Change-log record

Being the highly organised man that I am, working 99% of the time from little yellow post-it notes stuck on my office wall, i haven't really kept a good track record of the track history, but everything from 4.3 onwards is accurate.

Version 1.0 (Released in early 2006)
First attempt, all this did is generate an XML file as a component and module. It was very simple and had almost no features at all. This was working with Joomla 1.0.4 and VM1.0... very old school :)

Version 2.0 (released in late 2006)
We added 4 different feed types to this version
All, Latest, Popular and Featured
This helped users specify what they wanted to upload to google.

Version 2.1 (early 2007)
Custom categories feed was added, allowing you to specify specific categories within virtuemart to be added to the XML.

Version 2.2 Easter 2007
Cant remember what i added here, but i remember launching it ha ha.

Version 3.0
The whole thing was redesigned into a Mambot, we completely abandoned the component and module idea. This is because we added the FTP upload system which google had just released, it needed to be a mambot as we had a timer system installed, and the only way we could get the timer to work without adding scripts to the hosting was by cranking over a script each time a page loaded on the main site. This checked to see what time the last XML script was added to Google via FTP, if the last time stamp meant it was due another upload, then it would send it up again.

Version 3.1
Here we added a few more fixes

Version 3.2
More fixes to fix bugs on different hosting platforms.

Version 4.0
This version step was because we made a significant change in the way the code works to fix bugs.

Version 4.1
We have added a tax inclusion, condition (New or used)and discount costs

Version 4.2
A few fixes

Version 4.3
The last version that works with Joomla 1.0 and VM 1.0

Version 4.4
Whole thing is converted into a Plugin from a Mambot so it now works in Joomla 1.5 and VirtueMart 1.1

Version 4.5 (24th Dec 09 - Happy Christmas)
- Legacy Mode problem fixed, it now works in Native
- FTP Function on and Off, The FTP system has always been the biggest problem, in fact it is usually the only problem people have. This is because it depends on how the hosting company has set up PHP on the server and sometimes they feel it is appropriate to turn off the FTP function for security and resources reasons. But now Google have made a system that allows you to enter the URL of where the XML is kept, this means we can turn off the FTP feature, so all it does is generate the XML and store it on your site and Google will collect it from you.
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Version 4.5.1 (15th Jan 09)
- We removed an & sign from the code that was causing a problem in a few cases
- We added Horizontal lines to the admin to separate the sections to make it easier to understand.

Version 4.5.2 (19th Jan 09)
- Language file added, so that the description now has links and HTML, allowing us to format and give you great info in the left hand side.
- Correct Fly-page and Browse Page is added to the URL
- Description field choice (short or detailed), now you can choose if you want the description to be filled from the short or the detailed field.
- Empty description replacement if the description tag is empty. We have added this field that you can add text to and it will add this in place of the description. This means Google will never fail the field again because of empty description tags, or you wont have to go through hundreds or even thousands of products adding in descriptions just to stop google failing you.
- Special character encoding. If your description has any type of special character in it such as ", £, $, %, !for example, it will fail the google submission as XML doesn't allow special characters. We have had to add in a way of encoding the characters so the XML is accepted. So now you can add in what ever you like (in theory lol)

Version 4.5.3 (11th Feb 09)
- Fixed the"Warning: Call-time pass-by-reference has been deprecated - argument passed by value" error that showed on a hand full of peoples sites.
- We also added the Visa Payment Method we forgot to add in 4.5.0.
- Shopper groups are now added, allowing you to choose the shopper group to be exported.
- Unique Product ID codes no matter how many categories the product is added to as it was failing if the same product was added to more than one category
- Child Product fix corrected.

Version 4.5.4 (12th Feb 09)
- Fixed "Error 500" on a hand full of peoples website, this made the front end of the website disappear.

Version 4.5.5 (6th March 09)
Fixed 2 errors
- A small group of people found it would only work with Legacy Mode turned on, but not it now works with it turned on and off.
-A few people found that when the plugin was switched to live, it would make the front of the site become white with no errors or warnings, this is also now fixed.

Version 4.5.6 (12th March 09)
Fixed 2 errors
- Put visa back in again (we keep deleting it by accident lol)
- Added some text at the top of the right hand menu to explain how to fix the missing description text if it doesn't show
- Bulk buying options in the system, so if you have have discount prices depending on how many products you buy, it will correct this for you.
- You can now specify the file names of the feeds in the admin.
- Fixed a small shopper group problem, sometimes if the admin chose anything but default, it caused problems. this is now fixed.

Version 4.5.7 (19th March 2009)
Fix release -6 people had problems with their site crashing if Legacy Plugin was turned off, this is now fixed with this release.

Version 4.5.8 (19th June 2009 - day before my birthday :))
Fix release - 2 people have had problems with the plugin not generating a feed at all, so we checked and found that even though the script was good, if we modified a tiny bit of the code, it made it run a little faster and correctly on those 2 peoples websites. We have no idea why it refused to work on their servers when it does on all the other clients, but this has been corrected in this release.

Version 4.5.9 (1st July 2009)
Fix release - 2 more people have had problems with the plugin not generating a feed at all, we checked and found that even though the script was good, it refused to work on their servers because they had modified Joomla. But this version of plugin also works fine on standard Joomla sites, so we released this as a stable version.

Version 5.0.0 (1st September 2009)
(Not released to the public as google changed a few things before we were about to release it, so we had to make a fix immediately)
This is a full rewrite from the ground up, and has a complimentary component which allows the user to add more attributes to each product.

