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Tyson responded while I was typing, so just to add to what he said -- We carefully consider every core feature, if it doesn't make sense to be part of the core then it's implemented as an extension. Take a look at the Order System and the Support Manager. Both very well used, often necessary major features.. but we understand that other developers may create something that people prefer to use instead. Some future features -- KB, Mass Mailer, Affiliate System.. all of these will be plugins. (The KB will actually be part of the Support Manager plugin) Some features just make sense to be part of the core and forcing them to be extensions when they shouldn't be would fragment the system and de-stabilize the most basic function of Blesta. I ask the following questions when considering a new feature - 1. How widely used will the feature be? 2. How likely is it 3rd party developers will want to roll their own? 3. How basic to billing and client management is the feature, regardless of how many people will use it? Not that we go through a checklist, but this should give you an insight into our thought process. It's usually very apparent to us when something should be part of the core or not.

Yeah we've discussed this pretty extensively internally. So that we can get it out, the plugin will probably not yet tie into any third party mailers, however it will have a mechanism to queue and deliver mail systematically. So, if you're sending to a lot of people and leave the page or your browser crashes, it will still complete.

The OP's approach is more or less what we're already working toward. This is the reason we have extensions. For instance, the Order plugin is not apart of the core, although we currently ship it with Blesta by default. Likewise, gateways and modules are not apart of the core either. However, there is still going to be a need for core features to some degree. Currently, there are several still pending, such as the ability to merge clients. Many other features, like a mass mailer, are better suited as plugins. We still need to expand on the event system in Blesta to allow for extensions to perform more actions. There's always going to be some users that need custom feature X, or want feature Y to be changed slightly to work better for their business. But we don't intend to add or change core features that only 1% of users will use. Plugins are better suited in those cases. In the future, you will probably see a decrease in core features, and an increase in extensions.

Looks like a nice RESTful API, do you know when the beta will end? To be honest, I'm not sure we would consider doing an official module until the API is out of beta.

Yes, you MUST overwrite these files when upgrading. Every single time. Also, to clarify, the hotfix can be applied to PHP 5.4 or PHP 5.5. The standard distribution will work from PHP 5.1-5.4, so it's not necessary to apply the hotfix to PHP 5.4, but you can. Also, there are 3 files, not 2 that are encoded. If you are only seeing 2, you may be looking at a patch where there was no change. Every major or minor release will have all 3 of the files.

I don't think this is possible exactly how you describe. Blesta does not support statements yet so if you set a hosting service to be billed monthly then an invoice will be created each month. What you could do is set the service to be billed yearly but mention the monthly price in the service name. This reminds me that I do want to build a statement plugin, but I can't commit to doing this anytime soon. Yes, it is possible to manually print and send invoices or have them sent automatically via InterFax or PostalMethods. Yes, you can create a "free support" service. If you do any other work you can manually create an invoice with the hours and rate or any other costs. You mentioned a web package. Blesta works by having "services" such as web hosting, domain name, support contract etc. Each service will automatically generate an invoice according to the term you set (monthly, yearly etc). If your web package includes web hosting, a domain name and a support contract, you could create three different services, and if they all renew on the same date then each service will show as a line item on a single invoice. The other way to do it would be to have a single service such as web hosting, then several add-ons for that service for a domain name and support contract. These should show as line items on the invoice.

Personally I think if you are going to be sending a lot of mass mail and categorising it etc. then it would be much better to write a plugin to tightly integrate something like Mailchimp into Blesta which already has all these features and much more.

We will be raising the minimum requirement to PHP 5.3 next year, likely in Q1 or Q2.

You guys are not going to believe me but it's was/is true, one of the most "reliable" hosts made a "typo" in their ads. Thinking I am lying? Well a picture is worth a thousand words right? Here you go! Really I went on their chat and the guy took like 3 minutes to reply back to me (probably saying to himself ho crap..) and said that's was a "typo". How can you really put a GOOGLE ad that's probably worth $xxxxx or even more into production by "typoing" GB instead of MB??

I think most of us are in agreement that it is more convenient to have only the possibility of 1 pro forma number found, like your example, when checking logs for that particular pro forma invoice number. We will likely explore a different solution than yours, however, since yours adds two fields to every invoice when only 1 invoice would contain valid information. For now, pro forma numbers will continue to be generated like beta 1.

For the HotFix, why dont you do a function that check for PHP Version or ioncube echo error, and if it detectect the error or php version 5.5+ it auto renames or move the Patch Files? this way you dont have to include extra instructions to install/upgrade blesta to support php5.5

I believe You can get client info inside getadminaddfields , let me search for you this night . I wil back to you .

