VirtueMart Configuration

Allow User Registration – YES
A user/customer must be registered to your site before being able to checkout (even if the customer might not recognize it due to silent registration).

VirtueMart provides an enhanced Registration Form where customers can leave their account and shipping data. When registering using this form, they are automatically added to the Joomla User list.

Use New Account Activation – NO
If you keep this feature disabled, new customers have a streamlined checkout process and do not have to activate their new account by checking their email, confirming their status by clicking on a link and then returning to their checkout page to complete their check out process.

Mail Configuration –
VirtueMart sends Emails using the global Mail Configuration. Be sure to modify the Values according to your Mail Server Configuration.

Caution

If you do not change your Store Information and the Email Address, VirtueMart sends Order Confirmation Emails to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Search Engine Friendly URLs - Recommended: Off

VirtueMart is fully SEF compatible.

NOTE: Some of the SEF links for VirtueMart, which are generated by Joomla's / Mambo's SEF module or others, sometimes lead to "URL redirection limit exceeded..." or internal server errors.

Shop is offline? - Here you can switch the shop from Online to Offline mode. In offline mode, the offline message is displayed instead of the product pages. This means customers will not be able to access the shop section until and unless you make the shop section Online again.

Offline Message - This message will be displayed to customers who try to access your store when the admin put the shop in offline mode.

Use only as catalogue - Hides all "Add to Cart" buttons.

Price Configuration (Section)

Show Prices - When enabled, product prices are displayed. (Useful when using "catalog-only" functionality.
NOTE: You cannot hide prices from unregistered users and show prices only to registered users.
This is either an ON or OFF price trigger.

Membergroup to show prices to - default:"Public Frontend". Here you can decide which member groups of your site are allowed to see product prices.

Show "(including XX% tax)" when applicable? - When checked, users will see the text "(including xx% tax)" when prices are shown incl. tax (which depends on shopper group settings!).

Show the price label for packaging? - Use "price per packaging" label?

Frontend Features (Section)

Enable content mambots/plugins in descriptions? - If enabled, you can use your mambots and plugins for dynamic content in the product or category descriptions.

Enable Coupon Usage - If you enable the Coupon Usage, you allow customers to fill in Coupon Numbers to gain discounts on their purchase.

Enable Customer Review/Rating System - If enabled, you allow customers to rate products and write reviews about them. So customers can write down their experiences with the product for other customers.

Auto-Publish Reviews? - If enabled, customer reviews are instantly shown after being submitted. Maybe not a good idea, because you want to check product reviews before they are displayed to site visitors.

Comment Minimum Length - This is the amount of characters a customer must write at least before a review can be submitted.

Comment Maximum Length - This is the maximum amount of characters a customer can write before a review can be submitted.

Tax Configuration (Section)

Virtual Tax - This determines whether items with zero weight are taxed or not (only applies in Ship-To-Address based Tax Mode).

Tax Mode – This determines which tax rate is taken for calculating taxes. It can be either the tax rate of the customer's shipping address location, the tax rate of the store/vendor location or - in EU Mode - the tax rate of the country, the store is located in, regardless where the goods are shipped to.

Enable multiple tax rates? - Check this, if you have products with different tax rates (e.g. 7% for books and food, 16% for other stuff).

Subtract payment discount before tax/shipping? - Sets the flag whether to subtract the Discount for the selected payment BEFORE (checked) or AFTER tax and shipping.

User Registration (Section)

User Registration Type -
a) Normal Account Creation - This type of registration asks each customer for a username and password and all other published registration details.

b) Silent Account Creation - In this mode, users don't need to fill in a username and password for a new account. Instead the email address is used for the new account and a random password is generated. The registration details are mailed to the customer.

c) Optional Account Creation - The customer can select if a persistent account is created or not. If the customers chooses to create an account, they are asked for a username and password. If they choose not to create an account, a hidden account is created - so the customer can be silently logged in and check out the products / services that they have purchased.

d) No Account Creation possible – In this mode the customer can checkout without being able to create an account for returning later on. Each time a dummy user account is created to keep the data structure intact.

