CORE-12552 - Add domain suggestions to admin area whois lookup utility

[brian!]

Quote

CORE-12552 - Add domain suggestions to admin area whois lookup utility

errr... really? did anyone genuinely ask for such a feature... ?? feel free to point to a feature request where this occurred and received an overwhelming number of votes.

it's an admin lookup tool, not a sales tool... if I want suggestions, I can get them in the client area...

and nice to see the usual same old WHMCS trick of sneaking a new feature in between RC and GA, without the slightest hint of a mention of it in any of the previous two v7.6 betas...

I couldn't find any obvious admin method to disable the output - nothing in general settings... only option seems to be going to domain pricing and removing the alternate TLDs from Standard Whois or WHMCS Namespinning... which then removes them from the clientarea searches too... absolutely ridiculous, but sadly not surprising.

in the end, I wrote an admin hook to hide the suggestions output from that whois page... needless to say, there are no unique IDs used in the HTML, so using css in a custom css file wasn't an option(!)... if anyone wants the hook, feel free to PM me - but i'm not posting any  code in a temporary community like this one.

btw - did you decide not to fix the obvious twitter fontawesome icon bug that's been in twitterfeed.tpl since the first v7.6 beta..

<i class="fas fa-twitter fa-2x"></i>

with it being a brand icon, shouldn't it be...

<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-2x"></i>

even though I did mention it to a WHMCS staff member on June 29 when the first beta was released, I guess it's easily missed by WHMCS - it's only visible on the front page of the client homepage that every (if twitter account enabled) v7.6 end-user will now see when they upgrade.

oh boy.

[edvancombr]

1 hour ago, brian! said:

errr... really? did anyone genuinely ask for such a feature... ?? feel free to point to a feature request where this occurred and received an overwhelming number of votes.

it's an admin lookup tool, not a sales tool... if I want suggestions, I can get them in the client area...

and nice to see the usual same old WHMCS trick of sneaking a new feature in between RC and GA, without the slightest hint of a mention of it in any of the previous two v7.6 betas...

I couldn't find any obvious admin method to disable the output - nothing in general settings... only option seems to be going to domain pricing and removing the alternate TLDs from Standard Whois or DomainSpinner... which then removes them from the clientarea searches too... absolutely ridiculous, but sadly not surprising.

in the end, I wrote an admin hook to hide the suggestions output from that whois page... needless to say, there are no unique IDs used in the HTML, so using css in a custom css file wasn't an option(!)... if anyone wants the hook, feel free to PM me - but i'm not posting any  code in a temporary community like this one. 

btw - did you decide not to fix the obvious twitter fontawesome icon bug that's been in twitterfeed.tpl since the first v7.6 beta..

<i class="fas fa-twitter fa-2x"></i>

with it being a brand icon, shouldn't it be...

<i class="fab fa-twitter fa-2x"></i>

even though I did mention it to a WHMCS staff member on June 29 when the first beta was released, I guess it's easily missed by WHMCS - it's only visible on the front page of the client homepage that every (if twitter account enabled) v7.6 end-user will now see when they upgrade.

oh boy.

I agree, this kind of appeal is meaningless!

[brian!]

17 minutes ago, edvancombr said:

I agree, this kind of appeal is meaningless!

thanks @edvancombr - I didn't know if it was just me that thought this was stupid - glad i'm not alone! 😀

[WHMCS John]

Hi @brian!,

Thanks for your feedback. I wasn't involved in the design decision to include domain suggestions in the admin area, so cannot comment on that. But I have personally spoken with multiple customers who have expected to see the domain suggestions in the admin checker too.

I'm glad that you helped test the 7.6 release, I'm afraid we didn't seem to receive a report from you regarding the twitter icon. But I have now opened case CORE-12587 regarding this.

In the meantime, a quick tweak to /templates/six/twitterfeed.tpl will do the trick:

            <i class="fas fa-twitter fa-2x"></i>

 

[brian!]

40 minutes ago, WHMCS John said:

But I have personally spoken with multiple customers who have expected to see the domain suggestions in the admin checker too.

aahh so no official feature requests needed then - the way to get things added is to speak to WHMCS staff directly is it.. 🙄

my main points on this are:

1. the feature was added to a GA release without it being in the beta - what is the point of a beta if not to test new features? (but you've done this before and you'll do it again in the future).
2. why add a feature that can't be easily disabled - even if there is a tsunami of support for this feature (I don't believe there is - despite what "multiple" (2?) customers have been saying to you directly), we should have the option to disable it. e.g if using standard whois, I can well imagine these additional lookups are counting towards whois lookup limits - that's not good... yes I can hide the output with a hook, but the lookups are still taking place... yes I can switch to namespinner, but i'm not keen on it without knowing exactly how it works (which the documentation omits).
3. discuss these things with the client base first... put it in a beta, blog about it before a beta - don't just push it down our throats without warning - it's invoice calculation all over again (and there are more examples) - don't expect us to have to create our own solutions to remove it, or no doubt wait months/years for it to be removed by WHMCS.

