fail when it comes to security.

>>It was not built for real estate offices or agents.

Joomla wasn’t built specifically for real estate just as the IPHONE wasn’t built for real estate. Should we not use the IPHONE as well? In similar fashion, the IPHONE is a base communications platform that can be taken into many different directions by various industries, real estate, finance, sales, etc. depending on the APP that is loaded.

>>At Boston Logic, we’ve developed the ONE System Real Estate Website Platform, but I’m not going to write about that today.

You should talk about it as it’s your 12 hour work days that are at risk. Developing a platform is going to put all the changes, bugs, moves, adds back onto your own team. This isn’t to be taken lightly. Anyone who has been part of a development team knows the work-load that comes with the territory. The idea that any less than 3 full-time people working on a php application project and it’s going to be a success now and still be around in the future, isn’t a reality. Projects must move with technology. That movement must be done by real people. Those people cost money. Therefore any reliable, custom-built platform project is going to cost a significant amount.

Now as a customer or real estate office, why would I spend that amount of money, take the risk on an un-verified platform that is either in-secure, not well maintained, going to be bought out by another company or is simply going to disappear either through lack of support for the project or through advancements in technology? As a customer or real estate office, I’d be better off spending the money on a verified platform, that is known to be secure (with the right people), that is going to be well maintained now and in the future, that isn’t going to be bought out by anyone and isn’t going to disappear through a lack of support and will roll with advancements in technology. In fact, I’d be an inexperienced fool not to use a well supported project. History has more than shown that non-well supported projects die away.

Even more, your own blog is proof of evidence of this principle as it runs off Wordpress. What? You didn’t create your own? You didn’t trust a small company who developed their own blogging platform? Why not?

>>Before we invested the thousands of hours that we’ve put into building this system

And it still isn’t finished. Be prepared to invest many more thousands of hours for things you’ve missed, didn’t think about, didn’t prepare for, had no idea about and for items that aren’t in existence yet but will be 6 months from now. I really, really feel sorry for your team.

>>Joomla is not built to integrate with an MLS.

Nothing is built to integrate with an MLS. MLS systems are simply application projects (in essence no different than Joomla). Anything that is built to integrate is most likely done so by the MLS developers. Since, MLS systems aren’t unified across the US or anywhere else, it’s really irrelevant. As soon as you start dealing with two different MLS systems with two different sets of standards, all hope is lost on any type of easy integration. It must be done like all other integration, by hand.

>>Obviously, joomla doesn’t have a real estate lead management system for you to leverage.

And your team built a custom lead management system? If so, I really, really, really feel sorry for your team. Lead management systems (or CRM) is another project by itself. Every company has trouble figuring out how to integrate their CRM of choice (Tiger, Sugar, PeopleSoft, etc) with their site.

>>Joomla’s content management system is overcomplicated for real estate.

Any item that is powerful and customizable is going to be complicated. This is the nature of customization projects. A good aspect of Joomla exists in the fact that any developer can re-template the admin panel and limit what the end customer uses.

>>Joomla is relatively laborious to style. Our team has worked with Joomla plenty of times. It’s still a bear to make the pages all look good. If you think you’re saving money, think again.

I respectfully disagree. Once template for all pages isn’t laborious. One of the reasons Joomla has gained popularity is the styling ease of CSS. Possibly your team should brush up on Joomla styling (I can recommend some excellent people). This brings more to the point. If your team can’t style Joomla, how in the world do you really think you’re going to support a whole CMS (with CRM integrated)?

>>As a point of reference the last Joomla site that we worked on required about $75,000 in work to get to what the client wanted.

Show the site. This may be true but you fail to show what the site will do. What would it have cost without Joomla? My last pitch I got for a site was $300,000. That’s a $225,000 savings, if they are the same. Again, to be fair, we don’t know because you haven’t told us.

>>Joomla is hard to turn into an effective real estate website. Great real estate websites have lots of features that are not part of the Joomla platform.

And music is hard for everyone except musicians. Using Joomla as a platform for effective real estate websites is easy for a Joomlaian (Joomlaite?).

The big idea here is that the whole reason special item projects exists (Joomla, Drupal, Tiger, Sugar, Peoplesoft, Foxycart, Freshbooks, SAP) is because it’s been known that developing projects is difficult, costly and time-consuming. Rather than having the support put solely on your teams shoulders, it better to be part of a paying team that pulls resources together to produce a good product.

Think about it this way, who creates their own mapping solution anymore? Why would you when Gmaps, Ymaps, MSNmaps and MapQuest have all done the hard work. If you did build one, would it be any better than what’s already available? No. Simply choose one you like, integrate it and pay the respective cost.

Real Estate offices are complicated customers that have many complicated moving parts with massive amounts of information with laws that must be followed. Pulling this together has and will continue to be difficult.

