Blesta 3.0: The Translator

Blesta is in use in well more than 50 countries, and our friends abroad speak many different and wonderful languages. Blesta has always supported multi-language and some of our users have made their translations available to the community, but it has only ever shipped with English support and translations have been spotty at best. That’s all about to change.

Today we announce the availability of Blesta Translator, a collaborative, community driven effort to provide full, accurate, and up to date translations in as many languages as possible.

The success of this project depends on you. If you are fluent in another language and would like to contribute to the translation of Blesta into your language all you need to do is sign up and start. Contribute as little or as much as you like as often as you like. New and updated language will be added to the translator in advance of software releases and it’s our hope that the new language will be translated in advance of and ship with official releases.

While this is still a beta version, we will be adding a few new features in the coming weeks. Ultimately a daily snapshot of translations will be available for download. We realize this is a continual effort and nobody should have to wait for the next Blesta release to take advantage of the latest translations. Partial translations will fallback to English. Additional stats, graphs, and context for translations will come as well.

So, what are you waiting for? Head on over to translate.blesta.com and get started! You’ll be translating version 3.0.0_dev. While it’s not complete, now’s a good time to get a head start! Contributors are given credit for their efforts.

And, of course, if you have a suggestion to make this tool better please let us know.

Here are the languages currently available for translation:

1. العربية, SA (ar_sa)
2. Deutsch, DE (de_de)
3. Ελληνικά, GR (el_gr)
4. English, UK (en_uk)
5. Español, ES (es_es)
6. français, FR (fr_fr)
7. עברית, IL (he_il)
8. italiano, IT (it_it)
9. 日本語, JP (ja_jp)
10. polski, PL (pl_pl)
11. português, PT (pt_pt)
12. Română, RO (ro_ro)
13. svenska, SE (sv_se)
14. 中文, CN (zh_cn)

Blesta 3.0: RESTful API (video)

In this developer commentary, I give a behind the scenes look at the API in version 3.

What we’ve done is create a controller to make available all of the various models in a RESTful manner, using the four primary HTTP verbs (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE). All this controller needs to do is handle parameter passing and output formatting, which we’ve done here in just 342 lines. Available output formats are JSON, XML, and PHP serialization, but more may be added in the future.

The API supports an unlimited number of users, so you can delegate users for specific tasks. In addition, the API may be extended by plugins. The format for those requests is /api/pluginName.modelName/method.format.

Currently the API supports HTTP Basic authentication, but we’re looking to add Digest authentication in the future as well. In addition, we’ve added command line interface (CLI) support which is bound to make API development easier for you programmers out there.

Click the icon in the bottom right of the video player to go full screen.

Blesta 3.0: Emails (video)

It’s the end of the year and I can hardly believe it. I hope everyone had a nice Christmas, and has a nice New Years!

This weeks video is about emails, largely email templates and here are some of the highlights:

1. Email Signatures are new to v3, and were highly requested.
2. Tons of data available to templates besides just strings, such as objects, and arrays.
3. Conditionals, loops, and filters are now supported for powerful template control.
4. Improved layout and usability overall.

Here are some examples of conditionals, loops, and filters.

Conditionals

{% if id > 3 %}
    This will print out if $id is > 3
{% endif %}

Loops

{% for user in users %}
    Name: {user.first_name} {user.last_name}
{% endfor %}
 
This Assumes:
 
$users = array(
    array(
         'first_name'=>"First name",
         'last_name'=>"Last name"
    ),
    array(
         'first_name'=>"First name 2",
         'last_name'=>"Last name 2"
    )
);

Loops can also take advantage of limits. This would only cycle through the loop 1 time:

{% for user in users limit:1 %}

Filters

{past_due | default 'Not past due'} // Produces "Not past due" if past_due is false

Multiple filters can be applied in succession:

{past_due | default 'not past due' | capitalize} // Produces NOT PAST DUE if past_due is false

You get the idea, a lot can be done with templates and all of this and more will be in the documentation.

The video is below, as usual you can make the video full screen, and be sure to turn on your sound. Alright — as we head out for the weekend, see you next year! It’s going to be a good one!

Blesta 3.0: Secure Backups

We take backups seriously and always tell people to back things up before performing an upgrade. An upgrade issue is rare, but backing up your data should be standard practice for any software upgrade. Regular automatic backups are important too — critical, if you ask me.

The current release supports automatic backups but we wanted to take things a little further in v3.. so, we’ve replaced normal FTP backups with SFTP backups and added Amazon S3. That’s two available backup methods. Both are secure.

Additionally, On Demand backups now have two options: Force Offsite Backup & Download Backup

This is particularly useful when you’re about to perform an upgrade or do system maintenance and want a fresh backup before you do so. Clicking “Force Offsite Backup” will send a backup to your Amazon S3 bucket, or SFTP server, or both, right away.

When configuring your backup method, it’s super easy to test your settings.

In this case, we have backups going to our Amazon S3 bucket, which you can see below.

This is just the beginning. We have plans to add additional backup methods and more in a future post-3.0 release. In v3, you can rest assured that your data is being backed up securely, and regularly, offsite.. well, as long as you configure it first!

Blesta 3.0: Auto-Save (video)

This weeks post is a video I was planning to make a while ago, and had mentioned it in passing in a previous post on system requirements. The first video I ever posted about v3 showcased manual invoice creation. This video revisits manual invoice creation and shows off two features that the first video did not adequately cover: Auto-Save and fractional quantities (for manual invoices).

When you go to create a new invoice, auto-save works by saving your work automatically every now and then. If your browser crashes, or you accidentally navigate away from the page, just revisit the client profile and click “Drafts” in the Invoices box to continue. When you’re all done, just hit “Create” to create and deliver the invoice. If you aren’t done you can still use “Save as Draft” and finish it later.

One issue affecting a lot of people is that they have to do math for services. If you charge $75/hr and spent 55 minutes, that line item should be $68.75. In v3, you can use the quantity box and let Blesta do all the math for you. Just enter a quantity of ⁵⁵⁄₆₀ (gotta love fractions) and the hourly rate and you’re done. You can put your calculator away and save a lot of time.

As you can tell, we put a lot of work into the user experience. Nothing sucks more than spending time building an invoice, only to lose it all.. or having to bust out your calculator for a stack of line items.