Invent Virtuemart Template Changelog

Updated 29 October 2026 · in Template Change Log

• Change Log:
  • Release Date: 2026-10-29, Version: 5.4.10.1, Notes:

    “Ask a question” opens at its proper size again. The pop-up for asking about a product — and VirtueMart’s other window-style pop-ups — opened as a tiny 300 × 150 box, the size a browser gives a frame that has none of its own, because a rule written for the “added to your cart” pop-up also reset theirs. They now open at VirtueMart’s 560 × 550 (narrower on phones), centred on the screen, and the question form fits: “Name” and “E-Mail” stay on one line with their colon, the fields sit inside the pop-up, and the Send button no longer overlaps the character count.

    The “added to your cart” pop-up fits small phones. On screens narrower than about 340 pixels its two buttons ran past the right-hand edge of the white box. The box now sizes itself to the screen there, with the buttons inside it.

    The print view and VirtueMart’s pop-ups use the template’s colours. In the print view and the cart and login pop-ups, links and buttons showed in Bootstrap’s default blue: component.php loaded Bootstrap after the template’s own stylesheets, so Bootstrap’s link colour won. It now loads first, exactly as it does on every full page, and the template’s accent colour is defined for these views too.

    Long breadcrumbs wrap on phones. A long last crumb (a product or contact name) ran past the right-hand edge of the screen; it now wraps inside the page margin.

    Two Options settings that changed nothing removed. The slideshow-loader colours (cam_loaderColor, cam_loaderBgColor) belonged to the old Camera slideshow script, which the template no longer uses.

    Quickstart demo: “Contact Us” and “Special Offers” now go somewhere, and guests can ask a question. These menu links pointed at # and did nothing; they now open the contact page and the shop front. VirtueMart’s “Ask question/recommend for unauthenticated users” was off, so a visitor who was not logged in saw only a login form; it is on now.

    9 files that nothing loaded removed from the download. 4 JavaScript files (camera.js, camera.min.js, imgSizer.js, jquery.stellar.min.js) and 5 stylesheets (ie6.css, ie9-10.css, ie.css, reset.css, slideshow.css). No page, pop-up or view of the template loads any of them; they only added weight to every download.

  • Release Date: 2026-10-28, Version: 5.4.10, Notes:
    First Joomla 5 native release. Invent has been rebuilt for Joomla 5.4.10 + VirtueMart 4.8.4 + PHP 8.3 + Bootstrap 5 + vanilla JavaScript. The Bootstrap 2 framework, the Joomla 3 class aliases and the jQuery plugin stack the previous release depended on are gone. Measured against the previous download: 39 files removed, 12 added and 59 modified, with 183 Joomla 3 static calls reduced to 0 and 223 output-escaping helper calls added.

    Added

    Template Options — colour pickers and a Favicon tool

    • All 119 colour settings now use a real colour picker with a live swatch. On Joomla 5 every one of them rendered as an empty text box, so changing a colour meant knowing its hex code and typing it correctly. The Joomla 3-era jscolor library they relied on never loaded under Joomla 5; it has been retired for a self-contained picker that ships with the template, so nothing is fetched from an outside site.
    • New Favicon tab. Upload or pick an image and the template crops it and generates the icon set for you, rather than leaving you to produce an .ico by hand. With thanks to Gianluca, whose favicon question inspired this tool.
    • The template's Details panel now follows whichever admin theme you have selected, instead of a hardcoded light treatment that was legible on Joomla's dark admin only by accident.

    Modern social networks

    • The social set has been brought to 13 networks: X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Vimeo, Pinterest, Discord and RSS. Every link now carries target="_blank" and rel="noopener".

    Convenience

    • Show/hide control on every password field. Login, registration and account forms now have an eye icon to reveal what you have typed.
    • The site name / logo links to the home page by default, and the slideshow is on by default, in a fresh standalone install. Both previously shipped switched off.
    • A Checkout button in the cart drop-down. Opening the cart from the header previously offered only a "Show Cart" link, with no visible way to check out. It now ends with a Checkout button, which appears once the cart holds products.

