Optimus Template

Jomres 4.5.5 has been released

Lots of bug fixes/tweaks to the system. Two changes of note are modifications to the booking form, so please ensure that your versions of dobooking.html and dobooking_srp.html (if you've modified them) incorporate the new changes. Ifyou're on Windows, remember that WinMerge is your friend when comparing files.

The wind is blowing, it's raining and everybody is looking forward to escaping to the Mediterranean, it must be summertime in Pembrokeshire again.

Up until now, users who have purchased licenses for Jomres Developer (after 1st December 2009) have been unable to renew their licenses, forcing them to purchase new full licenses if they wanted to upgrade their version of Jomres.

Jomres 4.5.3 has been released. It is a security release so you are advised to upgrade as soon as you can.

The version includes the usual plethora of bug fixes/functionality tweaks. It also introduces two new features :

Implemented jquery ui's datepicker functionality to replace the older dhtml date picker which hasn't been updated in years and is starting to show it's age (for ex. August in Chrome doesn't seem to show). I'll leave the older code in-situ for now in case somebody wants it, but in time, once I'm sure that the new code works flawlessly, we will remove it.

Added table and code to cross reference room types with property types, and dropped the old SRP option in room type configuration. This gives us greater flexibility when creating room types and they probably should be renamed to something like "links" or somesuch in the future. There shouldn't be any need for properties to modify their tariffs or rooms, however site managers of existing installations will need to edit their room types and associate existing room types with property types.

This is a quick article to highlight a new plugin that we've developed for Jomres, called jomres_asamodule. This is one of those changes that sneaks up on you, originally it was just an idea that one or two people might use, but it seems to have blossomed into a really useful plugin.

You can see it in action on the new Jomres Demo, where we've set the featured_properties, extended_maps and popular_properties plugins as modules on the front page. As you can see, it really does help to improve the functionality of Jomres.

For some more information on the plugin, please see the manual page : http://manual.jomres.net/The_jomres_asamodule_plugin

Jomres v4.4.1beta1 has been released.

Pre-4.4.1 users will need to uninstall any old "upgrade bugfix" plugins, then install this plugin http://forum.jomres.net/index.php?topic=3036.0

This is mainly a bugfix release, but there are a few new features :

• Added a new function output_price and associated classes. Currently users need to enter an http entity in the property and site config areas to output a currency symbol. In this version we've added a currency class which (should) have every currency code in the world, and their associated symbols, plus formatting for putting symbols before or after prices. Any modules and plugins (particularly Jintour) will need to be updated to take account of this new functionality (TODO). This feature improves the display of currency symbol (eg the euro symbol is now after the price, not before it) and it allows us to ensure that users are using the appropriate currency code, not something they've guessed. Knowing that this information is correct I'll now be able to look at developing code that can pull currency conversion rates from the web to show prices in different currencies (except in the booking form, where we'll continue to use the property's "native" currency).
• Added html purifier library and supporting code in Jomres to add an extra layer of security for input and output filtering. It isn't mandatory to use it (it's slows things down), but if you are paranoid about security it is recommended.
• Added personal discount feature so that specific guests can be given individual discounts
• Added new functionality to enable us to use the search feature and return (some of) the data in xml format for use via a remote site. Currently only some of the data is returned url encoded as things like currency symbols were creating xml errors (simple xml doesn't like CDATA, but we use simple xml as it's the default on PHP5.2 servers), it's likely that all returned data will need to be url encoded though. Test code can be found at http://forum.jomres.net/index.php?topic=2760.0
• Modified system to use cookies instead of session_id, drops the requirement to run the system with Global Config needing to be set to None. With luck, any users who's servers are not configured to use sessions (admittedly, few and far between) will now be able to use Jomres.
• Added a site config feature where site administrators can limit the "home" country of properties to just one country.
• Added support key checking for upgrades and plugins

Please see the changelog at http://www.jomres.net/Changelog.html for a summary of all changes.

Some of the templates have been changed. It's likely that 4.4 templates will work without making any changes however if you'd like to bring your customised 4.4 templates up to date with the current version (for example, to take advantage of the new personal discount feature) you'll need to look at the changelog to see which templates have been changed and merge the new changes with your existing copies.

You can browse the Jomres repository via https://jomres.trac.cvsdude.com/Jomres_core_v4/browser/jomres/templates/jomres

Revisions from 4.4 and 4.4.1beta1 are between 724 and 780

So for example if you want to see specific changes for the dobooking.html template you'd look at https://jomres.trac.cvsdude.com/Jomres_core_v4/log/jomres/templates/jomres/frontend/dobooking.html and look at the appropriate changeset (Click on the revision number under the "Chgset" column). You'll see that for that file, only changes 763 and 771 are appropriate between v4.4 and v.4.41beta1.