One thing you could do is create an invoice with a future bill date. The invoice will not be delivered to the client until that date, nor will they see it in the client area. You can edit the invoice to add new items as they come up, and on the bill date the invoice will be visible and delivered. I did see that you don't want invoices delivered, in which case you can just set the client group to paper. Invoices will be "queued" under Billing > Print Queue, but you can periodically just mark them printed. If you will have services under their accounts, the above method won't work, but you can always sync service renew dates to a specific day. Prorata can also be used to to this as well, but it works for a specific day of the month, so you can't say that you want everything to renew on January 1st for example, it would be the 1st of each month. EDIT: So, if they order on March 15th, and it's a 1 year term, it will charge them for either March 15 -> April 1, or both March 15 - April 1 and April 1 to April 1 of the following year, depending on your "cutoff" day in the prorata settings. You can bill for x hours of support, but Blesta will not track that support automatically. I'd suggest using a sticky note to track that for each individual customer.

Already clears logs on a monthly basis. You set it here: Settings > System > General > Rotation Policy (That empties the logs)

Well incrase(edit php.ini file) max execution time to 60 and if only that is reason it will work,for comparation cPanel default value is 90s but 60 shoud be fine . Example Xamp php.ini-production file(see line 375) located in C:\xampp\php

Why would you need that? You can just call your function inside of your plugin.

great, that's right. i can change it, so thanks

I don't really think this is something that we have to worry about. The Blesta team knows that they want to keep things simple and smooth. The UI Designer (Paul) prefers the less = more approach. So if they feel a feature request would add more bloat than it would be worth, I am confident that they will turn it into an optional plugin rather than a core feature. However, you also have to realize that Blesta is a billing system...and adding onto those features is going to happen and not neccesarily be added as plugins. The example you gave is a good example I think, the ability to delete a service that has been suspended for 90 days would be a main feature and directly related to the billing system...I'd see no reason at all to have that it it's own plugin, especially when all it would need is a setting in the admin panel on whether to use it or not. Blesta 3.0 is only a year old, and is not feature complete yet so I'm sure there is still plenty more "basic" features to add before we start getting into bloating the interface in my opinion.

Ok, thanks.

Yes it needs to be applied to every version.

I didn't fully understand your reason for wanting to bill monthly. As I understand it the pro rata feature is for billing on a specific date (e.g. 1st January etc) and if a client signs up half way through the year they will only be charged for 6 months. From the tooltip: As far as I know when pro rata is enabled you can give refunds automatically when they cancel part way through a period. This may be what you're looking for. Even without pro rata you can manually give a refund to a client. Mike from Licensecart may be able to help you as I know he uses pro rata. Blesta is specifically built for web hosts and the functionality you describe seems more like how a software product built for design/development agencies would behave (e.g. workflowmax). However Blesta code is 99.4% open so anything is possible, you just need to hire someone to create a plugin. Edit: Also, if a client pre pays the money will be added as credit to their account. This credit will be automatically applied to any invoices, or in Blesta 3.3 you or your clients can manually apply this to selected invoices.

Reposting my answer from another thread for the benefit of those reading this thread:

ahh , i have misunderstand you . as Paul say , they are planning to limit support to php 5.3+

phpseclib support php 5.3/5.4+ as i know

i'm was thinking in a plugin to add custom pages for client and admin side . now i have removed it from my thinking . any ETA for it ?

Generaly (I will explain why I think Blesta is not in this category) it can be problem for hosting companies which have many clents and don-t implement multi php selectors, I have tons of user that uses ....5.1, 5.2 or 5,3 infact 90% of them ar at 5.3 and lower .But since I implement multi php selectors on all servers including cPanel runing on centos(have two on centos rest run on cloud linux) it is not problem for me,now why I thnk blesta can be safely be excluded from this ,because it is billing software and 95% webmaster host this kind of softwares isolated and not on same server where clients are(this is essential) so in theory they will not have problem to edit configuration without braking clients.

My monthly is a group, my owned is a group. But I do like your top screenshot, the other one I don't like as they show them anyway in sections.

when v3.3 come, i will release a new plugin that let you customise css/js as you want without changing the core files

$db_info = array( 'driver' => "mysql", 'host' => "yourmysqlserver.com", 'database' => "database_name", 'user' => "database"user", 'pass' => "password_database", 'persistent' => false, // or true 'charset_query' => "SET NAMES 'utf8'", 'options' => array() ); $remote_database = new Record($db_info);

Will Noted , is thier any possibility to make it inject php function ? something like $return_val['body_start'][] = my_own_phpfunction($vars); Note , i mean leave the function intact and run it inside the caller section (head/body_start/body_end) ?

