As we upgrade clients to Virtuemart 2 we ran into a small problem where there is no default country on the checkout page even after the shop is all setup. There is an easy way to fix this problem and a more complex way, I will describe both below.
In the easy fix, the only downside is that if you ever change your shop’s country location, you would need to redo the change. We really only did the complex way so that we could submit a change back to Virtumart that would allow them to make the quick fix not necessary.
To the magic! For a simple one-time fix, to set your default country, run the MySQL query below (replacing YOURCOUNTRY, with the name of your country exactly how it appears in virtuemart and jos with your table prefix):
UPDATE jos_virtuemart_userfields SET `default`=(SELECT virtuemart_country_id FROM jos_virtuemart_countries WHERE country_name='YOURCOUNTRY') WHERE name='virtuemart_country_id';
For a more permanent solution that matches the functionality found in Virtuemart 1.x where the default country matches the country the shop is located in you will need to update 2 files. I have attached a zip file which includes those 2 files, please feel free to diff them against the vanilla virtuemart files to see what changes we have made. Before applying this patch make sure you are on virtuemart 2.0.6
These are the 2 files you must replace:
administrator/components/com_virtuemart/models/userfields.php
administrator/components/com_virtuemart/controllers/user.php
Here are the files and as always both the files and query come with out any warranty. We strongly suggest you back up your files and database before making any changes.
If you are in need of additional help in upgrading Virtuemart, we’d love to hear from you! 209 257 1706 x3
Checkout other Virtuemart solutions and reviews here.
As I said in my previous post on how to fix your featured products the migration tools for moving to Virtuemart 2 while saving us much time and work occasionally miss something.
One of the problems a we experienced while upgrading virtuemart for one of our clients was that many of their categories became unpublished for no apparent reason. Thankfully these 2 simple SQL queries should fix things. As always we strongly suggest that you backup your database before proceeding.
UPDATE jos_virtuemart_categories AS c LEFT JOIN jos_virtuemart_categories_en_gb AS cen ON c.virtuemart_category_id=cen.virtuemart_category_id SET c.published=1 WHERE cen.category_name in (SELECT category_name FROM jos_vm_category WHERE category_publish='Y');
UPDATE jos_virtuemart_categories AS c LEFT JOIN jos_virtuemart_categories_en_gb AS cen ON c.virtuemart_category_id=cen.virtuemart_category_id SET c.published=0 WHERE cen.category_name in (SELECT category_name FROM jos_vm_category WHERE category_publish='N');
The above query may have issues if you have multiple categories with the same name, and use at your own risk, we make now warranty upon it. If your unsure of how to make this work or want additional migration assistance, give us a call or send us an email, we would love to talk to you. (209) 257-1706 x3
Upgrading your virtuemart site from 1.1.x to virtuemart 2 is a big undertaking. Thankfully the developers for virtuemart have provided us with a great migration tool that helps bring most of your content over with very little effort.
If one of the problems you are experiencing is that products that used to be “featured” are no longer “featured” the solution is quite simple. You can simple run the SQL command below and all of your products that were “featured” will be “featured” once again. We strongly suggest you back up your database before executing this query.
UPDATE jos_virtuemart_products AS p LEFT JOIN jos_virtuemart_products_en_gb AS pen ON p.virtuemart_product_id=pen.virtuemart_product_id SET p.product_special='1' WHERE pen.product_name IN (SELECT product_name FROM jos_vm_product where product_special='Y');
The above query may have issues if you have multiple products with the same name, and use at your own risk, we make now warranty upon it. If your unsure of how to make this work or want additional migration assistance, give us a call or send us an email, we would love to talk to you. (209) 257-1706 x3.
Coming off my post about technology and the cool-aid of hype, an article about what the cloud doesn’t do resonated with my thinking. It reminded me of being a kid … “do you believe in magic” … we all want to believe, but when it comes to your computing, skilled analysis is still critical to your success. Seth Godin points out that when execution gets cheaper, so should planning but counting on the cloud to do magic doesn’t count as planning.
Moreso, in his article, what Alexander says is that the cloud is here to stay. It is not going to altogether replace traditional computing methods, so now users will be faced with even more choices. With so much press on cloud products, often mixing or confusing SaaS, Iaas, PaaS services, confusion or poor choices are bound to result!
With new options being added daily, it is that much more important that you have trusted and skilled help to manage, evaluate, and deploy technology. Some thoughts come to mind:
SRI is in some ways a traditional hosting company, owning hardware and running many enterprise sites. However in other ways we are a support and services team, using available tools to skillfully built a solution to best meet our customers needs. Several recent CloudFront CDN deployments we have done are a great example of this. We certainly could leased a few servers, put a web cache on them, and call it a CDN. But we know our customers could get better, indeed needed better for world-wide caching, and so we made recommendations based on their needs to use CloudFront. Next time their request may lead to another Amazon service, to a different 3rd party provider, or maybe to our data center space.
If you are looking for planning, implementation, or help evaluating options don’t hesitate to call us!
But for magic, see this:
Joomla has long had a reputation as one of the best content management systems available. It has made web site management really easy for an end user to change their own content, seamlessly add features, and change site designs. One of the most frustrating and difficult to manage aspects of Joomla was it’s upgrade process. Small Joomla! security updates were relatively painless, you would download the update package, upload it to your home directory, and unzip it. Major version upgrades on the other hand were nearly impossible for the average user and could cost thousands of dollars if you were to hire a development team to make the migration for you.