Show the “Remember me” checkbox on login? - The "Remember me" feature allows setting a cookie in the customer's browser, so the customer does not need to login each time they return to the site. This is done by default. But such cookies can be a security risk - especially when people are sharing a PC in an Internet Cafe. So check this checkbox to allow customers *not* to store a user cookie.

Must agree to Terms of Service? - Check if you want a shopper to agree to your Terms of Service before registering to the shop.

Must agree to Terms of Service on EVERY ORDER? - Check if you want a shopper to agree to your terms of service on EVERY ORDER (before placing the order).

Show information about “Return Policy” on the order confirmation page? - Store owners are required by law to inform their customers about return and order cancellation policies in most European countries. So this should be enabled in most cases.

Legal information text (short version) - This text instructs your customers in short about your return and order cancellation policy. It is shown on the last page of checkout, just above the "Confirm Order" button.

Long version of the return policy (link to a content item) - This is the long and detailed version of your returns policy. This text is linked in the short version and appended to each order confirmation email.

Core Setting (Section)

Check Stock? - Sets whether to check the stock level when a user adds an item to the shopping cart. If set, this will not allow user to add more items to the cart than are available in stock.

Enable the Cookie Check? - If enabled, VirtueMart checks whether the Browser of the customer accepts cookies or not. This is user-friendly, but it can have negative consequences on the Search-Engine-Friendliness of your shop.

Select a currency converter module - This allows you to select a certain currency converter module. Such modules fetch exchange rates from a server and convert one currency into another.

Order-mail format: This determines how your order confirmation emails are set up:
a) as a simple text email
OR
b) as a html email with images.

DEBUG? - Turns on the debug output. This causes the DEBUGPAGE to be displayed at the bottom of each VirtueMart page. Very helpful during shop development since it shows the carts contents, form field values, etc.

Limit by IP Address? - Limit debugging output to a specific client IP address.
Client IP address - If you enable this option and enter an IP address here, then debug output will be enabled ONLY for this client IP address. Other clients will not see the debugging output.

Logfile configuration (Section)
Enable logging? – If disabled, a "null" logger will be instantiated instead, so that the vmFileLogger can still be invoked without error.

Logfile Name – Path to logfile. Must be reachable and writeable.

Logging level – Log messages above this priority threshold will be ignored.

Logfile format - Format for individual logfile line entries.

Security Setting (Section)

SECURE URL - Example: https://www.mydomain.com/. The secure URL to your site. (https - with trailing slash at the end!)

Caution:

Be careful what you fill in here - if the address doesn't exist, customers would be redirected to a non-existing location and receive a 404 error!

Shop Areas which must use https - Some of the areas of your shop can be forced to use the SECUREURL connection. Here you can choose the modules which must use this SECUREURL. By default this is: "account" (Account Maintenance) and "checkout" (the complete Checkout).

Generally prevent https connections? - When checked, the shopper is redirected to the normal URL when not browsing in those shop areas, which are forced to use the SECUREURL.

Encryption Function - Recommended: AES_ENCRYPT
Choose the MySQL function, which is used to encode/encrypt important data in the database tables. AES Encrypt is far more secure, as it actually encrypts the data, not just encodes it. AES_ENCRYPT is available in MySQL >= 4.0.2.

Encryption Key - The secret key for encrypting payment account data like credit card numbers and storing them encrypted in the database.

Store Credit Card Information? - Allows to completely disable the storage of Credit Card data.

Allow Frontend-Administration for non-Backend Users? - With this setting you can enable the Frontend Administration for users who are store admin, but can't access the Mambo Backend (e.g. Registered / Editor).

Table Prefix for Shop Tables - This is an experimental feature to allow multiple shops in one Joomla! Installation.

HOMEPAGE - Example: shop.index. This is the page which will be loaded in the frontend by default.

ERRORPAGE - Default: shop.error. This is the default page for displaying VirtueMart Error Messages.

Global Proxy Settings (Section)

URL of the proxy server - The URL of the Proxy Server you need to pass from the server for connections into the Internet.

Proxy Port - The Port of the Proxy Server

Proxy username - Only if needed: the username for authentication at the proxy server

Proxy password - Only if needed: the matching password for authentication at the proxy server

Display (Section)

PDF Button - Show or Hide the PDF Button in the Shop Front-end.

