Dear Valued Customer,

We would like to remind all our customers that our new automated system which is part of our CMS (Client Management System), will go live on the 1st November, as announced in our last newsletter (October).

Our new automated system, will take us one step closer to going paperless and being environmentally friendly, like our hosting which is now 100% carbon neutral. The CMS will issue the following information in the form of emails, some with PDF attachments:

Automatic

• Upcoming Domain Renewals - Starting at 60 days before the domain expires
• Hosting Accounts Renewals – Starting at 30 days
• Additional Services – Starting at 30 days
• Whois data reminders – These will be issued at random
• Invoicing – Automatically issued 30 days before a product is due for renewal.
• Invoice Reminders
• Recurring Payments (Subscription), synchronised with WorldPay
• All domain data will be automatically synchronised with Nominet and our gTLD registrar
• All renewals are synchronised with our servers i.e hosting, extras, software leasing, etc

NOTE

There will be some crossover with invoicing and reminders, as these would have been issued before the system went live. Any automated invoices issued after the crossover will be sorted out manually. Paper invoices will still be issued to those customers who have not opted to pay online, but will still receive an electronic invoice / reminder.

Dear Valued Customer,

Following on from our last announcement in September 2008, we have now introduced our new online Client Management System (CMS). The new Client Management System has been fully integrated into our new servers and support system. All actions applied from within your account are processed in real time.

To access the Client Management System, we have assigned all customers with their default email address as the username, to obtain your password. Please select forgotten password option, and a new password will be sent to you. You will then be able to gain access to the CMS.

Members Area = https://www.vwdesigns.co.uk/portal
Username =
Password - https://www.vwdesigns.co.uk/portal/passwordreminder.php

Please make sure all your current contact details are correct, as these details will be used to keep your domain name(s) up to date. So we can comply with Nominet & NIC regulations on domain names.

CMS Features

• Manage your own domain names, in real time.
• Entire product / domain history with statuses
• Manage your personal details
• Access your hosting control panel
• Access your webmail
• Full Invoice & Payment records history
• Complete email history viewable
• Renew products through your control panel or buy new products in real time.
• Automatic Reminders
• Download Area
• And much more ….

Invoicing

We have always issued our invoices with a clear “pay by date”, in advance before a renewal is required. A very small amount of our clients, wish to continuously ignore there “pay by date” and pay well passed these dates. So we no longer have to continuously chase these clients for payment. We have now introduced a new automation system, when an invoice is not paid by a given date. The CMS will automatically suspend their account and any associated services until payment has been received, also after a given time the account will automatically be removed from our servers.

NOTE: This part of our CMS will only be enabled on accounts, where clients continuously ignore the “pay by date”.

Automatic – Reminders

We have also introduced a new automation system, where reminders will be sent out x days before a product expires i.e. domain names, hosting, extras, etc. You will still have the opportune to renew your domain names / hosting using your control panel and take advantage of the new lower priced domain names*, or just wait for a paper invoice and pay by Cheque or BACS. We will update your account manually.

NOTE: *If you would like to take advantage of the lower prices for your domain names, you will have to switch from paper invoicing to electronic invoicing and pay online. If you wish to take up this option, please let us know.

To take advantage of the new domain name prices, your domain name will have to be transferred 30 days before renewal.

Please note any new products bought though the CMS will automatically be on our new system and no paper invoices will be issued.

We are currently working on a new version of eShop PRO and eShop Ultra, these new versions will only work on php5 and not on php4. The new versions will be called eShop PRO XL5 and eShop Ultra XL5.

The performance of the framework eShop PRO & eShop Ultra will improve by removing the php4 compatibility layer and by taking advantage of the new features php5 provides such as SimpleXML, DateTime, Iterators, and new core functions. The design and security of the Object Oriented framework will also improve by utilising the new features of the php5 Object Model.

Our new support policy for the XL5 series is to publish a release with new features every 6 months and to support each published release for 2 years. Removing the php4 compatibility layer now for the XL5 series allows us to focus only on php5 without the need to spend resources on php4 compatibility past its end of life cycle.

Because eShop PRO XL5 & eShop Ultra XL5 will be a substantial development effort, its progress will be broken into unique, defined stages. No time will be allotted to these stages because this is only to group different phases of development. We are hopping to have a new version out by the end of this year / January 2009.

Phase 1: php4 & MySQL 4 Conversion

• Upgrade the infrastructure of eShop to use php5 & MySQLi 5
• Remove php4 framework
• Incorporate new speed routines
• Remove unused php routines
• Speed up MySQL statements, with new indexing

Phase 2: System Structure

• Template Structure
• Ordering System
• Booking System (Ultra)
• Checkout System
• Add new features

Phase 3: Interface Redesign

• Redesign interfaces:
• Admin Control Panel
• Front-end
• AJAX where possible

Phase 4: Testing

• Beta Testing
• Release Candidates
• Final Release

As with all products, there comes a time when particular versions reach the end of their support life. We have already stopped support for versions 1.5 to 6.5, in March 2006. We will no longer be able to offer support for versions 7 to 9. Version 9 was originally released in October 2006. After the 31st October 2008 we will no longer be able to provide any support or patches for any version below 9.

