It's been 5 months since last release of HikaShop. While the 4.4.4 is a minor release as there is no breaking modifications or big feature being added, this summer was quite intense for us with Joomla 4's Release Candidates and then first release of the 4.0.0. We spent time testing and fixing all the little things that were still not working properly with Joomla 4, as well as with PHP8. Thanks to everyone who gave feedback on what they found.
Let's detail the main points of this new release and discover out what it can offer you !

Here are the most important things we've added to HikaShop with the 4.4.4:

• PayBox DSP2 support
• New coupon options
• New filter display
• Language switcher improvements
• Custom fields improvements

PayBox (Verifone) introduced a few months back extra data that needs to be sent to their payment server as part of the PSD2 European directive (Payment Services Directive 2 or DSP2 in French).
So far that extra data is optional. However, they will soon switch their servers to refuse payments without that extra data.
With HikaShop 4.4.4, we've updated the PayBox payment plugin to include that extra data automatically. No setup will be necessary, just updating HikaShop.
So if you're using the PayBox payment plugin on your website, you NEED to update to the latest version of HikaShop soon or you won't be able to accept payments.

HikaShop coupon system welcomes 2 new options ! It was already possible to restrict coupons by limiting them to a minimum product quantity in the cart. Now, you can also limit them to a maximum quantity of products in the cart.
And we've also added a similar option for the "minimum order value" so that you can also set a maximum order value.

With this new HikaShop version you will enjoy a new filter block design. The point here was above all to modernize the appearance of your filters using fontawesome instead of an image and a but of CSS for borders, the collapsable effect etc.

This is not only for the filter block at the top of the products listings but also for the filters module:

• Before, the canonical URLs of products and categories were ignored by the Joomla language switcher module. Now, if the canonical URL is set the language switcher module will use it if the "Force canonical URLs on listing" setting is activated in the HikaShop configuration. That way, you have a consistent behavior with what happens on products listings.
• Until now, when generating the URL dynamically, the language switcher module would always use the main alias of the product, not its translation. It now uses the translation, similarly to what would happen on listings when generating URLs.
• Categories URL generation for the language switcher is now improved to auto detect menu items and provide a cleaner URL for listings when switching the language.

Two new features relative to the custom fields arrive with this new release :

• Get values with MySQL
• Add value option

It's now, possible to set MySQL request in your custom field in order to dynamically populate your custom field values instead of manually entering them through the interface.

Concrete example :

• When creating a new custom field "User"
• In the field's Data part, click on the MySQL query tab
• There you can insert a MySQL query using the alias "value" for the values and "title" for the titles of the values (the values are what is stored in the database and the titles are what is displayed to the user). For example: "SELECT id as value, name as title FROM #__users"
• Result : Your custom field automaticaly fills with the values of the MySQL. In this example, it allows you to select a Joomla user account.

In your custom field settings page, in the Main Attributes area, you will find a new option named "Allow new value".
This option, if activated, will add below the selector displayed by the custom field a button which will open a popup so that you can directly add an extra value to the custom field values list without having to edit the custom field.
That will quite useful for custom fields of the table "product", so that you can add new values while creating products. For example :

As usual, there is a lot more to discover about HikaShop 4.4.4 with bug fixes but also many smaller improvements and other features. You will find all these elements detailed in our change log.

Keep in touch folks.
Team HikaShop