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.

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problems a we experienced while upgrading virtuemart for one of our clients was that many of their categories became unpublished for no apparent reason.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

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.

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:

The one time this is a problem is for PCI Compliance. Some of the auditing companies simply ignore/disregard the CentOS/RHEL patching methodology and fail patched servers. They see an old version and give you a failing score (on a fully patched operating system!). Suffice it to say time is spent by clients passing a PCI scan, when they really should be updating their web-facing code (CMS, Web Framework, etc) which more often than not gets missed by the scan and is truly not secure. We’ll be blogging more about this soon I’m sure.

We had to do something since the vendor will not change, but our client’s development team insisted SSH must be open. So we moved forward with upgrading OpenSSH.

First we setup a clean install of CentOS 5.8 x86_64. Then we found a great install guide that almost worked, up until the command “rpmbuild -bb openbsd.spec” failed. The first error we had we had was:

RPM build errors:
Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.5659 (%doc)

We found the answer to in a comment at another upgrade guide (thanks Mike!).

The second error was much more difficult, and we have not seen it on the web. It was:

RPM build errors:
File not found by glob: /var/tmp/openssh-5.6p1-buildroot/usr/share/man/man1/scp.1*
File not found by glob: /var/tmp/openssh-5.6p1-buildroot/usr/share/man/man1/ssh-keygen.1*
File not found by glob: /var/tmp/openssh-5.6p1-buildroot/usr/share/man/man8/ssh-keysign.8*
File not found by glob: /var/tmp/openssh-5.6p1-buildroot/usr/share/man/man8/ssh-pkcs11-helper.8*
File not found by glob: /var/tmp/openssh-5.6p1-buildroot/usr/share/man/man1/ssh.1*
File not found by glob: /var/tmp/openssh-5.6p1-buildroot/usr/share/man/man5/ssh_config.5*
File not found by glob: /var/tmp/openssh-5.6p1-buildroot/usr/share/man/man1/slogin.1*
File not found by glob: /var/tmp/openssh-5.6p1-buildroot/usr/share/man/man1/ssh-agent.1*
File not found by glob: /var/tmp/openssh-5.6p1-buildroot/usr/share/man/man1/ssh-add.1*
File not found by glob: /var/tmp/openssh-5.6p1-buildroot/usr/share/man/man1/ssh-keyscan.1*
File not found by glob: /var/tmp/openssh-5.6p1-buildroot/usr/share/man/man1/sftp.1*
File not found by glob: /var/tmp/openssh-5.6p1-buildroot/usr/share/man/man8/sshd.8*
File not found by glob: /var/tmp/openssh-5.6p1-buildroot/usr/share/man/man5/moduli.5*
File not found by glob: /var/tmp/openssh-5.6p1-buildroot/usr/share/man/man5/sshd_config.5*
File not found by glob: /var/tmp/openssh-5.6p1-buildroot/usr/share/man/man8/sftp-server.8*
Installed (but unpackaged) file(s) found:
/usr/share/man/cat1/scp.1
/usr/share/man/cat1/sftp.1
/usr/share/man/cat1/slogin.1
/usr/share/man/cat1/ssh-add.1
/usr/share/man/cat1/ssh-agent.1
/usr/share/man/cat1/ssh-keygen.1
/usr/share/man/cat1/ssh-keyscan.1
/usr/share/man/cat1/ssh.1
/usr/share/man/cat5/moduli.5
/usr/share/man/cat5/ssh_config.5
/usr/share/man/cat5/sshd_config.5
/usr/share/man/cat8/sftp-server.8
/usr/share/man/cat8/ssh-keysign.8
/usr/share/man/cat8/ssh-pkcs11-helper.8
/usr/share/man/cat8/sshd.8

After realizing the man pages were in the wrong spot, we added a flag to the configure line in the included openbsd.spec file.

We have attached our working spec file in case others find it useful.

AND of course, call our team at 209 257 1706 x3 if you are interested in help or hosting to make your server PCI compliant!

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:

1. Subscribe to the Joomla Security News Letter.
2. Install Akeeba Backup
3. Backup your Joomla! site and database then download the backup to your computer.
4. 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.
5. In the Joomla Admin go to Extensions -> Extension Manager -> Update
6. Click “Purge Cache”
7. Click “Find Updates”
8. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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”!

