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.