Use MageBridge with Advanced Module Manager - Yireo

Integrating MageBridge with other Joomla! extensions

The MageBridge extensions bring Magento to Joomla!, but besides integrating the content of Magento inside Joomla!, there are a lot of other integrations to be thought of as well. On this page you learn more about all the possibilities. See our roadmap for more information about the actual implementation.

Multilingual integration

Just like Joomla!, Magento offers the possibility of multiple languages, but using a completely different method than Joomla!. A Magento Store can contain multiple Store Views, and each Store View can be configured for a specific language. MageBridge allows a Magento store to be loaded when a specific Joomla! language is chosen. You still need to setup multilinguality in Magento and translate products and categories using the Magento Admin Panel. 

When you're setting up a multilingual site with Joomla!, you need to install a third party extension. MageBridge offers so-called Store Connectors with the following extensions to bridge multilinguality:

• Nooku (our pick)
• Joom!Fish
• m17n

Extensions with user profiles

Some Joomla! extensions extend the regular Joomla! user-profile with fields of their own. For instance, when using Community Builder or JomSocial, you have profiles that add extra fields like address-information but also personal interests and alike. Within Magento, there are also extra data available - mainly the customers address. We recommend to keep these fields separate - so, not to repeat fields in two different screens - but if you want, you can use MageBridge Profile Connectors to connect this functionality. We have Profile Connectors available for the following extensions:

• Community Builder
• JomSocial (our pick)

MageBridge also supports the extensible profiles of Joomla! 1.6.

Selling extension stuff

Using MageBridge Product Connectors you can sell Joomla! logic in Magento. With JomSocial for instance, you can sell JomSocial Group access or Karma Points using Magento. In Magento you would add a product (for instance a Virtual Product) and within Joomla! you would configure a MageBridge Product Relation to do something as soon as that product is being sold - for instance add the customer to a JomSocial group. We have Product Connectors available for the following extensions:

• AcaJoom
• AcyMailing
• Agora
• Akeeba Subscriptions
• Alpha User Points
• ccNewsletter
• Communicator
• DOCman
• Eventlist
• FLEXIaccess
• jDownloads
• JINC
• jNews
• JomSocial (both groups as karma points)
• Kunena (ranks)
• MkPostman
• OSE MSC (versions 3, 4 and 5)
• RS Events
• RS Files

MageBridge also supports selling access to Joomla! User Groups (in both Joomla! 1.5 as Joomla! 1.6).

Memberships, documents and access levels

With MageBridge Product Connectors you can perform actions in Joomla! as soon as a product is sold in Magento. Payments are integrated into OSE MSC using our Product Connector for OSE MSC. Using the MageBridge Product Connector for DOCman to sell access to certain DOCman groups, or the MageBridge Product Connector for FLEXIaccess to sell access

• OSE Membership Control
• Akeeba Subscriptions
• DOCman
• FLEXIaccess

WYSIWYG editors

MageBridge offers a JCE-plugin that allows you to easily create a link to Magento content (products, categories) from within the JCE-editor. This MageBridge Advanced Link plugin can be downloaded from our site and needs to be installed through the JCE Administration component.

• JCE

VirtueMart / Vm2Mage

Because MageBridge now offers a real alternative to VirtueMart, you might need help migrating from VirtueMart to Magento. The data contained in VirtueMart need to be imported into Magento. This functionality is made available through the tool Vm2Mage (VirtueMart to Magento migrator) and can be downloaded for free on our site. To use Vm2Mage there is no requirement for MageBridge, so you can also use it to migrate from VirtueMart to Magento stand-alone.

• Vm2Mage

Content plugins

Very cool is the fact that Magento blocks, as they are transferred from Magento to Joomla! by MageBridge, can also be parsed by regular Joomla! Content Plugins. Imagine that you need to add a little MP3-player to certain Magento products. The Magento-solution would be to add a new product-attribute, configure that attribute for your products and then start messing around with your Magento theme to insert the proper PHTML-code. With MageBridge, any Joomla! Content Plugin can be used with Magento products and categories

Sitemap tools

There are multiple sitemap-extensions available for Joomla!, and most of them offer ways for third party integration. MageBridge would need to offer a plugin for the most common sitemap-tools, so the sitemap not only lists articles and other regular content, but Magento products and categories as well.

• Xmap
• Xmap plugin for MageBridge

SEF extensions

MageBridge has made a lot of effort into creating SEF URLs that combine the Joomla! 1.5 SEF-logic with the Magento SEF-logic. Any third party SEF component that can be made compatible with Joomla! Core SEF is compatible with MageBridge. Typically, you need to configure some kind of exception for the MageBridge component inside the configuration of this SEF-tool.

• Artio JoomSEF
• RSSEO

Besides beautifying your URLs, you should also optimize your website regarding 404-pages. Every time a visitor hits a page that does not exist, an ugly 404-error is shown. With Dynamic404 you can redirect the visitor to the appropriate page or show a list of possible matches. Dynamic404 has a plugin for MageBridge to search the Magento products and categories for possible matches as well.

• Dynamic404

CCK integration

Integration of CCKs (Content Construction Kits) and MageBridge is possible by using MageBridge URL Replacements: Specific pages within Magento (wrapped in Joomla! using MageBridge) can be replaced using MageBridge. A CCK (like Zoo or K2) allows you to build your own content-items (articles, weblinks, etcetera) with your own custom content-fields (title, tag, category, image). By using Magento CMS-code you can extend this Joomla! content again with Magento blocks.

We plan to offer specific CCK-elements to allow Magento blocks to inserted in an easier way.

• K2
• FLEXIcontent
• ZOO

Form components

Just as with CCK-components, you can create custom content ("forms") using components like RSForms, Joomla!Forms, or ChronoForms. It could be tempting to allow for easy addition of MageBridge-specific fields to your form. For instance, if a customer needs to fill-in some kind of DOA-form, it comes in handy if the customer is able to select the (Magento) product in question.

While we are working hard to create an API that will make it very easy to integrate MageBridge-fields into Joomla!, we have no plans yet to actually support one of these form-components. Most of these components have no easy way for third party integration, which we think is preliminary.

• RSForms
• Joomla!Forms
• ChronoForms

Other bridges

Because MageBridge uses the regular Joomla! plugin-system to integrate itself with Joomla!, if other bridge-solutions live up to those rules as well, there's no problem. JFusion is compatible with MageBridge, because both systems use the regular Joomla!-events to integrate.

• JFusion
• RokBridge