The method I came up with was to add a function to smarty, the template processor and then sort the array in the product.tpl file. This article is what got me started:

http://www.smarty.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1079&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Here’s what I did:

1. Created a file called modifier.sortby.php in tools/smarty/plugins/
2. Place this code in the file
   <?php
   #
   # Modifier: sortby – allows arrays of named arrays to be sorted by a given field
   #
   function smarty_modifier_sortby($arrData,$sortfields) {
   ksort($arrData);
   return $arrData;
   }
   // You might need this for smarty to load the function, probably not
   //$smarty->register_modifier( “sortby”, “smarty_modifier_sortby” );
   ?>
3. Use this foreach loop in your .tpl file – @sortby:”key you are sorting by here”
   {foreach from=$group.attributes|@sortby:”#id_attribute” key=id_attribute item=group_attribute}

Hope this helps someone!

1. Change the config back directly in the db, as of Magento 1.3 the table is core_config_data the SQL used should be something like this, or just use PhpMyAdmin.

UPDATE core_config_data SET value=’NEW URL’ WHERE value=’OLD URL’

Make this change for both the Unsecure Base Url and Secure Base Url

2. Clear the Magento cache – according to most post on Magento, this solved the problem for most people. Didn’t for us so there was one additional step that took us a long time to figure out.

3. Magento also has the capability of caching the configuration settings in xml. This file apparently controls how Magento loads config variables, once deleted Magento resorted to using the config values stored in the database.

/app/etc/use_cache.ser

Delete this file, and you should now have your site and admin back to normal. It might be necessary to re-upload the file, not 100% sure about that.

Hope this helps someone save their site and a lot of time. Link to a Magento post on the issue:

http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/22420/

Yes, “” is the Byte Order Mark (BOM) of the Unicode Standard. Specifically it is the hex bytes EF BB BF, which form the UTF-8 representation of the BOM, misinterpreted as ISO 8859/1 text instead of UTF-8.

Probably what it means is that you are using a text editor that is saving files in UTF-8 with the BOM, when it should be saving without the BOM. It could be PHP files that have the BOM, in which case they’d appear as literal text on your page. Or it could be translated text you pasted into Joomla! edit windows.

The Unicode Consortium’s FAQ on the Byte Order Mark is at http://www.unicode.org/faq/utf_bom.html#BOM .

The remedy is to find the offending file, open in notepad, select Save AS, select ‘ANSI’ from the ‘Encoding’ drop down then re-upload to your site.

To find the problem file, you can probably narrow it down to one of the last files you edited before the problem started occurring.

If not, this shell command can help you find it on the server. Login to your server using SSH. This may or may not be enabled on your hosting account. Please check with your host if you are not sure. If you don’t know how to connect using SSH, search for Putty which is an easy to use SSH client. Once your are able to login, run this command (type in after the prompt you receive when logging in)

grep -rl $’\xEF\xBB\xBF’ /home/username/public_html

Where /home/username/public_html is the path to the directory you’d like to search. You might need to ech o $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] in a php file to find the full machine path to your directory.

Once you enter and run the command, it will display the file(s) that contain the BOM. Save these as described above and re-upload. That should solve your problem. Hope this helps!

1. First thing — installed Joomla, then installed the VirtueMart package. All is right in the universe, install goes well both running fine.

2. Delete all test content from system and all un-necessary menus. Left with topmenu and usermenu. Please note – top menu is what I consider to be the main menu, some have had the experience of losing their home page. All you have to do is add Home to the menu, indicate it as the front page, then in the Menu Item Manager select it and indicate it as the default. That will then indicate this page as the home page.

3. I like my sites to have a top menu consisting of sections and a left (or right) hand menu that dynamically populates with the categories corresponding to the selected section. To acheive this, I installed the very handy Categoris 1.5 Module, found here http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/structure-&-navigation/sections-&-categories/2423/details. There are several others like it but from my experimentation this is the only one that auto populates based on selected section. I did edit the helper.php file, as the option to show empty categories didn’t seem to work, commenting out line 161, which makes sure empty categories show up.

4. Making the VirtueMart module appear when in the products section of the site. I created a menu item on the top menu that points to VirtueMart, when clicked, it takes the user to the VirtueMart part of the site. I only wanted the product categories to show up when in the Products (VirtueMart) section. To get this to work I edited the mod_virtuemart.php file in the mod_virtuemart directory. I simply added the following code to the top of the file, and closed out the if at the end of the file. Basically this excludes the virtuemart code if we are not in the VirtueMart part of the site.

if($option==’com_virtuemart’){

5. Enabling Search Engine Friendly URLs – used this 
http://e-fusionsoft.com/downloads/category/1-extension-specific-plugin.html
to make SEF Urls for Joomla.

• DIY – Do it yourself. You can learn the relevant technologies and software programs that will enable you to update all aspects of your site.
• Content Management System – If your site has some sort of content management functionality you should be able to make most content additions and updates yourself. Design changes and functionality enhancements will probably require a call to your web developer.
• Contract with web developer – Part of your agreement with your web developer might include a monthly or quarterly fee that covers a basic amount of updating of some or all aspects of your site.
• Pay per event – pay your web developer hourly for updates on an as-needed basis. Major functionality upgrades or changes might require a new proposal and contract with a set project rate.

Content Management Options

It is possible to manage most content changes on your own, whether you have a static site or a database-driven site.

• Static site – a static site means that content changes will have to be entered into the HTML file, meaning you must be familiar with HTML or be able to use a program such as Macromedia Dreamweaver to update content and re-upload the file. Alternatively, Macromedia Contribute is a desktop application that allows you to manage web pages in with a much less technical interface than Dreamweaver and is a viable option for managing a small to medium-sized sites, not a good option for larger sites.
• Database-driven site – a database-driven site will have a user-friendly interface that makes adding and updating content easy. This is essential for a large site with many pages.

In general you should define/provide as much information as you can about the following:

• Company, Industry Background
• Project Overview, Project Goals
• Intended Audience
• Design
• Content
• Functionality

• Web Hosting and E-mail
• Maintenance
• Promotion
• Sites you like and why
  This will give the designer/developer/company a feel for the style and level of design you expect for your project. It will also communicate information about audience, content and functionality that may not have been communicated previously.

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• PPC Advertising with Google and/or Overture
• Social Media Optimization
• Affiliate programs
• Shopping Search Engines
• E-mail list (self developed or purchased)