    Changed

    Joomla 3 → Joomla 5 API migration

    • 183 Joomla 3 static calls removed, template-wide — now 0. JError, JText, JFactory, JHtml, JRoute, JUri, JModuleHelper, JRegistry and the rest are gone in favour of the namespaced Joomla 4+ API, across index.php, component.php, error.php and the html/ overrides. These aliases exist only while the Behaviour - Backward Compatibility plugin is enabled.
    • Error pages work again. error.php used the removed aliases, and when error.php fatals Joomla cannot render any error page — every 404 was served as a 500, with the real error never shown.
    • Three layout tests that could never be true have been repaired. The template asked Joomla whether two module positions were both in use by passing them as a single phrase; Joomla 4 and later read that as one position name, which never matches, so the two-column header and footer layouts they control could never be chosen.

    Bootstrap 5 rendering

    • The template renders on Bootstrap 5, with a compatibility layer translating the donor's Bootstrap 2 grid rather than shipping the BS2 framework itself. The BS2 grid classes fell from 770 to 548, row-fluid from 616 to 426 and input-append/input-prepend from 413 to 37 as the BS2 stylesheets were retired.
    • The print view no longer asks for a stylesheet that is not in the package. It pulled in the old Bootstrap 2 file, which is no longer shipped.
    • Style changes reach visitors immediately after an update. The stylesheets were served without a version marker, so browsers kept showing the cached copy until the visitor cleared their cache by hand.

    Template settings

    • The Joomla 3-era on/off switches are gone; the settings that remain render as Joomla 5 native switchers, so they read and save correctly on Joomla 5.
    • Web fonts are now requested with a direct stylesheet link and display=swap instead of the old JavaScript font loader, and Font Awesome has moved to version 6 with the v4 compatibility shim.

    Fixed

    • Prices and other large numbers were drawn with mismatched digit heights. The heading font supplies old-style figures by default, so 6 and 8 stood taller than their neighbours while 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9 dropped below the line — invisible in body text but plainly ragged at the size a price is shown. All numbers now use lining figures and sit on one line.
    • The password reset and login pages showed a blank page instead of the form. Pages without their own menu item borrowed the home page's template style, which hides the main content.
    • A PHP 8 fatal error on the cart's "Bill To / Ship To" address edit page — count(): Argument #1 ($value) must be of type Countable|array, null given, inherited from a legacy VirtueMart core view.
    • Headings that contain markup render as intended again. Output escaping was applied to the rich-text title settings, so markup in them printed as literal text.
    • Joomla 5.4's "What's New" tour took over the first admin visit on a fresh install, sending every administrator link to the dashboard. The tour still works — it no longer starts by itself.
    • A JavaScript error on the Options screen (jQuery is not defined), after Joomla's own colour field stopped pulling in jQuery as a side effect. The template now declares that dependency itself.
    • The Options screen loaded its icon font from a content network that has shut down, so its icons failed to draw.

    Store pages

    • The "Add to Cart" confirmation fits its box, with the two buttons stacked and legible rather than run together as one line of plain text.
    • The registration and account forms no longer draw a line above and below every row — 30 rules on the registration form and 38 on the account form, which read as very busy on a phone.

    Phone and tablet

    • The header no longer reserves empty space above the page on phones, the search panel no longer shows a duplicate submit button, and the cart is a proper control in the phone toolbar.
    • The menu button now carries the template's own colour and lines up with the logo beside it, instead of being an outlined square sitting 10px low.
    • Opening a phone panel no longer dims the logo and menu button at the top of the page.
    • Login and registration fields are at least 16px, so iOS no longer zooms in when you tap one and refuses to zoom back out.

