Alex

Any word from the devs on this?

In the email templates for the support tickets, it makes you define a static from address. This gets confusing for users if they think they have to modify the address if it is for a different department, not realizing the reply-to header is set. However, there is a template variable {ticket.department_email} available. Can we get a setting next to the From field which allows us to disable the from field in favor of using the {ticket.department_email} value? Just a simple checkbox should do. This would be really helpful!

Actually, the module log doesn't show any errors. SolusVM seems to think everything went fine, and it builds the VPS correctly. But, Blesta seems to think things failed.

Here is what the Blesta log shows as input: So, it appears that Blesta passed the 1499.5 value directly to Stripe, so these leaves me to conclude that it is not an error on the Stripe end.

Logging just fine? Logging without content. We have no HTML emails, all we use is plain text. The HTML tab is empty for all of the templates, there is only content in the Text tab. Also, as I said, it works fine with PHP piping without changing the templates.

About half the time I add a service for a client in the admin interface using the SolusVM module, I get this error: And then, about half the time I get that error (say roughly 25% of my usage) I get that error IN ADDITION to a dump above the header in the Blesta admin interface that goes something like this: (Don't have this one handy, so I am paraphrasing, but this should be fairly close) Some more info: When I get the error(s) above, the odd part is that the client VPS still gets deployed in SolusVM just fine, however Blesta does not generate a service for it nor send the client the package welcome mail. So, I usually just click "Add Service" again and it goes trough fine almost every time I try again, but we end up with a duplicate VPS that I have to manually delete... quite weird.

USD. (That's all we use) It was a $29.99 package with 50% off coupon, so it came to $15.00. The format we use is ##.##. This was not a manual payment amount, but actually paying an invoice so the amount was generated by Blesta. I believe he did the exact same thing the second time around when it worked, so that is the odd part. As I said, I added him as a client and added his service manually, so I believe he just clicked in the invoice email to go to the client portal and pay the invoice there, so it was not through the order form. Since this fella is a friend I consider very smart and technically adept, and a Systems Analyst for a Fortune 1000 company, I find it quite doubtful that it was human error. He wouldn't have tested it differently the second time around. The only difference may have been that he did a manual payment for $15 after the failure, rather than letting the system generate the amount. But after that, I asked him to try the original method (invoice payment) again and get a screenshot of the error for us, and when he did, he just paid us an extra $15 and it worked in the same method which had not worked at first.

I reported this to Paul a while back, but haven't had time to get it on the forums until now. Whenever we use SMTP for outgoing mail in Blesta (have tried 3 different servers) we do not get any mail logging of the content. However, if we use PHP piping for outgoing mail, the log works just fine. I have attached some screenshots displaying the problem while using the Rackspace mail servers. Just to be clear, SMTP mail logging has never worked for us at any point, this is not something that "broke"

On the packages list admin page: 1) Allow each admin to choose how many packages to view per page, rather than paginating at a static value. Currently it doesn't even fill the height of my widescreen monitor. 2) Add a column to the table that shows the Package Group. This is important because if you have: VPS Type 1 - Package group (maybe Xen) - Lite - Standard - Premium VPS Type 2 - Package group (maybe KVM) - Lite - Standard - Premium If both use the SolusVM module, it is nearly impossible to know which is which from this interface, unless you recall the order they were added, because the names are identical without the context of the package group.

I have no idea what you do for a living, what your experience is, or anything. I was simply asking in case it would help us to understand the fundamental reasons behind our difference of opinions. I have no reason to doubt someone I know nothing about -- I wouldn't even know what to doubt! Cheers

I have a coupon I made for a friend which was for 50% off. I set him up as a client and created the service, applying the discount code. The service normally costs $29.99, and Blesta calculated 50% to $15. However, when the friend went to pay, the following errors came about: https://api.stripe.com/v1/charges a:1:{s:5:"error";a:3:{s:4:"type";s:21:"invalid_request_error";s:7:"message";s:23:"Invalid integer: 1499.5";s:5:"param";s:6:"amount";}}I'm sort of glad it failed and didn't hit his bank for nearly $1500! Oddly, when he tried again, it worked! (It charged him $15 correctly, but not going to post the successful log since it contains personal information) Here is the mail Blesta sent him regarding the failed transaction:

