It sometimes happens that you want to publish a Joomla module in a custom position on a Virtuemart page, or perhaps you only want the module to appear on specific pages, such as the product details or category page. For example, you have a custom HTML module that gives some information about shipping, and you just want to display it on the product details page. The normal Joomla method of assigning a module page is to use the menu assignment, but this is not possible in our example, because a Virtuemart product details page will not normally correspond to a Joomla menu item. So how to do it? It turns out that actually there is more than one approach to solving this problem.

Joomla 3.3 is now released (you can read about its features and download it here). Joomla 3.3 requires a PHP version of 5.3.10. If your hosting environment does not yet support PHP 5.3.10 there is also a new version of Joomla 3.2 available (version 3.2.4), which you are advised to update to, also a new version in the Joomla 2.5 series (2.5.20).

One reason why we are very pleased to report these new releases is that these versions all include a fix of the issue with the Joomla JFile class which we recently reported. 

We have a new release of our popular GooglebaseXML shopping feed extension for Joomla and Virtuemart. The latest release is version 4.2.0, and is fully compatible with the new release of Virtuemart 2.6, including support for the new product gtin and mpn fields. Other new features include:-

• Adds support for the Google identifier exists tag
• Includes option to use the product SKU as gtin
• Improved discount calculation

There is now a new release of Virtuemart, the popular e-commerce extension for Joomla 2.5. Version 2.6 is mainly a step on the way to the eventual release of Virtuemart 3, which will be compatible with Joomla 3, but it has some useful new features:-

• support for product gtin and mpn numbers
• the paypal plugin now displays the payment amount in the payment currency
• a recaptcha field for the registration
• encryption of plugin fields

We have a new release, version 3.1 of our AmazonWS plugin. This is a plugin for the Joomla content management system which allows you to embed Amazon product information, reviews and links directly into your Joomla articles.

The latest release,version 3.1.0 includes many new features:-

• output of many new Amazon tags
• ability to create your own custom templates and include them in the plugin embedding code
• improved debugging output
• support for Amazon India

The plugin can use either the article metatags to search for Amazon products, or more precise control of the output can be obtained using simple plugin embedding code.

Our GooglebaseXML component allows you to submit what Google terms product variants, using Virtuemart child products. This article describes this process, it assumes that you are using Virtuemart 2.

Before attempting this it is a very good idea to first read Google's product feed specification (the section on product variants is about half-way down) to check whether your products can meet the requirements. If not, then you will need to submit the parent product instead. If that is your choice then there is nothing special that you need to do, by default the feed component will submit the parent product data.

We have a new release, version 2.0.0, of our content plugin for Virtuemart, ProductSnapshot Pro. This plugin allows you to embed Virtuemart product information and an add-to-cart button in Joomla articles, and other extensions that support content plugins, using simple embedding code. The latest release is a much improved version of the extension with many new features. It is now possible to list multiple items, by specifying a list of products ids or skus, or by specifying the category or manufacturer, or a group such as featured, latest or popular products.

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Plug Amazon Web Services

Product Details

This month's featured extension is a content plugin for the Joomla 1.5, 2.5 and 3 CMS.

This content plugin allows you to embed product information and reviews and links from Amazon Web Services.

 The plugin handles signed Amazon requests, and allows choice of Amazon country marketplace services.

You can specify products either by using an Amazon product id, or use a product keyword search, or a title and author search for books.

The latest release includes greater flexibility in layout choice, and a completely new additional template: the 'modal' layout displays Amazon Customer Reviews in a popup window rather than directly on the page.

View an Example

Virtuemart is a popular open source e-commerce extension for the Joomla! content management system. We have a number of extensions written explicitly for Virtuemart that will enhance your store:-

• VM2 Product Snapshot  allows you to embed Virtuemart product information in Joomla content articles. As a content plugin it is compatible with the Joomla core content component as well as extension that support content plugins, such as K2.
• HTML5 Slideshow for Virtuemart 2 displays your product images in an attractive HTML5 slideshow. It is compatible with all modern browsers including mobile devices and will display a simplified version in older browsers such as IE7. It is a great way to show off your products without using Flash.
• Virtuemart Featured Product Grid is an alternative to the Virtuemart featured products module. It can be used to show featured products, top ten products, recent products, and random products from some or all categories. The module is particularly useful when you want to display additional images for your products, as these are shown in a scroller.
• VM ModController Pro This module allows you to control the display of other Joomla modules on Virtuemart pages. It allows you to assign modules to Virtuemart pages (including specific product details flypages or category browse pages), categories, and shopper groups.
• GoogleBaseXML This component for the Joomla Content Management System generates a product data feed for your Virtuemart store in XML format. It is specifically designed to be compatible with the format required by Google shopping. The product listing can be manually uploaded, or submitted as an URL to Google Merchant Center for scheduled upload

You can view examples of these extensions in our Virtuemart Extensions Demo Store.

Below: A screenshot of our HTML5 slideshow for Virtuemart

We are happy to announce the release of a new version 4 of our GooglebaseXML component for Joomla 2.5 and Virtuemart 2.0.x. This component generates a product feed for your Virtuemart store which can be submitted to Google shopping through the Google Merchant Centre.

The component is designed to allow you to match Google's product feed specification exactly, so that Google should accept your feed without problems. The latest version is designed to make it even easier to generate multiple feeds, making it straightforward to submit feeds to Google  even for very large sized online stores.

Buy the Component