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Move Virtuemart 1.0 categories to VM 1.1.2

Question: We have Virtuemart 1.0.12 running on Joomla 1.0.12. On a beta server, we have installed Joomla 1.5, and Virtuemart 1.1.2. Now, we need to port the products and categories over. We thought this would be simple with CSV import, but CSV import on VM 1.0 does not have a category export function. What now?

*Note: With some fiddling we were able to move the products fine.

Answer: You have two options to move categories from VM 1.0 to VM 1.1.2.

1) Manually re-create categories in VM 1.2. If you only have a couple, this will likely be the easiest.

2) Use the phpMyAdmin tools of both sites to export / import the specific table. Though this may sound hard, it's actually very simple.

Here are the steps.

First, open log into the PHP admin of the old site. Select the database in question. Find the table : Table: jos_vm_category. Select the EXPORT tab, select SQL, select ZIPPED and go. This will export all the data and download it to your hard drive. Make a note of where you downloaded it.

Second, open phpMyAdmin on the new site. Select the same table: Table: jos_vm_category, and click the EMPTY tab. This will keep all the fields, but empty any sample content that may have been in there from the install or tests you conducted. After that, select the IMPORT tab. Using the browse button, find that zip file you download in the previous step. Click go.

All the OLD categories are now in the new site. However, we are not done. Most likely you had sub.categories, and so you need to repeat the steps above on the tale jos_vm_category_xref. This table contains child list info that you most likely want to preserve as well.

In addition to the raw mysql data, you most likely want to port over category images. To do this, looks in your old site. Open com_virtuemart > shop_image > category

Download all the images via FTP.

Now, open the new site, and upload all the images you just downloaded into the same folder on the new site.

If you have many, many categories and related images, you may want to use the host control panel file manager and zip the folder and move that way. Usually, a category folder is not that big and so does not need this process. Simple FTP should do the trick.