VirtueMart is the best known shopping cart for Joomla, and HikaShop reads its tables directly: you can move your whole shop from VirtueMart to HikaShop without exporting anything. This page explains how, what comes with it and what to check afterwards.
It is one of the shops HikaShop can import: see all the import options.
Before you start
Supported versions: VirtueMart 2, 3 and 4 (tested on 4.8.2 and 3.2.12), on Joomla 4, 5 and 6.
The VirtueMart tables must be in the database of your Joomla site, which is the case when VirtueMart is installed on the same site as HikaShop. Install HikaShop on the site of VirtueMart, you do not need to uninstall VirtueMart first.
Make a backup of your database and your files. The import adds to what is already in HikaShop and never deletes anything, but a backup costs nothing.
What is imported
- Tax rules
- Manufacturers (as brands)
- Categories, with their images
- Products, with their prices, images and files
- Product categories and the characteristics of the products with variants
- Customers and their addresses
- Discount codes and coupons
- Orders, with their lines and addresses
- Downloadable files
- Reviews and ratings
Not imported:
- The payment and the shipping methods: set them up again in HikaShop, the names of the ones used by the old orders are kept in these orders
- The custom fields which are not product ones, and the plugins of VirtueMart
Steps
- In the HikaShop back office, open Products > Import and choose Import from another shop.
- Pick VirtueMart in the list of shops.
- Choose what to import with the boxes of "What to import": orders also need the customers and the catalog, they are imported with them.
- Fill in the settings (see below) and click Start the import.
- Keep the page open until the message "The import is finished" appears. A step which fails stops the import and can be tried again or skipped.
The settings
- Languages: the language of the texts to import (the names and descriptions of the products, the brands, the categories). VirtueMart keeps one table per language, the language you choose is the one which is read.
- Table prefix: the prefix of the VirtueMart tables when it is not the one of the Joomla site. Leave it empty if it is the same.
- Redirect the old addresses (Joomla only): tick it to send the visitors of the old VirtueMart addresses to the new pages, see the questions below.
After the import
- Set up your payment and shipping methods (Payment methods and Shipping methods in the System menu).
- Remove the VirtueMart component once the shop is checked: the old addresses of its products and categories then lead to the HikaShop pages (see the questions below).
- Open a few products, a category and an order to check the prices, the images and the taxes.
Questions
The import stops with an error while copying the images
Check that the folders of the images of VirtueMart exist and that the upload folder of HikaShop (System > Configuration > Files) is writable. Then use "Try this step again".
I do not see VirtueMart in the list
The list only offers the shops whose tables it finds in the database of the site. Check the prefix of the tables of VirtueMart.
Can I import VirtueMart 1?
No, the import of VirtueMart 1 (Joomla 1.5) was removed. Move to VirtueMart 2 or later first, or use the CSV import.
Can I run the import again?
Yes. What was already imported is left alone and only what is new is added: the products, customers and orders created on the old shop since the last import. You can import once to test and again when you go live. A change made on the old shop to something already imported is not copied.
The old addresses of the products
With "Redirect the old addresses" ticked, each product and each category gets a permanent redirection in the Redirect component of Joomla, from its VirtueMart address (the one with its identifier, and the default one of the router of VirtueMart under the first menu item of the shop) to its new page. The redirections only apply to an address which no longer leads anywhere, so they work once the VirtueMart component is removed. They can be edited or removed in Components > Redirects; the import turns on the plugin "System - Redirect" which uses them. Sites which used the plugin "VirtueMart Fallback Redirect" can import again to get these redirections: nothing is imported twice.
Back to the import page, which also covers the CSV import and the import of orders. Something else went wrong? See solving problems.