Phil,
Thanks for writing. I'm not sure I understood the idea you were trying to
communicate, so let me re-phrase it back to you:
It sounds like you're saying that OFBiz didn't fit your requirements well and
the complexity and scope seems better suited to businesses larger than yours,
or maybe more accurately, businesses with more complex and wider scoped
software needs than what your business has.
Does that sound about like what you were trying to say?
If so I can totally understand that, and I totally agree with you. OFBiz is really not
meant to be a system used OOTB by small businesses. We have tried to communicate this
clearly with text front and center and on the OFBiz home page (http://ofbiz.apache.org)
under the "Introduction: What is Apache OFBiz?" heading.
There is a good chance the text there doesn't clearly represent that. Do you
have any ideas about how we could better communicate this?
-David
Philip Garrow wrote:
Hi David:
I tried to post the following message to the list and it bounced saying that
it looked like spam to the list filters. I don't know what I am doing
wrong; I felt that someone should read this sentiment.
Regards, Phil Garrow
RE: Help with Ofbiz
Hi:
I too was excited about Ofbiz when I found out about it. I was searching
for a web based solution on which to run my business and I thought I found
it. It turns out that what I found was unuseably complex, although
promising. I then sought a programmer to help me customize Ofbiz as needed.
I, like you, balked at a price tag of nearly $30,000.00 to do the work
needed. I then thought that I would put in the time needed to learn Ofbiz
to be able to program the back end of my site... and to allow me to earn
those high consulting fees. I completed a computer science degree ten years
ago and spent a year and a half updating my skills learning Object Oriented
Programming in Java in 2003. Even with this, I was unable to make any
progress trying to work through David Jones's tutorial. So I posted to the
Ofbiz list for help getting starting with Ofbiz and got no replies...
nothing... I spent a month reading about Ofbiz, struggling to get started,
and then decided that my time was really better spent running my business
rather than put any more time in to this marginally supported framework. I
sought and found a commercial solution and for less than a third of the cost
of customizing Ofbiz, and providing almost everything I needed. It is my
opinion that until Ofbiz can do what is needed to soften the steep start-up
curve it will remain just a set of back-end libraries for a small number of
programmers, not a useful tool for small businesses. Kind of like a phrase
book for those who study Sanskrit, not fulfilling the promise of making
open-source software accessible to the masses. Good luck with Ofbiz. If
you are interested in the solution that I found then check out PDG Commerce.
I don't make a nickel on that suggestion.
Just my $0.02 Phil Garrow
-----Original Message-----
From: EPaulson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2007 5:20 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Help with Ofbiz
I am new to Ofbiz as a user. A few months ago I was fortunate enough
to have a friend install and configure Ofbiz for my business. I
switched my entire
operation over to the Ofbiz framework out of sheer optimism/excitement for
the powerful potention it offers. I have spent countless hours over the
past
few years with toying with different OOTB eCommerce solutions...only to
find
that there was always some annoying limitation with each and every one of
them. Ofbiz, I thought, was going to be the solution I had been looking
for
the past several years. Finally...I can have EXACTLY what I need to
operate
my business the way I envision. Now the dilemma....
I am not sure if it's the version I am running OR if it's a
configuration issue, but a healthy chunk of Ofbiz features do not
function on my site. To just name one...content management. I cannot
add alt tags, policy pages,etc.
Now, my friend is too busy to work on my site regardless of an hourly
fee.
The seemingly few of dev. familiar with OFB are also too busy.
Documentation/training videos are too advanced for me unfortunately.
I am willing to put in the time to learn, but I fear that it would
take years for me to get where I need to be in order to customize OFB
for my business...AND
I don't even know where to begin.
It's frustrating to be dependant on others that have the necessary
knowledge to help you, BUT they are too busy unless I can un-ass $30K
on up to become
a top-level project myself. Please understand, I have the utmost respect
for anyone that has the knowledge/background necessary to be able to
navigate through development/implemention of Ofb AND I completely
understand
that small business owners like myself cannot expect the same attention as
companies with big budgets. It's unreasonable for me to expect the luxury
of
a tailor-made ERP solution without paying what it's worth.
1) Is there anyone that has the time AND is willing to spend one-two
hours per week consulting me on Ofbiz via phone/email/livechat,etc.?
(walk me through the process of setup/config. and customization from
time to time.
If YES or if you have some positive suggestions than please email me
directly with rates/availability. I would like to delete this post
soon, so please do not respond with a post.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post.
--
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9:48 AM
