Net Data Design, LLC Blog

WordPress version 2.9 is getting closer to it’s “RTM” release. Now that the RC1 build is available, the community of developers should start hitting the keyboards.

If you’ve been waiting for your moment to pitch in, it’s now. First we need tech savvy testers to upgrade their blogs and kick the tires, make sure everything is rolling like you expect it to. Here’s a list of all the fun and geeky new stuff in 2.9 to try out. Second, and more importantly, we need everyone to test out their plugin compatibility.

If you’re a user of plugins, there’s a groovy new compatibility feature on the plugin directory where you can vote on whether a plugin is compatible with a version or not and it’ll get registered in the new plugin compatibility checker. This is as a replacement to the old wiki-based lists we’d do before. To see it in action check out this Akismet plugin page, as you can see 14 people have already registered that it’s compatible with 2.9.

As I previously stated, I held SugarCRM as the defacto open source CRM software. This has changed, the more I delve into vTiger, the more I find functions that rival some of the high-end, high-dollar solutions. And some of these functions are found in SugarCRM, the difference is in vTiger they work!

The vTiger user interface (UI) is easy to navigate, well laid out and is consistent across the application. The icons are decorative but informative design elements, making it easy to spot and move to different options within a given task. The ability to move from item to sub-items is also very easy. Lets say we’re in an Accounts (company) file. From here, we can easily access every aspect of that account, such as its individual employees (contacts), invoics, services they use, service contracts, trouble tickets, quotes and documents. Just to name a few!

I have also discovered a few must have extensions (add-ons.) Such as Timesheets, Trouble Tickets Updates and the Add to Google Calendar. All are easily installed and share a common layout as the core vTiger. The Timesheet extension does require a patch. If you have vTiger on Windows, then you’ll need to move it to a Linux environment to patch it, then move it back to Windows. Fortunately, I have my installs on Linux.

Some other features I’ll cover in my next installment about vTiger will be the outstanding Customer Portal, the ability to create a PDF on demand, invoice templates, EMail templates and custom field values.

A serious SQL injection attack has injected a malicious iframe on more than 100,000 susceptible websites. ScanSafe reports that the injected iframe loads malicious content from 318x.com, which eventually leads to the installation of a rootkit-enabled variant of the Buzus backdoor trojan. A Google search on the iframe resulted in over 132,000 hits as of December 10, 2009.

Keep in mind that 99.9% of these attacks stem from poor coding. It very important to implore beginners (and some more experienced programmers) to code against them. In brief:

• Constrain Data, Check for known good data by validating for type, length, format, and range.
• Use type-safe SQL parameters for data access. Use parameters with stored procedures or dynamically constructed SQL command strings.
• Use a low-permission database account for data access.
• Hide data errors, don’t give clues at to what maybe acceptable to the database.

Now, there is a reason the items above look simple. They Are!

All we need are programmers that will listen and not take short cuts.

When hosting, customizing and supporting software, the landscape can change pretty quickly. Customer driven needs move you to places you never imagined. You must fill that void or be left outside looking in.

SugarCRM has great potential, however potential doesn’t fill most client needs. Rather, real-world working solutions drive us to new places and fill real-world needs. I have become increasingly aware that SugarCRM has some short-comings in the communications area, particularly email. Email functions are slow at best and don’t function at worst.

So, the quest was to find a CRM software with a low cost start-up and a healthy ROI. In stalks vTiger. It appeared to have similar features as SugarCRM, and as I found out looking over the code, for good reason. vTiger is a fork of SugarCRM and a great deal of the code is adorned by the SugarCRM copyright message.

I first set-up vTiger and the installation was quick and simple. I will write more about this in the future, but what amazed me was the speed of the application and it intuitive layout. Not to mention, features like email actually worked, and quickly. An test email campaign was set-up using one of the included email templates…and it worked too. Email campaigns have been an issue with a number of my clients, so this was a relief.

I’ll be blogging  more about my experiences with vTiger in the very near future, but I’d really like to hear your experiences.