what is more important

[avirammr]

upgrade Joomla?
OR
upgrade VM?

which one is more important?

[jenkinhill]

Depends which versions you are now running, but the logical answer is both.  http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=118683.0

[avirammr]

security.
because upgrade my VM gonna cost me alot of money. no one wants to touch my VM, everyone afraid to upgrade my VM

i did the upgrade for joomla from 2.5.7 to 2.5.17.

now i dont know what to do with VM upgrade, i want to stay with my template and layout.

[jjk]

because upgrade my VM gonna cost me alot of money. no one wants to touch my VM, everyone afraid to upgrade my VM

Sounds like you hired somebody to set up your shop who eventually added a lot of customizations. I would recommend to install 'xampp' on your own computer and install a copy of your shop on this one. It's pretty easy and there are many tutorials on YouTube demonstrating how to do this. Then you can always update and test your local copy first and if it works, do the same on your live website.

now i dont know what to do with VM upgrade, i want to stay with my template and layout.

Well, if you use a standard Joomla template, there are usually much less update problems to solve than with 'sophisticated' (feature ladden) shop templates. If you are using the latter, first ask your template provider if they tested it with the latest version of VM2. There are quite a few shop templates which haven't been updated to comply with latest VM2 developments for a long time.

In general, I think it's easier to frequently update both Joomla and VM2 (small update steps/problems) than waiting a long time (big update steps/problems).

[avirammr]

i have on my server a copy of my site. it's a test site. i already upgraded Joomla and it's work perfect also on the live site.
my website is with a coustomized template. and i did upgrade for the VM2 from 2.0.10 to 2.0.14 and it's messed up all of my template spacial on the checkout page. and product pages.
the biggest problem that i need to fix is the state drop down problem.
and i can't fix it. i tried alot of things. but i don't know how to fix it by myself.

i don't care to stay with 2.0.10 but just fix the state drop down.
after i did a test and upgraded the VM. the problem was solved. so idk what exactly the problem.

[jjk]

my website is with a coustomized template. and i did upgrade for the VM2 from 2.0.10 to 2.0.14 and it's messed up all of my template spacial on the checkout page. and product pages.

Template customizations should be done as 'Joomla Template overrides' instead of changing the original files whenever possible. It's very helpful to document all customizations for example in an unpublished article on your website, so that you can always look up what has been changed. If an original file changes with an update, you can always compare the new original file with the override file and if necessary, re-apply the customizations to the new original file and save it as your new override file. I frequently use the 'Compare' feature of the Notepad++ editor to do that.

[AH]

Sound advice from jjk

Always comment your changes in the code (even when you have modified templates and made your own overrides)

However, for a better method of file comparison between versions and your code changes I would use kdiff3

http://kdiff3.sourceforge.net/

This has been invaluable to me in identifying the changes from any version of VM I have running to the latest stable versions of VM that I look to implement.  Often find things that are not documented.  Storing historic unzipped versions of the packages allows anyone to check one version to another very easily.

I would not be without Kdiff now.

I do not upgrade until I can see where the changes are.

The VM team do not release Patches - preferring to release the whole package. Thus, an update has the consequence of overwriting all core files, so any core changes anyone has had to make are lost.

[avirammr]

ok but i don't know which template the people who build my website used.

also i am not a genius so it might be a problem for me to do the upgrade by myself.
but thank you for your assistants. the only thing that i can think to do right now is how to secure VM in the best way. and how to fix the state drop down problem because it's very important for me right now.

[jjk]

ok but i don't know which template the people who build my website used.

That one is easy. Just look into your Joomla administration > Extensions > Template Manager. It's the 'site' template marked as 'Default'.

[avirammr]

it's not that easy because they change the name of the template to: Belvah
and this is my site name.

www.belvahcollection.com

"Template description - Belvah collection website Design"

[avirammr]

wait i found something in the template code:
"chdemko"

so i searched about it and i found:

"chdemko", author "Christophe Demko"

he have a joomla template:

http://lesh.fr/joomla-websites/index.php?cat=url&si_id=2443

[jjk]

I'm afraid that website is just a 'List of international websites powered by Joomla' which belongs to Christophe.

[avirammr]

oh ok. so i don't know what template is it. because i'm not in contact anymore with the web designers.

[jjk]

Perhaps you can ask Christophe if your template is based on one he did. Maybe search for a copyright in the template code.

[avirammr]

that's what i did.
that's how i found his name.