5.2.1 feedback

[aoboau]

Same here, my domainsync stopped working...

[andy40]

Going to close my support tickets because had no reply for over 24 hours your support is the worse i have ever had cant believe its this bad when people depend on WHMCS for there business.

[Eduardo G.]

Same here, my domainsync stopped working...

Did you already make the init.php change?

[Si]

Over the past 24 hours I've had several emails from mod developers advising that I do not upgrade to 5.2 because all of their add-ons will stop working. So, that's poor to begin with.

 

None of the security patches (the same version downloaded several times) has worked on my 5.1.3 install. (Which now says 5.1.4 even though I've reverted back).

 

The registrar I use have been sidelined since 5.1 and the domainsync debacle which to the best of my knowledge is still not resolved, yet here we are moving on to another upgrade. (which, as it is, is never going to happen on my system).

 

My whole website would cease to exist instantly if I upgraded and WHMCS appear to be on some sort of suicide mission re their software and don't appear to be putting customers first any longer.

 

I've been with WHMCS for the past 6+ years and Matt has been excellent. But this past 2 years have seen a steady decline and with this launch it appears WHMCS has just jumped headlong off the cliff in proverbial lemming style.

 

Way to go WHMCS - our high hopes after the cPanel takeover are at an all time low. Serious board meetings required I suggest to restore customer confidence urgently.

 

Waiting, in hope rather than anticipation with bated breath........

Edited March 14, 2013 by Si
Because whmcs staff deleted part of my post which made it illegible

[zomex]

@jack - so there are 5.2.1 versions of your themes out now ?

 

Hello Rob,

 

Yes, I've created updates for all templates so they support WHMCS 5.2.1. I haven't yet updated the template files so they support the new features, but that will be done in a few days to ensure that if there's any changes made over the next few days I won't have to re-do it.

 

I'll be publicly announcing the patches shortly but you can get updated early by following the tutorial found at the bottom right tutorial box on the homepage (should you choose to do so - I'm running V5.2.1 myself but I had to remove two 3rd party modules for the privilege).

 

Thanks,

Jack

Edited March 14, 2013 by zomex

[gohigher]

@HawtDogFlvrwtr

 

Thanks - I had to get something out there quickly as I'm sure you are also aware customers don't wait for some reason (lol). Given the smarty object is hidden, it was the only way I could do it; recreating the smarty object also failed for my purposes as I need to also attach an output filter to it (which wasn't ever an issue until 5.2 )

 

Nice hack. I was investigating a similair option until I checked the metrics on customer php versions and noticed that 85% of them are still using 5.1 and 5.2.

[ljesh]

@Matt :

 

I downloaded 5.2.1 yesterday, it was 13,263,205 bytes long. Today it's still called 5.2.1, but it has only 12,858,112 bytes !

 

I noticed that too. Although the version number remains the same, that is like half megabyte of changes and I don't know what happen in the meantime. I have the both versions on my desktop.

[Matt]

@Matt :

 

I downloaded 5.2.1 yesterday, it was 13,263,205 bytes long. Today it's still called 5.2.1, but it has only 12,858,112 bytes !

 

All that happened is we removed the Ioncube encoding on some files that were encoded originally by mistake. The open source classes such as Smarty, Boleto, etc...

 

Matt

[HawtDogFlvrwtr]

To all those talking about bailing...

 

I understand your frustration.. but I will tell you that the alternatives are much, much worse at the same things you're complaining about.. I know because i've been through 5..

 

AWBS: There beta testing program is a joke.. they never respond to suggestions. Support is all but non-existent and the application itself, looks and feels antiquated and provides almost no support for 3rd party addons. Also, updates are few and far between and if memory serves me correctly, even if you've purchased a lifetime license, you have to pay a support fee each year (which is expensive as hell) to get updates to the application..

 

Hostbill: Almost identical to WHMCS except crappy 3rd party addon support, Always bleeding edge updates but that makes it completely unreliable. Upgrade process is a pain in the butt from version to version. The "wiki" for documentation is laughable. And support is all but non-existent.

 

PleskBilling / Modern Bill: You must sell your first, second and third child to finance the purchase of there product. Has great support for integration into the plesk server managment suite.. but then again, now you've sold your home, cars and cashed out your 401k to pay for that also. Support is all but non-existent..

 

AgileBill: ROFL. seriously though, it's never touched nowdays.. and while nice because it's free.. not worth it

 

AccountLab Plus:ROFL AGAIN.. same thing as above.

