vBLink 2.0 Status Update and Comments Wanted

[rmccny]

I am happy to say that the development cycle of vBLink 2.0 is now complete. The release was delayed for a complete ground-up rewrite after WHMCS 4 was announced. It is not ready for download just yet; I have not taken the time to create an installer or documentation because of two major issues that may become a factor in the long term success of vBLink.

 

The first issue is vBulletin 4 support is not included. This is in part because of the fact that I do not agree with decision by vBulletin to change the licensing structure essentially us to purchase new licenses. I own three licenses, two for production sites, one for a development site. The cost to upgrade is going to be huge, especially if I choose the publishing suite. So at this point I have no access to vB4 code.

 

The second issue is that from a business standpoint vBLink has not been a success, or at least the free/paid model that it has been distributed with. In the past year there have been over 400 downloads of vBLink but less than 2% were paid licenses making vB4 support hardly justifiable.

 

So the question now is what to do next, and that is the reason that I am posting this message. Obviously, vBLink without vB4 support is only going to be useful for a short time until v4 goes gold. But without a solid community and financial backing behind it, I have no reason to continue development. But one promise I will make is that if I do walk away from vBLink, I will release all source code into the public domain; I do not believe in holding code hostage.

 

If I do in fact release vBLink 2.0, I'm thinking of a 3-tier release structure...

 

vBLink Basic (Free, Fully Encoded with only account bridging and no extras)

vBLink Pro (Mid-range cost, a few admin module source files encoded, fully functional)

vBLink Pro Dev (Highest cost, fully functional with full source)

 

All feedback is welcome and will help determine the future of this vBulletin integration.

Edited December 20, 2009 by rmccny

[TheHostingHeroes]

hi

 

Do you plan on making V4 ? as Gold is due out today (or around today)

[Daniel]

It depends what features it'll have.

 

I don't plan on upgrading to VB4 any time soon for the same reasons as you but a WHMCS > VB integration is much needed.

 

I think you're over complicating it with three tiers, just make it paid - I have no problem paying for mods as long as the developer is going to stick around.

[TheHostingHeroes]

 

I think you're over complicating it with three tiers, just make it paid - I have no problem paying for mods as long as the developer is going to stick around.

 

I second this. Just do the paid version with source code, that way people can developein to it in the future.

[rmccny]

I have decided to go ahead complete development and release vBLink 2.0 after all within vBulletin 3.8 support initially with 4.0 support to come in a month or two. vBLink will be offered in two licenses; Pro (encoded) and Developer (full source) with each having identical functionality. I am in the process of putting together the finishing touches on the install functions right now.

 

I have written just about all of the documentation that I plan to; over 30 articles so far covering everything from usage to developing add-ons for it. For those who have extra time on their hands the documentation can be found here.

 

This is a brief list of vBLink 2.0 key features in no particular order...

 

• No vBulletin code-modifications required.
  
• No complex configuration files, in fact, no configuration files at all.
  
• Forum accounts can be created automatically when a client signs up.
  
• Clients can link existing forum accounts to their WHMCS account within the clientarea.
  
• Existing clients can register for new forum accounts within the clientarea.
  
• Clientarea forum home page shows clients newest private messages and latest forum posts.
  
• vBulletin and WHMCS can reside on physically separate servers.
  
• Captcha and word puzzles to reduce forum registration spam.
  
• Clients can log into vBulletin using their e-mail address instead of username for consistency throughout your site.
  
• vBulletin user lists and WHMCS client lists can be loaded via Ajax.
  
• Automatic login to forum when client logs into WHMCS.
  
• Automatic logout of forum when clients logs out of WHMCS.
  
• WHMCS Admin accounts can be linked to forum accounts.
  
• Automatic login to forum when a WHMCS admin logs in.
  
• Automatic logout of forum when a WHMCS admin logs out.
  
• WHMCS Admin sidebar PM notification alerts of newly arrived forum PMs via ajax.
  
