As of today the Joomla Extensions Directory team have removed all Joomla 1.0.x and non-GPL extensions (including Jomres) from the directory.

This is was a move publicised over the last Christmas period so there has been plenty of time for new extension directories that are non-GPL component friendly to rise and fill the void. Two that come to mind are CMSextensions and BestofJoomla. I personally prefer CMSextensions but it looks like BestofJoomla is coming on strong too.

So, remember folks when you're looking for the right application for your Joomla site, if you go to the JED you're unlikely to see the best possible choices available to you, and I'd advise you to make CMSextensions or BestofJoomla your first port of call.

I've had a few people with Jomres behaving strangely on certain servers. A typical example is where the tariffs look correct but prices only work out correct for one or two days.

This isn't a bug in Jomres, it's the Joomla cache. It's intercepting the calls to Jomres and instead using data it's cached to generate the content. Given the nature of the booking form's dynamic information, this is a bad thing so if you find that the booking form's not working as expected make sure that caching is disabled in both Joomla's Global Configuration, and that the Cache System Plugin is disabled.

Whilst it would be better for Jomres to programatically tell Joomla not to cache it's pages, I haven't yet found out how to do that, so in the short term at least it's best to disable Joomla's caching (although of course you can still use Jomres's caching).

Just a quick note to say that Jomres v4.0.1 has been released.

It contains a couple of small tweaks to improve things.

As v4 now runs in it's own directory the license key (key.php) is housed in /jomres/temp instead of the old /media folder, but v4 wouldn't force a rebuild of the key file because it was looking in the wrong place for it. That's now been fixed in 4.0.1. If you're having problems with the license in v4.0.0 (ie v4stable) then first and foremost, see if deleting /jomres/temp/key.php fixes the problem.

I've added a feature to detect if the template file on disk is newer than that in the database (for those of you using the template editing feature in administrator). This will help you to see that there may have been changes to the templates you've custom coded. This was prompted by....

Added a feature to the booking forms so if the property doesn't have any coupon codes against it, then the coupon input isn't shown. This means that both the dobooking.html and dobooking_srp.html files have been changed slightly.

Now, a quick word of warning. The weather forecast for the next few days is good, so I'm going to do something that I haven't done in years, that that's Take A Holiday. I'm not going away, I'll still be monitoring the tickets/forums etc and if there are any really critical issues (like you raising a ticket because of license issues) then I'll respond, but for the most part, until at least  Tues 2nd of June, I'll be taking a long weekend. Play nicely with each other while I'm away.

Changelog:

Added ability for Jomres to detect when a template on disk is newer than the last time the template in the db was edited and warn that it may have been updated.
Added code to detect usage of coupon codes. If there are no codes for the property, then the coupon input isn't shown in the booking form. Note that the booking form templates (dobooking.html and dobooking_srp.html have changed as a result).
Modified site config to remove key file on save, previous path was incorrect.
Tweaks to multilanguage handling to correctly pull and use the language file appropriate when calling a module but not showing Jomres proper.
Removed default date settings from list propertys book now link as no longer required as validto and from timestamps no longer used in booking engine.
Fixed issue in paypal gateway where settings overridden weren't being pulled from the db correctly.
 

Jomres v4 is stable.

For information and upgrade instructions, please see the news article regarding Beta3 , the same information applies to V4 Stable.

The Jomres license has been updated in Version 4 beta 2 to encourage third party development of plugins for Jomres. In the rest of this article, I'll explain the why/what/who of the changes, but first I'll summarise the changes here:

Jomres as a whole is copyright me (Vince Wooll) and subject to the Jomres proprietary license. Any file in the package, unless noted otherwise, cannot be shared/distributed hacked/cracked or generally messed about with by anybody else. There are, however exceptions.

All of the files in the jomres/core-minicomponents, jomres/libraries/jomres/cms_specific and jomres/templates folders have been re-licensed MIT , so anybody who wants to is free to copy/modify/distribute those files to suit themselves or anybody else, either for free or cost.

Jomres is still a very small business, and although it's four years old now I still think of it as a start-up, and of myself as new to the game of business, so like many of my clients I read a fair bit about running my business on the web (you never know, you might stumble over a good idea from time to time).

I've had my share of sleepless nights. Last autumn was pretty hairy as sales dropped off a little due to the panic as the economy tanked and although things have picked up since then I never consider myself to have "made it" or got myself set for life.  Every day I could do or say something ridiculously stupid and end up losing custom altogether, pretty much the same feelings of mortality that every other sensible human being suffers from from time to time, so I enjoyed reading this post and thought I'd pass it on to you.

"What haughty startup bloggers don't tell you"

"Always" "never" "do" "don't." Such confidence! It's a lot to look up to, a lot to emulate.

