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Domain Manager - We need your feedback on domains


Paul

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13 hours ago, EuroDomenii said:

I guess that the new feature is " Renewal Price Option - Optionally set a renew price that is different from the new price for services."  Nice!

Don't you have a grosso modo ETA for domain refactoring?  I mean, this year will be ready?  Or, we are talking about 2-3 years (  let's remember that the initial post is from august 2016).

This could be relevant to wait for the feature to land in, or start with existing framework and import later. 

The renew price option in 4.6 is one of the core updates required for the domain manager, and can be used now to support a separate new and renew price for domains in the current system. A separate transfer price and better support for domains is coming. While I don't have an ETA yet, we have been making progress. I know that it's highly requested, and much needed, and our 4.6 release puts us 1 step closer in terms of underlying core functionality to support the domain manager.

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On 5/31/2019 at 6:10 PM, Amit Kumar Mishra said:

may be @Blesta Addons, would be able to make a module/plugin to help us

i do not see many around with better knowledge?

we can't do anything, this need a modification in the core files, and we didn't encourage  the core files modification or hacking .

after the renewal price option, the next step i think is the unification of command in all domains modules, like getNameservers() , setNameservers(array $vars = null), getWhoisContact($type = 'all') ,  getEppCode(), setEppCode($epp) .... something like that .... or the second option that i can think about is to create a new module called for example domain manager, inside the module the option to add registrars and then extend the module command from the registrar class, the same login as modules with their functions, but finally Blesta who decide what is the best .

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In the first place, there was an internal debate regarding domains as plugin versus services. 

Later on, the mainstream is that domains should remain services. 

"Domains will almost certainly remain as services but be given a designation as domains so they can be displayed a little differently. That seems to be the simplest way forward. " https://www.blesta.com/forums/index.php?/topic/7197-domain-manager-we-need-your-feedback-on-domains/&do=findComment&comment=52874

"All the world are agreed in this subject. Domains are services and should remain as services. how it should displayed and how the order form should treated is another story. " https://www.blesta.com/forums/index.php?/topic/7197-domain-manager-we-need-your-feedback-on-domains/&do=findComment&comment=60816
 
According to https://dev.blesta.com/browse/CORE-3053 Add migration for pricing to support a renewal price, there a new columns to existing tables. 

This means that the new domain manager will be backward compatible? Or still a migration utility is needed, but it will be easier to upgrade, since domains would remain services?

Thanks! 
 

Edited by EuroDomenii
typo
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Hello to all :)

 

Finally some action, lol :P

to Paul, Cody, Tyson, etc (belestars staff :blesta: )

Why not simple make the this approche like I have done 4 years ago ?

 

My Original Post: 

 

Quote

========= Patch files for diferent prices to work (Registration / Transfer / Renew) ========
 
for this to work correctly you have to download the correct pach files below and replace the original ones (make a backup of the original, to reverse if you dont whant) that are:

app/modules/packages.php (this only make a smal change to a funtion to make it public and not private)
plugins/order/lib/order_types/domain/order_type_domain.php (this make some changes to detect if it is a transfer or a normal registration and it gets the correct prices and/or tld's for it)
 
Patch for blesta 3.3 - Download Patch Files
Patch for blesta 3.4 - Download Patch Files
Patch for blesta 3.5 - Download Patch Files
Note: Wen applying this pach files, if you have any outher Domain Module, you have to make some small changes on your Domain Module to be able to work 100%, it only needs to add the two new types "domaintransfer" and "domainrenew", if you whant help for this please post here.
==================================================================

 

This fixes almost everything, you can add diferent prices for diferent Types (Register/Transfer/Renew) and only needs 2 simples modifications on CORE to detect the type and apply the prices, after that wen registering or transfering a domain, the cron that register or transfer, applies the price added on type "Renew".

Simples has that :)

For multiples prices upload, just make a simples CSV/XML/JSON option to be able to upload all proces at once, I thin it resolves everithing and there is no need to make huge core changes :)

I hope to help more in this foruns :) very busy this few years also on CLOUD buisness now and so more work eheh :P

Regards to all blestars :blesta: 

 

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14 hours ago, EuroDomenii said:

 

In the first place, there was an internal debate regarding domains as plugin versus services. 

