WHMCS V5.1 Beta Release Now Available
I am pleased to announce the release of the WHMCS V5.1 Beta which is now available to download from our members area @ www.whmcs.com/members
Some of the new features in WHMCS 5.1 include:
- Admin: New Homepage Widgets, New Reports, Interface Enhancements, New Calendar, New Email Templates
- Orders: Admin Live Order Preview, Promo On Demand Creation, Custom Order Statuses, Product Retirement Ability
- Tickets: Sidebar Quick Filter, Customisable Ticket Masks, BB Code Support, Ajaxified Other Tickets & Related Services
- Invoices: New Search Options incl. Line Items, Improved Credit Logging, Improved Remote Gateway Integration, Quote Functionality
- Domains: Ability to Disable Registrar Modules, New & Improved Domain Syncronisation Processes, Grouped Domain Expiry Reminders
- Client Area: Domain Addons, Ajaxified Server Status, Search in Category for KB, Updated Default Template, Maintenance Mode Redirect Option
- Developers: New Hooks, New Module Functionality, New API Calls
Beta Release Warning
Please remember this is a public beta release and therefore is not intended for use in production environments. Beta software may contain bugs and several beta versions may be released in quick succession as updates become available. If you are not comfortable with experiencing or reporting bugs, or are not willing or able to keep up to date with new releases, we recommend you do not install this beta.
Thanks for using WHMCS,
Matt
& The WHMCS Dev Team
Posted by Matt on Friday, May 11th, 2012
Live Chat Addon - New Embedded Chat Feature
WHMCS Live Chat is developed in partnership with Stardevelop, bringing WHMCS users a powerful integrated live chat/visitor tracking solution that includes a Windows Desktop Client to monitor visitors and handle chats. The custom Live Help Messenger solution tailored specifically to WHMCS means that you can instantly see if a website visitor is a registered client, and get direct access to their tickets, profile, and other client specific information from the chat interface. Chats are also logged under the WHMCS ticket history for a client.
This latest update to the WHMCS Live Chat Addon introduces an embedded chat interface that can be used in place of the previous chat popup window (screenshot below). The new embedded chat window also supports HTML5 sound alerts and will allow the visitor to switch to the regular popup window.
Also introduced to co-incide with this is an embedded offline email interface for when no operators are available.
Find out more @ www.whmcs.com/addons/live-chat
Upgrading
The update can be downloaded from the Downloads section of our client area, and instructions for upgrading can be found @ http://docs.whmcs.com/Live_Chat_Addon#Upgrading
Posted by Matt on Wednesday, May 9th, 2012
WHMCS V5.1 Improvements Preview
Where does the time go?!? I had originally planned to post this blog last week, but it seemed like no sooner had the week started than it was already the end of the week again! However, I bring some good news. We are expecting to be ready to release a beta version of the new release next week, and that will be a public beta, available to all. Then following a few short weeks of intense user testing and feedback actioning, we should be able to promote it to a stable release.
Client Area
In Version 5.0, we launched our new brand new client area theme based on the Bootstrap CSS framework from Twitter, providing a modern, clean and most importantly cross-compatible experience with all major browsers. And in V5.1, we have incorporated some of the ideas that came from users, and upgraded to the latest Bootstrap release which brings some additional functionality and compatability improvements.
P.S. We knew we had made the right decision in choosing Bootstrap with the amazing feedback we got from you guys, but now some of our competitors have followed our lead in using the Bootstrap framework themselves which only serves to prove it further.
Admin Order Real-Time Summary
When creating an order from the admin side, the process has now been enhanced to show product prices and totals based on the selections you make - as you make them. This works in conjunction with the new on demand promo creation feature which will also be introduced in the upcoming release and combined, provides a much more powerful and easy to use admin order creation process.
Ajaxified Network Status Checker
The client area network status page is where your clients go to check the status of your hosting network. It allows you to post network related issues and notices, and for clients to check the status of individual services on servers. However, up until now, the queries to check servers have been handled server side, and thus as your server list grew, the page would take longer to load. And not only that but should one of the servers be down or unreachable, it would delay the page loading even further while that ping was attempted. So the solution... ajax of course! So now the page will load immediately, no matter how many servers you have, and the checks are then initiated via ajax and given in real-time back to the user as soon as they complete.
