VirtueMart

h1. Virtuemart 1.1.x

h2. What's new in VirtueMart 1.1?

h2. Themes

Themes are the new big thing in VirtueMart 1.1. Themes allow you to style your shop the way YOU want it without having to fear that all changes will be lost the next time you update to a new version of VirtueMart. 

Themes are the part where all the "Display Code" is stored (you have heard of MVC - Model, View, Controller; all those parts of a software should be held separately...?). 

Read more about themes in VirtueMart. 

Unfortunately, it won't be easy to upgrade an existing installation of VirtueMart without losing most of the design changes you have made. This is due to the new template structure. But there is an easy upgrade path. 

h2. User/Registration Field Management

Have you ever wanted to add new Fields to the Customer Registration Form? Now you can! 

VirtueMart 1.1 will allow you to manage the Fields of the Registration and in the Account Maintenance. You can add new Fields (example: "How did you hear about us?") or hide unnecessary Fields. 

It's even possible to link the Newsletter Subscription of a new User within the Registration (as a Checkbox for example). If you're using YANC or Letterman, you can used this Feature. 

All this can be done using the User Field Manager in the Shop Administration. 

h2. Category RSS Feed

You can now syndicate your Products based on Categories! VirtueMart shows an RSS icon at the top of the category listing, so people can subscribe to that feed of latest products. 

h2. Recommend a Product, Ask a Question to a Product

These two new Functions have been added to the VirtueMart Frontend. 

* Recommend a Product: Send a Product Recommendation to a Friend by Email 

* Ask a Question: Allows a Customer to send a Question about a Product to the Store Owner 

These functions are similar to the existing functions in Joomla!. 

h2. Currency Selector, Exchange Rate Modules

In VirtueMart 1.1 it will be possible for customers to select another display currency so they can see prices in their currency. Say you have a European Shop that offers Goods to American Customers as well. These Customers will be able to change the displayed cCrrency to "USD" and see all Prices in their EUR ? USD converted Amount. 

It's possible to restrict the Currencies that a User can select. 

You can even choose if you want to allow Customers to check out and order in another Currency that your default Store Currency. 

h2. Sort Order for Products in a Category

It's now possible to re-order products in a category and create a sort order that is independent of price, name or date. 

h2. Move Products from one Category to another

It's now possible to move more than one product at a time from one category to another one. You can do this at the admin product list if you have filtered by category. 

h2. Edit Product Prices directly in the Admin Product List

Based on Ajax, you can add and update Prices for all Shopper Groups directly from the Product List. 

h2. New Product Form saves changes using Ajax

If you open a product form from the product list, a Pop-up opens and you can make all the necessary changes. If you click on "Save" the product form is not reloaded, but its data is sent to your shop returning the result of the change (or addition). If you forgot something you don't need to fill in the value once again. 

h2. Product File Manager

The product file manager has been reworked and now is the central media manager for each product. 

* It's now possible to add more than one downloadable file to a product. 

* additional Product Images are uploaded using the File Manager. 

* Big Images are reduced to a normal user-definable size (resizes the full image AND the thumb image!). 

This allows a more flexible product file management. 

Note: In VM 1.1 all paths to product files will be relative, so you can move your shop quickly from one server to another one without having to adjust all paths in the database. 

h2. Directly add a product of a specific type

When dealing with product types and parameters you had always to create the product first and then assign it to a product type in VM version 1.0. This was complicated, because you had to access different forms and finally go back to the product once again and fill in the parameter values. 

New: Now you can add a product by type (say: "Clothes") and directly fill in the parameter values. 

h2. Payment Fees based on a percentage

For payment methods it's possible now to choose between a total fee (already part of VM 1.0) or a percentage fee (based on the order total). 

Example: You can now start charging 3% of the order total when user XY uses payment method PayExample. 

h2. User Group Management

VirtueMart 1.1 will allow you to add new user groups for better permission handling. Currently the groups "admin", "storeadmin", "demo" and "shopper" are fix. Now you can add a group "manager", for example, which has less rights than an admin, but more rights than a storeadmin. 

h2. Proxy Support

Shipping and Payment Modules need to communicate with other servers over the Internet. But sometimes it's necessary to go through a Proxy Server from your Webspace (e.g. from GoDaddy webspace). In VirtueMart you can set a proxy server that will be used for all external communication. It's even possible to use a proxy authentication. (Requires cURL library) 

Apply - Button

The famous "Apply" button, which was introduced in Mambo 4.5.2 to prevent being redirected to a list (but stay on the form), was added to VirtueMart as well now.