In reality though, due to the effort and cost involved, most Joomla! web sites were left in a state of decay that left the site full of security vulnerabilities and poor end user support. SRI Hosting recognized this trend a long time ago and we have been very proactive in working with all of our clients to maintain Joomla! and server security. When patches to known security vulnerabilities are released by the Joomla Security Strike Team, SRI is notified within hours. We then check to see which of our supported Joomla clients are currently on a vulnerable release and make notifications via E-mail or phone. For shared hosting, we also try to notify site owners, though ultimately this is their responsibility.
If you have a site that is using the Joomla! CMS you will be releaved to know, starting with version 1.6, updates have gotten easier than ever before. You can now click one button and your site will be updated to the latest available version, all known security vulnerabilities will be patched, and you will have access to the latest tools and features.
Before hitting the update button there are actually a few more steps you should take. So let me walk you through them. We will always recommend first creating a development environment and testing this update process thoroughly on your development site before making any updates on a live site. Furthermore, if you would like to have this handled for you, give us a call at 209 257 1706 x3 and our team is here to help. Otherwise:
- Subscribe to the Joomla Security News Letter.
- Install Akeeba Backup
- Backup your Joomla! site and database then download the backup to your computer.
- Check to see that your installed extensions are available for the latest version of Joomla! If they aren’t available you may have to find new extensions with similar functionality or remove the ones that are no longer compatible.
- In the Joomla Admin go to Extensions -> Extension Manager -> Update
- Click “Purge Cache”
- Click “Find Updates”
- Check the box next to “Joomla” and click “Update”
The update could take a couple of minutes. After the update completes I am typically given two message; the first is an error message about the “htaccess.txt” and the second is a success message letting me know what version of Joomla! I am now running. Most users can ignore the htaccess.txt message.
When you leave and go back to the Joomla! Control Panel chances are the icons will be running down the left side of the page. You need will need to hold down “Shift + F5″ or clear your browsers cache to fix the layout problem.
Be sure to check the functionality of your Joomla! site after the update and remember you have your backup if anything goes wrong. The makers of Akeeba backup have extensive documentation if you having any difficulties using their tool.
Good luck and thanks for keeping your site up to date. I will make maintenance much easier in the future.
Hype is in every industry, but in technology this is even more common than in other industries. Or perhaps because technology can often be hard to understand, the lure of easy, fast, simple, and FREE is even harder to pass up. But when you buy the hype, it is likely to hurt later, so you may want to carefully consider a couple things we’re seeing become more common in technology as a whole.
With the hype of the cloud and software-as-a-service, many vendors now tout their API-driven products as the key to simple programming or online-success. Open APIs fall fall short of open source brings up some great points related to how the owner of the APIs really controls this game. If you are not in control of your platform, it leaves you to be forced into change that may not be good for you.
Another area we see this is in the use of “unlimited.” Many people get upset when their DSL or iPhone data stream is throttled, yet they happily accept (usually without reading the fine print) limitations that the many “unlimited” hosting companies offer. We think here is another train-wreck waiting to happen. While it may feel good to complain, ultimately if you run a high profile or important web site, we think having hosting that’s worthy of your site is critical. With no hidden catch.
SRI is here for those that realize there is no free lunch, that want a platform that can deliver upon its specifications, and not a gimmick that cannot possibly be attained. To put it another way, if you brought a sleeping bag inside of a “all you can eat buffet” would you really expect to eat, sleep, and live there for a few weeks while you finish your meal?
Feel free to call or email our support team if you have questions about how we compare, we’re proud of our offerings and are not afraid of unlimited.
Code ownership is one critical item to address when you hire a web development firm.
In one recent case, after having trouble with bugs and server performance, a client decided to move to SRI Hosting’s managed VPS with their site. Unfortunately the client did not have server access or the site code/database, and the firm they used would not give access to this. Without documented ownership of the code (or even site data) it was a difficult negotiation for them, and ultimately it cost them more money.
So as you start your project you should be sure to have a contract showing ownership of the site and code, then continue to get code updates as you pay for the site. Asking a 3rd party to review the code may be another good idea if the project is sizable and you are not able to be sure what you are getting is real. SRI is more than happy to review any hosted code regardless of whether or not we have developed it.
SRI is converting all of there shared hosting users to FastCGI, which will be great news for all of our shared hosting clients. This will make your life easier as you install and use web apps like Joomla/Drupal/Wordpress and also add another layer of security between you and the other users on our server.
You do not need to do anything for this to go into effect. Further we have seen no negative impact for clients who have had this change in our first “beta” round. We will simply email you in advance of when the change will happen, and then within a day it will be live for you.
What does this mean for you?
- Setting up new web apps like Joomla/Drupal/Wordpress is easier.
- You won’t need to try and use the difficult FTP plugins these apps may or may not provide.
- Even if other websites get hacked all your files are out of there reach.
- You can restrict the permissions on your files more aggressively and still have a functional website.
For those of you interested in the technical details here is some information:
When PHP runs from FastCGI, your server runs the PHP interpreter like an Apache module, but with the rights of your user account. Usually, the PHP interpreter is either running as the user of the webserver (which is fast, but insecure, since everyone’s scripts run with the same rights), or as a CGI program, which is slow. Thus, FastCGI is a good solution for shared hosting.
If you have never needed a Joomla! shopping cart, finding a good one your very first try can be difficult and waste a lot of time. Skip to the very end for the conclusion, if you’re not interested in the full details.
There are currently twenty-seven shopping carts listed in the Joomla! Extension Directory (JED). I am going to narrow the list down to based on a few criteria.
- Must be available for Joomla 1.7!
- Must show signs of continued support into Joomla 2.5
Must offer a Non-Commercial version— EDIT- Must offer a Non-Commercial version that is “Easy to locate and download”!