Likewise, if you've modified any other files, you are recommended to browse the repository and check to see if those files have changed between the two versions, using the same approach as described above.

For operational reasons, I'm going to be forced to raise the price of Jomres at the end of February 2010. It's been the same price for quite some time now, and I'd prefer it to remain that way, however as the business evolves so must the price of the product and it's support.

Over the years Jomres has grown in popularity from a small hobby project to a full blown application with a multitude of features. One area that I've always put extra energy into is support however the growth of the user base means that almost all of my time now is spent just running the site and dealing with questions. There's almost no time for further development.

So, I'm forewarning everybody now that the price will be going up to £179 on the first of March. This increase will help fund future development and support. It's a fairly steep jump from it's previous price however it's still extremely reasonable if you compare Jomres to it's main competitors, none of which are are GNU/GPL licensed. Nor are they open source, Ioncube is required on your server to run the applications.

Jomres, on the other hand, is fully Open Source, GNU/GPL licensed and you can run it on as many servers as you wish.

As always Jomres remains the best value for money.

NO ioncube. NO restrictions. Just great software.

After much soul searching, I've come to realise that to stay active in the Joomla econosphere I have no choice but to license Jomres as GPL.

Everybody who uses the software agrees with me that it has no peers and it's the best at what it does, however in a market that's dominated by poor but free or cheap competitors it's not enough to make the best possible Joomla booking component, you have to go that one step further.

To that end I've now decided to relicense Jomres as GPL from v4.3.

Future purchases will be for the Jomres download and three months support, we will not be able to provide the lifetime support or upgrades that we did to pre-GPL clients.

Jomres is a great hotel booking system, and we have lots of loyal users who're constantly coming up with new feature requests.

A frequent request nowadays is for inter-server connectivity. This could be for connectivity between bookings.com, or a remote PMS (Property Management System). Other requests include for desktop and mobile phone applications.

Looking at all these requests, the common requirement is for an established API that will allow a Jomres server and "a n other" server to talk to each other, so about a year ago I sat down and wrote the initial framework for the Jomres API plugin. Since then it has been tweaked and updated here and there.

Time has finally allowed me to take a few days off from support and sit down and work on a Windows application that uses the API, which I'm currently calling the Jomres Desktop Companion (JDC).

The newest version of Jomres is packed full of changes to help your system run faster, with more features, and more flexibility. The main focus of the changes for this version hinge around two particular new features : Jomres Standalone and framework changes to reduce the need for globals.

Introducing Jomres Lite.

The latest and greatest version of Jomres has just got a new lease of life with the introduction of Jomres Lite, which is a feature reduced, but not crippled, version of Jomres 4.2.

Jomres Lite is dual licensed MIT/GPL, so it's totally free to all to download and use as you need. It's not an old version that the developer can't be bothered to maintain any longer, instead it's the newest version of Jomres with a handful of features removed but still perfectly usable.

This summer's discount voucher

Well, it's summer again so that must mean it's time for another discount voucher for Jomres licenses.

Use the voucher code "summer2009" on the checkout page when purchasing Jomres (before you get to the 2Checkout payment page) to get a 25% discount on any Jomres license.*

This is a great offer and a discount will not be offered again until Christmas 2009, so grab it while it's available.

For information on how to get the discount, please see this wiki page .

In other news...

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.

Normally, when I find a really good service I'm rather inclined to keep it to myself. After all, chances are good that the service is excellent because it's not overstretched. Praise them too highly and (if anybody cares what you say) you'll soon find that they're soon swamped with other customers.

Keeping the light of United Hosting under a bushel would be an exception to that rule. Sure, they're not cheap but ever since I moved over to them about a month ago after the debacle at Fasthosts they've answered all my questions extremely quickly (and there have been quite a few), regardless of the time of day, accurately and with good humour.

So, if you're looking for a top notch service (hosting Jomres based servers with them works without any problems whatsoever) I highly recommend United Hosting, who prove that you really do get what you pay for.

Thanks Wilson, Matt and everybody else for all your hard work.

The 'internet generation' of 15-24 year olds who spend three hours a week on the net will drive future growth of online travel.

The forecast came from David Soskin, CEO of price comparison website Cheapflights.

He predicted that with some $115 billion worth of travel product sold worldwide online currently, it is this internet and technology-orientated generation who will drive the growth of internet travel exponentially in the next few years.

See the full article at TravelMole (login required)