It will be a short list but that should be all we need. Not everything in the JED is actually a “cart” so of the seventeen that are available for Joomla! 1.7 only three are viable options.

1. HikaShop
2. RedSHOP
3. Virtuemart 2.0

I am going to spend a few hours looking at each component in depth and I’d like to see how each cart stacks up in a few areas.

• Installation Simplicity
• Coding Standards
• Ease of Navigation (Back-end)
• Basic Setup Time

• Documentation

• Developer Support

HikaShop

HikaShop was first released October 6th, 2010 has over 4.5 stars and 82 reviews; of the reviews, almost all of them are extremely positive and the HikaShop publishers have been praised over and over for their excellent customer support for all versions of their software.

Installation Simplicity

Finding the software needed and the installation process were as easy as one would expect.

Coding Standards

Once the installation was complete I went right to the file system and database to take a look at HikaShop. I wanted to know how much time and care the developers put into this component. The standard Joomla! MVC architecture was adhered to and the code is clean and easy to follow. The PHP error log is also free from HikaShop errors.

Ease of Navigation

After opening the component I found a clean looking and extremely descriptive interface. The upper navigation menu is clean and will be easy to use once I learn a little more about the component. Adding a product is extremely simple. Everything you need it visible to you on the screen and there are no deep menus that you will have to dig through to set up your products.

Basic Setup Time

For the most part setup is simple. Total setup time was probably only 30 minutes, this was a huge plus. Most of the configuration options are self explanatory and easy to find. The only two things that must be configured are the customer payment methods and the shipping method. I had a little difficulty setting up the customer payment methods, but had the error message been a little more descriptive this would have taken three minutes instead of twenty to find and solve.

Documentation

Documentation is easily accessible on every page of the back-end. So as you setup and configure HikaShop it is easy to find the information you need.

Developer Support

If you can’t find what you are looking for you can always post your questions on the HikaShop Forums. Nicolas is an active developer of and has posted over 14,000 replies in the forums. Needless to say they are extremely active and client reviews are extremely positive.

Summary

HikaShop has been around a little over a year and is shaping up to be a high quality product. It seems to still have a small core of dedicated developers that are sticking to their mission by continuing to develop this “ingenious and user-friendly service”.  Without going into too much detail, everything you would expect in a light shopping cart is available in this non-commercial version of HikaShop and if you need more functionality there are two additional versions available with additional features.

If you would like to see more, HikaShop has an excellent demo site that demonstrates the styling and UI flexability on the front end of Joomla! along with the available functionality to manage your products, categories, customers, sales  zones, tax rules and so much more on the back end.

RedSHOP

RedSHOP was first released March 13th, 2010, has over 3.5 stars and 43 reviews; of the reviews, most seem to be pretty positive. There are a few really negative reviews with less than adequate responses from the developers.

Installation Simplicity

This shopping cart almost didn’t make it into my review. It was extremely, almost deceptively, difficult to find and download the free Joomla! 1.7 version. While trying to find the 1.7 version you are constantly told that registration is required and then funneled to a free/paid subscription page that doesn’t seem to have a free option.

After finally finding the correct download page you are still told you need to register but you will find the install package you need is listed under “documents” not “downloads”.

The installation was just as easy as any other component.

Coding Standards

Like HikaShop I went right to the code. The first thing I noticed was in administrator/redshop.php. There were two PHP “if” statements that combined had a total of 66 conditions. This is simply not good coding practice, it is bad for performance, hard to read and easy to break. After turning on Joomla! debugging I noticed that RedShop was running an extensive number of queries, well over 150 for every page load. The max seemed to be about 600, this is far above the 50-80 one would expect. This significantly hurts the performance for this shop and if you are a busy shop your you will need a hosting provider that can handle heavy CPU load.

Over all the file system layout is good and is adhering to Joomla! standards. There isn’t much in the way of comments, so if you are looking at modifying RedSHOP in any way, it is going to a bit of time to sort out what is going on. You will also notice your PHP error logs fill up with alot of un-necessary errors generated by redSHOP that can drown out real problems and slow down repairs.

Ease of Navigation (Back-end)

The back-end has a familiar Joomla! 1.7 feel using the same style buttons as Joomla! with their own mix of icons. For the most part the layout is simple and it is easy to find what you need. Though not all of the buttons do what you would expect and in some places buttons simply don’t work. Don’t let the side menu scare you, it is a little overwhelming trying to find what you need since there aren’t any good visual cues to separate the menus.