Two types of projects exist; the projects that are built with separate blocks and the projects that are all in one solutions. AFAIK, effective and affordable all in one solutions don’t exist. They are very expensive and only somewhat effective. The projects built with separate blocks excel in some areas and not in others. Integration is a bear but if successful will excel past the alternative. I know of no other way. Joomla can be used a building block for an effective real estate web site.

Check out two that are coming up:  HTML to Joomla conversion and Joomla SEO Essentials

SOLD OUT…..

You heard right! For the first five people to sign-up, they will get their choice of a custom design or a sliced, coded Joomla template from their design of choice (OR BOTH). It’s a deal Marco nor I have ever offered to the community and now is the chance to jump in!

Two Great Services for $500 each!

Either one of the services is $500 (that’s a $400 discount off the normal prices)! So that means you can choose to have your Photoshop layout converted into a Joomla template for $500 or get a custom designed Photoshop layout for your site for $500 or get a whole new design and Joomla template ready to go for $1,000!

Custom design for your website

The custom design special offer has the following benefits:

• Personal interview from Marco to get your likes, dislikes, etc.
• One design and one revision.
• Deliverable is a design comp in Photoshop (PSD) format.

Sliced, coded Joomla template

The sliced, Joomla template special offer has the following benefits:

• Converted graphic file (Must be a Photoshop file) to Valid XHTML/CSS Markup
• Fast-loading and built with search engine friendly code
• Fully compatible in browsers: IE6, IE7, Safari 3, Firefox 3
• Deliverable is both an HTML and Joomla template

About the Designers

Rick and Marco have worked together for a while, collaborating to make beautiful websites, here’s some more about them:

Rick Blalock
Rick Blalock is a partner in the web design firm Expression in Design (XiD), located in Jupiter, Florida. (XiD) specializes in CMS consultancy and custom solutions for medium-size businesses. Rick’s passion is training clients with one-on-one session, as well as creating video tutorials, and just having fun helping others find their way through the Joomla! world. Rick also is the main contributor to this blog (BiD).

Marco Suarez
Marco Suarez lives in the small, yet not too small, beautiful city of Greenville, SC. He is one of those creative people. Don’t ask him to solve a math problem because he is all right-brained. He is an experienced designer and a creative thinker that will take your site’s look and feel to the next level. Check out his blog.

Some of Marco’s work:

cforms contact form by delicious:days

More info on the sessions:

http://www.cmsexpo.net/sessions/288-joomla-sitebuilder-1.html
http://www.cmsexpo.net/sessions/289-joomla-sitebuilder-2.html

See the interview here

I look forward to seeing some of you at the classes.  It will be a great time of learning and fun!

• Provide a friendly place for all types of users to meet-up and collaborate
• Create a community in South Florida and beyond that can offer opportunities, help, training, and more.
• A central place for people to catch up on news regarding Joomla, web design, development, SEO, and more, in the South Florida region.
• A place to get students (high-school and college) involved in web design and development.
• A place to cultivate business opportunity and business enhancement.
• To have a great time with fellow Joomla-ers…

Read the full announcement…

Also, featured on the site is a community for others to join (yes, using the new JomSocial component…review article coming too).  So come on and join up!

Don’t forget to register for the Joomla template classes I’m teaching in Miami and Atlanta this year!

Currently, the bundle has shortcuts and snippets for:

• Template module positions
• Template XML structure
• Miscellaneous template tags
• Controller template, toolbar template, etc.
• A few commonly used snippets from the JPATH, JTable, JFactory, and JRequest super-classes.

My goal for the joomla textmate bundle is to encompass a large portion of Joomla’s framework in it (or at least the most commonly used portions).  I would love for someone to help out with it.  Currently it is hosted with Google Code, so go forth and download!

Some great shortcuts include:

• Type module and hit TAB and you’ll get some module position options
• Type jhead and hit TAB and you’ll get a leaned down HEAD section
• Type query and hit TAB to form a database object and query
• …much more.

Here’s a video showing off some of the features:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Suggested Class Outline

You’ll learn how to design a Joomla template from scratch:

• Part 1: Introduction to Joomla templates
• Part 2: Template tags, functions and conditions
• Part 3: Standard module chrome and other module parameters
• Part 4: Converting an existing design to Joomla
• Part 5: Template Parameters
• Part 6: Template Overrides
• Part 7: Advanced techniques, tip and tricks
• Part 8: Hands-on exercise

Additional Items Provides

• Lunch and coffee / snacks throughout the day
• 6 months of free Joomla support after the class
• A flash drive full of tutorials and best-of-breed Joomla components
• Free membership to the alledia.com SEO Club. ($99 value)
• Free copy of the Alledia.com Bolt Template. ($60 value)

There are probably going to be several other items thrown in such as a free design / template (which will be the class project), Textmate bundle, and a few other ideas I’ll post a little later.

If you are looking for beginner/intermediate Joomla training or development training, there are other great classes available as well.

It’s really a great deal for $300 and seating is limited.  Buy your ticket now!

Would you like to see something specifically covered in the class?  Make sure to leave a comment below!