Show the "Recommend to a friend link" - Show or Hide the link to the form for recommending a product button to a friend in the Shop Front-end.

Show the "Print View" link? - Show or Hide the link for the print view page in the Shop Front-end.

Show Page Navigation at the Top of the Product Listing? - default: checked.
Switches On or Off the Display of Page Navigation at the Top of the Product Listings in the Front-end.

Default Product Sort Order - Here you can select by which criteria products are ordered in the product lists.

Available "Sort-by" fields - Here you can select the criteria which is available for the customer to reorder the product list.

Show the Number of Products? - default: checked
Switches On or Off the Display of Products in a Category right behind the Category Name like "Power Tools (3)".

"no image" image - default: /ps _image/noimage . gif
This image will be shown when no product image is available.

Show footer "powered by..." ? - Displays a powered-by- VirtueMart footer image. Give credits back to the author!

Layout (Section)

Select the theme for your Shop - Here you can select which theme is used to style the shop. The configuration link takes you to the theme configuration screen.

Default number of products in a row - This defines the number of products in a row. Example: If you set it to 4, the default category template will display 4 products per row.
Note: You can change the Category's Number of products per row for each category in its category form!

Category Template - default: browse_1
This defines the category template for displaying products in a category when no special template is set. You can create new templates by customizing existing template files (which reside in the directory COMPONENTPATH/html/ templates/ and begin with browse_).
Note
You can change the Category Template for each category in its category form!

FLYPAGE - default: shop.flypage
This is the page used for displaying product details when no special flypage is set.
NOTE: You can change the Flypage for each category in its category form!

Enable Dynamic Thumbnail Resizing? - If checked, you enable dynamic Image Resizing. This means that all Thumbnail Images are resized to fit the Sizes you provide below, using PHP's GD2 functions.

Tip:
You can check if you have GD2 support by browsing to “System” -> “System Info” -> “PHP Info” -> gd.
The Thumbnail Image quality is much better than Images which were “resized” by the browser. The newly generated Images are put into the directory /shop_image/prduct/resized. If the Image has already been resized, this copy will be send to the browser, so no image is resized again and again.

Thumbnail Image Width – The target width of the resized Thumbnail Image.

Thumbnail Image Height – The target height of the resized Thumbnail Image.

In the Shipping section you can select one or more of the provided Shipping Modules.
Tip:
You can configure Online Services (like UPS® or Intershipper®) in "Store" # "List Shipping Modules" # Service Name. Other Shipping methods like Standard Shipping or Zone Shipping must be configured through their own administrative interface: "Shipping" # Shipping Rates / Shippers or "Zone Shipping" # "Zone List". The Free Shipping module can be configured by amount only in the Store Form.

The selected Shipping Module will list all available Shipping Rates on Checkout.

NOTE:
If you want no Shipping Rate Selection, you must select "Disable Shipping method selection" AND a checkout process (next Tab) which doesn't include Shipping Method selection.

Enable the Checkout Bar - default: Enabled
Check this, if you want the 'checkout-bar' to be displayed to the customer during checkout process ( 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 with graphics).

Checkout Steps - The Checkout Process is divided into different Steps. Steps can be combined to so-called "Checkout Stages" by giving the same ordering number. Each one of the steps can be re-arranged by using the input boxes and writing a numeric value into it indicating the step number.

Enable Downloads - Check to enable the Download Feature. Only if you want sell downloadable goods.

Order Status which enables download - value: can be some Order Status.
Select the order status at which the customer is notified about the download via e-mail.

Order Status which disables downloads - Sets the order status at which the download is disabled for the customer.

DOWNLOAD ROOT - The physical path to the files for the customer to download.(trailing slash at the end!)
Important:
Must be a physical path, not a URL.
Caution:
For your own shop's security: If you can, please use a directory ANYWHERE OUTSIDE OF THE WEB ROOT

Download Maximum Sets the number of downloads which can be made with one Download-ID for one order.

Download Expire Sets the time range in seconds in, which the download is enabled for the customer. This range begins with the first download! When the time range has expired, the download-ID is disabled.
Tip:
86400s=24h

Keep Product Stock Level on Purchase? When enabled, the stock level for a downloadable product is not lowered although it was purchased by customers.