Finally after 2 years of development, the VirtueMart team proudly releases the first stable version of the new VirtueMart 2 Core. More than 100 people were involved, 8500 posts were written and endless lines of skype chats were done to create this new

VirtueMart 2.0.0.

Free Open Source Online Shop Solution,

an extension for Joomla in GPL2.

VirtueMart 2.0.0 is compatible Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.7.

A bunch of features are included, such as:

• Products with expandable custom fields
• Advanced Tax system
• True multi-currencies management
• Checkout process as registered user or as guest
• One click checkout or multi-page checkout
• Multilingual store as a native solution
• SSL checkout

Based on Joomla MVC framework with all  its advantage:

• Template overwritting,
• Implementation of Joomla Plugins for: payment, shipment, coupons, calculation rules, custom product fields, ...
• Simple installation and integration of other joomla extensions.

More features are listed here: http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=91199.0

Perspective

The next months we will mainly concentrate on module and plugin development and supporting 3rd party developers. We will also update the wiki with a manual, and do workshops.

Credits

We thank the whole VirtueMart community. We all helped together to create a new fantastic solution. We thank in special Sören Eberhardt-Biermann who made this community possible and Kelvyn Sheppard our forum master and our most endurance tester Devendra Kumar Shukla.

Max Milbers, Patrick Kohl, Valérie Isaksen, Rick Glunt, Roland Dalmulder, Oscar van Eijk, Urs Brülhart, Devendra Kumar Shukla, Eugen Stranz, Alex Steiner, Jörg Kiekebusch, Christopher Roussel, John Acosta, George Kostopoulos, Zbigniew Mazur, Joe Motacek, John Wicks, Markus Öhler, Stephanie Schmidt, Vu Hoang Viet, Simon Hodgkiss, Mickaël Cabanas,  Holbok Istvàn, Fred Bidon, Alexander Kludt,  Akarawuth Tamrareang, Konstantin Dzvonik

and a lot different translators, supporters, and testers.

Download VirtueMart 2.0.0

VirtueMart 2.00 RC3: better, faster and stronger

What is new in VirtueMart RC3?

• VirtueMart RC3 handles multi-lingual store as a native solution.
• The plugins implementation has been improved.
• Joomla cache has been introduced to speed up the code.
• The number of queries has been reduced.

When is the final?

During one month, several pre-releases for the RC3 have been submitted directly to the members in the forum to test the migration process from the RC2 M version to the RC3, the multi lingual capabilities and the new plugin system. This RC3 version is our last step before the final release. VirtueMart 2.0.0 will be released december, 19th .

Everybody having a store built with a RC2 version should first update their store with this RC3 version. In the final release VirtueMart 2.0.0, all the table migration process will be removed.

How to install the RC3 over a store running RC2 version?

1. If possible, increase the "max_execution_time" time and the "memory_limit" parameters in your php.ini file, so that the migration / update script gets executed without timing out.
2. Disable the Akeeba System - System Restore Points.
3. Disable the Joomla debug option in the Joomla configuration.
4. Uninstall the vmshipper plugin via the Joomla uninstall menu.
5. Delete the file virtuemart.cfg placed in the administrator/components/com_virtuemart folder.
6. Set your default joomla frontend language to the one used in the description of your products. It is important to do this step before updating VirtueMart, to install the correct default VirtueMart languages tables.
7. Install the component VirtueMart. The code will be overwritten, and VirtueMart tables content will be migrate to the new tables.
8. Install the AIO component. It contains all the plugins and the modules related to VirtueMart.
9. Edit and store all your payment methods. All the new tables needed to handle the payment will be created.
10. Because we have renamed the plugin vmshipper to vmshipment, you must reconfigure the shipment methods.
11. Go to the administrator, set the language(s) for your store, even if your store is not multi ligual and save the VirtueMart configuration.

How to set up a multi-lingual store?

In addition to the standard Joomla installation, install all languages you would like to use in your multi-lingual store. Select them in the VirtueMart configuration.

Products, categories, manufacturers, shipment, and payment can be translated. All the fields must be stored in the default language. For the others languages , translate only the contents signaled by a flag.

Translators

Some new keys have been added, some languages strings have changed. Now the language files are stable. Please check them or complete them.

Download VirtueMart RC3

Some people were annoyed that we do not update about the situation. The question is do we communicate or do we develop? Our style to develop needs already really a lot of communication, because we use rapid prototyping and pair programming technics. There is also a lot of communication in the forum. People who follow the vm2 forum a bit are updated. They can see the errors, questions and our answers.
They should also consider that we already released a version which is more or less treated by the development team as a final. That means we take care that people can smoothly update. For us it is important that beta testers can use their work for their final store. We also train the update processes itself. As I already wrote before I suggest to install vm2, try, test and learn it. Start to create your store, learn the possibilities. Then you can decide if VM2 is ready for your purposes. The virtuemart 2 core is now and later released as is without warranty. If it is a final or not.

There are also some people who are annoyed, because they trusted the published ETA and have now angry clients. This people are very rude. Not helping but shouting that it is too slow is just ... (speechless). It is really crazy that the team should feel guilty and is accused for something it never promised by people who did nothing for the virtuemart project .

