Upgrading your website to Joomla 3.10.xx and Virtuemart 4 are required to be able to use PHP 8.0, and both these updates are required  to be applied prior to updating to Joomla 4.

Joomla 3.10.xx wil be supported till September, 2023, but PHP 7.4  goes to end of life on November 2022. At that time any security flaws are not fixed, leaving possible security vulnerabilites exposed.

This article offers advice on how to update Joomla to 3.10.xx with VirtueMart 4.0 and change to PHP 8

Before starting on the process you need to ensure

  1. Your host support PHP 8.0
  2. The required PHP extensions are insallted on the server
  3. You can change the PHP version of the hosting environment with .htaccess

IMPORTANT NOTE

ALWAYS BACKUP YOUR WEBSITE BEFORE COMPLETING AN UPDATE

As this is a major upgrade for the PHP version we highly recommend that you apply the updates to a Development copy of your website as a test run before applying the updates to the live site. You can create a dev copy of your website on a subdomain of your hosting environment by creating a backup copy of your website using Akeeba Backup.

The upgrade process steps are outlined as below.

  1. Restore a backup copy of your live site on a dev subdomain of your hosting
  2.  Update VirtueMart to version 4.0.6
  3. Update all other third party extensions
  4. Update Joomla to Version 3.10.xx
  5. Install the new VirtueMart Template compatible with Joomla 3.10.xx and VirtueMart 4
  6. Change php version to 8.0
  7. Fully test the site.

 Once the site has been updated on the dev server, you have 2 options.

Option 1: Backup and restore

  1. Compete an akeeba backup of the dev site
  2. Make the live site off-line
  3. Restore the backup to the live site.
  4. Test the live site
  5. Make the live site on-line

Option 2: Apply Updates on live site

  1. Make the live site off-line
  2. Repeat the steps required to upgrade the site
  3. Change php version to 8.0
  4. Fully test the site
  5. Make the live site on-line

Additional Notes:

Extension Update Sites

Often the Update Sites will require to be rebuilt, specifically while applying the Latest Virtuemart versions.
You can do this by going to

  1. Extension >> Manage >> Update Sites
  2. And then click "Rebuild"
  3. Go back to Extensions >> Manage >> Update
  4. Click on "FInd Updates"

VirtueMart Updates

To update your website to the latest version of Virtuemart 4.0 you have two options.

These include

  1. Use automatic updates
  2. Apply Manual Update for Virtuemart

Option 1: Automatic Updates

  1. Log into the Joomla administrator area of your website
  2. Go to Extensions >> Manage >> Update
  3. If updates are available for Virtuemart the "updates are available" option will display the number of updates which you can install
  4. Once you have selected the "updates are available" option you will see the latest version of Virtuemart available to automatically install at your website
  5. You may need to do this process a couple of times, but between each update, click "Clear Cache" and then "FInd Updates"
  6. You may also need to "Rebuild" the update list during this process. (see note above)

Option 2: Manual Installation

  1. Visit http://dev.virtuemart.net/projects/virtuemart/files
  2. Download the latest stable version release of Virtuemart 4.0 from the website
  3. After you have downloaded the latest version unzip the zip file first onto your computer before installing the extension
  4. Make a FULL BACKUP OF YOUR JOOMLA WEBSITE INCLUDING FILES AND DATABASE
  5. log into the Joomla administrator area of your website
  6. Select the Extensions menu and select the browse button and upload & install button to upload the com_virtuemart zip file and com_virtuemart AIO zip file
  7. The install process will overwrite your current installation of Virtuemart. You do not need to uninstall the extension first.