 

If you're thinking about bailing, do yourself a favor and just stick around. This is the first major release since the merger and while it was a cluster f@#$%, and recent major released have seen similair issues, WHMCS is really the only "open book" webhost management companies that talk to customers via forums and take feedback.. they are also the only one's that i've even seen hiring folks to improve themselves..

 

Another important thing to consider is that Matt and his folks openly admit when they screw up and bust there hump until they fix it. You're not going to find another company that mans up like they've done.

 

I've seen folks complain about them not taking feedback on beta's and patching them right away, but then again... i've been with several that don't even offer the chance to test unless you prove to them that you're selling 10k in hosting with your company each year.

 

I'm not going anywhere... I know i've got it good with WHMCS despite the growing pains they are having for a few reasons:

 

1. Documentation for WHMCS is amazing

2. Support (while you dont think so) is way better than the other guys

3. There is actually a beta testing group that doesn't require a minimum sales number.

4. They listen to requests like two factor auth, better reports and better hooks.

5. Plugin creation is so easy, i've taught my 9 year old daughter to make plugins.

6. For what you're getting, the cost is amazing.

 

Nuff Said

Edited March 14, 2013 by HawtDogFlvrwtr

[Dreamz]

All that happened is we removed the Ioncube encoding on some files that were encoded originally by mistake. The open source classes such as Smarty, Boleto, etc...

 

Matt

 

Mistake huh? I call it "Obsession". You guys seriously need to rethink your OBSESSION with IonCube. Now everyone who went to 5.2.1 is stick waiting for you guys to "get around" to fixing the metric-f*-ton of broken stuff. We could do a lot of this ourselves, but unfortunately.........

[gobigred5]

We have been having nothing but problems with updating, as well as with your terrible integration service. We have had to submit approximately 10 tickets these past few days due to problems with WHMCS support messing something up on our site causing not only our panel to not function but also messing up on the integration several times. This has cost us several hundred dollars in sales.

 

Not happy at all.

 

EDIT: Forgot to mention that the tickets take ages to respond too.

Edited March 14, 2013 by gobigred5

[Dreamz]

To all those talking about bailing...

 

I understand your frustration.. but I will tell you that the alternatives are much, much worse at the same things you're complaining about.. I know because i've been through 5..

 

AWBS: There beta testing program is a joke.. they never respond to suggestions. Support is all but non-existent and the application itself, looks and feels antiquated and provides almost no support for 3rd party addons. Also, updates are few and far between and if memory serves me correctly, even if you've purchased a lifetime license, you have to pay a support fee each year (which is expensive as hell) to get updates to the application..

 

Hostbill: Almost identical to WHMCS except crappy 3rd party addon support, Always bleeding edge updates but that makes it completely unreliable. Upgrade process is a pain in the butt from version to version. The "wiki" for documentation is laughable. And support is all but non-existent.

 

PleskBilling / Modern Bill: You must sell your first, second and third child to finance the purchase of there product. Has great support for integration into the plesk server managment suite.. but then again, now you've sold your home, cars and cashed out your 401k to pay for that also. Support is all but non-existent..

 

AgileBill: ROFL. seriously though, it's never touched nowdays.. and while nice because it's free.. not worth it

 

AccountLab Plus:ROFL AGAIN.. same thing as above.

 

If you're thinking about bailing, do yourself a favor and just stick around. This is the first major release since the merger and while it was a cluster f@#$%, and recent major released have seen similair issues, WHMCS is really the only "open book" webhost management companies that talk to customers via forums and take feedback.. they are also the only one's that i've even seen hiring folks to improve themselves..

 

Another important thing to consider is that Matt and his folks openly admit when they screw up and bust there hump until they fix it. You're not going to find another company that mans up like they've done.

 

I've seen folks complain about them not taking feedback on beta's and patching them right away, but then again... i've been with several that don't even offer the chance to test unless you prove to them that you're selling 10k in hosting with your company each year.

 

I'm not going anywhere... I know i've got it good with WHMCS despite the growing pains they are having for a few reasons:

 

1. Documentation for WHMCS is amazing

2. Support (while you dont think so) is way better than the other guys

3. There is actually a beta testing group that doesn't require a minimum sales number.

4. They listen to requests like two factor auth, better reports and better hooks.

5. Plugin creation is so easy, i've taught my 9 year old daughter to make plugins.

6. For what you're getting, the cost is amazing.

 

Nuff Said

 

 

1. Agreed.

2. Don't agree at all. We've had tickets open now for almost 24 hours with no response, no confirmation, nothing.

3. Apparently the beta testing group needs to be tested... What is the point of testing if here we are today, stuck in production with a less than beta product.

