2BlueSolutions Developer Blog

This post will handle condensing the shipping address and shipping method pages. If you only offer one choice of shipping to your customer, then it is pointless to present your customer with a page that allows them to select, from one option, the type of shipping they want. It’s also just nice to condense these two pages to help reduce the number of clicks between the start and the end of the purchase process. Of course, it is still worthwhile to have your customer review their shipping address and to present them with an option to change the shipping address to something different than the bill to address. Condensing these pages will present your customer with a more streamlined checkout process that will improve your customer’s interaction with your e-commerce site. The first change needs to be applied in the VirtueMart configuration page. Log into your Joomla installation’s administrator page and then go to your VirtueMart component page. From here, click on configuration...

A funny comic relating Web Designers to Web Developers.  There definitely are some truths to the stereotypes!

By default, the VirtueMart checkout process will ask for more information from your customer than is actually needed by your store.  To help reduce the form-field overload  that you customer may face when trying to purchase a product from your online store, it can help to actually remove fields that are not necessary to your business.   Do you really need to know the “company", "title", or "fax number” of a customer?  If not, then this tutorial will show you how to remove those fields. Changing the following file will impact the Billing Information and the Shipping Information (Shipping Address) forms that appear during the VirtueMart checkout process. The file you will need to edit can be found here: /administrator/components/com_virtuemart/classes/ps_userfield.php Search for the function getSkipFields() By default, the skipped fields are the username, password, password check, and the check for the terms of service agreement. function getSkipField...

If your store will only be using  PayPal  as a payment handler, the customer experience can be improved by replacing the "Confirm Order" button at the end of the checkout process with an actual PayPal button. The old button doesn't convey to your customer that they will be taken to PayPal  to complete their order. All we're going to do with this post, is show how to change that "Confirm Order" button into this a Paypal button The file you want to edit is found here: \components\com_virtuemart\themes\default\templates\checkout\get_final_confirmation.tpl.php Within this file, search near the bottom for the following code: <div align="center"> <input type="submit" onclick="return( submit_order( this.form ) );" class="button" name="formSubmit" value="<?php echo $VM_LANG->_('PHPSHOP_ORDER_CONFIRM_MNU') ?>" /> </div> The button has a class called input.butto...

One quick solution to a common problem.  When running Virtuemart and using Moneris as your payment processor, you may occassionally run into the following error: A message from the processor:  API Token Mismatch: (N/A) ERROR:  FAILURE IN PROCESSING THE PAYMENT (ps_moneris) The quick and easy way to fix this is to log into http://www.eselectplus.ca with your credentials and make sure that, under “My Account -> Account Settings”, the default transaction ECI is set to SSL .  It normally defaults to another transaction type (non-electronic commerce transaction), so you need to change it to represent the type of transaction you prefer.  Whether that is an SSL transaction or not is dependent on you site.

To edit the “Add To Cart” popup that appears when you add an item to a cart in Virtuemart, there are few files that you need to know about. These are the files to know \components\com_virtuemart\themes\default\theme.js \components\com_virtuemart\js\mootools\   - contains the files for editing the appearance of the popup. To edit the appearance of the box, edit \components\com_virtuemart\js\mootools\mooPrompt.css to change the styles as well as editing the 2 images in the directory to edit how they appear as well (close box and header-background)

VirtueMart is a free piece of Shopping Cart Software made for Joomla .  It works right out of the box with a few minor tweaks, but it also allows for some major customization. There is a lot to learn about VirtueMart to get it fully customized for your needs, but if you want a free e-commerce shopping cart component for Joomla, VirtueMart is the leading candidate. To install VirtueMart is easy.  Download the latest complete package from the VirtueMart website .  Log into your Joomla adminstrative interface and upload the package that you just installed (see Joomla - Installing Components and Plugins ).  You need to unpack the file you just download because you are only going to need to initially upload the file called com_virtuemart_1.1.5.j15.zip (corresponding to the version you downloaded).