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

Phones. On product pages the quantity buttons no longer cover the "Ask a question" button.

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

Quickstart. Weblinks updated to 5.2.0.

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.

Login, password reset and username reminder pages. These pages showed no form when they had no menu item of their own (for example after a mistyped password). The template now shows the content on every page except the real home page.

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.

JavaScript error fixed. Every page logged a script error because the template's copy of jQuery UI did not include the autocomplete widget that VirtueMart uses. The template now ships the full jQuery UI 1.13.2 that VirtueMart expects.

JavaScript error fixed. Removed an old touch-events script (jquery.mobile) that does not work with the jQuery in Joomla 5 and logged an error on every page. The slideshow does not need it.

Parallax backgrounds. Added a small jQuery compatibility file, so the parallax script runs without an error on the jQuery in Joomla 5.

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.

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

Menu layouts. Updated to current Joomla code (prepares for Joomla 6).

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.

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

Maintenance and security release. This update refreshes the Joomla core and the VirtueMart component bundled in the QStore quickstart package, and corrects a fault in the QStore download area itself. The template files are unchanged from 5.4.0.2.

Please re-download if you took QStore recently

• The QStore download area was serving an outdated package. The Joomla 5 downloads shown to members contained a 2025 build of the template (reporting version 07.08.2025 5.3.0/4.4.4) and an Akeeba .jpa quickstart from the same era, instead of the current Joomla 5-native release that was published on 22 July 2026. If you downloaded QStore between 22 July and 18 August 2026, please download it again — you very likely received the older package. The download area now serves this release. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Security

• VirtueMart updated to 4.8.0 (from 4.6.8). VirtueMart 4.8.0 is an upstream security release from the VirtueMart project. The QStore quickstart package now bundles it. If you already have a QStore site running, please update VirtueMart on your own installation as well — those fixes live in the VirtueMart component itself, so installing the template package does not deliver them.
• Joomla core updated to 5.4.8 (from 5.4.7). The quickstart package now bundles Joomla 5.4.8. Existing sites should apply Joomla 5.4.8 through Joomla's own Update component.

Changed

• A stale 991 KB copy of the template was removed from the quickstart package. A leftover templates/qstore.zip archive had been riding along inside the quickstart install. Nothing referenced it, and it is no longer included.
• An internal development report was removed from the template package. security-sweep-3f-report.md, a build-time report generated by our own tooling, had been shipping inside templates/qstore/. It was never intended for release and is no longer included.
• Version metadata is now consistent across every surface. The template's index.php header reported 5.4.0 while both manifests reported 5.4.0.2. All version surfaces now read 5.4.8.

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!

Also fixed: a legacy behavior.modal call (helper removed in Joomla 4/5 — fatal behavior::modal not found) in the mod_virtuemart_product slick-slider override. Bootstrap 5's data-bs-toggle="modal" markup handles modal opening natively.

5.4.0 2026-07-16

Added

Joomla 5 native API

• Full Joomla 5 namespace compliance across template files, VirtueMart view overrides, and helper utilities — every Joomla\CMS\* class accessed through its namespaced form.
• templateDetails.xml updated to the Joomla 5 manifest with method="upgrade", so existing customers can install this release over the top of a 5.1.2 / 4.2.12-era copy without uninstalling first.

Bootstrap 5 compatibility bridge

• Joomla 5 no longer auto-loads Bootstrap 2; QStore now ships a dedicated bs2-bs5-bridge.css that maps the template's historic .row-fluid / .spanN markup (which still lives inside custom-HTML module content) onto Bootstrap 5, so the original layout renders correctly with no content re-authoring.
• Full-width grid parity: standalone .spanN blocks now use true 1170-grid widths. Blocks that previously capped at 940px — most visibly the footer columns and the bottom payment-methods bar — now fill the full page width exactly as on the original design.
• Hybrid slideshow row: the home slideshow and its two featured "side ad" products now sit correctly side-by-side, with the featured column in the right-hand slot reaching the container's right edge.

FontAwesome 6 + v4 shims

• Icons upgraded to FontAwesome 6.5.2 with the v4-shims stylesheet loaded alongside, so any legacy fa fa-X markup in customer content keeps rendering while modern glyphs are available to new markup. The dead FontAwesome 4.7 CDN reference was replaced.

Reworked mobile experience

• Edge-to-edge slideshow on phones — the home slideshow now spans the full viewport width with the timing/progress bar flush to the right edge (previously it was inset and the bar overran the image).
• ALL CATEGORIES menu rebuilt for touch: it now opens on tap (it was hover-only and unresponsive on touch devices), is vertically centered in its bar, renders on an opaque background so it no longer disappears over the slideshow, and has a larger icon, larger uppercase label, and more spacing between the hamburger and the word.
• Tabbed products nav (Hot Offer / News Items / Great Sale) widened and centered so the tabs no longer jam together or clip.
• Testimonials ("Happy Customers") quote text centered so it no longer runs off the left edge of the slide.
• Refined mobile spacing throughout the store rows (section backgrounds, module margins, heading weight/size, and inner product-box padding).

