Shape 5

I've been a member off and on for several years, and what always brings me back is really unique, fresh and non-joomla looking designs. However, I never cease to be amazed by what I see under the covers, which frankly is poorly written and incomplete. It's like you are a Hollywood set... beautiful scenes painted on plywood held up with 2x4s. Hey, as I said, great  aesthetics... but a joomla template (extensions too) has to be more than eye candy.
Now, for this Reservations Module:
Just what is you expect people to be able to do with it? As it is... you can configure one thing... who to send the email to.
What if I'm renting something other than rooms? After all, the name is "S5 Reservations", not "S5 Room Reservations", which implies a broader scope.

If I want it do ANYTHING other than provide a form configured just the way you have published it, then you better know how to dig into the code and start hacking.

 But for arguments sake, let's say that it is acceptable to provide such limited and inflexible functionality. If people were to say, "boy... this is great. These are just the questions I want to ask... and who cares that I have to read them in an email, and then manually enter them into whatever scheduling system I might be using (in the absence of one that should be included). We're having some fun now!

There still is 1 major problem, and I'm guessing you already know what I'm about to say... and if not, shame on you. There is no error checking to prevent the user from entering an end date which is earlier than the start date. Forget everything else i said, this alone means that the module cannot be used in production as is. How can you... with a straight face... can this a commercial extension?

What this is a just a pretty form (and a very pretty form at that). But it doesn't work.

You guys need to tighten it up and work harder on the follow through.

For what it's worth, I made this work for what I needed for the "proof of concept" I'm doing. (I only had to hack on 4 files... sheesh) But when I realized you had not even bothered to validate the date range... I stopped to write this post.

To call this a commercial module, at a bare minimum, it should:
1. Error check the date range(of course)
2. Provide back end functionality for (at least some) form customization
3. While it really needs a calendar, it needs to at least save the form data somewhere rather than just email it.

I respectfully request that you fix this module, or stop calling it commercial. Somebody could look pretty silly if they tried to use this as is, and had users requesting ending dates which preceded the start date.

Hey, I'm a fan of shape5, otherwise I wouldn't take the time to write. Let's focus a little more on follow though and quality control. The irony of it all is that it wouldn't take much to make this a really great extension. I could do it except that my plate is pretty full, and you guys couldn't afford me.


Respectfully,

Mike

Hello again,
It's been 5 days since my original post, and since then I've also sent 2 PMs, and the only response I've received is this"

"Hello,

I've sent your message to jonahh. Your post was most likely just overlooked.
Mike"

My initial questions still stand (unanswered) and I patiently await a response. In the meantime, I am curious how other members feel about the issues I've stated above. Maybe I'm the only one here who feels these extensions we pay for should actually work, and everyone else simply has very low expectations?

In the absence of any substantive response from the Shape5 team, perhaps other members might weigh in?
Comments welcomed.

Respectfully,

Mike

Hello,

I didn't answer because it seemed like you were just stating how you feel regarding the module.  Im not sure what to say besides we state all the features and functionality on the demo and show screenshots of the admin:

http://shape5.com/demo/get_reserved/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=161&Itemid=184

Sincerely,

See, the module is awesome but unfinished. If you could either post a tutorial on how to change the menus in the module or just make it fully editable, then we would be happy with it.

I am on the fence about upgrading to unlimited domains because this is a real issue that you simply refuse to resolve.

There are no other modules with this functionality, which also look as good. Throw us a bone here, man. Everything Shape 5 does is excellent. This is the glaring exception.

thank you

dd

I agree.
Its not a reservations form that is ideal, its more eye candy.
Every other joomla provider does have some actual options in the back end to publish fields that are required or with options to create new ones.
Sure there is a js to check fields but not dates that conflict. Time travel is here!

This could be recreated by any Joomla form creator..............its not a reservations form by any means.

Its easy...

You go to the code of the module in your root folder and open the default.php.
You can practically edit any field name you wish..
For the way it looks and apears and drops down you can edit the css and js (reccomend analyzing the module first.

Goodluck!!

agreed complete the module, salon spa's module has a time field to pick the time. The module itself does not at all... this make it usually useless because one cannot custom the fields themselves without coding. I have been able to manipulate the code to meet my needs but it shouldn't be this difficult

I recommend using our Quick Contact module instead of this module. It can do all this module can be you can add/remove fields. You can read more of this here:

http://www.shape5.com/demo/spectrum/index.php/extensions/s5-quick-contact

Yes I understand that but I want the function of reservations as it is in Salon and Spa template, it doesn't make sense that it has those functions on one template but not on all the others or the module itself have the options to enable these features.

Unfortunately the module isn't dynamic and this why we have abandoned using it in new templates.

We added an override which removed the accommodations field for this template and added the date field. You can just copy the folder here to  another template and place in the /html folder of that template to get it looking like this salonspa one.

/salon_n_spa/templates/salonspa/html/mod_s5_reservations

So if I copy those folders contents to the folder contents of a different template I would be able to get the functions of the reservations of salon spas template? Excellent. I'll attempt it, but at the same time it wouldn't rectify the date and time not coming even after a vertex update.

but of course in the templates modules folder with the same path correct?

It would go in the templates HTML folder not modules.  Just the exact same setup as Salon n Spa, its an override.  So:

templates/salon_n_spa/html/mod_s5_reservations

Is where you'd grab the files.  You'd have to also open up

templates/salon_n_spa/html/mod_s5_reservations/default.php

And edit the below changing salonspa to whatever template name you are placing it in:

$mod_s5_reservations = JURI::root().'templates/salonspa/html/mod_s5_reservations/';

Fixed all the other issues, the not sending the articles not sending etc. Now I tried the html override but it made everything look haywire. I removed it to have functionality for now, I need to show this today. Its for a friend, he's an accountant.

Oh ok for the override you may need to grab the CSS from the salon template too in the template.css file for the reservation module. I'm not sure though, I would need to see first hand to see whats going on.