4. Agreed.

5. Agreed.

6. Oh yeah, getting so many bugs that portions of the system are unusable, others cannot even use the system, others complaining about the system not working to the point where their sales are interrupted. Oh yeah, we got a lot for our $$$$$.

[beat]

All that happened is we removed the Ioncube encoding on some files that were encoded originally by mistake. The open source classes such as Smarty, Boleto, etc...

 

Matt

 

Thanks for replying, Matt.

 

So what's the plan for 5.2.2 which fixes the major 5.2.1 bugs that are mentioned in here ?

 

If it's only a day away, and given that the 5.0 vulnerabilities are not yet out in the wild and that we have additional anti-hacking application-layer firewall measures on our server, I would rather wait another day...

 

BTW: Wow, ioncube has a huge impact! Wish WHMCS would be commercial open-source (I don't think it would impact your business negatively, to the contrary. Those who null will just continue nulling stupidly and honest users would still be paying (even more) for service and prefer WHMCS even more for freedom of mind, and "competition" wouldn't understand the code anyway and prefer to invent their own)

[HawtDogFlvrwtr]

1. Agreed.

2. Don't agree at all. We've had tickets open now for almost 24 hours with no response, no confirmation, nothing.

3. Apparently the beta testing group needs to be tested... What is the point of testing if here we are today, stuck in production with a less than beta product.

4. Agreed.

5. Agreed.

6. Oh yeah, getting so many bugs that portions of the system are unusable, others cannot even use the system, others complaining about the system not working to the point where their sales are interrupted. Oh yeah, we got a lot for our $$$$$.

 

Just food for thought Dreamz Not trying to start a pissing match.

 

Just saying that the same things happen with the rest of them.. just worse... grass isn't always greener.

[disgruntled]

Im not going to be bailing, i like whmcs, besides i own my license so im not throwing away good money.

 

RE: update beta phases

 

I have to agree, The phases need to be lengthened.

 

beta phase a - major bug finding and reporting

beta phase b - major/minor bug finding and reporting

beta phase c - cosmetic bug reporting

beta phase d - select group for final evaluation. only release when no bugs have been found for x consecutive days

 

update release - Only a proven stable release.

 

That might seem like overkill, but as somebody on this thread pointed out, this is a billing/business software there has to be extra checking going on.

[HawtDogFlvrwtr]

Im not going to be bailing, i like whmcs, besides i own my license so im not throwing away good money.

 

RE: update beta phases

 

I have to agree, The phases need to be lengthened.

 

beta phase a - major bug finding and reporting

beta phase b - major/minor bug finding and reporting

beta phase c - cosmetic bug reporting

beta phase d - select group for final evaluation. only release when no bugs have been found for x consecutive days

 

update release - Only a proven stable release.

 

That might seem like overkill, but as somebody on this thread pointed out, this is a billing/business software there has to be extra checking going on.

 

Disgruntled,

 

That's a great idea. perhaps *caugh* Matt will look into that

[HawtDogFlvrwtr]

Just finished testing the fix from Matt and his crew on the smarty problems.. they made a patch to ensure it's reverse compatible.. my modules are all back up and working now!

[DigitalEnigma]

I have to agree on the beta testing, I did participate and reported a number bugs may of which were fixed and an enhancement to the ticket splitting which was suggested was implemented.

 

There are other bugs I reported such as the SagePay Token module not working at all, this hasn't worked correctly since it was added back in 5.1. Enhancements were made to get this working however it is still very very broken and preventing us taking payments with it.

 

There should be a number of phases with updated builds pushed for these with the fixes from previous version so they can also be tested to make sure they are working. There should also be a release candidate or two before a final stable release is pushed.

 

I also think the version numbering should be addressed, if the download is updated to fix bugs that have slipped through then the version number should be incremented to help identify this is an updated build. With a proper beta testing system in place there should be fewer bugs slipping through and we should not be seeing the issues we've seen with both the 5.1 and 5.2 releases when they were both first pushed.

[Si]

Just a question.

 

Do beta testers actually test on upgrading from previous versions or do they just beta test the clean version they are given?

