We are pleased to announce the release of the Softaculous Auto Installer plugin, officially named Soft Auto Installer for Blesta. In conjunction with our cPanel module, the plugin allows hosting providers to sell application hosting by provisioning WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, or any other supported application through Softaculous with a new hosting plan. Support for Plesk and DirectAdmin is on the way.

Watch the video below for more information, and be sure to check out the documentation for details on usage. The plugin should be included with Blesta 4.5 which is soon to be in beta, and can be obtained from our Github for use on version 4.4+ right now.

“The Auto install script feature in Blesta using the Softaculous plugin will help web hosts to configure specialized hosting packages like WordPress Hosting, Joomla Hosting, etc. Blesta’s easy to use admin panel allows the admin to install and configure the plugin in just couple of minutes.” - Pulkit Gupta, CEO, Softaculous Ltd

How does it work?

1. The plugin registers with the Event system in Blesta
2. The plugin watches for cPanel services that are provisioned that have specific config options
3. The plugin makes an API call to Softaculous within cPanel to install the desired application

This plugin opens the doors wide for Blesta users to offer application hosting of many different types. See the full list of supported applications with Softaculous, and consider installing Softaculous on your WHM server if you haven’t already.

Our success depends in large part on the ability for other people to extend Blesta by creating their own modules, gateways, and plugins. For this reason, it’s our goal to support developers like nobody else. We realize that we cannot build every extension imaginable, or serve every market niche. It’s our hope and desire that developers everywhere embrace Blesta as the best billing platform for their development efforts.

That brings us to the reason for this post. ModulesGarden has just released their first module for Blesta.

cPanel Extended for Blesta

• See the features
• Read the documentation
• Go to the dedicated forum

This module builds on our own cPanel module big time, eliminating the need for most of your customers to even need to login to cPanel at all. Your customers can create FTP accounts, email addresses, databases, subdomains, addon domains, cron jobs, and so much more right from their client area in Blesta. If they do need to get into the panel, there’s a simple button they can click to automatically log into cPanel, phpMyAdmin, or Webmail.

From ModulesGarden

We are very satisfied from cooperation between ModulesGarden and Blesta. Paul is a very friendly and open minded person who helped us a lot to create a module cPanel Extended For Blesta. Exchange of information between our companies was simply perfect. We received every support and feedback necessary to successfully proceed with development of the module. We definitely recommend Blesta as a partner for cooperation. - Piotr Dołęga, ModulesGarden CMO

Working with ModulesGarden was a pleasure, and we think they are on to something really important. Extended functionality modules are great because they consolidate tasks into a single panel. This simplifies things substantially for your customers, introducing a level of simplicity and usability that hasn’t existed in the web hosting industry until recently.

Please join us in thanking ModulesGarden for their hard work, and if you offer cPanel hosting be sure to pick up a copy of this module or give their 7 day free trial a spin. If you have a suggestion for another extended functionality module, let them know.

Packages in v3 are very similar to packages in previous versions, with a lot of additional functionality. The goal in redesigning packages for v3 was to facilitate addons, allow for quantities, provide for better organization of packages, and support specific pricing in multiple currencies (Rather than relying on currency conversion, which Blesta can do too).

A few notable items..

1. Limited quantities supported! If you only have 100 of them, when they are sold they’re gone.. no more orders can be placed.
2. Package Groups are new, Standard and Addon. Addon groups can be assigned to Standard groups, making their packages available as addons to the packages within them.
3. Addon packages are just like normal packages and can be provisioning. An addon for an “extra 10GB disk”, could make an API call to add the disk space, without any staff involvement, assuming the module supports it, of course.
4. Prices can be specified in multiple currencies. Set a 1 month term to 10 USD, and a 1 month term to 8 EUR and the client will be invoiced the price in their preferred currency, whatever that is.
5. Package emails are no longer combined with the welcome email template that contains account registration details. A package welcome email is sent out separately when the service is created, allowing for more flexibility and control over service creation emails.
6. Cancellation fees have been added, which are assessed if a service is canceled early.

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