The maintenance page is used to maintain your CSVI VirtueMart installation.
- Optimize tables
On a system where many changes are happening, the database will get fragmented. The information gets holes in it and starts to look like a Swiss cheese. This is not good for performance of the system. To keep the database in good shape it is important to regularly optimize the database when doing regular imports. Use this option to optimize all the CSVI VirtueMart and VirtueMart tables.
- Sort categories
By default categories appear as they are entered into the system. To alphabetically sort all your categories you can either re-arrange them manually or use this option.
- Remove empty categories
In VirtueMart it is not possible to delete parent categories that have child categories even though they are empty. This option will remove all categories from VirtueMart that have no products in them. Parent categories are only deleted if there are no sub categories left.
- Update available fields
CSVI VirtueMart uses a table to keep track of the fields that can be used for import and export. Whenever VirtueMart changes database layout, the fields can be updated using this function to support the new VirtueMart database layout. Whenever a VirtueMart installation is customized with extra columns, in most cases, the extra columns can be used by updating the available fields.
- Install sample templates
If you are in need for some sample templates, use this option to install 10 sample templates. There will be 5 import and 5 export sample templates.
- Resize product name field
On a standard VirtueMart installation the product name field is only 50 characters long. This option makes it possible to enlarge the field size to a maximum of 255 characters. After selecting this option an input box will appear asking for the new length. The size of the longest product name in the database will also be shown. In case a length is specified that is shorter than the largest product name, all names will be cut to the new size.
- Load exchange rates
In order to be able to convert product prices to another currency, the currency rates need to be loaded. The currency rates are taken from the European Central Bank (http://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-daily.xml). These rates are updated daily between 14:15 and 15:00 CET. To update to the latest currency rates, use the load exchange rates.
- Load ICEcat Indexes
To be able to use the ICEcat import, there are 2 indexes required to match your product to an ICEcat index in order to be able to retrieve the ICEcat data. The URLs where to retrieve the indexes from can be configured in the Settings section. Advised is to use the default values.
- Clean cache
Clean cache will empty your cache folder that might contain left over files and debug reports. The folder being emptied is located at administrator/cache/com_csvivirtuemart.
- Backup Templates
The backup templates option will create a backup file of all the templates in CSVI VirtueMart. The backup file will be created in the folder administrator/backups. The name of the file is csvivirtuemart_templates_YYYYMMDD.csv where YYYY is the year in 4 digits, MM is the month in 2 digits and DD is the day in 2 digits.
- Restore Templates
The restore templates will read a file created by the backup templates option and add the templates into CSVI VirtueMart.
- Backup VirtueMart database
To backup all the VirtueMart tables in the database use this function. This feature will create an SQL file of all tables in the database starting with vm_ (usually this is jos_vm_). After the export is complete the SQL file is zipped and placed in the folder administrator/backups. The zipfile will have the name virtuemart_.sql.zip e.g. virtuemart_1266699313.sql.zip. The zip file can be loaded using PhpMyAdmin.
- Empty VirtueMart database
To start with a clean store, this option can be used to empty all information from VirtueMart. The tables emptied are:
- vm_product
- vm_product_price
- vm_product_mf_xref
- vm_product_attribute
- vm_category
- vm_category_xref
- vm_product_attribute_sku
- vm_product_category_xref
- vm_product_discount
- vm_product_type
- vm_product_type_parameter
- vm_product_product_type_xref
- vm_product_relations
- vm_manufacturer
Here all manufacturers except the manufacturer with the lowest ID is deleted
- vm_product_files
- vm_product_type_x
All product type tables will be removed