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Recommendation: Build a Beta Test Team


Bartucxp

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Hello,

 

For about a year, each upgrade breaks things(without an exception). With each upgrade, somethings stops working. Critical things like currency convertion or resellerclub module gets hotfixes but most fixes takes really long time(for example, mass mailing was working fine and it was broken on October 2013 with an upgrade and it got fixed with 5.3.4 upgrade. It took months!).

 

WHMCS is a system that shouldn't have such errors. Companies are at stake here. You provide a great script that have many tools, people/companies having some habits using it(no one is using it the same way!), and when you break something that is important to someone, you can't know how much trouble it causes. Except for admin side, last upgrades(5.3.3 and 5.3.4) also affected client side with conversion problems, invoice redirect problems and resellerclub etc.. domain registration problems.

 

I believe if you hire just one person and provide him/her with all the service subscriptions supported by WHMCS(such as resellerclub subscription, cpanel server, etc.. only one of everything provided with whmcs) and this person runs tests for everything before each release, everything would be much better. I'm saying this as a PHP coder, you did test everything when you code something for the first time, right? I mean, didn't you test resellerclub api when you first created it? Of course you did, but why you don't test it again when you change things about it?

 

It is not just me, but everyone says that you're the only company to break things with upgrades. You can simply check web hosting and webmaster forums to realise that. If you don't trust one person about that, simply build a beta test team and make sure every single function of WHMCS is tested before release, isn't that how it is supposed to be?

 

Of course I understand you can't test everything before releases(even with a beta test team) and there will always be bugs. Also you fix things with updates. But it is not important to end user when you fix something that is already working or when you make it work better.

 

Please take this only as a suggestion. I started using whmcs before whmcs 4.0 version. I know how it used to be, there were no erros after upgrades, at least upgrades broke nothing and when a bug is reported, a hotfix used to issued in few days. But now, everything is broken with upgrades one by one and fixes takes months unless you consider it to be "critical". But you forget that some little things also can be very critical for your users. Everything wants you to work the way you used to work. People are looking for other solutions. Big companies are preparing their very own automation systems and small ones are just looking for something they can switch to. I small research will make you realise that.

 

Regards

Cihan

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Sounds simple enough, but each "test" would require many different scenarios for each one. It's easy enough to give recommendations without understanding the underlining issue, the code base. I'm hoping all these bugs are due the underlining issues, the coding standards itself being changed over. I'm sure this is the case, just give it some time and I think you will see things stabilize at some point.

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There was an error before caused by a misspelling. A letter error. Can't remember the exact error right now but a letter in a function name was incorrect, there was no way to miss it if that page was visited before releasing it. Also last update, resellerclub module was not working, there is no way to miss it if someone tried a resellerclub function. WHMCS is a big system with thousands of users. I believe spending few days for testing everything with only 2 php versions(5.2.x and 5.3.x) will be fine. I can see this is not what you're doing. I don't know your test procedure but missing that kind of errors basicly shows that it is not being tested enough before releases. Because some errors doesn't require different scenarios.

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Do you have a development site?

I understand your concerned about errors,

you have the ability to do EVERYTHING you are asking for.

 

This is reasonable, but not my responsibilty. Also, cant wait to get hacked on critical security updates.

 

---

 

Please don't get me wrong, I realise whmcs is a great system and testing every single function under different conditions is a very big job. I never said it is simple. But I believe it is very necessary. Even if not every single functionality, at least core functions and most used modules should be tested.

 

I just make a recommendation. I'm here to criticise for a good purpose.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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