The reason why we have taken this decision as php4 & MySQL 4 is no longer supported and as many ISP’s will no longer support php4. php5 & MySQLi 5 is now the industry standard and we no longer have php4 installed on our servers, the only patches we will apply are to the register_globals, so this can be switched off, as it’s currently set to on.

The amount of time required to convert existing eShop versions to the latest standards is not viable, as each version has been customised for each specific customer.

Customers who are currently on support contracts with us, we will send a separate email to those customers. From today we will no longer offering support contracts for eShop v9 and below.

NOTE: eShop & VrShop (100% php5) are not the same software.

We will also be offering website designing for the [dot] mobi domain name(s), which is used for PDA / Mobile phones. All website designs will comply with the [dot] mobi standards. By using the [dot] mobi standard you will have access to more customers, who currently use a mobile phone / PDA to access the internet.

We are also working on [dot] mobi eCommerce versions of our software, so they can be accessed from Mobile phones / PDA’s. Which will be sold as an add-on module.

We are currently working on two new versions, of our customer portal to be used on a PDA or mobile phone:

The PDA version will be written in Visual Basic using Windows mobile 2006 operating system, and the other one will be using IE 7, or a capability browser. Which would comply with [dot] mobi standards. You will have complete access to your account details while on the move, using a PDA or mobile phone. Internet access will be available using the GPRS network.

Following on from our last announcement in August 2008, we have now introduced a new online Client Management System (CMS v1.0 r1). The new Client Management System has been fully integrated into our new servers, support system and accounting systems and will also synchronies all data with our local server. All actions applied from within your account are processed in real time, from hosting account activation to domain name purchases, renewals, DNS changes, reports, downloads, software licensing and invoicing.

To access the Client Management System, we have assigned all our customers with their default email address as their username. To obtain your password, please select forgotten password option, and a new password will be sent to your default email address. You will then be able to gain access to the CMS.

CMS URL = https://www.vwdesigns.co.uk/portal

This is due to be live on the 29th September 2008. We will be emailing all our customers, who currently hold an account with us, with more information on our CMS and their default email address to access the CMS.

The data centre move has taken much longer than we expected (Over 8 weeks). We have now completed transferring all our customers to our new servers. The old servers were switched off on the 9th September 2008.

Once again please accept our apologies and any inconvenience caused by this move.

Following on from our last announcement in August 2008, we have now introduced a new online Client Management System (CMS). The new Client Management System is fully integrated with our new servers and support system. All actions applied from within your account are processed in real time.

To access the Client Management System, we have assigned all customers with their default email address as the username, to obtain your password. Please select forgotten password option, and a new password will be sent to you. You will then be able to gain access to the CMS.

Members Area = https://www.vwdesigns.co.uk/members
Username =
Password - Please select the forgotten password option and a new password will be emailed to your default email address.

Please make sure all your current contact details are correct, as these details will be used to keep your domain name(s) up to date. So we can comply with Nominet & NIC regulations on domain names.

CMS Features

• Manage your own domain names, in real time.
• Entire product / domain history with statuses
• Manage your personal details
• Access your hosting control panel
• Access your webmail
• Full Invoice & Payment records history
• Complete email history viewable
• Renew products through your control panel or buy new products in real time.
• Automatic Reminders
• Download Area – Customers who have bought our software
• And much more ….

Invoicing

We have always issued our invoices with a clear “pay by date”, in advance before a renewal is required. A very small amount of our clients, wish to continuously ignore there “pay by date” and pay well passed these dates. So we no longer have to continuously chase these clients for payment. We have now introduced a new automation system, when an invoice is not paid by a given date. The CMS will automatically suspend their account and any associated services until payment has been received, also after a given time the account will automatically be removed from our servers.

NOTE: This part of our CMS will only be enabled on accounts, where clients continuously ignore the “pay by date”.

Automatic – Reminders

We have also introduced a new automation system, where reminders will be sent out x days before a product expires i.e. domain names, hosting, extras, etc. You will still have the opportune to renew your domain names / hosting using your control panel and take advantage of the new lower priced domain names*, or just wait for a paper invoice and pay by Cheque or BACS. We will update your account manually.

NOTE: *If you would like to take advantage of the lower prices for your domain names, you will have to switch from paper invoicing to electronic invoicing and pay online. If you wish to take up this option, please let us know.

Please note any new products bought though the CMS will automatically be on our new system and no paper invoices will be issued.

We would like to announce an update to our domain names price list:

In June 2008 we became a UK Registrar for Nominet and have now secured a price agreement with a new supplier of General Top Level Domain Names (GTLD). So we are now able to offer a price reduction on all our domain names to all customers. These new prices will start from August 1st 2008 and will apply to all our customers, who currently have domain names registered with us and for any new domain name registrations or renewals. These prices will only apply if customers pay online. There will be no paper invoices issued.

All UK Domain Names will be £ 3.25 per year (2 years Minimum)
All General Top Level Domain Names will be £ 7.50 per year

This now makes us cheaper than www.123-reg.co.uk , www.easily.co.uk , www.1and1.co.uk , www.freeparking.com

For a full price list of our domain names, please click here …

All prices quoted here included VAT & NIC fees.