 

There seems to be an anamoly in two areas: testing third party modules and upgrades.

 

Either way, it is blazingly obvious the beta process is seriously lacking.

 

A serious look in the mirror needs to be taken somewhere.

 

WHMCS have (it appears) no concept of 'real world' situations and the concerns real life users have of their system. If you open your system to be used by third parties and allow them to produce third party modules, then you don't live on an island. You have to take into consideration, the input of third parties in anything you do. Make up your mind where you stand WHMCS - you are either committed to third parties integrating into your code, or you stand alone. You have seriously messed up here. FIX IT!

Edited March 14, 2013 by Si

[HawtDogFlvrwtr]

Just a question.

 

Do beta testers actually test on upgrading from previous versions or do they just beta test the clean version they are given?

 

There seems to be an anamoly in two areas: testing third party modules and upgrades.

 

Either way, it is blazingly obvious the beta process is seriously lacking.

 

A serious look in the mirror needs to be taken somewhere.

 

 

Beta testers are encouraged to test the upgrade process just as one would do upon final release... though most probably nuke and reinstall. as a matter of fact... 5.2.0 was extremely simple to update (even in beta) with little or no issues. the .1 "enhancements" is the culprit.

 

I think the main problem is that the only real people beta testing, are the addon developers.. and all we're looking at functionality for is our addons... we just need a larger beta tester base that are end users as well as developers.

 

The key here is that everything worked in 5.2.0.. the part that lacks is that .1 slid out without so much as an external tester on account of the critical security issues it resolved.. i (as a developer) am all over new releases like a fly on... well, you know... but for selfish reasons.. to ensure my product doesn't break with a new release of WHMCS.. not for anything else...

 

my 2cents

Edited March 14, 2013 by HawtDogFlvrwtr
typos

[Matt]

We hear you guys. This was far from our finest release. But we're gonna do whatever's necessary to make it right. And that's going to start with the 5.2.2 update which will be ready and pushed out imminently. There's been no silent patches to 5.2 - and while we didn't give the patches for earlier versions release numbers, we hear ya on that too. I can assure you it won't happen again.

 

Matt

[Si]

We hear you guys. This was far from our finest release. But we're gonna do whatever's necessary to make it right. And that's going to start with the 5.2.2 update which will be ready and pushed out imminently. There's been no silent patches to 5.2 - and while we didn't give the patches for earlier versions release numbers, we hear ya on that too. I can assure you it won't happen again.

 

Matt

 

Matt, I like the humility of this post. The sad thing is, I will however be waiting to see other developers posting that all of the concerns raised have been addressed before I will ever upgrade or move to a 'stable release' again.

 

How far have we sunk that I don't trust WHMCS releases. It'll take a lot to get my confidence back in you guys and what you do. Serious damage done, but I trust you and your humanity on this (for now).

[nasos75]

I would really like to know what will happen if someone tries to renew a domain with 5.2.1, pays and get the message that everything is ok, and the next day he sees his domain taken and parked in some unknown registrar who asks a few hundred or thousands of dollars to sell it back to him.

 

I had also the bad luck to install 5.2.1 in order to check the modules I'm selling. Fortunately I managed to downgrade again to 5.1.4 after a few hours of downtime.

 

If this was a stable release, I wonder how unstable are betas. Probably with WHMCS betas you will also have your server hard disk low level formatted too!

[Dreamz]

How long? Right now our domain sync cron does not work AT ALL, you cannot edit OpenSRS based domains without wiping the domains username / password, we are missing the register lock checkbox and bazillions of other operating issues...

[DigitalEnigma]

I think lessons can be learnt from this release for both sides of the fence.

 

From WHMCS side, more testing pre-release with a proper structured beta testing process. Several beta releases allowing for fixed bugs to be tested between releases and any new issued that have cropped up to be reported and fixed.

 

Once all reported issued have been resolved push an RC release for testing, again repeat the cycle if needed fix any issues that are reported and push another RC for further testing.

 

Assuming all is ok following that push for stable release.

 

If bugs are still discovered after release (everyone’s environment differs) then issue a bug fix release and bump the version number rather than as has happened in the past and the version has been silently patched.

 

From our side, don’t put a stable release into a live environment WHMCS will provide a development licence so you can test before putting live… use it! We've never jumped on a stable release on the day of release and let is loose on our live environment without having tested it in our development environment to make sure all is working as it should for a few weeks following the original release.