Onboarding messages for new installs

• The quickstart now surfaces exactly the five relevant Joomla post-install messages to a new site owner — Welcome to Joomla, User Actions Logging, User Privacy, Multi-Factor Authentication, and Automated Updates — while suppressing the eleven noise/already-configured notices.

Changed

Legacy framework removal

• Bootstrap 2 grid/utility dependency retired in favour of the BS5 bridge; Internet-Explorer detection shims and the jQuery.browser block removed; legacy jQuery menu plugins (superfish / supersubs) replaced with hover-delay CSS + a small vanilla-JS touch toggle.
• Deprecated J* static calls (JFactory, JText, JHtml, JRoute, etc.) migrated to their Joomla 5 namespaced equivalents.
• Bootstrap 5 modal markup migration for the login / account dialog.

Home page & store visual-parity fixes

• Footer & payment bar: both now fill the full 1170px content width instead of bunching to the left.
• Featured side-ads: the two featured-product boxes now render in the right column beside the slideshow instead of dropping below it, and extend to the right edge.
• Slideshow sizing matched to the reference design.
• Deals of the Day slider: corrected extra right-edge padding/margin.
• Tabbed products nav: fixed the tall active tab and the "blue sliver" above/below the tab bar (the active tab link is now block-level and height-normalized).
• Register / account modal: on mobile it opened off-screen to the left; it now opens centered on screen at all breakpoints without regressing the desktop dialog.

Admin / template configuration

• Removed the redundant word "Settings" from every template-options tab label (Color, Theme, Fonts, Built-in Slideshow, OWL Products Slider, Testimonials Slider, Manufacturers Slider, Product Images, Side Pop Up Box, Drop Down Menus, EU Cookie Law Window, Site Name And Slogan) — the tabs already live under Settings.
• Version-string metadata synced: <version> 5.4.0, <creationDate> 2026-07-16, canonical Cybersalt / VirtueMartTemplates.net copyright, and the on-screen Description version badge.

Security

• XSS-hardening: parameter and content echoes wrapped through Joomla's HTML-escaping helpers across the modernized template and overrides.
• PHP 8 fatal fixed in the VirtueMart cart address-edit view (edit_address.php and its variants): a legacy count() on a possibly-null value replaced with an !empty() guard, which crashed guest checkout under PHP 8.
• Joomla 5 case-sensitivity fatal fixed on the VirtueMart account-maintenance page: JHtml::_('Select.…') calls (capitalized service key) failed on J5's now case-sensitive HTMLHelper registry — corrected to select. so the logged-in vendor billing/currency form renders.
• Template-override security review: the two overrides Joomla flagged for review after the core update (com_content category-list and archive views) were audited — output confirmed properly escaped, no unsafe patterns — and marked checked.

Quickstart database hardening

• Article & product hit counters reset to zero before export (article hits 24,287 → 0) so customers install with clean view-counts.
• Donor-cruft admin/site templates removed — horme_3, vmbasic, and vmbeez3 deleted; the install ships the expected clean template roster.
• Update-sites audit: repaired two payment-plugin update URLs corrupted by a leading-whitespace character (eWay, Realex HPP) and disabled two dead/duplicate update sites (a duplicate VirtueMart releases URL and an entry with unreplaced build tokens).
• Account-maintenance page decluttered: promotional position-7 modules (Cameras / Tablets / "See also") are no longer assigned to the account views.
• Global check-in run across all lockable tables so no stale editing locks ship in the dump.
• StageIt demo-sync backup flag disabled so the quickstart doesn't carry staging-backup baggage.

Removed

• Dead Bootstrap 2 files — the unused css/bootstrap/ folder (bootstrap.css / .min / responsive variants, all announcing "Bootstrap v2") and js/bootstrap.min.js. Confirmed via a rendered-page asset audit that the live pages load Bootstrap only from Joomla's own core (5.3.x), never from these files, before removal.
• All in-tree backup files (*.bak / *.pre-* / .orig) and stray error_log artifacts cleaned from the template before export.
• Legacy IE-detection and jQuery.browser code; superfish / supersubs jQuery menu plugins.

Package format

• Standalone template: pkg_qstore-5.4.0.zip — a Joomla package wrapper that installs the tpl_qstore template and registers it under the package manager, with update notifications delivered through Joomla's native Update Manager.
• Quickstart bundle: a complete Joomla 5.4 + VirtueMart 4 install with QStore pre-loaded as the active template and all sample store content.

• Upgraded - Now compatible Joomla 5
• 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

• Upgraded - Now compatible with PHP 8.2
• Upgraded - Now compatible Joomla 4.3.4
• Upgraded - Now compatible VirtueMart 4.2.0
• Fixed - Responsive Menu bug

• Fixed - VirtueMart Products Module issue
• 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