Test VirtueMart 5 Beta on Joomla 6 Safely: A Staging Walkthrough

VirtueMart 5 is the version for Joomla 6, and it is still in beta. That is no reason to wait with your eyes closed. Running your shop on Joomla 6 with the beta – on a copy – tells you now what the real upgrade will involve. This is how we do it.

Never install a VirtueMart beta on a live shop. Everything below happens on staging.

Start from a supported base

Do this from a shop on Joomla 5.4 and VirtueMart 4.8.x. If you are still on Joomla 3 or VirtueMart 3, do step 1 of the route first – two big jumps at once make it impossible to tell what broke.

1. Build a fresh staging copy

• Copy files and database from live to a staging server running PHP 8.3+ and MySQL 8.0.13+ or MariaDB 10.4+ – Joomla 6's minimum.
• Payments in sandbox mode, outgoing email caught, search engines blocked.
• Count products, categories, orders and shoppers, so you can compare later.

2. Upgrade Joomla to 6

1. Run Joomla's pre-update check for Joomla 6. Write down every extension it flags – this list is half your answer.
2. Install the VirtueMart 5 beta (the 4.9.x test build from virtuemart.net) before or together with the Joomla upgrade, following the notes that come with the build.
3. Upgrade Joomla to 6 and the template to its Joomla 6 version, if it has one.

3. Walk through the shop

Go through the shop as a customer, with error reporting on and the browser console open:

• Category pages, filters, search, product pages with variants and custom fields.
• Add to cart from product pages and from modules, update quantities, coupons.
• Checkout as guest and as a registered shopper, every shipping and payment method in sandbox mode.
• Account pages: orders, addresses.
• Admin: products, orders, status changes, invoices.

4. Write down what breaks, and why

VirtueMart 5 changes some internals, so expect findings in these areas:

For each finding note: the extension or file, the error, and whether a vendor update exists or is announced.

5. Turn the list into a plan

Sort findings into "update when the vendor releases", "replace", "fix ourselves" and "drop". Add rough effort. That is your Joomla 6 budget and timeline – months before you need it, instead of the week the old version goes out of support.

6. Repeat with each beta

VirtueMart publishes new test builds as VirtueMart 5 matures. Re-run the walk-through with each new build, and when the stable release lands, you will already know it works with your shop.

Status of VirtueMart 5: Does VirtueMart work on Joomla 6?

For developers: make the findings list exact

On the Joomla 6 staging copy, let Joomla tell you what's deprecated or missing instead of guessing:

# terminal – Global Configuration: maximum error reporting and the deprecation log
php cli/joomla.php config:set error_reporting=maximum
php cli/joomla.php config:set log_deprecated=true

# after the walk-through: grouped deprecations, by file
grep -v '^#' administrator/logs/deprecated.php | cut -f4- | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -40

# third-party VirtueMart plugins still using removed Joomla class names
grep -rlE "\bJ(Factory|Html|Route|Text|Request)\b" plugins/vmpayment plugins/vmshipment plugins/vmcustom --include=*.php

Run the walk-through once with "Backward Compatibility 6" → Classes Aliases off. Whatever breaks then is also what will break on Joomla 7, so the same list covers both upgrades.