    Removed

    Legacy frameworks and dead code

    • The Bootstrap 2 framework — the whole css/bootstrap/ set plus a second copy of bootstrap.css that sat alongside it, none of it loaded by anything.
    • 23 JavaScript files that nothing loaded, among them jQuery 1.8.1, Superfish and Supersubs (the drop-down menus are now Bootstrap 5's own), Backstretch (replaced by a small vanilla-JavaScript equivalent), DropKick, Modernizr, Selectivizr, Owl Carousel, Slick, NiceScroll, Selectric and the jQuery Mobile build. Nothing in the template referenced any of them; they were simply still in the download.
    • Two template settings that no code could reach. The template read two values its own settings file never declared, so they always rendered as an incomplete style rule.
    • A development report file that was being included in the download.

    Retired services

    • Google+, StumbleUpon, Digg and Blogger — all four services are discontinued.

    Security

    • 223 output-escaping helper calls added across the template and its overrides, so every template setting echoed into the page is escaped on the way out. Rich-text settings are filtered through Joomla's InputFilter in HTML mode, which still strips script, style, iframe and on* handlers.
    • The download no longer carries jQuery 1.8.1 or the other unused libraries listed above. None of them was loaded, but a package should not ship a 2012 copy of a library at all.
    • The error page no longer leaks the server path of the file that raised the error.
    • Nothing is loaded from a third-party host at render time: the icon set and the colour picker both ship with the template.

    Quickstart Installer

    • Bundles Joomla 5.4.10 and VirtueMart 4.8.4.
    • Two third-party VirtueMart demo templates removed — neither is part of this product, and both carried broken error pages of their own, so activating either returned a 500 instead of an error page.
    • Redirects, leftover override records and the administrator action log are emptied before the bundle is made, and the post-installation messages no longer greet a new site with a backlog.

    Package format

    • method="upgrade" is declared, so existing customers can install over the top without uninstalling first.
    • The version and release date are stated consistently in the manifest, the Options screen and the template's own header comment.
    • Dead settings that no code reads, parked override folders and editor backup files are all excluded from the shipped package.

    Earlier history (pre-5.4.10). Invent originated as a Joomla 3 / VirtueMart 2-era template. The previous download (11.08.2025, Joomla 5.3.0 / VirtueMart 4.4.4) carried the Bootstrap 2 framework and Joomla 3 class aliases throughout; this release is the first with neither.
  • Release Date: 2025-08-11, Version: 11.08.2025 5.3.0/4.4.4, Notes:
    • Upgraded - Now compatible Joomla 5
    • Upgraded - Now compatible Virtuemart 4.4.4
    • Fixed - Minor bugs
  • Release Date: 2024-11-29, Version: 29.11.2024 5.1.2/4.2.12, Notes:
    • Fixed - Minor bugs with cart
  • Release Date: 2024-08-15, Version: 13.08.2024 5.1.2/4.2.12, Notes:
    • Upgraded - Now compatible Joomla 5
    • Upgraded - Now compatible VirtueMart 4.2.12
    • Fixed - Minor bugs
  • Release Date: 2023-12-18, Version: 23.11.2023 4.3.4/4.2.0, Notes:
    • Updated - Compatible with PHP 8.2
    • Updated - Compatible with Joomla 4.3.4
    • Updated - Compatible with VirtueMart 4.2.0
    • Fixed - Minor bugs
  • Release Date: 2023-06-30, Version: 26.06.2023 4.3.0/4.0.13, Notes:
    • Fixed - VirtueMart Products Module bug
    • Fixed - Double ReCaptcha on VirtueMart Registration page
    • Fixed - Template toggle button not displaying
  • Release Date: 2023-06-23, Version: 16.06.2023 4.3.0/4.0.13, Notes:
    • Fixed - Menu Params error for adding in image on menu
  • Release Date: 2023-05-20, Version: 20.05.2023 4.3.0/4.0.12, Notes:
    • Fixed - Template updated to be compatible with Joomla 4.3
  • Release Date: 2022-08-23, Version: 23.08.2022 3.10.11/4.0.6, Notes:
    • Fixed - Joomla 3.10.11
    • Fixed - Template updated for PHP 8.0