Too Many Issues with 5.1.2

[easyhosting]

 

I'm kicking myself now for upgrading so quickly. I truly didn't look like a big deal, and very few changed template files were in the release notes. I feel like I've been deceived, lied to. For as long as it was being BETA tested, I can't imagine why none of these issues came up during that time.

 

the trouble with Beta testing is that it is not being testing in a full production scenario, so some bugs will go un detected. if you look over the forum you most likely find issues reported where some people had placed the beta in production, even though WHMCS stated a beta should not be placed in production.

I have 5.1.2 on a development machine and dont get half as many reported issues, but then as its on a dev licence it cant be used for production purposes.

[LDHosting]

i think they rushed 5.1.2 out, so they could concentrate on the cPanel deal and Matt could travel to Boston for Hostcon

 

Unfortunately, this seems to have some truth to it. Personally I was quite shocked to learn that Matt had gone to Hostingcon while the forums were buzzing with people having domain registration issues.

 

Is this what we can expect from this new cPanel / WHMCS combination... absolute mayhem and being left in the dark if anything goes wrong?

[Matt]

I'll try to address the points raised here 1 by 1...

 

There seems to be way too many issues with 5.1.2 that are taking a long time to be addressed, time to regress to 5.0.3 I think and redo the past 2 weeks of orders manually... At least 5.0.3 worked....

Sorry to hear you feel that way. What exactly is causing a problem for you?

 

With the severity of the bugs in 5.1.2 (for me it is orders not auto-activating, 404 errors on checkout, and all the issues with domains) it would seem that not enough beta testing was done before this was released as "stable".

The domains activation issue I can confirm and there is a patch available for that in the V5.1 Patches thread. But we do not have any known issues with 404 errors on checkout. The issue affecting domain activations was certainly a serious oversight, and an unfortunate bug to have slipped thru the testing phase, but a fix has been available for that since mid last week.

 

easyhosting, wise move... wish had stayed on that too.... hopefully though matt and team can concentrate more on current issues rather than expanding more with cpanel and hostcon takign precedence

Unfortunately, this seems to have some truth to it. Personally I was quite shocked to learn that Matt had gone to Hostingcon while the forums were buzzing with people having domain registration issues.

Our team consists of 17 people these days. Only 1 of those went to HostingCon. So HostingCon and our announcement last week is not the reason for support delays - we are just very busy as at every new release time.

 

Amen! Wish I'd waited. From the release notes it didn't seem like that big of a change. I'd also seen it being BETA tested for what seemed like quite some time, so I assumed the upgrade was safe.

 

Now I find there are NUMEROUS undocumented changes. To templates, to email templates. WTH???? I've *never* had an upgrade the reverted my email templates to the lame out-of-the-box emails.

Only 2 email templates will change in the V5.1 upgrade to add new functionality - the Upcoming Domain Renewal Notice for the new grouped domain notices, and the Cancellation Request Confirmation for the addition of cancellation type.

 

The system template changes listed in the release notes include all the functional changes, applying to all 3 templates - default, portal and classic. But granted, the underlying Bootstrap framework was updated to the latest version, which was a fairly fundamental rewrite from the Twitter team, and so some class names in the default template did change, but they had no required updates for the functionality of the system. Nonetheless I hear you, and accept we could have made that more clear.

 

And in looking at the WHMCS client area, it seems WHMCS itself is still using 5.0.3.

I can confirm we're not. We have been running 5.1 ourselves since April and we always do live testing of new releases prior to an actual release.

 

i think they rushed 5.1.2 out, so they could concentrate on the cPanel deal and Matt could travel to Boston for Hostcon

This isn't true. 5.1 was first released in beta back in May. And not released as stable until July. That was nearly 2 months from beta to stable. Now granted the stable release has had a few bugs identified post release, 1 of which was seriously impacting on domains which we clearly hope would have been caught during testing, but there's always some that slip through the net. There should be no outstanding service impacting issues at this time however.

 

Matt

[lance]

Matt,

 

The domain registrar patch put up did not work for us, we had a newer file from Si that resolved the registrations/renewals not working... the domain sync is not putting pending transfers to active eg when a TAG change has been done, so they are not updating the dates, when manully setting to active they then update on the next cron run.

 

The calendar is missing prices, this should return, also the calendar on the front of the admin area is 1 day out, eg its reporting stuff due today as due tomorrow, when go to the calendar itself the items show as today.

 

The compose message links eg {$signature} etc at the bottom of the text window, these used to be clickable and they would go into the message, these not longer work..

