Guest Checkout not working with standard J! sef URLS

[rudders360]

Hi All..
Searched for this but can't find an answer..

when I have SEF URLs switched on

Search Engine Friendly URLs    Yes
Use URL rewriting                    Yes
Adds Suffix to URL                   Yes

The guest check out doesnt work. When clicking on the 'Add/Edit billing address information' or 'Add/Edit shipment address' it just redirects and request to login first.

When SEF URLs are disabled it works fine no issues. How do I fix this?

J 2.5.18 VM 2.0.26d

Thanks in advance.

[Amema]

I have exactly the same problem. I need guests to be able to checkout so the thing about SEF urls will be useful, but not for my entire site!

Thanks rudders360 for the hint about SEF urls, that made the difference for me. I think I know how to solve this. Since yesterday I'm in the process of doing like this - just in the middle of it, so I don't know if it really will work though:

* make a virtuemart store in a subfolder of root domain
* use the extension jFusion to link and sync users (for members who want to log in to buy)
* set the shop site to no SEF urls

(jFusion is supposed to sync users between a master site and a slave site so users will be logged in at both.)

This way I hope that I may run my site as I want without the disturbances from VM. I'm not happy with it at all and have had to hear a few words from disappointed users, but I hope this will do it. I just can't switch horses in the middle of the race either, as I use VM to sell attendance fees to a conference that takes place in May. Some people have already succeeded in buying their fare, but lots have problems and one called yesterday 'cause he can see the store when not logged in, but the page is blank when he's logged in, so he may see the goodies but can't have them. A-noy-ing! This is turning my hairs grey and I will gladly not use VM anymore after this.

[rudders360]

So I feel a bit sheepish about this now...

The solution was to change the account maintenance link to public not registered..

[jenkinhill]

Yes it works fine with native SEF, but always ensure Joomla's "Adds Suffix to URL" is turned off, or some issues can arise.

[Amema]

"Account Maintenance Link", pls define details. I've looked for it but cannot see anything like it. (I'm not running my site in English neither is it my native tongue.)

[Amema]

I've looked through EVERYTHING, from all settings for everything in VM, to permissions in VM, its modules etc. I haven't seen anything like "Account maintenance" where the settings for Registered are different from Public regarding VM. The only thing I would presume directs the permissions is the line in VM Configuration - Checkout that says Only registered users can checkout, which has been empty and not checked from the start. What else rules this?

[Amema]

Because I finally found a name for what this problem might be, I kept on searching for Account Maintenance. No help from the VM homepage, but finally I got down the list to a blog post at emanipur.org that solved the whole shebang.

The oh, so simple solution (and I can't for my life understand how this quite basic and apparently recurring problem is so hard to find a solution for in the VM pages) is that you probably have a menu item called Account Maintenance (it's one of the VM types when choosing menu item for a menu) somewhere in a menu somewhere, that is set to Registered or some other user group. It must be Public for the last step in the checkout procedure to work for Guest checkout.

So, just for all you other lost souls who are tearing your hair over this, a few keywords to be searchable: guest checkout, can't checkout, only registered can checkout, guests can't buy...

[jenkinhill]

Unix server, php 5.2.17, VM 2, Joomla 1.7

Surely you are not using those old insecure versions?

I never thought anybody would make the Acc Maintenance link to registered as it leads to a login page when set to public.

[Amema]

I can see the logic in having a link that is public and asks people to log in if they want to see some special info (in this case a link to one's orders), but this link also shows a form to register an account. That I don't want. For me the obvious solution was to set the link to Registered, so that only registered members were to see the link. But that broke the shop.

The logic in VM is the assumption that all webmasters want anybody who's interested, to register an account at the site. But what if I'm not? What if I have a site for an elect set of individuals, but still want to offer whares to the public? In this case I cannot offer the link to only registered members, because the inate logic of VM is that I'm not supposed to set the menuitem Account Maintenance to Registered. I see this as a break against the overarching logic of Joomla.

If I have misinterpreted this, pls correct me. From my other post, reporting this as a bug, I understand from jjk that this is a problem that VM cannot solve. It's something we have to live with. But for me it's such an obvious bug and nuisance in an extension that have so many exceptionally good features as well. This is a huge problem for us and if I can't resolve this, we'll have to find another solution than VM.

(It's not me running old versions - I run J2.5.18 and VM 2.0.26d)

[jenkinhill]

This is not a bug in VirtueMart - it is just that you want to do something that is not normal for the vast majority of VM users. A guest user actually has a temporary user account created to be able to complete the checkout so the registration system must be available to unregistered users.

But as ever with Joomla there is a simple solution. Make a new Joomla menu with a public link to account maintenance. Publish the module for that menu to a hidden, ie a non-existent user position in your Joomla template. The public link is thus available to VirtueMart but is not seen by the user. If you need to make a link for logged in users then you can make a second main or user menu link as required to the account maintenance.

(It's not me running old versions - I run J2.5.18 and VM 2.0.26d)

Then you may wish to change your forum sig line.