Virtualmin.com migration updates

News
21

Howdy all,

So, I fixed the shop, again. Maybe it actually works this time. (Yesterday it was issuing two licenses for every purchased license, because the payment processing module was calling the completed order function twice. Believe it or not, this one wasn’t a bug in my code! Hooray!)

The support module will be updated in a few hours to support the new issue tracker. I’ve ported the connector script to PHP, since we can’t safely hit the database anymore, so converting the Perl code was going to be difficult. So, it’ll not be part of the site so it can directly use the real Drupal API.

I’m also working on the API docs convertor.

Jamie let me know at lunch today that the new help search is complete, and the new Webmin release will be out in a couple of days. This is really cool news, and Jamie has put in a huge amount of work into the help system. If you’ve ever used Search in Webmin, you know that the results it returns for large modules can be…frustrating. It tells you what module the help file appears in, but not what page within the module. The new help search tells you exactly where to find the option or page that the help file applies to. It’s awesome. I was surprised by how much code it required to support this seemingly simple thing, until I actually thought about it for a while and realized there is no way to go “backward” from the help files in current Webmin. Making that backward trip possible is pretty complicated. So, it’s really nice that it’s now done. It will also enable a new Webmin reference guide compiled from all help files. Once I have an API docs convertor/importer, it should be trivial to make the same tools work for the Webmin docs. More docs is always good, right?

Cloudmin is flying off the shelves faster than we’d planned at this early date (the Cloudmin site hasn’t even launched yet!), and we’re a bit overwhelmed helping folks out with it. Mostly new customers, so we’re hearing from them via email so far (I suspect we’re also seeing slow uptake on the new tracker and such because it’s new and complex, so we’ll keep tweaking the site a bit so folks can find their way to the right places).

I haven’t heard any opinions on the new doc layout or the download page, but clicks and downloads are up, while forum posts and ticket tracker submissions are down, so I think we done good. Thanks to Eric for a lot of that work.

If it sounds like I’m winding down this thread…well, that’s because I am. Most of the really urgent issues with the site have been resolved. I’m still working on a lot of stuff (obviously), but when people need help now, they can get it. Likewise, when people want to buy software, they can buy it, and it’ll probably show up in their licenses page right away (except for Scott, it seems, but we’ll get that taken care of).

So, I’ll start posting new topics henceforth.

22

going to https://www.virtualmin.com:10000/

It says Login failed. Please try again. I had access to it before.

23

I go to https://www.virtualmin.com/user/2620/purchased-files and I see nothing there.

24

Oh, that link shouldn’t even exist. Vestigial stuff from earlier experiments.

Licenses are where they always have been: http://www.virtualmin.com/serial

25

I’ll also add a link to the My account page for the serial numbers page. I’d written a block for that early in development, but it was too crowded with just a few licenses (it actually listed the licenses). I’ll revisit that one now, though.

26

Not sure what to make of that. Your account looks fine from here. No lock due to failed logins or anything like that.

I can reset the password if you’d like. Email me if you want a reset, and I’ll send back a new password. Webmin will soon be able to sync with the website password. We’re working on some integrations of Cloudmin and Drupal that requires it, so it’s on Jamie’s todo list. Probably a week or two out, though, as we obviously have a number of more pressing issues to address.

27

Ok I was just going to suggest to add that link to the account page

28

Ya reset the password for me - send to sgrayban @ gmail.com

29

Do you use aggressive caching for anonymous users in Drupal (/admin/settings/performance)? You may also try to use the cacherouter module together with memcached to get the cache out of the database. I see below you are using APC yet, that’s good.

30

I would be very, very interested in just what integrations you are making, and whether they will be made available to customers or publicly…

I host many Drupal sites on a Virtualmin managed machine, and more integration between the two would be welcome news. If it were to tie into such Drupal projects as Aegir… be still my beating heart!

31

I would be very, very interested in just what integrations you are making, and whether they will be made available to customers or publicly…

We plan to Open Source most of the Drupal components, with the possible exception of the ordering system (which is clearly and entirely for making money with; our current policy on GPL vs. Professional is “does it primarily help someone make money?” if yes, it goes into Professional, if not, it goes into both). I’m not actually sure yet, as I don’t want to become a full-time Drupal developer, so it might go Open Source just so I don’t feel compelled to add new stuff to it all the time.

It looks like this one will be an Ubercart plugin, but it doesn’t quite fit with the “buy one time” model that Ubercart is tuned for, so it may end up being standalone. I’m not sure. In short, we’re building a tool to allow folks to buy Virtualmin and Cloudmin services via a Drupal shop. But, this isn’t as simple as saying, “OK here’s my moneys, give me my stuffs”. Cloudmin supports accounting at much finer granularity than the traditional monthly. You can bill by the hour with Cloudmin…so we’d like to have some sort of ability to do that. But automatic payments are really hard. Monthly subscriptions are easier, but don’t allow a real “cloud computing” experience. I’m still researching this, but expect to begin work on the actual code in a couple of weeks…I will probably also contract some of this out to the Ubercart developers or the guy who helped us out with the ticket tracker development to make it go a bit faster. I’m not sure the big problem (fine-grained recurrent billing) has ever been solved in Drupal, though. If you have any ideas on how to solve that one (even a payments provider that offers that kind of thing; simple subscriptions don’t work for this, which is all I’ve been able to find).

There will also be a ticket submission plugin, which will come out very soon (like in a week or two), which will allow you to use the same Virtualmin Support module that we use to allow clients to file tickets and grant temporary root access to the system to your administrators from within Virtualmin or Cloudmin itself.

We don’t currently have plans to have Virtualmin dig into Drupal any deeper than it currently does. The plan is to allow folks running Drupal sites to sell Virtualmin-related products and services (and possibly perform simple management via the UI), and support them better and more easily. We’ll also probably distribute a Drupal module that provides logged in users access to full Virtualmin documentation under your brand. This one is further out, as we have to finish the docs first.

I’d never seen Aegir before, it looks pretty cool. We’ll see whether there is any useful overlap there, and get in touch with the folks working on it, if so.