The version M was quite final, so we tested to develop different plugins and run into trouble. The payment and shipment plugins do not belong to the core, but are essential for a shop, so releasing a core without a minimum amount of working plugins is useless. We noticed that the system can be simplified, which improves and helps with the plgugin development. Since we are not final, we combined the abstract plugin handler for shipment and payment plugins. Within 3 days we optimised the pluginsystem and enhanced it. This was a big shift and very good that we waited with the final release.
The next big shift is that we got unhappy with the multilanguages solution for j1.7, or better said, there is none and it will take time until there is any and the solutions in seight are not performant. We got the idea how to write a fast performant multilanguage system. Since we need that for the virtuemart store, we decided to write it and it seems that we needed 4 days for it. The result is a multilanguage system, which is even faster than before.
Since we changed 2 big systems, the plugin system and the language system, we must do another release. We call it Release Candidate 3.

Feature list: Integrated in joomla 1.5 and joomla 1.7 with its advantages (articles, blog, forum, ...)

• Uses joomla extensions
• User based shopsystem
• Template overrides (layouts, mails)

 

native multilanguage

• categories
• products
• manufactuers
• vendors
• seo

 

nested categories

• with meta tags for seo
• with description and media

 

shoppergroups

• pricing depending by shoppergroups
• price display depending by shoppergroups
• payment/shipment depending by shoppergroups
• anonymous shoppergroup

 

shopper

• customizable shopper input form
• input form depended on registration, checkout or shipment
• completly anonymous checkout
• Adressbook
• default Bill-to and Ship-to address
• default payment and shipment method
• check of eu vat id (not working yet)

 

products

• with meta tags for seo
• short and long description
• dimensions (weight, size)
• multiple media
• variants, attributes
• stockable variants
• unlimited child products and derivated levels
• product pattern (Parent product used as pattern for child products)
• related products

 

Inventory/Stocking

• stocking/inventory
• stock warning
• virtual stock (ordered but not finally bought)

 

Prices

• various type of prices to display depended by shoppergroup
• prices adjusted by shopper choosen currency
• different currency format per currency

 

real multi currency

• auto updating rates
• add your own currencies for fixed currency rates

 

manufacturer media handler

• atm finished for images, will be used for downloadables, videos, pdf, programs, ...

default SEF/SEO integrated Product reviews and ratings dynamical calculator

• discounts based on time, category, shoppergroup, country, and state
• tax based on time, category, shoppergroup, country, and state
• discounts, tax per product and/or order
• discounts, tax have their own currencies (for duties)

 

multiple payment and shippings options

• shipment payment methods are defined per vendor

 

checkout

• guest checkout; completly anonymous checkout
• option to register at begin of checkout
• cart is an object, competly overridable by template
• cart is stored in the session
• 1 click checkout
• multipage checkout
• one page checkout (not by default)
• SSL

 

order handling backend

• Payment/shipment workflow
• history
• modifiable

 

order handling frontend

• order tracking for anonymous users

 

revenue

• sortable

 

template handling

• different joomla templates by category
• different category browse pages per category
• different product display pages per category/product

 

product display configurable by

• latest
• topten (most sold)
• newest
• featured
• sortable
• searchable

 

marketing promotions and tools

• coupon handling
• recommend a product to friend link

 

other

• hidden debugging tool

Good news,

So far it looks like that the final release of vm2 is now 1-2 weeks away.

We understand that many people are not happy, that we have not set a final release date, but we don't want to create banana software, many people have been working hard in the past few weeks and months, building a robust shopping cart they are proud of, and with this in mind, we feel we are at the final stages. We want release VirtueMart 2 when the last sub release has no new severe bugs. The last sub release should be stable as the final, then we release it, however, please remember that VirtueMart 2 will be the fundament core for the next few years, so we wanted to consider as much as possible for it's future use.

The general problem to set an ETA is that VM2 is developed by a community and not a company.

This means that the work is not only delayed because people working on VirtueMart who need to pay their bills and do other jobs, it means also that the whole process of testing & qualifying is done completely differently, normally a tester is a skilled programmer and not an end user. We have a strong working community, so we rely on testing from our community, this has delayed development, because it takes more time to train the people and to understand if there is a bug or a misunderstanding of the feature. On the other hand this leads to a more intuitive and self explained product, the other problem is that a lot people in different countries and with different ideas, work together purely over the net. We do not sit together in one office, so we need a lot more communication using forum's and chat rooms. Altogether more than 20 developers have committed their code, and more than 20 extra testers are in touch with the core team, during this time we also had programmers, who had to leave the project for personal reasons, and in some cases the programmers claimed to finished a task, left the project and when it got tested by the community later, we found a lot bugs and had sometimes rewrite the whole work of them. This problems affect the final product in a positive manner, so this makes it harder for estimating the release date.

What happened since the first RC in may?

First we changed the whole database layout using a common pattern also used by nooku. Then we implemented abstract controllers, models and tables, to follow the DRY principle (meaning = Don't repeat yourself). After that we thought we are done and released the RC2, but then Joomla 1.7 came out. To get an idea what we had to do (http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=90207.msg295973#msg295973). Then we found out that a lot stuff was buggy or only partly implemented. Take a look on the developer forum to get an impression (http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?board=127.0)
So what we think is the estimated date for the final? Let's take a look on our feature list http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=91199.0 as far we can see, almost any feature is implemented. The missing features are not obligatory for many people, so let's take a look to the forum board with the bugs, since version j, it seems almost any bug is fixed. The bugs left are minor or specifically connected to the environment of the user. So when you are happy, with the already built in feature, you can treat the j version as a final.

And finally!

There are already a lot people happily configuring VM2 for their shops and some of them will go online, before VM2 is announced as final because it works, it works very well and the initial feedback we are getting makes the road to this version and the developers happy and proud.

VirtueMart is a community project, so the ideal is when the community itself signals that VM2 is final and I think the day is very near.