Store owners. The account page no longer shows an error when a store owner or vendor is logged in.

Cart. The cart icon always shows how many items are in the cart, not only on mouse-over.

Articles. The Previous and Next buttons sit at opposite ends of the article.

Phones. New phone header: the logo with a menu button, and a row of icons for the menu, your account, registration, search, sharing and the cart. The cart icon shows how many items are in the cart.

Phones. The menu opens again, and menus, the cart and the login close when you tap outside them.

Phones. Account pages (login, registration, account details) show the form straight away, with only the store menu above it.

Desktop. The cart icon shows the number of items in the cart.

Fixed. The account details page no longer shows an error for shop owners.

Joomla 5.4.10. The Quickstart now installs Joomla 5.4.10 (Joomla 5.4.10 release notes), and the template version is now 5.4.10 to match.

Error pages. "Page not found" and "access denied" pages now show inside the template, with its header, menus and footer, and fit a phone screen.

Phones. Page text no longer touches the screen edge.

Category pages. The category description lines up with the products (no extra space at the sides).

Quickstart. A fresh install no longer lists stale update notices.

Breadcrumbs. Fixed a template bug that could give the breadcrumb trail the wrong CSS class.

Quickstart. The quickstart includes MCP For J 2.8.3.

Quickstart install fix. The quickstart now installs completely on MySQL databases. Before, the Joomla installer stopped part-way through on MySQL hosts; MariaDB hosts were not affected. Thanks to Iryna for reporting this.

Quickstart. Removed leftover files from the quickstart's top folder.

Joomla 5.4.9. Updated for Joomla 5.4.9, a security and bug-fix release. The quickstart now installs Joomla 5.4.9.

Fix for the previous update. After the security update of 28 September, pages the template shows in its "component" view stopped with a server error ("Call to undefined function phEsc()"). That view is used for print pages, pop-up windows and the VirtueMart cart and checkout steps. The helper those pages need is now included, and they work again. There are no other changes. Recommended for every site that installed the previous version.

Security update. Every template setting that is written into your pages is now escaped for the place it lands in (HTML, attributes, CSS and JavaScript), including the site name and slogan in image alt text, and module, menu and tab titles wherever the template prints them (module headings, title attributes and the mega menu). A setting or title containing a quote or markup can no longer break out of its place in the page. The error page escapes its message and title too. There are no visual changes. Recommended for all sites.

Maintenance release.

• Joomla 3 compatibility code removed throughout the template. The template's PHP now uses Joomla's current API everywhere — the template files, the component override and every layout override (cart, checkout, product details, login and the modules). The old code only worked while Joomla's Behaviour – Backward Compatibility plugin was switched on, and will not work at all on Joomla 6. The most serious case was the error page: when it failed, Joomla could not display any error page, so an ordinary “page not found” was served to your visitors as a 500 server error.
• Removed two unused third-party demo templates from the Quick Start (horme_3 and vmbeez3). They were VirtueMart demo templates that served no purpose in your site, and both had broken error pages of their own. Your site is unaffected — neither was in use.

Both the template package and the Quick Start have been rebuilt for this release. Download the latest from your member area.

Joomla 5.4.8 and the VirtueMart 4.8.0 security update.

Important — please update VirtueMart

• VirtueMart 4.8.0 is a security release from the VirtueMart team (published 12 August 2026, revision 11339, “Eagle owl”). The Quick Start in this release installs it, and the demo this template is built from has been updated to it. If you already run an Echo store, update VirtueMart yourself — installing this template package does not update your store component. Get it from virtuemart.net or your Joomla Extensions Manager.

Changed

• Version numbering has changed. From this release the template version matches the Joomla version it is built and tested against, so Echo 5.4.8 is the build for Joomla 5.4.8. The previous number for this template was 5.4.0.4. Nothing about how you install or update the template changes, and Joomla still treats 5.4.8 as newer than 5.4.0.4.
• The Quick Start now installs Joomla 5.4.8. The previous Quick Start bundled Joomla 5.4.7. Starting a new site from it now gives you the current Joomla release without an immediate update afterwards.

Fixed

• The version shown on the template's own options page was two releases out of date. The Template Options screen read “5.4.0.3 — 2026-07-22” while the template was actually 5.4.0.4. The badge, the manifest and the installer record are now all read from the same release and all say 5.4.8.
• An internal engineering report was being packaged. security-sweep-3f-report.md, a note from our own modernization work, was inside every download even though nothing referenced it and the template's own file manifest never listed it. It has been removed from the package and the Quick Start.
• The Quick Start registered a template style that pointed at nothing. A leftover “Aeon Template” style row had no matching template installed, so after a fresh Quick Start install it appeared in System → Site Template Styles with nothing behind it. It has been removed. No menu item referenced it, so nothing else changes.

No template file changed between 5.4.0.4 and 5.4.8 — this release is the current Joomla and VirtueMart, the packaging fixes above, and the new version number. No template-parameter or database changes; installs as a straight overwrite.

Bugfix release. Fixes a legacy Joomla 3 form-validation call (behavior.formvalidation, removed in Joomla 5) in the VirtueMart login template override, which could cause a 500 - behavior::formvalidation not found error on pages where the login block is shown to guests — for example the cart, depending on your VirtueMart settings. The override now uses the Joomla 5-native behavior.formvalidator.

Found during the follow-up on the 2026-07-15 report — thank you again, Zoltán!

Bugfix release. Fixes a PHP 8 fatal error (count(): Argument #1 ($value) must be of type Countable|array, null given) on the cart "Bill To / Ship To" address edit page. The edit_address.php template override — and its Bootstrap-3 layout variant — now guard the optional user-fields block with !empty() instead of count(), so guest checkout address editing works on all PHP 8 versions. Recommended update for everyone running Echo 5.4.0.

Thank you, Zoltán, for taking the time to report this!

• Upgraded - Now compatible Joomla 5.3.0
• Upgraded - Now compatible VirtueMart 4.4.4
• Fixed - Minor bugs

• Fixed - Minor bugs with cart

• Upgraded - Now compatible Joomla 5
• Upgraded - Now compatible VirtueMart 4.2.12
• Fixed - Minor bugs

• Fixed - Minor bugs

• Updated - Compatible with PHP 8.2
• Updated - Compatible with Joomla 4.3.4
• Updated - Compatible with VirtueMart 4.2.0
• Fixed - Minor bugs

• Fixed - VirtueMart Products Module bug
• Fixed - Double ReCaptcha on VirtueMart Registration page
• Fixed - Template toggle button not displaying

• Fixed - Menu Params error for adding in image on menu

• Fixed - Template updated to be compatible with Joomla 4.3

• Fixed - Joomla 3.10.11
• Fixed - Template updated for PHP 8.0