Oct 31 2009

Twitter Weekly Updates for Week Ending 2009-10-31


Oct 24 2009

Twitter Weekly Updates for Week Ending 2009-10-24


Oct 23 2009

Egypt 2008 673


Oct 19 2009

Yarmouth Old Gaffers Festival 2009 295


Oct 17 2009

Twitter Weekly Updates for Week Ending 2009-10-17

  • Deploying a @blesta install – by far the best billing/management system I've seen in a while, especially compared to the ModernBill hell #
  • Took the picture: October 2009 Desktop http://st.tl/orZ8r #
  • Loving the optimism… RT @kevr1990: Burnley will be 5th on Sunday night if all the other results go our way and we win by 24 goals… #
  • Sitting down to watch England #football #worldcup #
  • RT @cs278: http://beatcancereverywhere.com/ #beatcancer #

Oct 16 2009

Egypt 2008 901


Oct 13 2009

Blesta: Sensible Billing

blesta-logoOver the past year or so I’ve been trying multiple billing/management/ticket/auto-provisioning systems to try and find one that a) actually works and b) fits my needs. It’s been a struggle and I’ve been through ClientExec, Modern/Parallels Plesk Billing, WHMCS and others before stumbling upon Blesta.

Without going into great technicolour detail we required a simple system which allowed the client to provision a hosting account, bring their own domain (we currently don’t offer domain registration for various reasons), collect payment and then set-up the account on our servers and throw the client both billing and Plesk login details without any interaction from our side. Seems simple? Most systems make it like open heart surgery, with a million different options for every single step.

What a revelation Blesta was, billing done right. I’m not going to go into a hideously complex and detailed review mainly because I don’t have the time but suffice to say if you are on the look-out for a new billing system or are slowly starting to feel the need to throw your current one out of the window I’d encourage you to give Blesta a try.

We’ve currently got it running the Plesk module to auto-provision services while payments are processed by PayPal or offline (bank transfer, cheque etc.) depending on the client. It’s been incredibly easy to set-up, and the one support ticket that I dropped in was answered within a few minutes. At the moment it’s just doing hosting but billing and invoicing for service jobs shouldn’t be a problem either, and certainly well within it’s capabilities. A big plus for me is that Blesta actually uses the domain template packages on the Plesk server, and doesn’t require you to set limits within the actual billing software.

It’s not often I write nice things about billing systems, mainly because most of them are just epic amounts of fail and hideously complex to use. However, Blesta isn’t, so go and give it a try.


Oct 10 2009

Twitter Weekly Updates for Week Ending 2009-10-10

  • Firefox, why oh why do you eat all of my memory… #
  • @stickerboy Eating is fine – eating so much that you empty the bloody cupboard and don't leave anything for anybody else isn't :-( in reply to stickerboy #
  • @stickerboy Yeah, I need to try something new. Firefox grabbing ~1G of RAM is just taking the piss for a browser, so might give Chrome a go in reply to stickerboy #
  • Top work by @Ebuyerdotcom – ordered on Friday, super saver delivery and already been dispatched via UPS #
  • Woooh, new toys. 2 1TB hard drives, new speakers, external HDD caddy and a waste toner collector (less exciting) :-D #
  • Anybody got thoughts on Acronis TrueImage? Looking at backup software for Windows that actually works, recommendations welcome #
  • Much thanks to anybody who has a Google Wave invite to spare and is willing to pass one onto me :) markthedaemon@gmail.com #
  • What a complete waste of time by Donington; should have handed it over to Silverstone as soon as they realised they were up shit creek #f1 #
  • RT @alandavies1: BBC1 showing highlights of England game at 10.15. Internet robbers barred an earlier annoucement. #

Oct 10 2009

Moving On

phpBB.com Community

After over three years as a part of the phpBB modifications team I have decided to move on and have thus departed the team.

Unfortunately time was the main cause of the issue; I simply didn’t have enough of it to be able to commit fully to the role, and it wasn’t sustainable for me to continue in the team with activity level the way it was.

I wish the entire MOD team well in their future endeavours and hope to have the time to drop back into the phpBB.com fora occasionally to keep tabs on the project and how it continues to develop.


Oct 3 2009

Twitter Weekly Updates for Week Ending 2009-10-03


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