Aren't you are just like these perfect personas? You've got an internally-consistent philosophy guiding every decision, right?

You've always got the correct answer and never toss and turn at night.  RIGHT?

You don't worry about competitors or worry about having shitty ideas or whether money will come through the door next month.... uh... right?

I won't quote everything that he says as that would spoil the fun, but suffice to say, he's talking a lot of sense. I've been around a short while now and can confidently say that when he sums up and says

Remember this: Doubt is good. It means you're being introspective, that you're not resting on prior knowledge (that might be invalid now), and that you're honestly weighing the situation instead of employing blind optimism. Doubt is healthy! Hold onto that.

he's spot on.

Read it for yourself. If you're a small business too, I'm sure you'll get courage from what he says.

Oh, and V4 Beta 2's available. Take a look at the Jomres v4 forum board for more info on the subject.

I'm please (and exhausted) to announce that Jomres v4 is now available for Alpha Testing. Alpha Testing means that it's available for users to play around with and test new features, but should not be used on a production server.

Jomres v4 is not backwardly compatible with Jomres v3, so please do not attempt to upgrade an existing installation from v3 to v4.

The Jomres v4 web installer is available for download from your downloads area under My Account at Jomres.net. The installer will download the ioncube encoded version of Jomres and install it, just like the v3 web installer.

Be aware that in this version we're dropping all support for PHP4 and Joomla 1.0.x.

There's a new board on the forum for reporting v4 bugs, please use that if you're testing v4. This helps me to ensure that there's no confusion as to which version you're referring to when posting.

There are lots and lots of changes for this version, so without further ado, here's a quick summary:

There's a new plugin available: Horizontal Rooms list.

This plugin is a response to those folks asking for such a thing. The rooms are listed horizontally below the Accommodation Total and is a modification of the standard booking form in that the room data isn't in the  overlib popup but instead in a row alongside the room type icon. The data shown in the row are Number, Name, Type, Tariff name, Rate per night, Disabled access? & Max people.

This plugin also resolves an issue that some folks who are using the Averaged Tariff Model wanted the per night price of the room listed in the room details rather than just the first night's price. The price is calculated to cover the whole period if you're using the Averaged model but of course there's a warning saying that the full price of the booking will not be known until the room's added to their selection (because things like guest types, extras and single person suppliments need to be taken into account before that's known).

Have fun, I'll add this to the demo when I find a shiny round tuit.

• Added jquerycombo feature so that geographic searching can be performed via dropdowns that autopopulate. mod_jomsearch_m1 has been tweaked to be more appropriate to a banner/syndicate type module position.
  
• Moved enabling of logging from jomres.php into Site Config.

Plugin updates

The API plugin has been updated. I've added transaction recording, so transactions can be viewed from a new API Transactions button in Jomres Administrator area. As tranactions are recorded we can also put into place some security so the system now can check for failed API connections and ban IPs for an hour if there are more than three failures within the last hour. Also added a new API call "query_room_price_byroomnumber_noperiod". I'll upload the test code to the forum thread where I've been documenting things so people can add that to their library.

There's a new SMS gateway plugin called sms_clickatell that some people have been asking for. As usual it's being treated as Beta code so don't rely on it for a production site just yet. As far as I can tell the messages seem to be going thru to my clickatell test account so now it's over you y'all to play around with it.

Site changes

Also, a few changes to the site that folks might be interested in :

In the main menu at the top of this page you'll see under the Support open a new item "Changelog". This pulls the data from the changelog on the updates server.

Under the Products option I've added an item "Current Plugins". Like the changelog this pulls data direct from the updates server and will give you an up to date list of the current plugin set. It's the same data, more or less as you'd see in your plugin manager.

Please be aware that Joomla 1.5.8 is now available and you are advised to upgrade as soon as possible. The Jomres Joomla updater has been updated so if you'd like to use the plugin to bring you up to the newest version then please check out this post  for more information.

• By default, new installations of Jomres have the Minimised Configuration option set to true. This means that non-Super Property Managers by default will see a simplified set of configuration options.
• Some options that were previously viewable by SRP managers but were only relevant to MRPs have been switched off (for both Super and normal property managers).
• Some options that were previously viewable when in Minimised Configuration have also been removed (again, Super Property Managers will still see them).
• When a new property is created via the add button in the toolbar the user is offered the opportunity to select if their property is an SRP or an MRP. If it's an SRP then they are given, in a new dropdown, a series of radio boxes which they can use to choose the number of bedrooms that their property offers. On submit, this option is then used to create a new transparent room which they will never see or change and in Property Admin where previously they would be able to choose their room, now they will simply choose the number of bedrooms their property has. This is effectively a wrapper for the old room handling but it also manages converting any existing tariffs to their new room type. It might sound complicated but the idea is to remove any need for them to understand that tariffs and room types and rooms are linked, making it easier for them. Similarly room/property types are no longer selectable by them in the Tariffs admin of either Advanced or Micromanage, making creating tariffs even simpler.