... That's really nitpicking. Can't we stick to facts instead of using minor technicalities out of context to invalidate one another? Blesta v3 lacks proven stability in that it has had a fair amount of bugs and it's only been out a short time with limited use/testing, but what is there has proven to be sufficiently stable for me. It is my opinion based on years of experience that the Blesta v3 code is of high-quality, including security, especially when compared to the competition. If that weren't true then I wouldn't be having this conversation with you in the first place. I respectfully disagree. I have not the time to reiterate the shortcomings which have been reported and acknowledged by the developers. However, I will say that I do not think Blesta is yet as feature complete as it's competitors. It's also not yet as expensive, so that seems fair to me. In terms of these judgements, how much experience do you have with the competing software packages? How many PHP/MySQL applications on this scale have you built? Myself, I've worked with ModernBill (years ago, before it got bought up) and I use HostBill, ClientExec, Ubersmith and WHMCS nearly daily while working with our resellers, clients and vendors. As for PHP/MySQL applications I've built on similar scale... dozens. Try selling a dedicated server with Blesta, then try it with any of the aforementioned packages, without external modules for either, and then tell me if you think Blesta is more flexible. I actually just worked out an agreement with Paul to purchase 3 more licenses, with the plan to add 7 more soon. That should display my long-term confidence in Blesta.

I'm not debating that, I've only said that it is a reflection of the current demand for Blesta licenses. I've not implied any lack of quality on the part of Blesta, because I don't believe Blesta lacks quality. However, I do think Blesta is immature -- in the sense that the developers of Blesta themselves would like to have v3 more feature complete and have more third-party extensions. That will come in time, primarily because the software is of quality. But, some fundamental shortcomings (such as support for configurable options on checkout) have been identified and are being worked on for v3.1 -- this is evidence of the immaturity which would inspire some would-be Blesta users to sell their promo purchased licenses. But, the fact that it's being worked on is evidence to me that the developers are listening to the users and working in the right direction. It's really not uncommon for people to have a knee-jerk reaction like this and sell their license without having the foresight to see the potential and fundamental quality. I've managed to have this creative foresight many times, and I think Blesta will prove to be another successful instance of that. I do not confuse maturity with quality, and I ask that we drop that misconception here. I am very happy with the quality and stability of Blesta, but that doesn't override the reality that it is immature. Scope is a direct competitor of secure, stable and high-quality software, so it makes perfect sense that Blesta would lack some functionality in order to achieve it's superior foundation.

Our website is several years old! We're currently working on a complete redesign (same designer and coder) but you have to give us credit, that was quite nice 3 years ago! Excessive CSS effects were more acceptable at that time. The main banner image is actually an illustration of the view from our offices here in Jacksonville, Florida. That is the St. Johns River you see, looking towards the former Modis Building in Downtown Jacksonville, from the South side. You can see the Jacksonville Landing if you look closely. I'm sitting at my house just 5-10 minutes away from the office as I write this. We're so overloaded with the usual eCommerce surge of the holidays right now though, and the started/looming launch of our hosting/domain/CDN/SSL brands, that we may not launch our new design until early 2014.

I couldn't agree more. My business has done very well due to the loyalty of our clients, referrals from our clients and repeat business with our clients. Because of past experiences like mentioned here, once a client does business with us and realizes that we deliver as promised time and time again, they appreciate us. It's this that has kept us in business for years, and has given us the luxury of raising our rates and expanding operations into other markets such as SaaS, hosting, CDN, SSL certificates and domain names. Having a slew of quality references (who will confirm that we don't operate like the "normal guys" do) has really helped us over the years. I spent years working in the industry before I formed a team of competent individuals to work with me. Designers, developers, system administrators, copywriters, billing coordinators, salespeople... you name it. I'm fairly competent in each of these fields, but no one person can properly keep up with all of these roles for a company with any real volume.

Literally LOLed. This really is an extremely naive perspective. Many of these bugs were observed well in advance but weren't fixed until a few releases down the line. Regardless, there is no evidence that any of the bugs fixed since the release of v3 were the result of a previous 3.0.x release, and I personally don't believe that to be the case. Beside the fact that such a thing would be unheard of, I think the Blesta team is comprised of solid developers. In fact, this is only evidence that the pace of development is increasing since the release of v3, which is a great sign. I actually think the team could do better, and if Cody/Tyson worked for me they would be getting pushed harder than I perceive them to be, but I think they are on a great path which far exceeds the competition. Like Paul, I too think you may come to reconsider your position in the not-so-distant future.

