digirocket

I'm sure many of you read the tech news sites and see the millions of dollars being invested in groupon.com and Groupon clones. It's unbelievable how such a simple yet brilliant idea is getting so much attention (and money). Groupon looks to be very cloneable and if you do a Google search you'll see nearly 100 different freelance script requests being submitted by people who want it built as a standalone clone, WordPress, Joomla! or Drupal plugin. The idea behind the site is that businesses will approach Groupon with a deeply discounted deal (often 40-80% off) and if a predetermined number of people "elect to buy" the deal then "it's on" and it actually happens. If it doesn't reach the quota then no one gets charged or gets the deal. Users "elect to buy" the deal by going through the check out process and if the deal reaches its predetermined number of buyers then they will receive a printable coupon certificate and their credit card will be charged. Groupon gets their cut for facilitating the deal. As you can see, this is a bloody brilliant idea for small businesses to make money. I fancy the idea of offering a plugin that does the same functionality for client's sites. I think a similar product like this as a plugin or extension for sites would be a real game changer. People could run their own "mini-groupon" on their site. Anyway, I'm sure some folks in this forum are on to this hot trend and have likely even got some developers working on it. Share your thoughts below.

I'm going to keep exploring this and see if it is available. If not, then I'll move this over to the Feature Requests area and see if it gets any traction there.

Perhaps this functionality is available and I'm simply overlooking it but is it possible to restrict what a client sees in the Client Area Portal based on the services/products they have purchased? For example you would only see KB articles and downloads related to the product group or groups you've purchased. If you're selling a few unrelated products/services you don't want your clients seeing information in the portal that is completely unrelated to what they've purchased. I see that I can restrict KB articles to "Clients Only" but to become a "Client" doesn't one only need to complete the registration form? Anyway, I feel like I'm still putting the pieces together on this idea.

I was wondering if any veterans had a few tips/tricks/hacks for offering good customer support without working yourself to death? We're planning on investing a lot of time in creating a thorough KB along with our own original screencasts (no pre-made bundled ones). We're spending time on these because we feel that they are important to helping customers based on our own experiences. However, that may just be our own personal opinion and doesn't reflect what really is important and works. I know that as time goes on we'll adjust and get better at offering support. We hope to add a forum once we get a large enough customer base and community. No plans for a Wiki.

I will pay whatever it takes to keep the quality high and the new features coming. The success of WHMCS is important to all of us.

Have a look at Asterisk. It's powerful and Linux based.

I keep searching for the ajax domain searches and form integration scripts. We want to keep our potential customers on one screen with one form. We would like for them to be able to type in their desired domain and get a "check" or a "green light" if they can use it. It would be validated upon submission. Still no luck.

We're putting the final touches on some screen casts and video tutorials for our customers. We're about to discuss the best way to integrate them into our site. We were wanting to put many of them in the Client Portal area and were wondering if the community had any tips/tricks/demos of nice integrations? At present we are thinking of placing them in the knowledge base area. However, we are also considering a custom page. Any thoughts?