Adding basic options to a product is pretty simple. There are an abundance of options, not all of them are required and the average small to medium sized shop won’t need to use most of them.

Basic Setup Time

Set up is easy, RedShop comes with a setup wizard to get you started but it lacking any shipping set up. You will need to download and install “rs_shipping_shipper_1.1.4_1.7j.tar.gz” along with one of the payment plugins from their download page. Once they are installed and set up to meet your needs you should be able to process your first order.

Documentation

Documentation comes in the form of a downloadable PDF at first glance it is extensive and easy to follow. I needed to use it to configure a couple of things and it was right on step by step.

Developer Support

The forums are active and full of information. Requests for help get answered quickly and individual problems are addressed by the developers.

Summary

RedShop is a good option if you are looking to expand your existing online store. It took a long time to locate, download, install and configure the basics needed to purchase one example product. A small business that has a limited number of products probably isn’t going to want to use RedShop, it takes the time, man hours and resources of an established business to setup and run RedShop and all of it’s features.

Along with being more powerful than most small to medium shops need it has a few serious downsides. It appears as though they developed this without consideration for performance and good coding practice. They admitted to intentionally not adhering to web standards, which though not always easy to follow, do still play an important roll on the web. They don’t make it easy to find the free version and when a user requested a refund they did not issue a refund because it was GPL software. An acceptable policy but one that should be noted.

VirtueMart

VirtueMart was first released March 5, 2006, has over 4 stars and 276 reviews; of the reviews, most seem to be pretty positive. Most of the reviews from experienced VirtueMart users are very positive. It looks like newer users are having basic setup problems that seem to come from a lack of experience with VirtueMart.

Installation Simplicity

I had no problems finding what I needed to install VirtueMart. I was able to upload the file and load the component without any errors or problems.

Coding Standards

Over all the PHP looks good. It is clean, organized and commented well. There are large blocks of legacy code commented out and left without any comments or notes. Though this isn’t really a problem it probably should be cleared out in this version since it is marked as “stable.”

Ease of Navigation (Back-end)

Unlike the other shops VirtueMart keeps a consistant look no matter what you are trying to do. The menu is easy to use and has a good layout that makes navigation simple.

Basic Setup Time

Setup was fairly easy, everything you need is easy to find and error message were descriptive enough to find and fix any errors in just a few minutes. You will need to download, install and set up a shipping and payment module.

Documentation

There are two versions of documentation for VirtueMart. The user documentation is extremely extensive and can walk anyone through the setup process. There are full screen shots that are up to date and highlight the buttons and links necessary to use VirtueMart. The developer documentation is also extensive but to the point, most developers shouldn’t have any problems using it and the forums also offer developer support.

Developer Support

The forums again are extremely active. I wouldn’t expect support directly from a developer but the user base is large enough that you won’t have any problems finding someone to answer your questions.

Summary

One of the great things about VirtueMart is they choose to be GPL because that is what they believe in not because they have to, and you can count on updates to VirtueMart being free as long as it is around. VirtueMart really shows its age but the experience it has earned since it was first released in 2006 makes it a really solid cart with great options. VirtueMart stands out with it’s feature list, extend-ability, user generated support and longevity.

Conclusion

Like I said before, choosing a cart can really be a daunting task but you really need to decide what your long term goals are. Some carts are great at the basics and leave out all of the complex set up, while others will streamline the sales and delivery process, but take more time out of the box.

If you are a small shop just starting out and you want to hit the ground running without spending a lot of time setting up all the complex options of a full featured cart then HikaShop is perfect. It is the newest of the three components and therefore is still missing some common features. There is currently no way to track sales inventory or group shoppers, like you can in Virtuemart.

RedSHOP looks like it is trying to become as full featured as Virtuemart but with some of the simplicity of HikaShop. It seems to be happening at a cost though. The software is slow, buggy and lacks refinements that Virtuemart has. Maybe someday it will be a great cart but today isn’t that day.

If you are looking for a cart with unlimited possibilities, Virtuemart is a top of the line non-commercial shopping cart that is stacked full of features. It has, by far, the largest user base and almost 500 available extensions, that’s more than any other component made for Joomla!.