Blesta, a script kept under raps and developed for over 3 years, has just been released. The script has been dubbed to be in direct competition with the popular “ModernBill” and “WHMCS” web applications which up until today receive many positive reviews.

We took a look at the newly released Blesta script, and found it both refreshing and secure. We also took this opportunity to conduct an interview with one of the developement/Sales & Marketing team, Paul Phillips. You can see our interview with Paul below.

1. What inspired you to develop a new billing/hosting script?

To us it is anything but new. We started coding Blesta under a different name well over 3 years ago and used it in house here at Phillips Data with no real intention to sell it. The inspiration came from seeing the scripts that are currently out there and knowing that we’ve created something better and wanting to share that.

2. What makes your script better than that of other popular scripts such as modernbill and WHMCS?

One word. Productivity. I’ll try to refrain myself from commenting directly about ModernBill or WHMCS, but I’ll elaborate a bit. Blesta is designed with the idea that you should spend *less* time in it than other apps. We want you to be able to get your job done quickly so that you can go home and spend time with your family.

3. How long has blesta been in development for?

Blesta has been in development off and on for over 3 years. With the addition of some much needed personnel it has been in active development all during 2007.

4. Which feature from blesta would you consider your favourite?

This is a tough question. I really like our invoicing system.. but I’ll have to say that my favorite feature is our module system. It’s an object oriented system that lets anyone write their own modules, making Blesta extremely flexible. Other apps seem to have had tunnel vision in this area.

5. What type of server configuration and requirements are there with your script?

Blesta requires PHP 5 with cURL and OpenSSL, and MySQL 4+. Some people complain about the PHP 5 requirement, but PHP 5’s OOP (Object Oriented Programming) features really opened us up to creating a more powerful application. Besides, PHP 4 is being discontinued at the end of 2007.

6. How many staff members do you have working for your support team (if applicable)?

Right now we have two active developers working on Blesta. Cody and myself. Cody recently came on full time after completing a BS degree in Computer Science from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

7. What are your future plans for blesta?

We have many plans for Blesta. We want to make Blesta even better, and there are some features on the dev list that we think will help accomplish that, like PayPal and pending service support. We don’t measure our success by how many features we add though - I have to stress this point. Blesta is about productivity, and so we won’t be adding useless or time wasting features. Our change log will probably indicate more improvements to existing features than new ones.

8. How many languages do you support?

Blesta ships with en-us language support. Currently we have no plans to ship it with any additional languages. The reason is this: We aren’t really multi-lingual, and we don’t feel comfortable including languages that we can’t verify are correct. Now, with that said, user submitted language files will be available for download on our forums, so they will be available and installing them is really easy. Nearly all written languages could potentially be supported as long as there are people willing to translate. I also have to add that our language file contains language for both the client *and* admin areas… apparently not everyone does this?!

9. Does blesta support intergration with any other 3rd party application?

Blesta supports integration with just about any 3rd party applications through our powerful module system. We will be adding more modules over time, and developers are free to create their own.

10. Is there anything else we should know about the Blesta product?

We haven’t invented the wheel, but we’ve made it rounder so that it rolls better. Blesta is about productivity, and if you try it out we think you’ll agree. We are committed to the success of Blesta and invite anyone and everyone to become apart of our community and help shape it.

It might sound lame, but together I think we can change the industry for the better. Go productivity!

A demo of the Blesta system can be found at http://demo.blesta.com/ or visit the http://www.blesta.com website!

PCPartsOnline.com.au, a company who claim that they sell PC parts at competitive prices, have recently launched their new online store where users from around Australia can grab products at cheap prices.

For more information on the site and to checkout their new line of products, checkout www.PCPartsOnline.com.au!

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UPDATE: Products are still being added, so make sure you keep an eye out on the site!

After the sale of a company whom went into Voluntarily Administration a few months back, Wild IT, customers considered the heartache that many went through over. However, it appears that this is not the case.

Many users continue to report that they have been charged though cancellations had occurred, and debits from financial accounts had been processed even though written permission had not been granted. It appears, however, that another issue has arisen from goTalk over the Wild IT accounts that were transferred to them.

Earlier today, customers received an email which told them that they “are streamlining the number of service plans on offer” meaning that some of the Wild IT plans are being removed, forcing current users onto the already developed goTalk plans.

The 512 connection is going down to a 15gb limit, however the price rising up to $50. So far it only appears that only the 512/128kbps plan has been removed, however we will update this post if we’re made aware of any other plans being removed.

Want to voice your opinion or have a news idea for us to investigate? Send us an email on our contact page!

Skype today made an announcement on it’s website today explaining the cause of it’s recent 2 day outage. The cause was due to Windows Update, or more specifically “The disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users’ computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update.

The high number of restarts affected Skype’s network resources. This caused a flood of log-in requests, which, combined with the lack of peer-to-peer network resources, prompted a chain reaction that had a critical impact.”

The good news is that Skype is back up and running as good as ever and that this downtime was not caused by any malicious activity so no user data was ever at risk.

For full details go here

Today, the popular site Joomla.org which creates and uses the Joomla CMS (Content Management System) was hacked, with the standard “hacked by” message being left instead of the site itself.

This hack has not only affected the Joomla.org website, but has also prompted fear across the globe without thousands upon thousands of websites using the same system in which Joomla.org was using.

The message that was originally read was:

Template File Not Found! Looking for template:

Hacked M3rhametsiz & Zorbey

A screenshot is available by clicking on the image on the right hand side.

It was however soon after that the Joomla.org website was pulled offline by it’s developers, obviously to stop the hack message being displayed. However, soon after, the standard Joomla offline logo was replaced with the following image:

Yes, it was hacked once again by a different hacker!UPDATE (19/8/07 2:05pm): As ilox said below, the site has been reopened but no official announcement made.

The site was fixed, and reopened. We all considered that this was finally the end, however soon after all other Joomla based websites on the Joomla.org domain were hacked, including the Store, Help site and Developement Site (screenshots below)

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The Joomla.org Store Hacked message

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The Joomla.org Help site Hacked message

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And, the Joomla.org Developement website Hacked message.

Obviously, something like this has stirred site’s around the globe, without thousands upon thousands using the same system that Joomla.org develops. However, Joomla.org representative Louis Landry, had said that the hack wasn’t due to the popular open source content management system, but in face a plugin one of the site’s were running.

A simple and as we have all seen common mistake was made and the print mojo component had a vulnerability to remote file inclusion. Louis Landry - Joomla.org Developement Workgroup