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- Written by: Max Milbers
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We know you are all expecting VirtueMart 4 for Joomla 4 to be released soon. We are almost there. Our new version is being tested daily in various test environments and most features are working to our satisfaction. So well, in fact, that the first VM testers are planning to go live with smaller stores soon.
VirtueMart 4 Update Procedure
Upgrade or Migration? Don't worry, the changes in Joomla 4 are substantial in some areas, but we have made sure that you can update from VirtueMart 3 to VirtueMart 4 like a normal update, mostly with just a click of a button. We can provide you with an installation package that is compatible with Joomla 3 and Joomla 4.
VirtueMart 4 loves Testers
Saxonian Swizz Lilienstein, Copyright Max Milbers
Next Release
We will soon provide a new version, even if it is not yet fully perfected for Joomla 4, as we have also made many enhancements for existing VirtueMart stores with Joomla 3.
When to Update?
Joomla 3.10 is officially supported until August 17, 2023. So there is no need to rush to update to Joomla 4 immediately. Joomla 4 is still a new software, so we recommend to wait a bit with live store updates until the community has fully tested Joomla 4. New software always tends to have some bugs that need to be discovered and ironed out in the beginning.
Help Joomla 4 and VirtueMart 4 by testing in your test environments.
We expect that late spring 2022 will be a good time to update the first live stores without any problems.
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- Written by: Valérie Isaksen
- Category: Latest News
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Here are some words by the leader of VirtueMart (Max Milbers): These are ambivalent times. On one hand life changed completly for most members, on the other hand it offers new opportunities. In my case, I am currently very busy with the lockdown problems. Literally getting a simple screw is suddenly a big time consuming problem. Politics divide people and business. I got indirect questions, asking if VirtueMart is going to take measures concerning it's 'political correct use'. When I joined VirtueMart, my goal was to create a free shop system for the people. VirtueMart is a free Open source system for anyone. No community member can controll, what you sell with it. It is not our responsibility. Personally I believe in the good will of people and that no one should judge about others without walking in their shoes for a while. We, the VirtueMart communtiy, have members all over the world. Let's keep it that way!
Now back to VirtueMart. We tried already a year ago to create a new admin template. This time our team member Valerie Isaksen of alatak.net broke through the obstacles and lightend a new fire for the new administrator template. The old template will be later merged into the new template and provided as style, or theme (it won't be exactly the same). The new admin template is currently provided as backend template. Updaters should use our package (use the big blue download button) to get the new admin template. You can just install the package over your current installation. It ensures that you get also the latest tcpdf and vmbeez. But you can also extract it and install the vmadmin.zip. This way ensures that the changes in the backend template do not interfere any productive installation.
Updated administrator interface template design
A new administrator template is available for testing which improves mobile and desktop appearance and usability for shop administrators.
Modern icons are used to represent key features and give the interface a cleaner appearance.
Feedback tells us that the rich core features and configuration flexibility remain a core aspect of why VirtueMart is a great choice for Joomla ecommerce.
This is therefore a template UI update and not a complete redesign of administration pages. Shop owners will still find their business information and configurations in the same place.
A small number of configuration screens have had their look slightly modified using icons and give a more consistent alignment of features/fieldnames with input/selection.
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VirtueMart 3 component (core and AIO)
Highlights
- Sidebar
- Cleaner look and feel toggle functionality.
- Is hidden completely and available via slide or overlay toggle in all views - giving more space for information to be displayed
- Mobile/Tablet:
- List displays for the majority of VM administration functions now wrap effectively.
- Function selections (filter/search) are shown correctly.
- Alignment of fieldname with selection/input facilitates easier desktop viewing and significantly improves UI on Mobile/Tablets.
- General
- General improved use of icons.
- Cleaner tab selections for multipage configurations.
- Simple radio yes/no selectors now align with Joomla UI look and feel.
- Image view and upload - small design change improvement for Products/Categories/Manufacturers and Media.
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VirtueMart 3 component (core and AIO)
New features, enhancements, fixes
Enhanced or new
- Skrill payment update
- Removed shop is offline feature. Added instead a link showing better possibilities todo that (Using joomla or catalog mode).
- Restriction for shipment/payment byCoupon
- Extra order note. Just a simple note for orders for internal use.
- Order list searches now also for the customer_note and order_note
- Order list now also filterable by vendor
- New options of storing carts (currently per hidden configuration)
- #CartsDontSave = 0 //dont store carts for logged in shoppers
- #CartsDontSaveByshoppergroup=50 //dont store carts for shoppers in this shoppergroup
- #CartsDontSaveCartFields=1 //dont store cart fields when storing a cart for a shopper
- Order model function getOrder loads now the whole data of an order status (interesting for templaters)
- Multiple category filter for product list in the backend. Disabled by default, currently you can enable it by hidden config AllowMultipleCatsFilter=1
New for developer
- new pattern if an array is given, and we need the first item then we use now reset and not the 0 item.
- New Trigger in storeProductCustomfields, for removed customfields.
- Added "andWhere" function to parameter to VmTableXarray load function, added function loadOrderingCurrentItem
- VmTable cleaned ordering, added function loadOrderingCurrentItem
- PHP 8 compatibility, bugs may still occur.
