I recently needed a simple way to inform users in countries that shipping is not set up as standard, to contact us for shipping costs. The standard message if there is no shipping set up is "Please Select a Shipping Method", which i s a bit annoying if there isn't one showing up and the user will go elsewhere.

Here's my simple solution to alter that text;

1. Go to /administrator/components/com_virtuemart/languages/common/english.php
2. download english.php and open in a text editor/ BBE/Dreamweaver
3. Line: 293 'PHPSHOP_CHECKOUT_ERR_NO_SHIP'.
4. Change the standard text "Please select a Shipping Method" to "whatever you want"
5. Save your file - with exact same name
6. Upload by FTP
7. Clear joomla site cache
8. Check in front end