Raptor Support

 Raptor Support has been providing free support services for my commercial software customers from Raptor Services for many years now - but as it's almost a year since I stopped selling commercial software - the time has finally come to close the site down.  I felt the start of 2011 would be an appropriate time to do this, and while it may not suit everyone - no decisions ever please everyone.

We've had lots going on in 2010 though, including a change from commercial licensing to creative commons gnu gpl licensing. Our decision to make this change has been well-received by the vast majority of our commercial customers and applauded by many of our new customers. Some of our older customers havn't kept up with our site news though - and havn't received any of our email notifications regarding the changes that have been taking place over the past 12 months, so we've produced this information with an overview of the important things you need to know:-

• If you're a commercial customer who has purchased EZ Realty, EZ Autos or EZ Rider in the past - we'd like you to know that you can still download the old commercial packages from your customer account.
• If you encounter a licensing system error or encryption error - log into your customer account, download the latest EZ* package and upgrade your site. These packages are unencrypted and don't connect to the licensing system, as we wanted all of our commercial customers to have access to these prior to our switch to gnu gpl licensing - so you no longer need to worry about encryption or licensing connections.
• if you havn't already done so - make plans to upgrade your site to the latest version of EZ* available for download from your customer account because of the benefits of not having to worry about the encryption and licensing system. In addition to this - there are many customers using very old versions of EZ* - and continued use of these older versions just puts your site at risk due to a security vulnerability in these much older versions. Be smart - upgrade your sites to the latest packages available to you! It takes less effort to upgrade a site than to repair the damage done by hackers that abuse a security vulnerability on your site.
• If you want to upgrade your site to the latest 6x version - please note this is not a free upgrade - as it's a major release point released under new licensing and distribution/support in line with our switch to gnu gpl licensing. For more information on how to access version 6x of EZ Realty and EZ Autos - visit our site at JustJoomla.
• With our switch to gnu gpl licensing - we've decided to discontinue further development of EZ Rider - and have taken EZ Autos down a more flexible development path that will meet the needs of EZ Rider users for motorcycle sites.
• Now that it's 2011 and almost a year since we sold commercial software, support services for commercial customers have now been phased out. We've kept this free service available until all of our commercial customers received the necessary support to build their sites - but given the time that has now passed since we ceased commercial sales - the time has now come to discontinue this service. If you need support in the future - please visit JustJoomla and purchase a support subscription.
• If you don't remember your login details for your commercial customer account - please contact us via the site contact form at JustJoomla.

 

 

I've always considered the good folks who look for security vulnerabilities in software to be performing a valuable function in the cycle of software development and quality control, however there are times when they're just plain irresponsible.

Take "Gamoscu" for instance - who recently reported an SQL injection vulnerability in EZ Autos. The manner in which the report has been made is somewhat irresponsible, as no effort has been made on their part to contact me to establish what the facts are - so I'll address them now.

Firstly - EZ Autos has NOT been affected by this SQL injection vulnerability since version 5.3.3, which was released some 15 months ago when I discontinued use of the AJAX chained selector list code.

Current versions of EZ Autos are NOT affected by this SQL injection vulnerability either as they do not use the AJAX chained selector list code.

Come on guys. If you're going to report on security vulnerabilities - at least have the good manners to contact the developers of software to find out the facts first - so you can report accurately and responsibly. At the very least - you should find out what versions were affected, and whether it's still a current vulnerability.

Customers - I'm aware that some of you have been affected by this vulnerability, and its a shame given it was fixed so long ago and could have been avoided by taking advantage of the upgrades made available to you.

So, please make sure you are using an up-to-date version of EZ Autos. Log into your customer account at http://www.raptorservices.com/customers/ and download the latest version available to you - and then upgrade your site.  Site maintenance is an individual responsibility - however if you're too busy or can't be bothered to do the upgrade yourself - I do have a paid installation/upgrade service available where I will do the necessary work for you.  Submit a support ticket for details of this service.

