April 2 2024

Joomla 5.1.0 is right around the corner! In order to prepare for it, we're releasing HikaShop 5.0.4 today.
Let's look at some of the new features this version has to offer, besides the changes to properly support Joomla 5.1.x

Structured data

We've added Google structured data as json-ld to the product details page. This will allow us to provide more complete and complex data to search engines regardless of the HTML of the product details page.
Thanks to this, the structured data as json-ld on the details page can now contain variants data when the product has variants. That structured data also complies with the settings of the Google Products plugin so that what is provided in the product XML feed and what search engines see on the product details page when crawling it matches. Let's details what new around this :

  • Now based on the "HikaShop Google Products" plugin settings
  • Select which price provided (Cheapest, most expensive, average or unit)
  • Price with discount or not
  • Price with tax or not
  • Support for product variants
  • Add MPN or not
  • Add Age Group, Gender, Size & Color

Backend color scheme option

As many of you already know, with Joomla 5 the backend template supports the dark mode. This means that based on whether the browser / operating system of the user is in dark mode or not, Joomla's interface itself will be in dark mode or not. Taking this into account, we've also added that same support in HikaShop 5 last year.
With HikaShop 5.0.4, we've added a new "Backend color scheme" which allows you to choose if you want to choose to force the light mode or the dark mode. This can be useful if you're using another template than Joomla's default template.
Also, with Joomla 5.1, the Atum template will have its own color scheme setting so that you can force the light or dark mode there. Taking this into account, the "Automatic" mode of HikaShop's color scheme setting will also base itself on this Atum template setting so that by default, the color scheme of HikaShop's backend matches with Joomla's backend.
You will find this new setting in the HikaShop Configuration page under the Display tab, in the Css Options section.

New Smart Search abilities

With HikaShop 5.0.4, the plugin Smart Searh - HikaShop Products plugin (built-in HikaShop) comes with several major improvements:

  • Indexing of variants data
  • Indexing of products and variants translations made with Falang
  • Auto selection the menu item to use for the URL of the products being indexed based on the main category of the product. This will help in providing results with a nicer looking URL.
  • Products with a sale start date in the future or with a sale end date in the past are not indexed anymore
  • Better support of the images

As usual, there is a lot more to discover about HikaShop 5.0.4 with bug fixes but also many smaller improvements and other features. You will find all these elements detailed in our change log.

Keep in touch folks.
Team HikaShop