Creating a Feed for a Large Number of Virtuemart Products
This article discusses how you can go about creating a product feed for your Virtuemart store using our GooglebaseXML extension, and submitting it to Google Merchant Centre, when your store has a large number of products. There are a few issues that you need to consider, although there is nothing to stop this from being done very successfully.
The main issue is that the server resources required, including the server memory, and the script execution time, will be large for a large product database, probably much more than your site is normally allocated. How you go about solving the issues mainly depends on what sort of hosting your site uses.
Read more: Creating a Feed for a Large Number of Virtuemart Products
New Release Version 2.1.5 of VM Product Snapshot Pro
We have a new release, version 2.1.5 of our VM Product Snapshot Pro plugin for Virtuemart.
This content plugin for Joomla and Virtuemart allows you to embed Virtuemart product information directly into a Joomla article, the custom HTML module and other extensions that support Joomla content plugins, such as K2.
This is a maintenance release which adds support for the Joomla updater. Note that you will still need to log into your account and download the plugin in order to update, due to the limitations in the Joomla update manager it is not possible to make one-click updates available. However you will be notified through the update manager when an update becomes available.
The update also fixes a javascript error which affected the slideshow layout.
New Version 4.6.24 of GooglebaseXML Shopping Feed
We are happy to make a new release of our GooglebaseXML product feed for Joomla and Virtuemart. Version 4.6.24 is a maintenance release which includes some bug fixes and new features, the main one being that it adds an option to use meta description and custom page title (custom title and metadesc fields in the Virtuemart database) for items instead of product description and product name. The advantage of using these is that they can be cleaner, if you want to avoid using HTML in the product description (which Google prefer), then you can use the meta description which is plain text.
Read more: New Version 4.6.24 of GooglebaseXML Shopping Feed
New Image Zoomer Release for Virtuemart
We are happy to announce the new release of version 2 of our Spiral Image Zoomer plugin for Virtuemart. This plugin allows you to add a nice image zoomer to your Virtuemart product page. It displays a medium sized image, when the customer hovers over the image a magnified version of the image is displayed in a floating window, allowing the customer to inspect product details.
Version 2 includes some useful enhancements to the plugin. Now it can be used in a variety of ways: as a Virtuemart custom field; as a Joomla content plugin (allowing the zoomer to be automatically generated for all Virtuemart products; or as a custom event plugin, if you want to use it in a template or module.
The new release is designed to make usage as simple as possible, so it can be as straightforward as installing the plugin and then enabling it.
You can read more about the plugin here, and see some examples here.
New Release Version 3.0.3 of Featured Product Grid
We have a new release version 3.0.3 of our extension Featured Product Grid for Virtuemart.
This is a maintenance release which includes some bug fixes, mainly to improve the support for display of Virtuemart 3 custom fields. The module now properly supports Virtuemart cart fields and can update prices in response to variant selections.
This release also adds some support for the Joomla updater, so that in future the site admin will be informed when an update is available. However because it is a commercial module you will still need to download a copy from your account, or use the install from URL option by supplying your download link. This is due to the limitations of the Joomla updater which does not provide a straightforward way for commercial extensions to validate the download.
Read more: New Release Version 3.0.3 of Featured Product Grid
New Release Version 2.6.2 of AS3 Manager
We are have a new release, version 2.6.2, of our extension, AS3 Manager. This extension package for Joomla! 3 allows you to manage your Amazon S3 objects and buckets from your Joomla admin. You can upload and delete objects, and create and delete buckets. You can create download files and packages (consisting of multiple files), for free or for sale. If you want to sell digital downloads you can use our download plugin for Virtuemart which is compatible with AS3 Manager.
The latest is a maintenance release which fixes some bugs (mainly an occasional issue with the Amazon S3 autoloader, and with the Dropbox download). It also includes a Russian language translation (thanks to Хорошевский Алексей http://aleksius.com/).
You can find out more using the links below.
New Release Version 1.8 of Spiral Download Plugin
We have a new release, version 1.8, of our Spiral download plugin for Joomla and Virtuemart. This is a maintenance release which improves the layout of the custom field in the Virtuemart administration.
Our paid download plugin for Joomla and Virtuemart supports locally hosted files, and also Amazon S3 and Dropbox hosted files through our AS3 Manager extension. The plugin is designed to allow you to offer paid downloads as products for sale in Virtuemart, by allowing you to attach the download to the product as a custom field. It allows you to restrict either the number of downloads, the time limit on downloads, or both.
Read more: New Release Version 1.8 of Spiral Download Plugin
Extensions Now Supporting Dropbox
We have a new release of our AS3 Cloud File Manager extension. The latest release is 2.5, and now supports Dropbox as well as Amazon S3. This extension allows you to manage your cloud hosted files through your Joomla admin, and make them available as download packages, either for free, for restricted Joomla user groups (through the standard Joomla ACL), or for sale.
If you want to sell your files, our paid download plugin for Joomla and Virtuemart works with the AS3 Manager extension to allow you to do this.We have a new release of this plugin available too: version 1.7 adds support for selling Dropbox files as well as Amazon S3, by selling AS3 Manager Manager download packages as Virtuemart products. The Spiral Download plugin is designed to allow you to offer paid downloads as products for sale in Virtuemart, by allowing you to attach the download package to the product as a custom field. It allows you to restrict either the number of downloads, the time limit on downloads, or both.
New Extension Google Product Review Feed for Virtuemart
We are pleased to release a new extension. GProduct Review Feed makes it easy to submit your Virtuemart product reviews to Google shopping, you can do it in a matter of minutes. It's a great way to enhance your product listings.
GProduct Review Feed can be used to create either a full review feed, or an incremental feed. As well as automatically creating your feed, the extension allows you to mark reviews as spam, or deleted.
- You can read more about submitting a review feed to Google here;
- See a tutorial, with screenshots of the feed administration here;
- View an example feed here;
- Buy the extension here.
Our Extensions for Virtuemart
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
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