Blesta 3.0: Quick Links (video)
Quick links are basically bookmarks. In the grand scheme of things, they may not be the most powerful of features, but don’t write them off so easily. Quick links are simple, unobtrusive, and very useful for getting back to where you need to be.
If there’s a client you frequently access, or a package, setting, or email template you aren’t quite happy with, just quick link it! Quick links appear on the dashboard and are staff member unique.. that means you are the only one that will see your quick links.
Add and remove quick links with a simple click directly from the page you’re on. Get back to where you need to be quickly and easily. Just another way you can customize your dashboard.
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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Blesta 3.0: Evolution of Design (video)
We like to do everything in house, and we work best together as a team. From idea, to design, to implementation we’re all involved to one degree or another in every part of development. Granted, we each have our strong points, but the unique ideas of every member of our team can be found in every stage of development.
I was feeling a little nostalgic and thought I’d share a bit of the evolution of the v3 design. The video below shows how the design for v3 came along, from the first hour as a static image in Photoshop to how it looks and works today.
It’s incredibly satisfying to create.. and to see something static come alive.
The video is below, as usual you can make the video full screen. (No sound this time)
Blesta 3.0: Custom Client Fields (video)
It’s incredible how quickly this year has gone by. It’s been productive, but I’m looking forward to what 2013 has in store. I think it’s going to be an amazing year for Blesta!
The v3 alpha is in its third release and is going great, the feedback we’re getting from developers is incredibly valuable and reassuring. We’re working towards the beta release now, resolving issues, and finishing up some critical features while pushing out regular alpha updates.
This week I wanted to show you custom client fields. Not an incredibly exciting feature, but it’s a really useful one.
- Custom Client Fields are Client Group specific, create different fields for different groups.
- Field labels can be language defines, so that they are available in many languages.
- Text box, check box, drop down, and text area fields are supported.
- Fields can be hidden from clients, or displayed as read-only to clients.
- Fields can be required, and custom regular expressions can be used for validation.
- Fields can optionally be encrypted in the database with 256-bit AES cipher.
- And of course, custom client fields can be created and fetched through the API.
The video is below, as usual you can make the video full screen, and be sure to turn on your sound!
Blesta 3.0: CLI Installer (video)
Whoa, it has been a busy week! If you didn’t hear, we released v3 alpha on Wednesday, which is a huge milestone. We’re excited and gearing up for the next phase, which I think will be a lot of fun.
Part of prepping for the alpha was building an installer and handling licensing. We opted to do a CLI installer for now, but you’ll have the option of installing via CLI or your browser at release. Once installed, the rest is handled in the browser — entering your license key and creating your first staff member.
The video is below, as usual you can make the video full screen, and be sure to turn on your sound!
Google Authenticator & Blesta
When we originally introduced two factor authentication there weren’t a whole lot of options available to produce one-time-passwords. Since that time a number of applications have popped up for Andriod, Blackberry, and iOS devices. Chief among those is the Google Authenticator.
Using your Google Authenticator with Blesta is pretty straight forward, but requires a little manipulation to get the key in the correct format. Blesta expects TOTP keys to be in hexadecimal format (base16), but Google Authenticator uses base32. So we have to convert our Google Authenticator keys into hexadecimal before storing in Blesta.
There are a number of online utilities to perform this operation. Here’s one: http://www.darkfader.net/toolbox/convert/.
As an example, “PEHMPSDNLXIOG65U” (in base32) becomes “790ec7c86d5dd0e37bb4″ in hexadecimal. Simply select Time-based One Time Password as the two factor authentication method in Blesta then enter the converted (hexdecimal) value and you’re good to go.
You can download the Google Authenticator from the iOS app store, or Android Marketplace.