Hey Ken, I'll take this bit by bit here, but I think I should start with saying that I think you entirely misunderstand my position, my business needs and my definition of maturity. A reseller buys a license specifically for the intent to make money, and that has nothing to do with their evaluation of the software or intent to use it themselves, but rather it's market demand and potential profitability. So, while I think I see where you're coming from, I don't think you've made a clear distinction here. I don't think you've addressed the fundamental point which I've made, which is that most of these don't appear to be "flippers" (or resellers, for that matter) but people who didn't find the software fitting to their needs. I did make the point that maybe we should appreciate what few flippers have been identified, because I'm not entirely convinced that their actions are anything but good for the community. But, I'm clearly playing devil's advocate here as I don't have all the insight necessary to make that statement with any real authority. I just don't see them as having any major negative impact on Blesta. Everyone is entitled to their own approach and methodology, and I think both are fair in this case. It's wise of you to be cautious, but others would rather jump on the opportunity to get what they need for $99, knowing that they could sell the license for maybe a small profit if it doesn't work out. But, it's not fair to negatively categorize those who take the latter approach and decide to sell because it doesn't work for them. This will only discourage those potential customers from returning to Blesta when it is more mature, as Paul has made clear he is aware of by his public response(s). My company never launched a public product offering which used WHMCS, Hostbill, ClientExec, etc. I have tested some of these extensively, as I have with Blesta, but our initial launch (which hasn't happened yet) will be using Blesta. However, the security issues surrounding "the others" provided us with enough incentive to not use them, and I suspect it would serve as incentive for existing customers of "the others" to switch over to Blesta. So, it's funny you approach the topic from this angle. This is where it became infinitely clear to me that you are misunderstanding my point of view, and I'm sure Paul can confirm this for me. I really have no idea where you got these ideas, but let's get some facts straight: 1) I called Paul on the phone before purchasing Blesta and gave him a full interview with questions relating almost exclusively to security. 2) I'm a Certified Web Application Defender ( http://www.giac.org/certified-professional/alex-stanford/135828 ) with nearly a decade of experience as a PHP/MySQL (the foundation of both Blesta and most of the systems you refer to here) developer. 3) If security were not a concern I would not be using Blesta 4) If a plethora of modules which work identically to major systems like WHMCS was my requirements, I would have never purchased Blesta in the first place. 5) I would highly prefer a limitation of scope over code quality. 6) To this day I'm actively purchasing additional Blesta add-on licenses and implementing it for even more businesses. With all of that said, I stand by my statement that Blesta is immature. It's a brand new, entirely rewritten version of the software. There is much room for improvement in terms of being feature-complete and user-friendly, but the foundation is outstanding and I have good faith it will mature quickly. If I meant stability was a concern, I would have said that. Maturity, at least for me, refers to how well tested, broadly used, feature complete and aged a piece of software is. Blesta has proven to be quite stable and secure in my testing. We're talking about dozes of licenses here, not hundreds or thousands! If proper demand was in place, this wouldn't be considered an "over abundance". Just because only one person was selling when you were looking doesn't mean that anything more than 1 licenses available is an over abundance. Furthermore, a product with very high demand almost never suffers from concerns like this. This is really more evidence of my hypothesis being accurate. If more "flippers" had purchased during the $99 window wouldn't you have had more options to choose from? I think it's because the people who are now selling hadn't yet made a decision as to whether they would use the software, because "flippers" would have been happy to sell you a license for $75 profit. I this we just had a bit of miscommunication here, because for the most part I think we see eye-to-eye on more of this than it would seem by reading this thread. Cheers, Alex

We just made a few tweaks to our fcgi settings in Apache and with any luck it will help. I'll wait a couple of days to make a call, as it can be quite intermittent.

Just found this: http://serverfault.com/questions/251418/premature-end-of-script-headers-occurring-seemingly-randomly It seems similar. Also found these: http://galleryproject.org/node/8955 http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?p=2511696 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=868893 http://htmlfixit.com/cgi-tutes/tutorial_Common_Web_dev_error_messages_and_what_they_mean.php#premature Maybe these will help to generate ideas.

I made a post with my take on things over in a different thread: http://www.blesta.com/forums/index.php?/topic/957-blesta-unbranded-license-for-sale/?p=8917 Will just quote it here since it entirely applies:

Another great example of a member of the active Blesta community benefiting from the $99 sale. I'm quite literally afraid to think how small this community would be without the $99 sale which happened during Beta. I think we just found that 2 of the most active community members on these forums might not be here without that $99 sale. I too have fallen in love with Blesta. But, more due to the security and staff than it's current stability or flexibility, which I must admit I think is lacking. However, I am aware that the developers are working hard to improve that and I believe they will do a good job. @CubicWebs: Did the licenses you purchased seem to come from license "flippers" or people who couldn't put Blesta to use as they had hoped?

