jeremyhaber Posted March 3, 2011 Share Posted March 3, 2011 Hey You! Yeah, you. So you want to be a WHMCS developer? Awesome! Welcome to the development community. Listen carefully, as your absolute success depends on it. I am about to give you insider information into becoming a successful 3rd party developer anywhere. There are things you should know. First and for most, there have been a lot of developers here that have come and gone leaving their customers stranded As you can imagine this leaves people hesitant to buy your addons. Ugh, how will you ever get anyone to buy your addons now? Well really, it’s simple! You just have to follow this full-proof plan. 1. You have to build rapport within the community. This doesn't mean randomly showing up one day with an addon. Talk to people in the community. Help them out with problems. Show them you know what you are doing. Too many times developers just come to these forums just to post an addon. If you do this, people will have no idea who you are. Nor will they care. Your addon will probably sit silently in cyber space or you will have a lot of people trying to figure out if they should trust you. 2. Offer quality support. This one is a big one. Quality support means being polite, being quick to respond, and being open minded. This all comes with having that can-do attitude! Being polite is something so simple that I see developers fail to do all the time. The golden rule of being polite is if you don't have something nice to say, just don't say it. That being said sometimes you need to tell your customers "I'm sorry, but your billing information is incorrect. We can't process your payment till you correct it." This is perfectly acceptable to do in any business. What is not acceptable: "Stop saying this and that because you are ruining my reputation." That right there is an automatic-weapon-of-self-destruction. If people say something you don't like, that means it's time for you to correct this issue. Being quick to respond to support requests does not mean you have to have a dedicated support staff. It means respond to the ticket within a few days. I know from experience answering tickets is a long process and can take hours out of your precious day. What you should do is setup a schedule of when you will look at tickets and handle each response accordingly. I suggest 3-4times a week you take a few hours and just respond to all your tickets. Having an open mind is always a big advantage when dealing with customers. Sometimes customers come to you using your addon in a completely different way than it was originally intended. Embrace it. Help them out with this new way and tell all your customers and all the forum members about it! 3. Learn to properly license and encode your addons. This is only necessary if you intend to encode your addons or license them. Do not use a demo version of any encoder. Use the full proper version. This way your encoded files wont expire or do anything whacky. As well do not place any scripts in to capture your clients database information into your own system. This is against the law. As it violates your clients rights to their information and privacy. 4. Know your rights. Developers sometimes use other peoples source code in their system. This is alright as long as you follow the authors licensing agreement! 5. This is not a get rich quick scheme. I think people generally overlook this. It takes 100's if not 1000's of hours of dedication to be successful in any community. Following this entire guide will help you to become a success in the community. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uberhost Posted March 3, 2011 Share Posted March 3, 2011 Good post, Jeremy. The suggestions are helpful but I still think there's a big problem with the trust factor regarding WHMCS encoded addons (yes, even with those who follow your advice) since so many of us have been left stranded with paid addons that are no longer supported. It would be a wise idea for the devs to try and work together to build a system whereby if a particular developer went defunct his source code license automatically transferred to the remaining group of devs. This would mean creating a WHMCS developers group and a special license. Such a scheme would give us some confidence that we wouldn't be stuck with a non-functional addon if a dev went under or lost interest in his project. Just a thought. Cheers, Rick 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
interfasys Posted March 3, 2011 Share Posted March 3, 2011 (edited) I mentioned using an escrow service in another thread, but WHMCS Ltd could also act as a source vault, with code automatically being released to licensees under certain conditions. Also, I believe that if you offer something unique and rock solid, you don't necessarily have to have all these ties with the community to begin with (although you would inevitably ask questions about the API, etc.), but support must be excellent. Edited March 3, 2011 by interfasys 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeremyhaber Posted March 3, 2011 Author Share Posted March 3, 2011 Yeah, that is another issue that has been discussed a few times, something definitely needs to be done. We can only really wait patiently as WHMCS decides on the best course of action for some sort of developer network. As we wait this post is intended for new developers entering into the community to have a better chance of surviving. Another thing new developers can do is release their addon's unencoded. Which will definitely build a lot more trust with their clients 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wsa Posted March 3, 2011 Share Posted March 3, 2011 Another thing new developers can do is release their addon's unencoded. Which will definitely build a lot more trust with their clients Well true but they alot customer that said the script dont work they what a refund or dispute they c.c/ paypal company and the developer lose. That why I start encode peoples talk about bad developer here but they also they bad customer that dont like to pay and make story that dont work or etc.. to got the script free 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deathrequest Posted March 3, 2011 Share Posted March 3, 2011 I, thoroughly, support the idea of WHMCS acting as a Source Vault. However, It would be easy to assume that WHMCS can not provide support to each n every module that is left by a developer. So, in the above scenario, I really like what Uberhost has to say... coming up together to build a sort of dev-group.. Meanwhile, we can even try to rebuild some of the lost (not supported) modules - but does that violate any license/copyright? Regards 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisTERiS Posted March 3, 2011 Share Posted March 3, 2011 Well true but they alot customer that said the script dont work they what a refund or dispute they c.c/ paypal company and the developer lose. That why I start encode peoples talk about bad developer here but they also they bad customer that dont like to pay and make story that dont work or etc.. to got the script free Never punish nine honest clients for one unfair client. And finally have you ever thought that maybe the mod is not really works as he expected to work? Maria 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uberhost Posted March 3, 2011 Share Posted March 3, 2011 I mentioned using an escrow service in another thread, but WHMCS Ltd could also act as a source vault... I don't see that ever happening so if the devs don't organize something together then they can expect poor sales due to lack of trust IMHO. Cheers, Rick 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
othellotech Posted March 5, 2011 Share Posted March 5, 2011 support the idea of WHMCS acting as a Source Vault I'd rather they spent their time & resources on fixing the bugs, extending the features and supporting their customers, than getting involved with the minefield that is software storage & escrow. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeremyhaber Posted March 5, 2011 Author Share Posted March 5, 2011 I'd rather they spent their time & resources on fixing the bugs, extending the features and supporting their customers, than getting involved with the minefield that is software storage & escrow. Yes. I would be rather surprised if an escrow service will ever be done. That's not to say that something shouldn't be done, as something should be. Really all we need is for WHMCS to support a community developer project where the WHMCS 3rd party developers all contribute into making the system work. Aka developing the application side system. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobbravo2 Posted April 27, 2011 Share Posted April 27, 2011 I agree with @Jeremy and @othellotech: the last thing I want is WHMCS getting stuck with support tickets that say: "I tried installing addon XYZ, and it broke WHMCS" I'd much rather see them extend the addons API, v 4.3 was a major improvement. I'd like to see a unified installer/licensing/upgrading feature added next. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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