• 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.

Jomres 3.1.11 has been released. As well as a few bug fixes, there's also a new license for Jomres:

Jomres Unlimited.

This license should be considered the daddy of them all. The other licenses require that your server communicate with the license server on a regular basis to confirm that your license is still valid, whereas the Unlimited license does away with all that. You can even download the installation and integration scripts in their unencoded formats and edit them to suit your own requirements.

This is the ideal license for the web developer who wants to provide multiple installations of Jomres to multiple clients. The price is set so that after you've installed Jomres 3 times you're effectively using it for free.

Subscriptions!

It's now possible to add subscription functionality to your website, enabling you to charge your property managers for the properties they host on your Jomres powered server.

The new features work around the concept of property limits. You create subscription packages which can have a range of options, and set a limit to a number of properties for that package. Property managers then can have N published properties on their system for the number of properties the subscription package(s) they have signed up for allows. If they want, they can subscribe to multiple packages.

This functionality is new and should be considered beta, which means that whilst we've tested it for functionality there may still be bugs with it so use it at your own risk.

More information can be found on this forum post: http://forum.jomres.net/index.php?topic=464.0

Just to let you all know, the manual's been finally updated for Jomres v3.1+

It's been broken into two parts, a System Administrator's guide and a Property Manager's guide. 

The Property Manager's guide takes a much more tutorial style approach, guiding you through your initial steps you need to take to set up a property, then touches on other settings that you might want to consider when performing further configuration. If you're a site admin providing services to your users you might have other suggestions as to what can be included in that guide, if so please raise a support ticket with your thoughts.

Jomres 3.1.8 is now available for download via the license server or updates server. Apart from a few more bug fixes 3.1.8 finalises, for the most part, the remote plugin functionality.

Remote plugins are installed directly from the update server so you can be sure of getting the most up to date versions of your favourite plugins (if curl is enabled). It also installs mambots (aka plugins on Joomla 1.5), modules and Jomres minicomponents (these are stored outside of the Jomres directory tree so if you upgrade Jomres the files aren't changed). Naturally, all these plugins are free.

There's still a little work to be done with plugins as some are incompatible with each other and managing this needs to be worked out, but in general it's all there and working and Hazel and I can finally move onto other stuff like building an invoicing system for the site administrator.

Have fun folks.

I'm calling this the  John Inman** special because it's Jomres' third birthday and there's a yummy discount to be had again!

Vince is moving home between the 16-23rd of February so he will be offline while the ADSL is moved from his old house to the new house. This shouldn't be a problem as Hazel will still be around to manage tickets and forum queries.

Because there will be reduced support for the next week or so we do ask that you first raise any questions you might have on the forums. Hazel's definately going to be snowed under so don't be surprised if there's a delay responding to those questions. If you're a Jomres/Jombok user and you can answer any of the questions you see on the forum please don't be afraid to jump in with a reply yourself.

Wish me luck, quitting smoking's hard enough without the added fun of moving home!

I'd like to remind folks that we get the vast bulk of our traffic from JED so your reviews and votes are very important to us. If you have the time, please visit the Extensions Directory and let other people know your experiences of Jomres.

Jomres v3 is ready for download from the license server.

This isn't a huge build functionality wise. It has a few scrummy features like frontend stats and html emails, but the main changes are, once again, under the hood. These are 1. Refactoring of the file system so that virtually all of the files now exist under /components/com_jomres allowing you to .htaccess password protect the administrator login, and 2. Making it Joomla 1.5 ready (that'll raise a few eyebrows).

If you're planning to upgrade to this version you are strongly advised to read this forum post as there is important information in there that you will need to know. Also, unlike previous versions you should not simply run the executable/upload and overwrite existing files. Instead, uninstall Jomres using the Joomla/Mambo component installer then run the executable/upload the new build again. Ensure that you run install_jomres.php once the files have been uploaded so that you can bring your database tables up to date with the current version.

Note, after upgrading you'll need to re-add Jomres to your main menu. Once that's been done, note the new Itemid in the main menu and add that to Jomres's Site Config as you'll get a lovely annoying warning about the Itemid not being correct otherwise.

As always, it is advised that you do a file and database backup before performing an upgrade, and it is recommended that you test an upgrade against a development installation on localhost. 

There's a new forum at http://forum.jomres.net for those users who've been nagging me. Have fun and don't break it!