New Release Version 4.6.26 of GooglebaseXML
We are happy to make a new release of our GooglebaseXML product feed for Joomla and Virtuemart.This extension generates a product data feed for your Virtuemart store, which can be uploaded to your Google Merchant centre account for use in Google Shopping and advertising.
Version 4.6.26 is a maintenance release which includes some bug fixes and new features:-
- Truncates the title to 150 characters
- changes g:expiry_date tag name to the correct g:expiration_date
- adds option to force language in the extension admin to fix occasional problem with loading the wrong Virtuemart tables
- fixed a bug with filtering by language
- fixes a bug in the site language file
- improves handling of PHP memory limit configuration
- adds a log entry for PHP memory limit and max execution time, so you can check the operational values for these
All these are quite minor issues.The feed works well at what it does, so there has not been a big reason to make many updates recently.
However we are planning a more substantial release in the future which will include some more new features: the main one will be a more flexible method of renaming the tags, so that you can customise the tag names in order to satisfy different feed formats.
But this is still at the planning stage at the moment.
New Release Version 3.0.2 for Articles Count Module
We are happy to release a new version, 3.0.2, of our Articles Count Module The articles count module counts the articles in your Joomla categories, and displays them in a list with a link to the category. You can choose which categories to display, or use the currently displayed category. There is a choice of display: either as a simple list or a collapsible tree.
The latest release is a small update to the code which makes it compatible for the first time with Joomla 4. We plan to make most of our extensions work with Joomla 4 alpha over the next few months, which is likely to be in advance of the first stable release of 4.0, which is scheduled for the end of 2018.
We also have a new release (version 1.0.2) of the Articles Count module for K2, which fixes a couple of minor language issues.
Read more: New Release Version 3.0.2 for Articles Count Module
New Release Version 1.0.2 of Tags Match Module
We are pleased to announce the release of version 1.0.2 of our Tags Match module for Joomla!. Tags Match allows you to display in a module Joomla items selected by tag. It works with the Joomla Core Tags component.
In the new release we concentrated on making the module output look more attractive, by introducing some optional styles: a simple column layout, and a grid layout. You can see examples of these layouts here: https://www.spiralscripts.co.uk/examples/tags-match.html
All the layouts and effects are created using css, with no javascript, so that makes them very efficient. The effects are supported in all modern browsers, and as far back as Internet Explorer 10. In our tests the module output renders very acceptably in earlier browsers, just without the transition effects.
New Release Version 4.1.0 of Featured Items Pro Module
We have a new release of our Featured Items Pro Module for Joomla.
This module displays a short excerpt from articles in a selected category or section, or from a specified list of articles, with link and optional thumbnail image. It works with both the Joomla core content and with K2.
The new release includes a new feature to select K2 items by tags. It also adds some improvement to the generated URLs for Joomla articles.
You can download the module here.
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