We are going to be making use of PHP 5.3 specific features including namespaces, etc.. however to what extent and when I'll defer to Cody. That is the point really, to raising the minimum requirement.

Please note that the AppController.structure event has been updated to use arrays instead of strings for head, body_start, body_end in 3.3.0-b2. This is a backwards incompatible change (with 3.3.0-b1). Please be prepared to update your plugins if your plugins use the AppController.structure event. See CORE-1421 for more info.

This is trivial to implement with a plugin using the AppController.structure event.

The bottom line is that there's no 1 software option that's best for everyone. Blesta has a ways to go before it will support all the same gateways and modules as our competitors, and we prioritize development based on demand. WHMCS has had the advantage, a large customer base and plenty of revenue. Yet, they have gone years now without adding any significant new features. Virtually all of their new features and integrations are sold by Modules Garden, a third party developer who was offered an exclusive deal in order to limit competition in the market. The fact is, WHMCS is in damage control and has been for a long time now. As for Blesta: One release at a time. Out of all the products available, Blesta is the best written, the most stable, and has the best track record on security. That's a solid foundation we continue to build on, and we have a lot of great things planned for the future.

Agreed Naja7host mate, WHM**: Launched 1.0.0 in 2005 and built on it, each version's modules are passed onto what it is today. When WHM** 6.x comes out in PDO format (Re-write) they are going to be in the same situation because every single module will need to be re-written in PDO to be compatible with their new requirement... Oh well haha win some loose some. HostBill: Launched 1.0.0 in 2008 and has a bad business model changing prices every week when they feel like it to hit the $4,999.96 price mark for everything included in it. They charge a high price per ticket as-well and doesn't have a community with the developers. ClientExec: Launched 1.0.0 in 2002 and built on it in every version. Still doesn't have everything either. Blesta: Opened in 2007, built on 1.x up-to 2.5 and then decided to re-write Blesta from the bottom up again this time making it modular so you only install want you want and need. It's now 99% opened and has a strong API for any developer to make it (Remember people need to live). Blesta 3 is modern, secure (Still), opened and still growing slowly, not too rapid to loose focus on the main focus "Secure & expandable billing system". - My own words. Blesta 3.0.0 went Beta only on August 2013, a year today and it's grown a lot and the community is bigger.

You make some good points and offer some good suggestions. We'll keep an eye on this one.

I made this mod in response to another thread but I figured it would be best to cross post it here. If that's not allowed then please remove this thread. When you add a payment manually, it will automatically apply the payment to the invoices, oldest first. It will check any invoices with an amount above zero. E.g. if the client has three invoices - $30 and $10, and $20 and paid $37, $30 will be paid to the first invoice and $7 to the second. The third invoice will be unpaid. Note: this doesn't actually add any real functionality to Blesta, it will just make it easier to apply the payments without having to work out manually how much to apply to each invoice. /app/views/admin/default/admin_clients_recordpayment.pdt After line 79 $(document).ready(function() { add: $("#amount").change(function() { amountRemaining = Math.max($(this).val(), 0); if (!isNaN(amountRemaining)) { $("#invoices_to_pay").find("tr").not(".heading_row").each(function() { checkBoxElement = $(this).find("input[name^=\'invoice_id\']"); applyAmountElement = $(this).find("input[name^=\'applyamount\']"); amountDueElement = applyAmountElement.parent().next(); amountDue = Number(amountDueElement.text().substr(1).replace(/[^0-9\.]+/g, "")); applyAmount = Math.min(amountRemaining, amountDue); amountRemaining = (amountRemaining - applyAmount).toFixed(2); applyAmountElement.val(applyAmount); checkBoxElement.prop("checked", applyAmount > 0); if (!amountRemaining) return false; }); } }); If you want the calc to run while typing, change line 80 to: $("#amount").on("input",function() { Just be aware that this is unsupported or buggy on older browsers. apply_payments_calc.xml

I highly recommend Eric, he is just amazing to work with, and I've learnt a lot from our chats. He's done a custom module for me and will be finishing another shortly. I will be getting all my modules from Eric and will be recommending him to customers / friends, because he's just amazing to work with You can't go wrong.

If you're looking to have an extension developed, email Eric. We've talked with him, and taken a look at some of his work and you can't beat his pricing. He has real experience building extensions for Blesta and we feel comfortable recommending him.