New to VM: Are these bugs normal?

[wirecreative]

Hi, I'm a long-time Joomla admin, but I haven't used Virtuemart since 2010-2011. I've been drafted to help someone with their VM shopping cart (v. VirtueMart 3.2.14 on Joomla 3.8.7), and it's a mess. However, I can't tell what is a normal mess and what is an extraordinary mess. It's not behaving like software that is ready for production, even though this client has been using it for live transactions for a few years.

Most obviously, there are untranslated language strings everywhere. I've been stomping them out throughout the user experience -- category displays, cart alerts, the product dimension fields, checkout, etc. Here's an excerpt from a copy of a refund email which I received today:

COM_VIRTUEMART_MAIL_SHOPPER_YOUR_ORDER
COM_VIRTUEMART_MAIL_SHOPPER_SUMMARY
COM_VIRTUEMART_MAIL_SHOPPER_CONTENT
COM_VIRTUEMART_MAIL_ORDER_STATUS

COM_VIRTUEMART_MAIL_SHOPPER_YOUR_ORDER_LINK : https://www.[redacted].com/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&view=orders&layout=details&order_number=[redacted]&order_pass=[redacted]
COM_VIRTUEMART_MAIL_SHOPPER_QUESTION

COM_VIRTUEMART_USER_FORM_BILLTO_LBL

I feel like I'm creating an entire translation set from scratch.

Also, today she found some products that weren't working. It turns out that these products no longer have Product Names, displaying instead "Translation missing for virtuemart_product_id 261" and "Translation missing for virtuemart_product_id 260." What's going on with that? How do products just lose their data?

Did they pick a poor template (Captiva)? Does VM not work well on Godaddy hosting (not my choice)?

There are other issues, like incompatibility with PHP 7.1, highly rated shopping and payment plugins resulting in 404 errors, order emails not being sent at all, and a general sense that VM has not been improved inline with its competition over the last 6 years. My gut instinct is to get them out of VM ASAP, unless none of this is normal and it can easily be repaired. Would a reinstallation of VM help, or make things worse? Does everybody get this exasperated using this software?

[AH]

You say nothing about what you are doing and how you have approached this project.

VM has improved over the 7 years - so much has changed for the better.  Things have changed massively and old methods of working need to be updated to fit with the new VM MVC model.

"Most obviously, there are untranslated language strings everywhere. "

None of the language variables you quoted are missing from the base release.

Using outdated plugins will no doubt cause a myriad of issues - " highly rated shopping and payment plugins" - this does not guarantee that they have been updated to work with the latest production version of VM.  You will probably need to contact plugin developers where issues are found.

"There are other issues, like incompatibility with PHP 7.1"
What have you found is incompatible?

"Would a reinstallation of VM help, or make things worse?"

It really depends how/what you have already done and what you are trying to achieve.  You say that this client has been using it for live transactions for a few years - so what has changed??

"Does everybody get this exasperated using this software?""
No, most experienced developers and users have a very positive experience using VM.

I sympathise, inheriting another persons mess is never fun or simple and without experience of VM3 you might find it hard to work things out.

Try installing a clean version of VM3 without loads of plugins and see how you progress from there.

[Studio 42]

Simply try to get last translation and it should fix the missing language keys
See https://virtuemart.net/community/translations

[Milbo]

Looks like a completly messed up store. Like an old j2.5, which was not updated correctly.

St42, I doubt the problem here is the language file. I think the language setup is just not correct. http://docs.virtuemart.net/faqs/38-troubleshooting/113-products-vanished.html

[wirecreative]

Looks like a completly messed up store. Like an old j2.5, which was not updated correctly.

St42, I doubt the problem here is the language file. I think the language setup is just not correct. http://docs.virtuemart.net/faqs/38-troubleshooting/113-products-vanished.html

Thanks. I'm getting back to this project now and will try this. I've set-up a copy of the site -- another folder on the same hosting account -- which somehow fixed a couple of bugs with checking out. The language strings are the biggest headache right now as they are everywhere. I'll look into this.

[jjk]

Just for your information - Old Joomla versions required the language files of the extensions to be in the Joomla language folders. But since a few years the preferred location of the extension language files are language subfolders of the 'components' and 'plugin' folders to which all VirtueMart en-GB language files were moved a few years ago. Translations of the VM en-GB language files are still placed in the Joomla language folders, because the ctransifex extension we use to generate the language packs from transifex.com doesn't have the capability to place the translations into the 'components' and 'plugin' folders, too.

If the shop was updated from very old versions, you might have to delete some old english VM language files in the Joomla administration and site language folders. For example the VM administration language file en-GB.com_virtuemart.ini should now be installed into the folder your-root-folder\administrator\components\com_virtuemart\language\en-GB\en-GB.com_virtuemart.ini.

Perhaps compare the location of the language files with a virgin Joomla/VM installation.