Hi all,

I've got a online store working using VM and have configured some products to have child attributes (size) - they display fine in the front end and even show a drop down list of those size attibutes, however if I select any size other than the first one - the selection reverts to the first listed size, and won't allow you to change your size selection.

It's an awkward one to explain so apologies.

I'm running VM 1.1.7a on Joomla 1.5.22 using the RT Mynxx template

Anyone seen this issue with VM before and have a clue how to resolve ?

A tiny bit off topic, Martin, but have you tried Jing? Great video capture function with audio and it's free!

How about you do a video of your problem, load it up on one of your sites (joomla.org.au doesn't let you upload big files or SWF files to the forum) and provide a link here.

Ok it's been a while, but I should provide some feedback on this one - it may help others ..

The solution was to change the configuration of SH404SEF that I was using.

Wherever a product had a child attribute VM considered it as a seperate product. The unique URL's to each product however were all v.similar. Due to this and the way I had SH404 SEF configured every time I chose a child attribute/product the cached version was returned. Turning off or reconfiguring SH404SEF resolved the issue.

As usual thanks Patrick for resolving

More specifically:

Log into your site admin
Components > sh404SEF > Configuration > Extensions Configuration
Go to the Virtuemart tab
Turn "Insert product ID in URL" on.
Where you have variations of products as seperate products (as opposed to a single product with attributes) this will now insert the ProductID value in the URL, so changing the product selector will switch to the different product's URL.

Once done, purge your URL cache, and you should find the problem cleared.


Another problem that can arise that is related to this (though didn't effect Martin's site in this case) is where you have products that are assigned in Virtuemart to multiple categories. What happens as the default is that they will all have the same URL, and will be aliases of whichever is the first URL created.

To set it to show individual URLs for each category (usually you want this if you're showing the category name in the URL) you need to do the following:

Log into your site admin
Components > sh404SEF > Configuration > sh404SEF Configuration
Go to the Very adv. tab

Search for "Virtuemart" and you should find the following:

// SECTION : Virtuemart plugin parameters ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

// set to 1 for products to have requested category name included in url
// useful if some products are in more than one category. By default (param set to 0),
// only one category will be used. If set to 1, all categories can be used
$shDefaultParams['SH_VM_ALLOW_PRODUCTS_IN_MULTIPLE_CATS'] = 0;


Change the value to 1, then save the changes, purge your URL cache and you should now have individual URLs for products in their various categories.

Note that the reason for this setting is due to the implied risk of having duplicate content penalties in Google. If this is of concern to you, research if further. In the few instances I've used it, it's not caused any great penalty, while the benefit to the end user of having the extra categories in the URL is considerable.