Version 5.1.0 (15th September 2009)
Google changed a few hours before we released V5.0.0, regarding shipping. http://googlebase.blogspot.com/2009/08/shipping-costs-in-product-search-for.htmlWe also found that Google Base will only accept feeds to Google Base Germany in German, so even the attributes needed to be changed. So we added in the language file which changes the tags. This allows the plugin to be 100% German and any other language correct.

Version 5.1.1 (19th September 2009)
A Few people who found the product link in the feed was adding spaces, so this fix release corrected this problem.

Version 5.1.2 (17th May 2010)
Artio SEF Functionality and a Licence upload function added.

Version 5.1.3 (19th May 2010)
sh404SEF Search engine friendly added and Category error fixed.

Version 5.1.4 (26th May 2010)
Fixed a few tiny errors with the SEF functions.

Version 6.0.0 (April 2011)
This was a major rebuild, almost from the ground up. It was going to be 5.1.5, but to be honest the work on this version was too huge and the complete change in functionality was too huge to warrant a small update. We were keeping V6 for a new offshoot secret project we have under way, but this will have to now be either V7.0 or will be a completely separate system.

Fixed - Licence problem, some hosting would loose the licence for apparently no reason. This is now fixed.

We have moved a massive portion of the functions and controls from the plugin, into the component, to make it much more clear, less cluttered and user friendly. These moves include

• The FTP on/off and username and password moved to the component
• Shopper Group List moved to the component
• Global Payment methods and notes all moved to the component
• Parent Child product selection to be moved to the component
• Stock system controls moved to the component
• Multiple Prices moved to the component
• Shipping (Global) moved to the component
• Tax (Global) moved to the component

This means the only settings left in the plugin is to create the feed. This makes the plugin much clearer and easier to use.

In the plugin controls we then removed the "Periodical time" and "Periodical type" and replaced it with an "On/Off" function for each feed. I thought this made much more sense. Now the system just updates once every 24hrs, from when ever the time stamp says. So you can set it to update a few Min's before Google Base is scheduled to pick the feed up.

This is because Google Base fails a feed if it sent more frequently than once every 24hrs, and i was always being sent emails asking about what the 2 settings were. So I know this removed some of the functionality, but it also makes it easier to use for the none techy people.

We also corrected a fly-page error, as some people using flypages other than the default one, where not having the correct fly pages picked up. Now it correctly picks all fly pages, custom or not. This was due to a change in the way VM passed the info to the plugin in some update.

There was an error in some image links in some sites. We have corrected this by rebuilding the image creation script. This was also due to an update in VM which changed the way it created the link.

We have changed the colour and size attributes, so they can now have many sub attributes added to them. This means that 30 sizes can now be added to a product and 10 colors to a product rather than just the one.

Extra attributes we have added are

• Featured Product
• GTINs
• Product Review Count
• Product Review Average
• Product Type (Categories)
• Genre
• Author
• Excluded Destination
• Location
• Pickup
• Custom Attributes (add unlimited custom attributes to each product)

I also completely rebuilt this website, every attribute having its own page, many articles about Google Base error reports listed here for reference, and a huge host of up to date information. There are also 3 videos in HD showing you how to setup Google Base, Joomla Google Base extensions and what advantages it has to a shop owner.

A lot of work to keep it as the market leader and make sure there is as much information as possible to help you sell your products for free on Google Base :o)

Version 6.1 (10 May 2011)
There was a problem with the image link and on certain hosting with the FTP upload function.

Version 6.2 (18 May 2011)
FlyPage TAGS added to the plugin, to display them on the product page if needed.

Multiple entries for Genre by comma

Sizes and Colours are managed now by VirtueMart

Default quantity box is added to the global config area

Shipping Region - Yes or No added to global config.

Version 6.3 (1 June 2011)
Bug fixes and snags for a few clients with component compatibility and unique hosting situations

Version 6.4 (27 June 2011)
Image path error when using SH404

Error 500 (white screen) with 2 clients due to hosting configuration, we added an exception to stop that on their hosting and anybody with similar setups.

A few people using SH404 error
/home/xxxxx/public_html/components/com_sh404sef/sef_ext/com_virtuemart.php on line 75 Notice: Trying to get property of non-object in
Corrected to not happen again.

Prices as shown on the flypage
Google require the prices to be exported at exactly the price shown on the flypage as a person not logged in would see it. This happened for most people, but if you had it set up in a strange way with taxes etc it would export differently, so it was rebuilt this system to work every time correctly for all people.

Title Merge system, allowing you to build your product titles as you wish.

Multi currency system
Allows users to export multiple currency feeds.

Shipping attributes controls
To turn on and off the different fields in the shipping area to all products.

Products to show only once
This used to be part of the system, and somebody asked for products to be shown multiple times if in multiple categories, so i added it in. Now it has had to be stripped out again as it was causing feeds to fail.

Cleaned up the plugin and the component Global config area (it still could do with more being honest)

Version 6.5 (12 September 2011)
A few bugs that caused an issue with one client.

Version 6.5.1 (13 October 2011)
Added the availability Tag for the new Google requirements which i forgot to add into the last version (sorry guys).

Version 6.6 (24 October 2011)
Added the functions needed to accept the new Categories Plugin and repaired 3 bugs found.

Version 6.6.1 (31 October 2011)
Stopped the menu link dispearing for the category component if you upgrade the Google Base component.

Version 6.6.2 (2 November 2011)
Add the ability to work with both mysql and mysqi database types

Version 6.6.3 (3 November 2011)
Fixes bugs if you have a large number of products (20,000+ products)