Shop Offline checkbox and Offline Message Box missing (VirtueMart 3.8.8 10472)

[antonitus]

Hi,

My Virtuemart configuration page does not seem to show the usual Shop Offline checkbox and Offline Message Box. These two options seem to be missing from the top of the configuration page.

There is a message on top of the page to say to follow advice, but there is nothing really there to follow.

Can one of the devs or someone else please help.

Thanks

[jenkinhill]

I don't have that old version, but the link should be to https://docs.virtuemart.net/faqs/245-how-to-set-the-shop-in-maintenance-mode.html

The advice is to turn VM off in Joomla by eg disabling the VM menu items or restricting access only to admin groups via the menu. For security issues you can turn the whole site off in Joomla config.

[antonitus]

Thank you jenkinhill.

This page is very confusing. I wouldn't know where to start or even go. I think there should be some more information about these options with links.

Also, what actually happened to the previous offline message description box?

Can Virtuemart put this option back again as it doesn't make sense to remove this option. It's now even more confusing when I see those many options. Not many people will know where to go or what do now.

Please get Virtuemart to put this option back again. It's an important option that should never have been removed.

Thanks

[Milbo]

It makes no sense to remove this option?

No, it makes no sense to activate that option. If you want to set your shop offline, use the catalogue mode. So your links keep valid and you do not loose ranking. If your page has heavy trouble, use the joomla option to disable your page.

[pinochico]

Can Virtuemart put this option back again as it doesn't make sense to remove this option.

If you want to set your shop offline, use the catalogue mode. So your links keep valid and you do not loose ranking.

It seems very difficult to explain to the main developer that if the e-shop no longer offers products == is in off-line mode (for example due to non-delivery of goods from Russia by the supplier) and therefore cannot display the product catalog page. Rather, it seems that the developers (and I'm talking here in general) are quite often detached from the real business because they don't run e-shops. And if so, really only for personal use and do not understand how ecommerce should work properly.

Yes, in one. it's true - turning off the e-shop often means a big mistake - the occurrence of 404 URLs and domain relocations like spam farms and the loss of the established position on the Internet.

However, if necessary, this must be solved in another way, not to display the main page as a catalog of goods
use the functionality discontinued == the goods cannot be searched on the e-shop and if someone clicks on the indexed URL, the modified product detail will be displayed without the option to purchase with information about "This product is no longer for sale."
- turn off search
- Disable from view in categories while maintaining a click on the modified product detail
- turn off from export to feeds

This is the better way.

Fortunately, most of the time, strangely, I do not follow the recommendations of developers, but the needs of clients == for me, this option should be back.

Rather than turning off functional things, I would personally invest energy in fixing eshop functionality errors or improvements (for example, in another discussion, the manufacturer's detail - we solved this problem in 2016 in version 3.4 and there is still the same code in the core code - in my opinion unfinished for more correct use).

In the end, we solved it ourselves, but not every VM user is a PHP developer and understands ecommerce, SEO, indexing, sales and traffic, and other ecommerce-related issues.

A regular VM user should not first create a main menu item and then use the override to modify the core code with his own Itemid. If so, there is something wrong with the basic idea.
As it stands, the manufacturer should ask the manufacturer if there is a menu item in the DB and automatically assign that item to a URL.

[Milbo]

Yes, in one. it's true - turning off the e-shop often means a big mistake - the occurrence of 404 URLs and domain relocations like spam farms and the loss of the established position on the Internet.

However, if necessary, this must be solved in another way, not to display the main page as a catalog of goods

So at least you agree that the old option was a big mistake. Btw it was not written by anyone in the team, it was just there in vm1. And vm1 was a PHP-SHOP bridged into joomla.

Fortunately, most of the time, strangely, I do not follow the recommendations of developers, but the needs of clients == for me, this option should be back.

Strangely I have only clients to follow. Clients with big shops ;-). My whole opinions and knowledge about ecommerce is from clients. Maybe I have just other clients than you.

Rather than turning off functional things, I would personally invest energy in fixing eshop functionality errors or improvements

Then do it and share the code. No one paid me for this. None of my customers is really interested in this option in general. I do not have a lot time. I need to decide where to invest it. In a feature paid by a client, or in a feature, which almost no one needs as long he works the right way? and as described in the docs. We have 3 options to dissable a shop. Your russian example can be already solved without any coding by shoppergroups, but yes could be written better, but who pays for it?

(for example, in another discussion, the manufacturer's detail - we solved this problem in 2016 in version 3.4 and there is still the same code in the core code - in my opinion unfinished for more correct use).

I dont know what you mean. I check any code if it is good for core, usually and I also take a lot code from users, from the forum, and so on. But it must follow a bit some conventions. My experience is, a users tells me "here I worked 3 hours on that code" I take it, and within the next months I invest 6 hours to debug it. So the better your code, the more likely I take it.

In the end, we solved it ourselves, but not every VM user is a PHP developer and understands ecommerce, SEO, indexing, sales and traffic, and other ecommerce-related issues.

Did you share the code? If not, you do not understand the nature of this opensource project and your behaviour is like a leecher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leecher_(computing)

A regular VM user should not first create a main menu item and then use the override to modify the core code with his own Itemid. If so, there is something wrong with the basic idea.
As it stands, the manufacturer should ask the manufacturer if there is a menu item in the DB and automatically assign that item to a URL.

I dont know what you are talking about. Routing and finding the right menu itemid is tricky. From my point of view, you do not understand to be part of the community. If you rant and blame around, you set yourself in opposition to the community.

Look, "Do not ask what the team can for you, ask yourself what you can do for the team". Did you try to get your fixes into the code? If yes, why I dont know about? If I knew about and I just forget it, what was my response, why did I reject it? Maybe I had to explain you, that your code fixes your problem, but creates another and that other users need it the other way? For example. Or that your code does not follow the VM way of coding? If it is small, I can do it myself, but stuff written like 1.5 is too hard.


I think I remember a bit your rant about the buggy custom field boolean. and I think that 5-6 people in the team said "There is no bug, he just wants to use it different, than we do since years now. Makes no sense to change it, otherwise people using it this way would get in trouble".

[Milbo]

Btw, do you talk about this?
https://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=148078.0
First time that I heard of that.

[pinochico]

to Max:

Thank you
Although I do not agree with much of the information, it would be appropriate to transfer it to another discussion

[Milbo]

I explain a bit closer, why I removed the feature, "Shop is offline".

One of the reasons is for example this post

Hello,

In the previous versions of Virtuemart you had a "Shop if offline" function which displayed a message when the shop was offline. Caching product links and such, and without disabling Virtuemart (so the previous orders were accessible).

It is not caching the links. So setting the shop offline the old way can destroy your SEO/SEM. People used that for "We make holidays for 3 weeks". I had a customer doing that,.... and the more I digged into this problem, the more I noticed that the feature was just stupid. There are so many other ways to solve that with the catalogue mode, or with joomla groups, which make vm accessible, or not (and you can even controll that per geo-ip, per country, sooo).
The only disadvantage is now, that there is no method to show for any vm page "shop is offline", that is true. But if you want to keep the old links alive, use the category mode.

And in all my examples, the people want to take the shop offline for a short period. Some hours, days, or maybe weeks, but not months.

And your example is something for "discontinuned" product, as you say yourself. The option "shop is offline" was never meant for this use case, what you explain in your example is to have a shop with discontinued products only suddenly