40 minutes ago, WHMCS John said:

I'm glad that you helped test the 7.6 release

it's the sadist in me - what can I say... I certainly won't be using it for admin whois lookups.

40 minutes ago, WHMCS John said:

I'm afraid we didn't seem to receive a report from you regarding the twitter icon.

that's cos I didn't report it - I mentioned it to @WHMCS ChrisD in a PM at the end of June and suggested he pass it along internally... if he didn't pass it on, not my problem... besides, it's on the front page and should have been obvious via even the most basic level of testing... seriously, nobody there could spot it in six weeks of thorough "testing" ? 🙄

 

[wp4all]

Hi @ all,

not only there you will find a lot of bugs in the six, just one more here -->

<i class="fas fa-envelope-o"></i>

should be :

<i class="fas fa-envelope-open"></i>

or 

<i class="fas fa-envelope"></i>

 

I do not know what was wanted, but I'm sure this beta phase was too short. 

I know always the same but the shop is cruelly implemented.

Greetings Christian

[tap0le]

3 hours ago, wp4all said:

Hi @ all,

not only there you will find a lot of bugs in the six, just one more here -->

<i class="fas fa-envelope-o"></i>

should be :

<i class="fas fa-envelope-open"></i>

or 

<i class="fas fa-envelope"></i>

 

I do not know what was wanted, but I'm sure this beta phase was too short. 

I know always the same but the shop is cruelly implemented.

Greetings Christian

Seriously. As a developer, I test every last feature I add in a beta before release. It's really the only way to release decent software. It really irritates me when I get an update alert, assume it's 100% working, (since after all, it's GA/release) and end up with a bunch of broken crap.

[WHMCS John]

Hi @tap0le,

Thanks for your report, I've opened case CORE-12595 with our development team to have this looked into!

 

Version 7.6 was in a public pre-release testing for just over a month:

https://blog.whmcs.com/133495/whmcs-76-beta-now-available

https://blog.whmcs.com/133498/whmcs-76-release-candidate-now-available

For the next beta, we would love for you to take part and help us spot these kinds of things earlier!

[yggdrasil]

I can't believe I'm reading this. Who exactly requested such a dumb feature for the look up tool on the administration side? Isn't there a reason why that area is called the "admin" mode and not the "customer" mode?

Edited August 2, 2018 by yggdrasil

[brian!]

15 hours ago, WHMCS John said:

For the next beta, we would love for you to take part and help us spot these kinds of things earlier!

John, perhaps others would be more tempted to test if you released clearer (or plain just released) detailed documentation about new features...

5 hours ago, WHMCS John said:

Documentation for customising upsell messages are located here: http://kb.marketplace.whmcs.com/m/overview/l/840635-promotions-and-upsells-what-are-they-where-do-they-show-up-how-do-i-manage-them-enable-disable-how-do-i-customize-translate-them

not the hashtable nonsense... one of the worst WHMCS solutions that i've seen in over 5 years.

5 hours ago, WHMCS John said:

In 7.6 we made it easier to translate upsells via language overrides, and documentation for that is coming soon! http://kb.marketplace.whmcs.com/m/overview/l/927722-latest-news-and-updates

there you go... you launch a new feature in a beta, with documentation "coming soon" - six weeks later, it's still "coming soon".... seriously, this is how you treat the testers and you wonder why we don't bother reporting back? it's nice to see the Class docs have finally been released for v7.5 & v7.6... but ideally, we need the documentation before (or at least at the same time) as a feature release - not later after it's been fully released and then the bugs gets noticed.... if you need more time to write the docs, delay the launches - rarely are any new features time critical.

John, you personally know why I will never post in a beta f0rum again (though this is technically a beta f0rum, but not a real one).... and the idea that i'm going to blindly test a beta, with scarce documentation behind it, is not on either... i've got better things to do than officially report a missing icon from the front page... it was the first thing I spotted on day one and if nobody can spot it at WHMCS Towers, then just wow... there were many other bugs that I spotted that got fixed during beta without me informing you, just not the most obvious one...

seeing that the twitterfeed icon issue hasn't been fixed with a hotfix yet, it's safe to assume a v7.6.1 is around the corner... though a .1 maintenance release within a week/fortnight of a major release occurs every time, so not a surprise.... how many times have we been here before, and yet, here we are again. 🙄

1 hour ago, yggdrasil said:

I can believe I reading this. Who exactly requested such a dumb feature for the look up tool on the administration side? Isn't there a reason why that area is called the "admin" mode and not the "customer" mode?

if they had released it during the beta, I would have publicly complained... two beta releases and nothing like this was even hinted at... full release arrives and this is smuggled in with no public testing, seemingly no feature requests and we're supposed to just sit here and accept that we can't disable it.

commercially, I wouldn't use v7.6 - but I would hope that one of the things planned for a v7.6.1 maintenance release is some method to disable this nonsense.

and when v8 is being designed, tested and released next year, can the developers please just have two words in mind - COMMUNICATION and CHOICE - give us the option to disable features that aren't WHMCS core functionality... and tell us about them first before/during testing... I don't think that it is too much to ask for.

