With great sadness we have to announce that we are ceasing development of all our VirtueMart, WooCommerce and Joomla plugins. Effective immediately, all our plugins -- even those that were paid downloads -- are made available for free from our homepage (GPL license still applies), but we cannot and will not provide any support anymore.
It has been a great pleasure to be part of the thriving development communities of VirtueMart as well as WooCommerce. However, during the last year it became painstakingly clear that in addition to a full-time job, a young family and several other time-consuming hobbies at professional level (like being a professional singer) the plugin development and the support that it requires is not sustainable and is taking its toll. It has been an honor, but it is now time to say good bye!
I am developing the plugin with PHP 5.4 and 5.5 on Joomla 2.5 with VirtueMart 2.x. Starting with plugin version 1.9, support for Joomla 3.x and VirtueMart 3.x was added. Support for VirtueMart 2.x on Joomla 1.5 is available only up to plugin version 1.8.2. If you need that version, please contact us, as old versions are not available for download by default.
In version 1.3 I fixed some problems with php 5.2, and I have not heard of any problems with php 5.2 since (those with problems confirmed that their problems no longer appear).
Other combinations might work, but I have not had any reports. If you are using the plugin on a different combination of versions, please let me know whether it works or not.
Until version 2.0 of the plugin there was no way to set the counter to some particular value in the Joomla/VirtueMart backend (mainly due to the fact that in the plugin configuration screen I had no easy access to the databases, and also had no way to execute some code to read/modify the database entries). In version 2.0, support for changing the counters was added directly in the plugin configuration screen, so the method described in this section is no longer needed.
In previous version, it was, however, possible to change the counter entry manually in the MySQL database. In particular, in the mysql database the counters are stored in a table called (prefix)_virtuemart_shopper_plg_ordernumber, where (prefix) depends on your installation, sometimes it's jml, sometimes jos, or something entirely different. That table will be created on the fly when the first order is processed by the plugin, so you might make a test order directly after installation.
-) The number_type column means: 0=orderNr, 1=invoiceNr, 2=customerNr
-) The number_format gives the value of the format.
-) The count is the current count for the given format. The value in the database is the previously used number, so the next order/invoice will be incremented by 1.
E.g. if you have only a running counter (format "#"), then you would change the count column of the database entry with a number_format of # to the current value of your invoices.
If you use a format of e.g. "[year][month]-#", then you would change the count column of the entry where number_format="201211-#".
If you use a global counter, the number_format column of the corresponding type will be empty.
See the answer above to set the counter. Notice however, some caveats:
Unfortunately, it is not possible to use an order number format of the form [orderID], because the order ID is only created when a new order is stored in the database. The order number, on the other hand, is created before that moment.
The order ID is automatically created by VirtueMart (even before my plugin comes into play). It is the auto-incrementing index `virtuemart_order_id
` in the jml_virtuemart_orders table. To reset it, you need to reset that auto-incrementing index directly in MySQL. As the order ID is not meant to be used publicly, but rather as an internal ID to ensure orders are unique, I will not give any recipe here how to tamper with that part of the VirtueMart internals. If you really know what you are doing, you should be able to find out yourself how to reset a table index in MySQL. Otherwise it is better to not touch the VirtueMart ID generation and simply modify the order and invoice numbers, as these are the number that are actually displayed to and used by your customers.
The only solution is to use an order number format that only contains letters and digits, but no other characters like -, /, etc.
I'm always open for good suggestions and ideas concerning the plugin's functionality. However, as my time is really limited, I cannot promise anything. Currently, the following ideas are on my list:
I have no idea when I will be able to implement these ideas. If you really need any feature urgently, please feel free to ask me for a quote for custom development. All commissioned features will of course be made available to all other plugin users, too, if they are useful to the general public.
The short answer: You can't! This plugin can only modify the order and invoice numbers of new orders.
The long answer: There is no graphical interface for changing order/invoice/customer numbers in the Virtuemart backend. However, if you really know what you are doing, you can modify the database directly. Notice, however, that the order numbers and invoice numbers have already been sent out to your customers, so we don't recommend changing existing orders....