Fixes
- Ordering for products
- All nasty warnings like "Warning: Parameter 1 to plgVmShipmentWeight_countries::plgVmOnSelectCheckShipment() expected to be a reference, value given in /var/www/vhosts/..../libraries/joomla/event/event.php on line 70"
- time for coupons is from now on not "NOW" but "timestamp_utc"
- Fix for 1054 Unknown column 'Array' in 'where clause after update to 3.8.6 http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=145855.30 Fix for ordering of products if products of subcategories shown
- The order detail links in the email consider the case, that neither guest link, nor registered is set
- Feature that registered users must activate themself
- getUserInfoInUserFields getting the right joomla user data per given id
- Missing cart error message in js
- Missing '' for constant VMPATH_ROOT in installer script
- Removed useless \n in Sample shop decription
- getVendorAddressFields when a administrator and vendor edits another vendor.
- category model calls to clearCategoryRelatedCaches
- language of shipment plugin in order view
- added chosenDropDowns in cart default shopperform
- little fix for custom cartlayout
- Copyright years updated, renamed variables and other minors
- fixed a lot warnings of the type "Deprecated: Required parameter $isSite follows optional parameter $selectedCategories in /var/www/vhosts/.../administrator/components/com_virtuemart/helpers/shopfunctions.php on line 652". So we are already prepared for PHP8.
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- Written by: Max Milbers
- Category: Latest News
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A new XSS was found by 4N_CURZE (https://www.openbugbounty.org/researchers/4N_CURZE/). It took a while to reproduce it, because it was caused by the manufactuer dropdown, which is not always activated. The problem itself was easy to fix, although the value was whitelisted everywhere else, it was missing for the manufacturer drop-down list.
Since the previous release some features got added. The long desired multicart system got implemented. Multicart means for a multi-vendor shop, that there is an extra cart for each vendor. So when a customer buys products from different vendors he needs to do a checkout for every vendor. This system is very interesting for real marketplaces, which offer products of different vendors.
Another nice new feature are payment/shipment restrictions by coupons. This can be used to offer customers other payment methods over the phone, such as bank transfer for example. Or it can be used for marketing campaigns like "use this coupon to get free shipment".
The textinput plugin can now be used for mandatory text, as we have introduced a required characters check. iStraxx contributed the toggleCartButton.js with MIT license for the required characters check.
StAn of RuposTel has provided a useful overhaul of the VirtueMart recaptcha system. It now works according to the new Joomla standards and works with any joomla captcha plugin. Read more about this on docs.virtuemart.net
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VirtueMart 3 component (core and AIO)
Read more: Security Release VirtueMart 3.8.6 Closing an XSS Vulnerability
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- Written by: Max Milbers
- Category: Latest News
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Great update of the Skrill Plugin
Trusted by millions across the globe Skrill meets the needs of more than 156,000 businesses worldwide providing a convenient and secure way to send and receive money in nearly 200 countries and 40 currencies.
Our payments platform comes with an exclusive reduced fee offer of 0.9% on Debit Card/Prepaid Card/Credit Card (VISA, Mastercard, Maestro) transactions, and 0.5% fees on Rapid Transfer transactions.*
*Fees apply to new merchants only within restricted industry sectors. Terms and conditions apply.
What this module does for you:
- Free and quick setup
- Access credit cards and 100+ local payment solutions with 1 easy integration
- Take advantage of the Skrill multicurrency account, giving you access to 40+ currencies
- High-security standards and anti-fraud technology
- Seamless payment experience across mobile, tablet and desktop
- Connect with millions of Skrill account holders
Features:
- Additional payment options and control over how they are displayed
- Customizable gateway with embedded page and redirect functionality
- Instant settlement
- Enhanced reporting and transaction status viewing
- Refund capability within VirtueMart
What your customers will like:
- Easy ways to pay safely online – no sign-up required to make payments
- Convenient and immediate payments – pay with a bank account, or debit and credit cards without any hassle
- Multiple local payment options allowing customers to pay how they want
- Internationally recognized and trusted brand
Don’t have an account? Sign up for free today!
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- Written by: Max Milbers
- Category: Latest News
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This is a special release in these unusual times. It was planned as simple version with an optimisation boost and bugfixes for VM 3.6.10, but it became a lot more than that. Many people are affected by a corona stasis. One of our members had to go in quarantine (without being infected) where he had a lot of time tor develop and donate smaller enhancements. Personally, I had been preparing for coming restrictions since the end of February since it was clear that Germany will follow the other countries. My wife and I are now taking care of our children's homework and home-education, which are aged from 3 to 11 and my development time is severely impacted. On the other hand this period allowed to really hard-cook this version in the debug process. It is already in use on some live shops for at least the past 2 weeks now.
Some of our developers also joined the COVID Support campaign for the Joomla community https://covid.joomlart.com/. Participating developers offer a 20% discount on extensions.virtuemart.net
Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay
The biggest change under the hood are the new optimizations that avoid massive sql requests and use booleans to decide whether we need to load data from an xref table. The technique has some implications, which are described on docs.virtuemart.net http://docs.virtuemart.net/tutorials/development/241-reduced-database-access-by-using-booleans-for-reference-tables.html. When I worked on that pattern for categories, I noticed that we can enhance the loading of a category tree in a similar way. Rough tests with more than 200 categories (organised as years) indicate a 5 times faster loading time.
Read more: Release of VirtueMart 3.8 and Covid support campaign
