Needed steps for successful updating Joomla & VM

[Ballastico]

Hi everyone.
I have an online site running Joomla 2.5.7 and Virtuemart 2.0.12f .
I would like to update to the latest versions, keeping all the site settings including template, plugins and mostly VM products and images.
How can I do?
Thanks a lot.

[AH]

I suggest you update joomla to the latest release first as you have a version that may have security holes.

You do this form the Joomla admin panel

[Ballastico]

If I update Joomla could I have problems from VM?
Thanks for your help.

[jenkinhill]

You should update Joomla first as that is most likely to be hacked, this should cause no problems with that old VM version, but then you should update VM using Joomla's extention manager (do not uninstall VM before installing the latest version). There could be problems if you use template overrides written for the older VM version, so as with all updates, test on a backup copy of the site first.

[Ballastico]

Ok great I will transfer all in local first then do the steps you told.
Thank you all for your precious help.

[Ballastico]

I've successfully updated my J and VM version, but now I have a bunch of problems..
The worst is when I buy an item I see no items in the cart, but I see in my homepage that I have all the random products and under them the cart but without items in it..
My site is full of problems... I'm starting to hate VM cuz working other sites on Wordpress is totally another world... hope I can solve all the problems because I think that's a pretty site...
Thanks to who will help me...

[jenkinhill]

The sort of problems you describe are usually related to using a template with too many bells & whistles. Develop first using Beez template.

[Ballastico]

Hi jenkinhill.
I managed to solve all the problems I had on my site.
The fact that I had Random Products in Homepage was because my home was not related to VM Main Page but to VM Product Plugins set to show Random Products.
That module have some bugs, so I disabled it and set the home just to VM. Now cart works and everything seems to be fine.