 

The biggest issues was with the domains, but with help from other members these seem to have been partially rectified

 

The release looking at the forum seems to have come too early, lots of people are complaining of various things, some are having alot more issues that we are, I`m normally a whmcs fan, but the lack of responses to issues is causing lots of concern for people, especially as theres multiple threads for the domain things.... maybe these would be cut down and the amount of ticket opened if there were some responses coming onto the forum.... Please lets get some feedback going on some of the open issues.

 

Thanks

 

Lance

[invictus]

we do not have any known issues with 404 errors on checkout

 

So is that supposed to mean my issue which I have reported will simply continue to be ignored?

 

My customers can not complete orders when using certain coupon codes because cart.php throws a 404 - see my ticket #746560.

 

I gave WHMCS support a temp admin account to check into this, they have verified the issue but told me it must be "mod_sec" rules on my server... I don't even use mod_sec! My host thoroughly investigated the issue and verified that it is in fact an error coming form the WHMCS script.

 

The apache log shows:

[Fri Jul 20 08:15:32 2012] [error] [client 173.199.xxxx.xxx] Premature end of script headers: cart.php, referer: https://mysite.com/whmcs/cart.php?a=checkout

 

So there you go, now you have a documented case of 404 errors during checkout. Care to do anything about it?

 

Also, and more importantly for me, the licensing module is not auto-activating orders when a customer pays like it is supposed to. No license is issued and the order status is set to pending. The product is never set up, even though I have it set to auto-activate after first payment in the Module Settings of the product.

 

My customer places on order, they are redirected to a payment gateway and complete payment.

 

The customer tries to download the product they just paid for from the client area and get their license key, but it tells them "Access denied, you must purchase a product to download that" and there is no license key available to them until I manually accept the pending order.

 

The above is well documented in my Ticket #659190 - and I even provided a WHMCS admin login for support staff to use.

 

So far this has halted my business, but I have received no help from support on the above mentioned tickets.

[Blueberry3.14]

the trouble with Beta testing is that it is not being testing in a full production scenario, so some bugs will go un detected. if you look over the forum you most likely find issues reported where some people had placed the beta in production, even though WHMCS stated a beta should not be placed in production.

 

Yeah, I understand, and would never use BETA anything on a production site. I can't remember more problems with another upgrade (especially what should have been a minor upgrade).

 

I have 5.1.2 on a development machine and dont get half as many reported issues, but then as its on a dev licence it cant be used for production purposes.

 

I didn't even know they had development licenses...

[Blueberry3.14]

Only 2 email templates will change in the V5.1 upgrade to add new functionality - the Upcoming Domain Renewal Notice for the new grouped domain notices, and the Cancellation Request Confirmation for the addition of cancellation type.

 

The system template changes listed in the release notes include all the functional changes, applying to all 3 templates - default, portal and classic.

 

Under Template Changes (http://docs.whmcs.com/Version_5.1_Release_Notes#Version_5.1.2) or any other sections in the release notes for this version, I'm not seeing anything related to email template changes (and yes, I do understand that the email templates aren't technically "templates"). Going forward, I'd really like to see a complete list of changes documented *in* the release notes, and not have to go through blog posts, etc looking to see what's changed.

 

I've spent a lot of time customizing the emails sent out, to make it as easy and clear as possible to my clients how to renew their domains. It never occurred to me that upgrading WHMCS would wipe out one of them. AFAIR, this has never happened in any previous upgrade.

 

But granted, the underlying Bootstrap framework was updated to the latest version, which was a fairly fundamental rewrite from the Twitter team, and so some class names in the default template did change, but they had no required updates for the functionality of the system.

 

Yeah, I'm still completely confounded why they wouldn't have made it backwards compatible.

 

Nonetheless I hear you, and accept we could have made that more clear.

 

THANK YOU!

 

I can confirm we're not. We have been running 5.1 ourselves since April and we always do live testing of new releases prior to an actual release.

 

I was going by the look of your site, verses a default v5.1.2. Yours has the same color scheme of v5.0.3 (and the bootstrap.css included with that, v1.4.0). When I upgraded, I got black and white buttons (in addition to sections of the client area home/details overlapping, out of place, a mess). If changing the button colors was a simple proposition, that would be one thing.

 

And by the way, I just checked....WHMCS.com is using Bootstrap v1.4.0, the OLD version. So for you to say "Oh, gee, it works for us just fine", it beyond annoying. If you're going to include a new version of bootstrap with v5.1.2 but continue to use the OLD version on your own site, then you can't really claim that you're "using v5.1.2." Please, upgrade to v2.0.3 and see the pain the rest of us are going through, maybe then you'll understand.

 

In addition, some of the templates (which weren't listed as changed, yet were changed), have "buttons" changed from being a form input to being a straight link (a href). This changes how they look and what needs to be changed in order to get back the look that was previously there.