Later on, the mainstream is that domains should remain services. 

"Domains will almost certainly remain as services but be given a designation as domains so they can be displayed a little differently. That seems to be the simplest way forward. " https://www.blesta.com/forums/index.php?/topic/7197-domain-manager-we-need-your-feedback-on-domains/&do=findComment&comment=52874

"All the world are agreed in this subject. Domains are services and should remain as services. how it should displayed and how the order form should treated is another story. " https://www.blesta.com/forums/index.php?/topic/7197-domain-manager-we-need-your-feedback-on-domains/&do=findComment&comment=60816
 
According to https://dev.blesta.com/browse/CORE-3053 Add migration for pricing to support a renewal price, there a new columns to existing tables. 

This means that the new domain manager will be backward compatible? Or still a migration utility is needed, but it will be easier to upgrade, since domains would remain services?

Thanks! 
 

The goal is to remain backwards compatible, so far it's looking like that will be possible. Meaning that existing registrar modules should continue to work, and it shouldn't break when installing the domain manager. However, the domain manager may not be able to recognize pre-existing domain packages and take control over them. A way of conversion may be required to take full advantage of the domain manager with existing domains unless starting fresh for domains going forward.

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22 hours ago, Paul said:

The goal is to remain backwards compatible, so far it's looking like that will be possible. Meaning that existing registrar modules should continue to work, and it shouldn't break when installing the domain manager. However, the domain manager may not be able to recognize pre-existing domain packages and take control over them. A way of conversion may be required to take full advantage of the domain manager with existing domains unless starting fresh for domains going forward.

What is the Obstacle Now in Domains? in reality the obstacles are now :

- Multi Price System, This can be fixed with more price fields like Renewal Price, we add more fields , Transfer Price, Restore Price.
- Better Domain Management, this also can be fixed by adding the functions to the actual modules .
- Unification Commands, this also can be done by actualizing the actual modules.
- Privacy, Forwarding & other addons prices, this can be implemented with the actual  system by addons, we need just to tweak the actual modules to support this addons
- if we want to distinct with domains modules and other modules we can add a new entry in modules to define is a domain module or not (true/false) or something like the order type definition.

For me what Blesta need is enhancing the actual system  and not reinventing a whole system for domains.  now we have waited years to only hear a something from blesta, creating another system will take other 2 or 3 years, and the quick solution and the simple is to extend the actual exist mechanism to support new features .

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On 6/15/2019 at 7:09 PM, Amit Kumar Mishra said:

@Paul i see, you have given the renewal pricing option in 4.6

but there is no one commenting in this thread, if the domain manager is working as expected

if any one would let the community know about this, would be of great importance

Cool, but now in our company we will put the same prices for registering/renewing we have think a lot and since almost every 6 months or so the proces are changed, we cannot spend time in changing the prices everytime, so we will always put the higher price for both to minimise riscs on rasing prices that we have not notice. :)
 

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6 hours ago, PauloV said:

Cool, but now in our company we will put the same prices for registering/renewing we have think a lot and since almost every 6 months or so the proces are changed, we cannot spend time in changing the prices everytime, so we will always put the higher price for both to minimise riscs on rasing prices that we have not notice. :)
 

Welcome back again ?

in my opinion the renewal price is a good addition, sometimes you need to make a promo without offering promo code, this way you can offer promo for renewal or registering with a easy way. it left now the transfer price wit the same logic as renew price, the transfer price will be only used in order form as it happen only the first time of contract. after making a unified commands for domains modules will solve all other issues, after this two steps we can release our custom order form to the community. (used here https://nh.ma) we can't release it as we have some tweak in our modules and some core files .