• WHMCS Admin clientsummary integration shows clients forum account status including last login, last post, etc. Provides 1-click access to vBLink and forum accounts.
  
• Encrypted communication between WHMCS and vBulletin, even without SSL but SSL can be used for even greater security.
  
• Remote vBulletin communication class can be easily expanded by developing additional modules.
  
• WHMCS add-on module code is 100% class-based object-oriented PHP.
  
• Advanced module system makes developing additional vBLink admin or client modules very simple through the fully documented vBLink API
  
• Modules are self-contained within a directory and contain their own templates folder and language files.
  
• Virtually all options are fully configurable; just about anything can be enabled or disabled.
  
• All modules use smarty templates.
  

I have not yet made a determination on pricing. I will however extend free upgrades to anyone who purchased vBLink 1.0 regardless if they are current on their support or not. I anticipate a formal release sometime around 1/9 or 1/10.

[Daniel]

Sounds great to me, I'll be buying a copy.

[TheHostingHeroes]

me too I'll buy!

[rmccny]

Just a FYI.. vBLink 2.0 is just about ready for release. Nearly 50 articles of documentation have been written, the install process has been tested on several platforms, and the finished product has been running on our site for nearly a week. I expect the public release to be available later today or tomorrow. Pricing will be announced at that time.

[Troy]

This sounds promising. Please charge enough so that you'll be able to continue supporting it. I'm very skittish about WHMCS modules, having dealt with whmcsbb previously, as well as being interested in whmcslive but seeing how that one is going too.

 

Make it expensive so that you'll get serious buyers, can make a profit and have less support headaches.

 

That's my advice, anyway. I'd be willing to pay more for good, working, supported module than vBulletin itself costs. Anyone else who is a serious buyer should too - obviously the market for a WHMCS <-> vBulletin link is much, much smaller than the market for vBulletin itself, so the module *should* cost more than vBulletin.

[rmccny]

I'm literally a couple hours away from releasing it; just putting on the finishing touches.

 

Pricing is certainly going to be higher than the previous version, which was my experiment with a donation-based pricing system that rather failed miserably. As a rule, I do not build modules for commercial consumption only; of the three WHMCS add-ons I offer, all started out as something to fill a need for my own site. vBLink strays a bit from that rule as it was extremely-overbuilt for my own needs but that is a quality I feel necessary for general consumption.

 

As I mentioned previously, when vBLink 2.0 launches later today it will include only vB3 support. After careful thought I have decided that we will offer a vB4 API module sometime during the first quarter this year as an add-on for a small fee.

 

I will start a new thread in the commerical modules forum later to announce the launch.

[Snowman]

I am definitely interested in the vB4 setup, for 3 separate installations..

[rmccny]

Then you'll be glad to know that I just purchased and installed vB4 on our development site yesterday. I plan to begin coding the vB4 module this weekend. I don't expect it to take more than a week or two at most.

[Daniel]

Is the cookie problem on the first version being worked on?

[rmccny]

Development of vB4 supoprt is going far faster than I anticipated. I have it fully running with vB4 in a development environment already, but there are a few changes that need to be made to the whmcs-side of the system before it can be rolled out. I plan to deploy vB4 and vBLink live at my site as early as tomorrow.

 

Daniel, yes the cookie problem has been fixed. I would have deployed that to you sooner, but read on for an explanation.

 

The problem is if both WHMCS and vBulletin are on separate subdomains (ie clients.host.com and vb.host.com) the "cookiedomain" is being incorrectly calculated. Now having read that vB4 uses a different cookie prefix than vB3 and the fact that cookie names were hardcoded into vBLink, many changes to the way vBLink handles vB cookies need to be made. I will update the vB3 release of vBLink at the same time I launch the vB4 version which should be ready in about a week.

 

Daniel, if you have an offline dev site as well, I would be happy to send you something to test with in a couple days once I'm satisfied that everything is in order.

[Daniel]

If I'd have know that before I ordered I wouldn't have bothered, the only thing I can do now is uninstall as nobody is able to use the forum. Disabling the mod from the 'Addons' section breaks the order process.