 

I know I'm not the only WHMCS user who designed their site around the new WHMCS v5 look. To have a minor upgrade change the look so drastically...needs to be recognized so it doesn't happen again. Hosting is only half of my business, the other half is design/development. I hate to keep harping on this, but it really IS important.

 

Damn...I was ready to give you the benefit of the doubt until halfway through my comment here I checked the version of bootstrap WHMCS.com is using. *sigh*

[Blueberry3.14]

this has actually cost me time and money as i have had clients and resellers pay me to upgrade to 5.1.2, but ive spent the last few days rolling back resellers and clients back to 5.0.3 with some wanting refunds while others are willing to wait until 5.1.2 is fully fixed for us to upgraded again without charging them as they already paid

 

Ouch

 

From what I've read, rolling back to v5.0.3 wasn't doable because of the database changes. How did rollbacks go for you? Any tips you'd like to share with the rest of the class?

[Blueberry3.14]

easyhosting, wish I had done the same this time, normally there are a few glitches, but the team fix these quickly... this time round though seems to be so many issues and lack of responses with fixes.....

 

In all fairness, that's always been my experience also. You always expect little things to crop up, but previously patches were released quickly and efficiently.

 

I read Matt say they have 488 support tickets in the queue. I don't know how far off from normal that is for them (with or without a new release), but that number seems very high and to indicate a LOT of people are having problems. That and there's likely many more of us who know better than to submit a support ticket after a new release, so there's additional unreported issues, waiting till the dust settles.

[Raven]

I have tried upgrades and fresh installs on 4 different servers running different variations of php and mysql and I get all the same errors i was only drawn to an error when I had over 60 failed login attempts to the admin area ( i know should use htaccess but thats was always a job for tomorrow) but after 3 should be a bann but no they kept trying and trying this was how i noticed a problem. Also noticed that the cal doesnt work properly as in any events that were in the old cal were not in new one but still in the DB. Plus the fact my browser wont do anything until the new graph widgets load fully ( kind of annoying )

 

As for rolling back i dont actually think the upgrade does anything to the DB as i just uploaded 5.0.3 removed a couple of DB entrys and it works 100% again. Not saying it will work for all but it may work as worked for me and a clients account.

[LDHosting]

Our team consists of 17 people these days. Only 1 of those went to HostingCon. So HostingCon and our announcement last week is not the reason for support delays - we are just very busy as at every new release time.

Matt

Ok, of those 17, how many are able to alter WHMCS code and issue patches to the public off their own backs? The impression I have always got (and I accept that it could well be wrong) is that you are the head developer and that it is yourself that prepares and issues patches to bugs. If you are the only, or one of the few people there that is able to actually push a patch out then yes that strikes me as part of the cause of support delays.

 

There should be no outstanding service impacting issues at this time however.

Check out http://forum.whmcs.com/showthread.php?51586-Domain-Registrations-Renewals-Failing/page4 it would seem that the patch that is published on the forums doesn't work. Customers are now passing a new patch between themselves because it is not published and they are unable to reach support.

[SolidState]

Updating to 5.1.2 is the biggest mistake i have made.

 

whmcs need to provide us script to downgrade to 5.0.3....

[Bartucxp]

Even cronjobs stopped running after upgrading to 5.1.2. That was a huge mistake. I don't know what to do about it since I get a reply to my tickets.

[Matt]

Ok, of those 17, how many are able to alter WHMCS code and issue patches to the public off their own backs?

 

4 of the 17 have access to the code and can debug and send updates/patches out to people as required.

 

Customers are now passing a new patch between themselves because it is not published and they are unable to reach support.

 

Customers should never do that. All the latest patches available are posted in the V5.1 Patches thread here (http://forum.whmcs.com/showthread.php?51266-V5-1-Patches) and are the only official patches issued.

 

Also noticed that the cal doesnt work properly as in any events that were in the old cal were not in new one but still in the DB. Plus the fact my browser wont do anything until the new graph widgets load fully ( kind of annoying )

This could be related to your rollback. There were definately changes to the DB for the V5.1 upgrade so rolling back would not be as simple as just "removing a couple of DB entries". The new graphs style should not be causing your browser to lock up - they are loaded via separate ajax processes and don't require waiting until complete.

 

Updating to 5.1.2 is the biggest mistake i have made.

 

whmcs need to provide us script to downgrade to 5.0.3...

Why is that? What is your ticket number please?

 

Even cronjobs stopped running after upgrading to 5.1.2. That was a huge mistake. I don't know what to do about it since I get a reply to my tickets.

The crons should not stop running by upgrading. What's your ticket number?

