VirtueMart Forum

I know this has been asked many times over again, but I was hoping that a new solid solution has been found.

I have a Joomla 3 and Virtuemart 3 installation which has a lot of users.
We need to do a clean install, and I would like (love) a solution to export:

• All User Data (including purchased items, addresses, passwords-everything!)
• Export all products, categories, and custom items

Basically I need an easy way to export all the VM data and upload it back in. I am savvy, but it seems like doing a simple DB dump isn't so simple as you need many tables that if not added will cause problems and errors.

If you do not understand what is said below - I suggest you do not proceed

The simple way is to take a full copy of your database and import it into a secondary "holding" database

You can easily do this using a number of tools - phpmyadmin will be suitable - my preferred choice is heidisql https://www.heidisql.com/ (https://www.heidisql.com/)

You will of course need a suitable temporary database environment in which to do this - if you don't have one then you need to sort one out for testing releases / changes etc.

Do an export of all files from your existing dbase

Import this to your backup database to make sure you have it all working as you expect. ( your table backups are now safe :-) )

Do your new install as you choose.

AS a precaution - also backup this database before you do anything else - that way you can just import it back if things go wrong.

Export the required files from the first true data backup dbase

key files - simply by using tools>export and tagging them in hedisql - and export them to a file

Take all tables that start with:

prefix_virtuemart
and
prefix_user


Import this data to the new dbase


If something is not right you can revert to the backup copy of the new dbase and start again

And use FTP to copy all VM related image files from the old to new installation.