 

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1 hour ago, Blesta Addons said:

Welcome back again ?

in my opinion the renewal price is a good addition, sometimes you need to make a promo without offering promo code, this way you can offer promo for renewal or registering with a easy way. it left now the transfer price wit the same logic as renew price, the transfer price will be only used in order form as it happen only the first time of contract. after making a unified commands for domains modules will solve all other issues, after this two steps we can release our custom order form to the community. (used here https://nh.ma) we can't release it as we have some tweak in our modules and some core files .

 

In Portugal to add Promos ,the product/service has to have an inicial date and end date visible to the client or elese we are fine €€€€ big time lol :)
Yes, I know what your are sayng, and even now in our WHMCS we have diferent prices, but in Blesta we opt to not have diferent prices, for now :blesta: 

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On 5/29/2020 at 5:47 PM, Paul said:

This is getting a lot more attention after we release the affiliate system, would should be in 4.11. Affiliate System, and Domain Manager are the 2 biggest items on our todo list right now.

Ok, so have we to choose about iDevAffiliate or does make it more sense to wait for ver. 4.11 and Blesta own affiliate system? What are your suggestions about?

Also if someone have now iDev or will switch to it, have we to expect some incompatibilities ?

I mean also simple things like if an affiliate system cannot be switched off , you can find referring (link url etc) on the client portal or logged in client area of this integrated affiliate system.

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@vedovaWe are delaying our affiliate due to the very known reason. Seriously if I knew that Blesta will delay so much a must have feature...
I don't like the idea using 3rd party affiliate systems because there is nothing better than having one coming with the billing system.
It is really shame watching updates with new features like "invoice filtering" when we are lagging behind with other more important one. 

And the crazy part is that.. Blesta devs are not asked to invent the hot water .. affiliate systems are not something unique ..
Of course domain manager is complicated and should be perfect before released but affiliate system? 

I really hope to see it with 4.11 if I don't I wont renew my support license and will consider leaving Blesta.

The competitors monthly prices can be covered from the new customers within affiliate marketing. 

Just don't want to deal with migration .. I hate migrations..

Flower stores have affiliate marketing... 
 

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@CyberHour Mine was just a question. By me most useful are things like a domain manager, vat full and internal (not external, as this would be something like having an invoicing systems to generate Blesta invoice) ... of course I loved @PauloV work. But has non sense to not have it internal developed by Blesta itself, and also the ability to watch on VAT MOSS reports and printing ... without have prior exporting them. Another big must-to-have feature and I will ask on requested feature site, commonly is the VIES check support! If possibile with VAT rate update like WHMCS do. Nothing strange, but if you work with EU customers you must have it; it's not an option and by my humble opinion it's more important than the affiliate system itself. The affiliate system can be deployed when it will have most of the iDev characteristics .. ie. I don't want to take an external module in order to give affiliates the chance to use a product page direct affiliate link rather than only the main website page one like WHMCS ask you to do. If you want to give people an affiliate link module, you have to give them a complete full system or better to use an external one at this point. The last thing coming now in mind to me: if I got $100 income with tax included, and the affiliate rate was 10%, the system cannot calculate $10 as the affiliate amount! It must be ($100 - tax1 - tax2) * %. !!! Or will have to pay affiliates also a % for the tax we pay to government ? in WHMCS - but this is Blesta so I'm expecting better - things happens like this and we used to calculate a fixed fees for all users to not loose money. But it's not correct as for example, Hungary has VAT rate of 27.00% while in Switzerland is 7.70% , in Andorra 4.50% and so on. I believe in US with Sales taxes will be the same also. Ok I think have wrote a little more than what is needed but hope this helps...

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3 hours ago, CyberHour said:

>It is really shame watching updates with new features like "invoice filtering" when we are lagging behind with other more important one.

For my best knowledge. Accounting is very important for a billing system. Almost if you have something to do with invoice and taxes in your business.

Alternatively for who have not a real business, can rely on WooCommerce + every bitcoin's payment module on the earth, a billing system it's useless.

>The competitors monthly prices can be covered from the new customers within affiliate marketing. 
I didn't choose Blesta for pricing reasons :)

>Flower stores have affiliate marketing... 
Times are changed and affiliate is important but not all. If you are not a hosting giant, these will cover not more than 2-3% of your total annual sales.