• Composite Property Details. The property details page in older versions of Jomres were constructed via a number of different templates which were shown sequentially, which made editing the entire details page tricky. Site Configuration has a new option "Use Composite Property details?" which when enabled now allows you to use a new template composite_property_details.html which is effectively all of the old, seperate, templates merged into one. This will allow you to better modify your layout. See this forum post for more information http://forum.jomres.net/index.php?topic=1037.0
• Completely rewrote the profiles handling functionality to make it simpler and more logical. It is now much easier to add and configure Property Managers.

• Switched on display of API key in front end property admin area

As usual, you're advised to always install the upgrade on a local server first against a copy of your current site and ensure that there are no issues. Take the time to read the changelog and ensure that none of the bugfixes or functionality changes impact your current ways of working. The tariffs override templates have been change, see this post http://forum.jomres.net/index.php?topic=1066.0 to see details of the changes between 3.2.3 and 3.3.

In other news, I've been hard at work on the new Jomres API handling. See this post for more information : http://forum.jomres.net/index.php?topic=1088.0

This API is in response to numerous requests from users for intra-server functionality, so I need your feedback to make it work as you want, so get yourselves over there and start playing.

In case you've missed it, the Joomla team have announced a retirement date of July 22 2009 for the Joomla 1.0.x series. You can read more about it here.

I would advise all of you to ensure that when you do your Jomres install, to do it on Joomla 1.5.x, as Joomla 1.0.x will be unsupported in less than a year's time. If you've already got a J1.0.x installation then now's the time for you to start looking at migrating over to Joomla 1.5. I'm afraid I can't suggest the best migration tool as they've all got their own faults but whatever you do, please test your migration on a local/development server before trying it on your live server.

We have post two new surveys for you to abuse Hazel and I with.

There's the Exit survey for non-purchases which we hope non-adopters will use to help us understand why they haven't used Jomres and the Your Jomres experience 2008 survey for existing clients to give us feedback on how they're using Jomres, and how we can make it better.

Don't hold back folks, without your priceless feedback we'd never be able to improve the system.

There are a couple of new plugins available via the Jomres plugin manager that might interest a few people.

The first is a very simple plugin that replaces the room name with the room type. The room name/number etc will show in the room popup, but in the rooms list you'll see the room type. The plugin's called "bookingform_swaproomnamewithtype"

Much more interesting is the plugin "bookingform_no_rooms_list". This is an experiment by me to remove the rooms list completely from the booking form. Instead, it'll try to automatically assign rooms to the booking much like the SRP handling functionality does. It's still considered Beta standard functionality, so test it thoroughly before you decided to use it. All of the scenarios I can think of, it seems to work ok, so now you all can have a play around.

It's probably not ideal for everybody. If you've got a lot of different room types it might not be your cup of tea, but if you've only got one room type, it should be ideal.

Let me know (via the forum/ticket system) how you get on with it.

Version 3.1.15Stable's now available for download.

A quick summary of new features :

Added metatitle and metadescription (change these through Edit Property in Property Admin). Whereever property header is shown, these details will be added to the page.
Added new feature to room details. Specific rooms can have different single person suppliments, which can come into play if the General Configuration Single Person Suppliments option is not set to Yes.
Added new feature to Advanced tariff editing mode to allow different tariffs to be offered depending on the number of rooms already selected.
Added mailto link for guest's email address in edit booking page.
Added email site manager on property delete
Added captcha protected contact form for properties that do not allow bookings online.
Added Contact form link to property details template so even those properties that allow online bookings can receive emails from guests.
Added new option to Advanced editing mode tariffs so that you can ensure that a tariff is only valid to begin on a certain day of the week.

Lots and lots of bug fixs and tweaks.

Just a quick note about 3.1.13

This is a small changes release, it tries again to address some paths issues that people have had (and as far as I can see, it does, but only time will tell). 

We've also released two new plugins. They're very simple but they do what they're designed to do:

1. featured_properties Does what it says on the tin. Adds a new button to your administrator Jomres so that you can choose which properties are featured. Search results will be re-calculated so if a featured property is in the results, then it will be pushed to the front of the list.

2. frontpage A nice simple plugin that offers a new front page that non-registered users will see if they're not navigating the Jomres pages via a search (ie if $task=""). Currently it offers 2 rows of properties that Hazel's done a lovely layout for (thanks mate).

Finally, can I remind people that we get a heck of a lot of our business from the Joomla Extensions Directory, and we rely heavily on reviews to produce business. If you're a fan of Jomres (or even, if you're not) then please visit our page on JED and pass on your experience of us to others.

Thanks.