[wp4all]

Nothing to add.

Greetings Christian

[edvancombr]

2 hours ago, brian! said:

John, perhaps others would be more tempted to test if you released clearer (or plain just released) detailed documentation about new features...

not the hashtable nonsense... one of the worst WHMCS solutions that i've seen in over 5 years.

there you go... you launch a new feature in a beta, with documentation "coming soon" - six weeks later, it's still "coming soon".... seriously, this is how you treat the testers and you wonder why we don't bother reporting back? it's nice to see the Class docs have finally been released for v7.5 & v7.6... but ideally, we need the documentation before (or at least at the same time) as a feature release - not later after it's been fully released and then the bugs gets noticed.... if you need more time to write the docs, delay the launches - rarely are any new features time critical.

John, you personally know why I will never post in a beta f0rum again (though this is technically a beta f0rum, but not a real one).... and the idea that i'm going to blindly test a beta, with scarce documentation behind it, is not on either... i've got better things to do than officially report a missing icon from the front page... it was the first thing I spotted on day one and if nobody can spot it at WHMCS Towers, then just wow... there were many other bugs that I spotted that got fixed during beta without me informing you, just not the most obvious one...

seeing that the twitterfeed icon issue hasn't been fixed with a hotfix yet, it's safe to assume a v7.6.1 is around the corner... though a .1 maintenance release within a week/fortnight of a major release occurs every time, so not a surprise.... how many times have we been here before, and yet, here we are again. 🙄

if they had released it during the beta, I would have publicly complained... two beta releases and nothing like this was even hinted at... full release arrives and this is smuggled in with no public testing, seemingly no feature requests and we're supposed to just sit here and accept that we can't disable it.

commercially, I wouldn't use v7.6 - but I would hope that one of the things planned for a v7.6.1 maintenance release is some method to disable this nonsense.

and when v8 is being designed, tested and released next year, can the developers please just have two words in mind - COMMUNICATION and CHOICE - give us the option to disable features that aren't WHMCS core functionality... and tell us about them first before/during testing... I don't think that it is too much to ask for.

After reading your comment I remember a long conversation I had with WHMCS.com regarding a restriction of ioncube loader.

They tried to N to inform that the problem was in my code or in the ioncube.com site encoder.

After direct contact with ioncube x whmcs.com have decided to implement a feature to bypass the verification http://prntscr.com/kdwalq

Quote

CORE-12222 - Provide option to disable ionCube Safe Include to allow loading of files encoded with Online Encoder

https://docs.whmcs.com/Other_Tab#Encoded_File_Loading

 

 

[WHMCS John]

Thanks for your feedback. As always we are reading these forums and taking your comments into consideration. Feedback from users is very important in driving the development of WHMCS.

 

@edvancombr Looking at this another way, this proves that we listen to user feedback. We heard you needed a way to run files encoded through the Ioncube online encoders, and so we added an option in the very next maintenance update.

I am currently working on a blog post which explains a bit about this feature, and how it facilitates a better experience for users.

The article will also provide some guidance to valued WHMCS developers to help match those expectations for their addons too, and how to best use Ioncube to distribute files for use with WHMCS.

Stay tuned to https://blog.whmcs.com in the next few weeks!

[sol2010]

Well, just to add my tuppence worth, I've update to 7.6 and all my icons are broken.

Another waste of my time trying to sort out the mess of another release.

 

 

 

[yggdrasil]

5 minutes ago, sol2010 said:

Well, just to add my tuppence worth, I've update to 7.6 and all my icons are broken.

Another waste of my time trying to sort out the mess of another release.

 

 

 

Check this post:

 

Edited August 21, 2018 by yggdrasil

[N8Solutions]

On 8/1/2018 at 5:52 PM, wp4all said:

Hi @ all,

not only there you will find a lot of bugs in the six, just one more here -->

<i class="fas fa-envelope-o"></i>

should be :

<i class="fas fa-envelope-open"></i>

or 

<i class="fas fa-envelope"></i>

 

I do not know what was wanted, but I'm sure this beta phase was too short. 

I know always the same but the shop is cruelly implemented.

Greetings Christian

Would you please do me, and others, a favor by letting us know what file this is in? I have performed a search for the Font Awesome classes you provided and was unable to find it in the Six template. Maybe it's been fixed already in the current release?