I suggest you don't rely so much about affiliate system in marketing sectors that are very sold out on affiliate system technics, affiliate would be only a very marginal time investment for little hosting companies. It's like to rely on Facebook rather than SEO & Google Ads for hosting advertising ... it's fool. It could work or not, but for 90-95% it's a waste of money. The same in hosting affiliate marketing. If you don't have a big hosting company and a well known brand, working more than necessary on affiliate systems and Facebook advertising it's totally wasted.

 

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5 hours ago, CyberHour said:

It is really shame watching updates with new features like "invoice filtering" when we are lagging behind with other more important one.

We will not stop releasing updates entirely while we finish up big features. We did that when we were rewriting Blesta for v3.0, and it was a mistake. We need to be consistent with releases, and there are tasks big and small. Filtering was pretty simple, and it's useful for the majority.

Everyone has this "one feature" that they need, and all other features are "useless" to them. That's the wrong way of looking at it. New features that you may not care for, someone else cares for greatly. We can consistently release updates with new features, while still working on the big ones.

 

5 hours ago, vedova said:

The last thing coming now in mind to me: if I got $100 income with tax included, and the affiliate rate was 10%, the system cannot calculate $10 as the affiliate amount!

Affiliate system excludes tax in the payout amount, it looks at the package price pre-tax. So if your payout rate is 10%, and the item costs $100 + $30 tax ($130 total), the payout would be $10, not $13.

You referenced quite a few potential new features, if you don't mind, please check that they are individually listed at https://requests.blesta.com with sufficient detail. When we plan new releases, we review the requests site.

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@vedova the smart search was already doing great + for the accounting we are doing it on monthly basis so everything is on track (we have connect it with 3rd party  accounting software which follows the local tax requirements and makes the work easier for our account department), for Vies and VAT MOSS the same but yeah still lagging.

"I didn't choose Blesta for pricing reasons "
- Me nether, I like supporting new projects and companies plus I'm not fan of closed source (back then, blesta was still new on the market with not much price difference with the main competitor).

"Times are changed and affiliate is important but not all. If you are not a hosting giant, these will cover not more than 2-3% of your total annual sales."
You do realise that 1 to 3% of total annual sales is not that small. This is why I said that affiliate and even 1% of annual sales profit can cover side expenses like the yearly price for the competitor solution.


We focus on both SEO & Ads and Facebook. Facebook/Twitter are actually driving tons of traffic / shares and sales.

Anyway again I love blesta and I'm against going with the masses but that doesn't mean that should lag with the basics. 




 

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> for Vies and VAT MOSS the same but yeah still lagging.

Interesting, but not for the accounting reasons, just to show the correct price at checkout to customers... also because it's need to be done with GeoIP.

But about VAT MOSS you know that almost two part must match finally, as IP<->Phone number   Credit Card country <-> IP etc... so it's something more complex rather than simply transfer it to an accounting tool. We know tools like Quaderno, Octobat, Avalara do that match. Avalara & TaxJar already do this in US for example, and them can filing sales tax returns too.


>I'm not fan of closed source
Me too, as I'm coming from Linux since 1998 #184306  and supporting GNU too, so we preferred to change to Blesta and another OpenSource for main CMS (not WP ?


> 1% of annual sales profit can cover side expenses like the yearly price for the competitor solution.

Yes that's true and depending on how you can realise that affiliate promotion .. I know about hosts that spend money to achieve referrals ?


>We focus on both SEO & Ads and Facebook. Facebook/Twitter are actually driving tons of traffic / shares and sales.
Probably it depends on product and region. ? But we (and others ) tested on that traffic from FB is not totally correspondent to hosting products even FB suggested is it.

Something is not working ... and traffic / likes from people have anything _real_ interest in Hosting / IT is not an opinion. So about FB it's a true lottery ... that's all!

(ps. last week Germany disappeared from FB countries list in ADS manager ? How you can rely on something like that???


>that doesn't mean that should lag with the basics. 
Agree. Completely.

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