 

Matt

[lance]

Matt the domains fix didn`t work for us thats in the patches section.

 

bartucxp - the cron paths changed in this version, point your cron to the cron folder if not already done so, ours failed after update until we changed path.

[easyhosting]

I didn't even know they had development licenses...

 

If you get your main licence direct from WHMCS then you can get a free dev licence ( just open a ticket and request 1) if you dont get you licence direct you can still get a dev licence for a fee of $45, but teir are stipulations on how to install etc.

 

A dev licence is helpful to developers creating mods etc. but i find it helpful to beta test releases

[Raven]

This could be related to your rollback. There were definately changes to the DB for the V5.1 upgrade so rolling back would not be as simple as just "removing a couple of DB entries". The new graphs style should not be causing your browser to lock up - they are loaded via separate ajax processes and don't require waiting until complete.

 

 

Matt

 

As I said in my support ticket ( not being a whmcs expert ) From what I have seen the DB DID NOT upgrade as would be the desired action. I have removed the 5.1.2 files re-uploaded the 5.0.3 Kept the cal widget on frontpage removed the DB added entries (i even left the version to 5.1.2 so not to get the update notice) and my 5.0.3 works perfectly 0 defects so in my specific case it worked for me thank god and now all is back to normal and the ip banns work as does the domain lookup and renew/reg The Cal now works 100 % too so this leads me to deduce that its an error most likely in the DB upgrade files or not is just a thought

[Blueberry3.14]

If you get your main licence direct from WHMCS then you can get a free dev licence ( just open a ticket and request 1) if you dont get you licence direct you can still get a dev licence for a fee of $45, but teir are stipulations on how to install etc.

 

A dev licence is helpful to developers creating mods etc. but i find it helpful to beta test releases

 

Excellent, thank you! I get my license direct, but I think I'll wait a few weeks until the dust settles. That would be very helpful in testing new releases.

[Bubka3]

Excellent, thank you! I get my license direct, but I think I'll wait a few weeks until the dust settles. That would be very helpful in testing new releases.

Just a few tips and gruges

- The downloads on it are never updated. You always gotta use the download from your main license.

- You'll need a higher up WHMCS team member add apps like Mobile Edition for testing (something we recently did).

[Nexxterra]

Surprisingly, although I waited until a few days ago to upgrade, things are fine so far...

Quick question for Matt, when reading your replies, should there be an English accent in my head?

[gks]

Opened a high priority ticket a week ago and haven't got an answer as yet. Now we have to open up SSH for remote access for how long?

 

Anyway there is an issue with the graphs, don't really care about that stuff we just can't access a new module that was purchased, the addons section is not showing, as in nothing displays on the page.

 

We really need this fixed so we can export to accounting system, as such nothing has been done this month.

 

 

Whats the next best system than WHMCS? if we need to buy something else that works then we will, can't afford to have this system sitting in limbo.

[Blueberry3.14]

Just a few tips and gruges

- The downloads on it are never updated. You always gotta use the download from your main license.

- You'll need a higher up WHMCS team member add apps like Mobile Edition for testing (something we recently did).

 

Thank you for the heads up, I appreciate it.

[Blueberry3.14]

Whats the next best system than WHMCS? if we need to buy something else that works then we will, can't afford to have this system sitting in limbo.

 

I understand your frustration, and that's a decision only you can make (trust me, I've almost jumped ship a few times). For me, what I looked at was how much time I already had invested in learning and customizing the (WHMCS) system, and how long it would take to learn a new one. The learning curve on putting a new system in place was always more of a time suck than sticking with WHMCS, at least for me. That answer might be different for you, just an angle to consider.

 

There are other systems out there, but it's really not kosher for me or anyone else to post links to a competitor. I would expect a moderator to delete those posts (as is their right). Try searching in WebHostingTalk forums.

[invictus]

Opened a high priority ticket a week ago and haven't got an answer as yet. Now we have to open up SSH for remote access for how long?

 

Good question... my high priority tickets are being ignored also. Even my posts in this thread have been ignored by the developer as you can see.

 

I hope we can get some answers soon and that these delays are only because of the high ticket volume due to so many bugs in the recent release.

[Blueberry3.14]

Good question... my high priority tickets are being ignored also. Even my posts in this thread have been ignored by the developer as you can see.

 

I hope we can get some answers soon and that these delays are only because of the high ticket volume due to so many bugs in the recent release.

 

Communication is good, but I'm personally hoping they're busy testing, rewriting code and fixing the issues rather than reading every thread in the forums. And though plenty of WHMCS employees/mods *do* spend time in the forums, it's primarily a user-to-user forum and not a means of getting support.

 

While you wait: