TOPIC: Mod VM Featured Product Grid-Latest Products issue

Hi

I use the mod on the front page to display just a few Latest Products and also as a menu item (article linking to the mod) to display a larger number of Latest Products.

Both 'were' working fine until probably just a day or so ago.

I now find that the menu version displays empty for Latest Products, although working fine if I switch to Featured, Random etc

I believe the issue is the same if I use the stock VM mod and so, although not an issue with your module, I wonder if you could suggest any potential cause(s)?

I have disable the menu option version until resolved.

I am on JM 2.5.27 & VM 2.0.26d (yes, I know(!), and plan to update after Christmas).

TIA

Still do not know the cause but may have solved the issue.

I published the module to a normal module position and it displayed products.

I then cleared out the cache (for the umpteenth time) and re-published it to the pseudo-position for the article->menu option.

It still displayed correctly so I will assume t is fixed without knowing the cause.

I would still be interested in what the potential cause(s) may have been.

Hello, my apologies for the length of time it has taken to get back to you. I had a check into the way that the module picks the latest products and I can't see that there is any obvious way that there could be a problem with this. The module simply orders the products by the Virtuemart product id, and picks the ones with the highest id. Because the id is always defined and increments each time a product is added then it is pretty much foolproof.

One possibility is that there was a problem with the products themselves, maybe the images were missing - if you have set up the module to not show the product when there is no image then nothing would show up.

However based on what you say it sounds more likely that it was a caching issue, there is a lot of caching going on, virtuemart caches a lot of product information, also there is the Joomla cache system, plus your web browser doing its own caching. It's probably a good idea to clear all three in this situation.

If you are still using VM 2.0.26d and you have not already fixed the problem you should know that it is vulnerable to a critical security issue that can allow an attacker to create an admin account on your site: http://virtuemart.net/news/latest-news/462-security-release-of-vm2-6-10-and-vm2-9-9b

You should be able to fix it using the advice from the virtuemart team:

Exchange the file models/user.php

The easiest way is just to exchange the user model with the new one:

Dowload the latest version (VirtueMart 2.6.10 or VirtueMart 2.9.9b)
Replace the file /administrator/components/com_virtuemart/models/user.php with the new one.

Hi

Thanks for your thoughts. Since my last message it seems to have been ok; although, it is not something I check regularly (assumption being it is Always ok!).

Re the VM vulnerability, I have just updated the file user.php, as recommended.

In the New Year, I will bite the bullet and do a proper VM update. I have actually done to on replica backups and all seemed fine. However, I cannot afford potential downtime right now.

Best