I probably wouldn't be a Blesta customer if it weren't for that promo, and I've since purchased Add-On company licenses, totaling me at well over what the full-price ($210, right?) license would cost me today. I've also purchased the ModuleGarden cPanel module for Blesta, which I assume helps to further grow the 3rd-party community around Blesta. Despite Blesta's current shortcomings or immaturity, we are making it work for several of our businesses. So, I must say that I'm a proponent of the $99 sale which happened, because for me it lowered the barrier of entry enough to justify giving something new a try. I struggle to see the excessive "flipping" which most everyone here seems to be convinced of. I'm sure a case or two exist, but in general I have seen a lot of people selling a single license with minimal margins over $99. If I were in their shoes, I wouldn't sell my copy for $99 either, I'd try to recoup a few extra bucks too! It seems to me that if people were serious about flipping licenses in such a manner that they would have purchased many licenses and be selling them en masse. Most of what I'm seeing is one guy with one license and a business which could have used Blesta. The evidence of my take on it goes further, though: If Blesta were already in high-demand then we wouldn't be seeing so many licenses sit unsold, and these $99 buyers would be running out of licenses quickly. But, what we're seeing is a lot of people willing to undercut the Blesta direct price by ~$50 and still not selling the license. I bet if Paul published the Blesta sales over time we would see that licenses were selling dramatically faster during Beta at the $99 rate than they are now. I myself could justify dropping $99 without knowing much about what I'm getting, just for the off-chance that it gets me away from WHMCS. Like many others who felt the same way, I ended up with a Blesta license long before I ever used the software. I personally know several people whom purchased during that $99 period and who can't yet make Blesta work for them so they are just sitting on the license and keeping an eye on Blesta's progress. It's no surprise to me that others whom purchased at $99 and Blesta didn't work for them are selling their licenses now. It's also no surprise to me that these licenses are sitting unsold, as I think the hosting community (at least) has more awareness about the state of Blesta than it did during the Beta. Any license "flippers" who purchased a lot of licenses with intent of resale only provided Blesta with more income during Beta. How is this any different than a reseller, really? They paid consumer rates for bulk at the time, betting on Blesta to become popular. It's almost like we should appreciate these guys, not belittle them. Now these guys are serving as Blesta salespeople out posting on forums, which can only help expand the active community. If solid demand for Blesta existed, their $99 licenses would be history by now. From my perspective, we have a whole lot of license holders and potential customers waiting to see Blesta progress before they make any decisions. I suspect as we see 3.1, 3.2, more modules, etc. come to light, and the current 30% direct discount ends, these licenses will begin to dry up. I say this because buyers on the fence will feel more comfortable, and because less people will be inclined to sell their license.

CloudFlare may or may not have been involved in this issue, but they certainly aren't the Cadillac of CDNs. EdgeCast and Akamai seem to be the best CDN options going still. However, my company is releasing our CDN in the near future, which will run on the PEER1 network with 6 NA PoPs and 1 UK PoP to start. Our offering will be technologically more similar to EdgeCast and Akamai than CloudFlare but will not require nearly as much cost for the customer; we will be friendly to customers with low volume. In fact, our CDN has a design advantage over all of these guys which specifically targets low volume/traffic customers. With the aforementioned CDNs, it will return home to the origin if no one has made a request for the resource near that PoP recently. With our CDN that will only happen on the very first request, after which the CDN will retain the cache until the cache headers expire, and then it will just update the cache, not delete it. This tremendously helps with the performance of low-volume websites which may not have people requesting their site from all over the world very frequently. With the more traditional CDNs, the performance improvement for low-traffic websites is often negligible, therefore it's usually not even worth it to add CDN to the mix. We intend to change that, because we believe that all websites, big or small, should be able to affordably benefit from distributed content delivery via BGP Anycast. Regardless, I don't usually add any caching to the admin sections of web apps because it's generally not worth the effort anyway. I would recommend the same to anyone. As for a registrar whom handles vanity name servers, you may want to consider us. (CheapoDomains.biz) Not only are we priced competitively, but we support custom/vanity name servers for free. (as well as free DNS management, email accounts and privacy protection) You can easily configure the vanity name servers from your customer control panel once you've transferred/registered a domain with us. But, if you have any trouble, you can rely on friendly and knowledgeable support from myself or my staff. (always English-speaking Americans)

This actually looks like a coupon math issue to me, from what you've said. 50% off of $3.98 shouldn't be $397.50, obviously, but rather $1.99. However, not sure why Stripe considered 397.5 invalid. I could be misunderstanding, more details would probably help.

I'm the owner of http://fullambit.com - a web design and development consulting firm. You can learn more about me via LinkedIn in my signature. It may be worth mentioning that we have extensive experience with the web hosting and eCommerce industries, as well as reasonable familiarity with Blesta v3 customization and integration. If you're looking for the cheapest option though, it won't be us. We're 100% owned and operated in the USA with a focus on superb customer service and deliverable quality. Feel free to PM me if you're interested in working with us and we can go from there.