[rmccny]

Daniel, setting vBulletin Auto-Login to off in the WHMCS addon and Use WHMCS Authentication in vBLink Options in vBulletin will disable the autologin system while still allowing the rest of the functionality to work. This notice about breaking the order process is news to me, you never mentioned it in your support ticket.

 

EDIT: You didn't mention whether you wanted fix to test.

Edited February 1, 2010 by rmccny

[TheHostingHeroes]

Hi

 

Any news on v4 support?

[rmccny]

Almost done. I have been working on it almost non-stop, except for the lost day yesterday after a server had a hardware failure. v4 support is just about complete and I plan to go live with it on my site possibly this evening. Still have to finish the upgrade functions as there are some big changes between versions. I'm still hoping for a weekend release.

[TheHostingHeroes]

Excellent, Ill buy your module once available for v4

[smokindss]

I"m in for the module as well!

[Daniel]

Daniel, setting vBulletin Auto-Login to off in the WHMCS addon and Use WHMCS Authentication in vBLink Options in vBulletin will disable the autologin system while still allowing the rest of the functionality to work. This notice about breaking the order process is news to me, you never mentioned it in your support ticket.

 

EDIT: You didn't mention whether you wanted fix to test.

 

Thanks - disabling the 'Use WHMCS Authentication' sorts the order process but if you just disable the auto-login it throws up an error that it was unable to create the account.

 

Yes please - I'd like to test the fix.

 

Also, will it be possible to grant access to specific forums based on the clients products?

[rmccny]

After the scope of changes I have decided to bump the next release to a .1 (2.1.0) since I've migrated the backend platform to appCORE (our own internal WHMCS module platform). I'll post a formal list of fixes and changes later, however here are the highlights:

 

 

1. FIX: Loginshare cookie failure when WHMCS and vBulletin are on unique subdomains.
   
2. NEW: Complete vBulletin 4 support including publishing suite.
   
3. NEW: URL-based vBulletin login for sites where vBulletin and WHMCS are not even on the same domain.
   
4. NEW: New admin module for configuring clientarea forum home options.
   
5. FIX: Latest posts are now proxied through the clientarea forum home module to prevent insecure content warnings when using SSL. (Thanks for the suggestion Daniel)
   
6. FIX: PM Icons can be disabled to prevent insecure content warnings when using SSL.
   

 

I'm still targeting a Weekend release if all goes well. Daniel I will see if I can get the files ready for you to test later today. I'll open a ticket and attach them when they're ready.

[Daniel]

Sounds great, any feedback on being able to grant access to specific forums based on the product?

[TheHostingHeroes]

After the scope of changes I have decided to bump the next release to a .1 (2.1.0) since I've migrated the backend platform to appCORE (our own internal WHMCS module platform). I'll post a formal list of fixes and changes later, however here are the highlights:

 

 

1. FIX: Loginshare cookie failure when WHMCS and vBulletin are on unique subdomains.
   
2. NEW: Complete vBulletin 4 support including publishing suite.
   
3. NEW: URL-based vBulletin login for sites where vBulletin and WHMCS are not even on the same domain.
   
4. NEW: New admin module for configuring clientarea forum home options.
   
5. FIX: Latest posts are now proxied through the clientarea forum home module to prevent insecure content warnings when using SSL. (Thanks for the suggestion Daniel)
   
6. FIX: PM Icons can be disabled to prevent insecure content warnings when using SSL.
   

 

I'm still targeting a Weekend release if all goes well. Daniel I will see if I can get the files ready for you to test later today. I'll open a ticket and attach them when they're ready.

 

Excellent, I am looking forward to the v4 support, can I purchase this now?

[rmccny]

Sorry Daniel, I ran into a small issue testing the upgrade process which has now been resolved. I'm still thinking a weekend release will be possible however I still have documentation to write which I would prefer to have done ahead of time.

 

cyberhostpro I don't have anything ready to purchase yet for vB4, however give it another day or two and thatt'll change.