I've finally launched JustJoomla.com which has traditionally been the site I use to distribute software that I license under the gnu gpl compatible licenses - and EZ Realty version 6 has been released over on this site too today.

A lot of clients have asked me about the changes that have taken place in EZ Realty version 6, and I suppose these changes can be classified as new features and changes, and performance changes. So, I'll go through the differences you'll see with EZ Realty version 6.

 

1. Performance changes

EZ Realty version 6 has some significant improvements in memory over version 5, and this has been one of the biggest benefits of rewriting the code base into the new MVC code structure. The data listed below has been derived by using the core Joomla debug function, to get a reading of the memory in bytes used during page loading. In the far right column is the difference - and all areas examined showed significant improvements.

	Version 6 memory used	Version 5 memory used	Reduction in Memory used
Admin Area
cPanel	6954008	11005304	4051296
Property listings manager	893704	11470592	10576888
Add/edit property form	8917024	11462096	2545072
Configuration area	7624176	11261768	3637592
Profiling manager	7354184	11382960	4028776
Frontend Area
Multi-layout entry page	8158792	9901680	1742888
Category list	7146536	9913696	2767160
Main search form	8133944	9913352	1779408
New listings page	8534320	10214648	1680328
Full property details page	8427656	10195512	1767856
Members EZ Panel	8293744	9997352	1703608
Add/edit property form	9980048	11607696	1627648

Remember these are just fairly baseline readings though, so the memory consumption will change as you enter more data.

 

2. New Features and Changes

EZ Realty version 6 has been coded to make use of payment system plugins now - rather than being tied to the payment processor code that was a part of EZ Realty. This will provide a more flexible means for users to select a payment processor that suits them, as not everyone has access to PayPal. A PayPal payment plugin will come standard with EZ Realty, and alternative payment processors can be obtained from Rob Joyce at osdcs.com.

The old system of generating decimal coordinates for google mapping during the save listing process had the occasional problem for some users, as some web hosts didn't permit the method used to connect to google. In light of this, I've replaced the old coordinates generation system with an embedded clickable map, so you'll only need to click the map to find the necessary coordinates - and the coordinates will populate the necessary fields. The old popup coordinates finder has gone as a result, so there's now one consistent system which should be trouble-free for all users.

Gone are the tabbed pages in the admin area add/edit property listing form, and they've been replaced by a more compact page layout with 2 columns and sliders. It's a complete change to how it used to look, but I'm sure you'll find it far easier to add listings using this layout than the previous layout.

The admin property listings manager has also had a number of changes as a result of the rewrite - the first being the column headers are now clickable and will order/re-order the columns. The delete listing link is also gone - to be replaced by a delete button at the top - which will allow you to delete individual or multiple listings. One other link to have some changes is the admin print listing link. It used to open a popup browser window, and this has been replaced by a Moodle popup - so the printable page opens on a nice darkened background.

When you enter EZ Realty for the first time, the biggest change you'll notice is the admin cPanel has been redesigned. It has new larger graphics and a cool green colour scheme, so it's much easier on the eyes to look at. It's also less cluttered, as a number of functions have been integrated, and others removed for various reasons. For example - the export subscribers function is no longer available, as I've simplified many areas to simply integrate with something else - rather than provide secondary backup systems. So, rather than having the choice of saving newsletter subscribers to an EZ Realty table, receiving a notification that someone would like to be added to your newsletter, or the option to save subscribers to ccNewsletter - there is now the single choice to save subscribers to the ccNewsletter system. The external site feed exports for google, propsmart and other sites have also been removed from EZ Realty, as I'll be writing a new component to handle these types of feeds.

The frontend of the site has also had a number of changes. The first is the view profile page - it used to have a link to view the seller's listings - but now those listings are contained on the same page as the profile details. The frontend member's EZ Panel has had some minor design changes and new graphics, as has the frontend add/edit property listing page. It too now has sliders rather than tabbed pages, and this has resulted in a more compact layout too. The "wanted" properties page has also had some minor design changes.