Transparent Offsite Card Processing
Transparent offsite credit card processing is becoming more and more popular as the requirements for PCI Compliance, and gateways enforcing of them becomes stricter. And so there's been an explosion in the number of token based offerings by payment gateways, and demand from those using them. At WHMCS we were the first web host billing solution to implement token based billing support, and in the latest release we've taken that integration a step further to allow gateway modules to have cards submitted completely offsite via a transparent iframe.
Now we just need gateways such as Quantum Gateway in the example here to offer more flexibility over the customisation of the remote hosted pages!
New Reports
Improvements to the core reporting engine mean that reports can now combine both textual and graphical based data representations to provide you with better and easier to interpret insights into the data contained within your WHMCS system. New reports and graphs include annual income, clients by country, income by product and new customers.
There's more neat things I'd love to share, but this blog post is already long enough!
The release isn't far away now, but keep all those suggestions and comments coming in - we're still implementing as many of them as we can in the time remaining.
Posted by Matt on Monday, April 30th, 2012
Upcoming Nominet (.UK Registry) System Changes
On 1st May 2012, Nominet are introducing support for multi-year registration periods which will mean that in future, .uk domain names can be registered and renewed for between 1 and 10 years. As I'm sure you're aware, until now there has been a 2 year minimum.
So what are the key things this means for you as a WHMCS user? Well...
- Domains can be registered or renewed for single-year periods - so you may want to add a 1 year pricing option for your .uk TLD's in Setup > Products/Services > Domain Pricing
- Domains can be registered or renewed for up to ten years - so you may want to add additional registration pricing options for 3 years or more
- Domains can be renewed at any point as long as the additional years added to the domain do not take the total registration period over 10 years - this brings .UK in-line with other major TLDs, opening up early renewal promotion opportunties via coupon codes in WHMCS
- Registrations will be executed in real-time - so in future if a .UK registration fails, you should be notified immediately at the time of attempting the registration
We are aware that various domain registrars are now sending email notifications out to users of their services such as yourselves, warning that changes will be required to systems like WHMCS that are integrated with their API's. However we can confirm that at this time, we are not yet aware of any module in WHMCS that will require any changes to acommodate the new Nominet functionality.
Specifically in response to Enom's email with subject IMPORTANT: Nominet (.UK Registry) System Changes which is being sent out today, we can confirm that the Real-Time Response changes which they state are a required change will not require an update to the Enom module for WHMCS.
More information on the changes Nominet are making can be found in the official announcement here:
http://www.nominet.org.uk/registrars/systems/Plannedchanges/developmentroadmap/multiyear/
UPDATE 1st MAY 2012: The Nominet module requires an update for renewals of the new registration periods to work and is available on request via support ticket for the current release.
Posted by Matt on Monday, April 23rd, 2012
BackupAgent Launches WHMCS Integration
BackupAgent, a leading provider of cloud backup software for service providers, today announced the launch of a WHMCS Integration module. The integration allows hosting service providers to connect BackupAgent's cloud backup platform seamlessly into their WHMCS installation for full automation.
The module is directly available for all hosting service providers in the SPLA partner program "Powered by BackupAgent" and running the WHMCS automation software The module is free of charge and can be downloaded from BackupAgent's partner portal.
"We are incredibly excited with the launch of the integration module. We are always eager to keep up to date with the latest hosting technologies and we are proud to be the first cloud backup platform to integrate with WHMCS", says Robbert van Geldrop, CTO of BackupAgent. "We have had a tremendous amount of requests for WHMCS and are delighted we can now satisfy these requests."
BackupAgent was founded in 2005 and is a privately held company with headquarters in Delft, The Netherlands. BackupAgent's cloud backup technology is used by over 400 service providers, hosting companies and telcos in over 50 countries worldwide. BackupAgent was ranked 8th on the Deloitte Fast 50 in 2010, the list of fastest growing technology companies.
www.backupagent.com
Posted by John on Tuesday, April 17th, 2012
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