Joomla / Virtuemart questions...

[PAJ]

This question is for anyone familiar with Joomla / Virtuemart sites and conversant on PHP and MySQL stuff.

I have a website that's currently online that is a product catalog that incorporates static pages. The objective is to create a CMS type catalog to replace it. My choice for the project is Joomla / Virtuemart. While it's not relative to my questions, I will not be using any of Virtuemart's shopping cart features. I am strictly using it as a simple catalog. Of course, I can later turn the shopping cart features on if I want.

My question:

When I installed Joomla, I used cPanel's Fantastico. The site was and is not live yet. The current website / catalog that uses static pages is pointing to another server. The plan is to set up and populate the new Joomla / Virtuemart site catalog, and once done, switch the DNS to point to the new website.

So for the moment, and while I work out all of the bugs, I access the Joomla / Virtuemart online via something like this (but not exactly since I'm not looking for anyone to inspect the site):

http://cpanel??.gzo.com/~username/

Will everything work when the day comes to reassign the domain to the new website on Dathorn's server?

In other words, have I caused myself any problems by making the installation of the Joomla / Virtuemart prior to the site being live?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

[AndrewT]

I know I already noted this in your ticket but I might as well post it here in case someone else needs to find it later on.

The only potential problem is that some scripts do not work well via the preview URLs.

Aside from that, you simply need to configure your scripts to use the domain instead of the preview URL once you change the DNS. These scripts will often ask for the file system path and full HTTP URL of your script install and this is what you would need to update.

[PAJ]

Perhaps a better way to have asked the question would have been:

Before I launch the installation routine for Joomla from cPanel's Fantastico and install VirtueMart, does the domain name need to be resolve to the new account first?

[AndrewT]

No. Though as I mentioned, some scripts will not function properly via the preview URL. This won't impact the install itself but may impact your ability to access and configure the scripts after installing via Fantastico.

[PAJ]

Right. I think I've already run into some of that with trying to install and deploy a component "sh404SEF." It's supposed to do rewrites for the dynamic pages so the URLs are search engine friendly. When I enable it and try to access the pages, I get 404s. I'm assuming I won't be able to deploy that until I get the domain to resolve.

Here's a FAQ on sh404SEF if anyone is interested.

If anyone here is familiar with these products, please chime in.

Thanks!

[ZYV]

Not that I am familiar with Joomla / VM, but what OS are you using on your development computer? For any half-descent OS you have an /etc/hosts file which contains the IP addresses and the corresponding hostnames which will override the data you get from the DNS resolver.

Having that said, if you are the only one to be testing the site (or if you are few developers who do not mind making temporary changes in the configuration of their computers) you can add the following entry to this file:

YOUR.DATHORN.SHARED.IP yoursite.com www.yoursite.com

You will then be able to access this website via yoursite.com from your computer and test it exactly as if the DNS were already set up and propagated through the network.

P.S. It turns out that even Windows have this feature, however, they are hiding this file in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts ... Why I am not surprised?

[Elite]

Right. I think I've already run into some of that with trying to install and deploy a component "sh404SEF." It's supposed to do rewrites for the dynamic pages so the URLs are search engine friendly. When I enable it and try to access the pages, I get 404s. I'm assuming I won't be able to deploy that until I get the domain to resolve.

Here's a FAQ on sh404SEF if anyone is interested.

If anyone here is familiar with these products, please chime in.

Thanks!

Sounds like your .htaccess file for the rewrites is not set up correctly

I don't see why you shouldn't use SEF URLs before changing the domain, I would think at worst you would have to tweak your .htaccess and a couple of config vars to point to the new domain.

[AndrewT]

Right. I think I've already run into some of that with trying to install and deploy a component "sh404SEF." It's supposed to do rewrites for the dynamic pages so the URLs are search engine friendly. When I enable it and try to access the pages, I get 404s. I'm assuming I won't be able to deploy that until I get the domain to resolve.

Here's a FAQ on sh404SEF if anyone is interested.

If anyone here is familiar with these products, please chime in.

Thanks!

That would likely be due to the preview URL. ZYV's suggestion should get around this.

[PAJ]

Tried ZYV's solution and it worked perfect. The aforementioned "sef" component works fine now.

Good show! Thanks guys!!

[ZYV]

Glad to help a fellow Dathorn customer