Blesta 3.0: The database

A lot of effort has gone into designing and interfacing with the database in version 3, so I thought I’d share a little insight into some of the improvements we’ve made over version 2.

We’ve beefed up the database by making use of transactions, which allow us to add, edit, or remove items from the database with the ability to undo those changes should something go wrong. Because of this we’ve made the switch from a MyISAM storage engine to InnoDB (the default for MySQL as of version 5.5), making Blesta ACID-ic.

Another major improvement is the use of UTF8 collation, which will now allow users to more easily search the database in their native tongue as well as input and output data without conversion. This is a huge improvement for developers, and we are all about developers with version 3.

Speaking of developers, another great improvement is the introduction of the Record component. The record component is a database access object that creates queries using a series of method calls. Never again will you have to worry about which comes first, GROUP BY or ORDER BY.

In addition, the Record component uses the PDO library, making queries safe and secure. But that’s not the only benefit of PDO. Can we say “multi-database support”, as in MSSQL, PostgreSQL, and others? Well, no, not at the moment, but that’s definitely a possibility.

From the Developer Documentation:

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Blesta 3.0: Client Area

One thing we haven’t really talked about much is the client area. We have a good excuse: The vast majority of functionality is built into the staff/admin interface. But, the client experience is important too, arguably much more-so. In v2.x the client interface is identical in overall design to the admin interface with a slight color change.

In v3 we went a different direction. While there are similarities between the client interface and the admin interface they are completely different designs and you log into them independently.

Important notes to make about the client area in v3..

1. The client interface has a new, clean & unique design.
2. The client interface can be easily themed & integrated into an existing site.
3. The client interface now consists of a Portal, Account Management, and Order System.
4. The client interface is more intuitive and user friendly, and takes advantage of a lot of new features introduced in v3.
5. Developers will be happy, Plugins can affect the client areas too.
6. Mystery feature — yes I just did that, more details in a future post.

Portal, Account Management, and Order System. All tied together, all themed the same, all easily integrated into an existing site design.

I can’t not leak some eye candy in a post, so above is a cropped segment of the default order template. I hope you agree, it’s a nice and clean design, yet fairly neutral in terms of color. Though the header is not shown here, it does have color and the color is easily changed.

There’s a lot more I could show you, but we’ll cover more in a future post. And to all a good weekend!

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Blesta 3.0: Staff Login

We’ve shown you a fair amount of the staff interface, but I want to show you the staff login page today. Overall this video touches on three things..

1. Staff Login Page: This is a first, no one outside our team has seen this login page before now.
2. Two-Factor Authentication: This was originally developed for v3, then back-ported to 2.5.
3. Resource Preservation: Session expire? Blesta remembers where you were headed.

The staff login page has previously never been shown, although I designed it before much of the interface. Two-Factor Authentication was originally developed early on for v3, and then back-ported to 2.5. As far as we know, no one else supports two-factor authentication, making Blesta uniquely secure. We don’t blame them though, it took plenty of R&D and most solutions are proprietary. Resource preservation is just a fancy term we coined to say that Blesta remembers where you were going, and takes you back there if your session expires and you get logged out and login again.

The video is below, as usual you can make the video full screen, and be sure to turn on your sound.

Note: Cody tells me, and I realized after that OATH is pronounced “oath”, not “oh-auth”, which is something completely different.

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Blesta 3.0: Plugins

So, let’s keep it real. I didn’t have the time to make a video this week. I’ve been doing a lot of graphic design work on Blesta, some awesome stuff you’ll get to see soon. But that doesn’t mean I can’t share something, right?

Plugins. Are. Amazing. Plugins can do a lot, we’ve talked about them before in passing while describing other features. Plugins can register widgets on the Dashboard, on the Billing Overview, on the Client Profile. Plugins can create entirely new pages, with new functionality, with their own nav links. Plugins can register themselves into the ACL. Plugins can create their own email templates. Plugins are mini-applications. Plugins are POWERFUL.

I know people are going to shock us with what they develop for Blesta using the plugin system. I can’t wait to be blown away.

This post is the tip of the tip of the iceburg, we will have a lot more to say about plugins as we get closer to release.

Oh yeah, plugins can be installed, and uninstalled, upgraded and managed. Here’s what the installed plugins window looks like. These are all plugins that will come pre-installed with Blesta (there will be more too, don’t worry). These ones create widgets on the Dashboard.. and since we wrote them, they got slapped with the Blesta logo. Slap your logo on your own plugin!

Maybe a video next week? We’ll see!

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Blesta 3.0: Themes (video)

I hope you’ve had a chance to check out the Blesta Translator that I posted about and that we released last week. The previous week Cody posted a developer commentary video on our RESTful API that you may want to check out as well.

This week’s video is about themes. We mentioned themes briefly a while back, but here it is in action. You can do the following with themes:

1. Select from different color themes that are included with Blesta.
2. Create and save your own color themes, and fine tune colors to match your brand.
3. Use your own logo, rather than the Blesta logo.

In the future we may add additional options that affect the direction and style of gradients, add additional options, and provide a way to share themes.

The video is below, as usual you can make the video full screen, and be sure to turn on your sound.

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