Bugtracker systems....

[tallship]

I saw some very limited discussion of a bugtracking system here started by Paul: http://www.hostbillforums.com/index.php/topic,19.msg55.html#msg55

Hi Guys! I like the idea and I hope it grows.

Concerning bug reports, I know this isn't official, and I wouldn't expect HB admin to see it, but I still think it might be good to have a section for Bug Reports, as it's also a place for us to see what an update might have broken for someone else before we update, or other experiences in general that could serve as a warning or just be helpful for others to see.

Thoughts?

« Last Edit: May 14, 2013, 12:16:56 PM by Lawrence »

NOTE: um... before I go any further with my thoughts and participation here. I think some ground rules need to be laid out about editing other people's posts - it isn't right, I won't consent to it, and i'm certainly not comfortable participating in a forum where those kinds of shenanigans take place - so let's just nip it in the butt right now and put an end to it immediately.

nuff said about that.

Anyway, when I went to post suggestions there I noticed that discussion was apparently a closed thread. Not being a fan of discussions that close like that. I doubt seriously I'll ever post or participate in that subforum, especially when we have general discussion forums that will suffice nicely (even better) for such a small niche community of interested parties that doesn't stymie input in that fashion. Nothing personal against it - it's just not a way I choose to participate in any discussion (discussions which one can't actually participate in).

Moving on to the actual candidates for a bugtracker, one system I particularly like working with is the Mantis Bug Tracker system. It's, free,  easy to set up and use, straight forward, and doesn't require a lot of the extra work that ChiliProject or Redmine involve (two other development systems I like alot). Here's the link: http://www.mantisbt.org/


Here's some screenshots: http://dblpl.us/834ced

I don't mind shouldering some of the burden/opportunity for the community infrastructure we're beginning to build here either, like the bugtracking system, and perhaps some other aspects, if that's desired, so lemme know folks.

In the meantime, thoughts and suggestions from the auditorium?

Kindest regards,

[tallship]

Lawrence also made mention of a bug tracking system here:

I think the first thing we should do is just let the community know. This is classified as a "Fan" forum, or an unrelated forum.

I'm currently building up a bug reporting system for HostBill. It'll be completely unrelated to HostBill, but something that Kris could use to manage bugs. Naturally Kris will be given access to mark bugs as Resolved or Patched / Testing, somewhere along those lines.

I would sugest that this Kris guy, which some folks seem to want to give some kind of benefit of the doubt to, when there's absolutely no doubt in many of our minds about what kind of crass, insensitive, rude, and condescending person he is, should have no place in our bug-tracking system here.


Our bugtrackingsystem would be almost useless for tracking HostBill proper bugs anyway, and he's not going to maintain a presence here anymore than he does already wrt bugs at hostbillapp.com.

It really has nothing to do with him anyway. He's got his own little empire where he's a legend in his own mind, and besides the fact that he's the emperor of that little fiefdom, he's proabably has no interest based on his history over the last two years, of interfacing with any community of third party contributors/developers who will probably just abandon our efforts here anyway - he already chased everyone off who had potential over at hostbillapp.com or appropriated what they contributed into his proprietary offering anyway.

Our bugtracker here should focus on third party contribs, anyway, which he has no place in marking bugs as fixed - or whatever. It isn't for his software and he's got no business taking any sort of leadership roll in our bug system.


Also helpful, would be support for users here to follow what us users perceive as hostbill bugs and whate are not, and how we as a community monitor progresss toward that goal - an informational approach.

If we're successful in lobbying for such people as third party developers to participate, and focus on those projects, as well as better, reworks of kbkp's broken, buggy,  and/or overpriced modules that kbkp has published, then this needs to be a system for that third party software an not kbkp's software - they already have their own bass-ackwards rednecked system for disregarding bug reports!

I'm not advocating that we paint kbkp into a corner, but certainly, it is in our best interests as users and operators of their software to marginalize their all encompassing interests where addtional functionality beyond simple and basic functionality is concerned.

For example, if no one is buying his modules because there are other free or reasonably priced modules that provide that functionality, then kbkp will simply stop producing new versions of it (Or do a better job at producing it at a more reasonable price point). This is what a third party developer community is going to want to see - that there is room for, and a reason for them, to develop such functionality for HostBill.

Although I'm not a big fan of Joomla as a CMS, it is easy for the non-developer to deploy and enhance, largely due to the focus to stay with core development, and let module/extension development occur in the extensions.joomla.org community. it actually makes for a great synergism.

Let that bozo over at kbkp develop HostBill and let's sweeten the incentives for third party developers to roll out modules for HostBill. I know that myself and a couple of others have interfaced off list and have some interested parties already - so let's not even go there with kbkp.

Take for example, some integration with an ERP system like OpenERP, OpenBravo, and half a dozen others, or the integration between various CRMs vTiger and ERP software like FA. It's not that much more of a stretch to integrate that with HostBills server management functions.

We had a couple of systems working like this before we made the error of trusting kbkp over a year ago and drinking their kool-aid with the one size fits all in an all in one solution concept, and still found ourselves contracting out to integrate it with our ERP software.

Simple bugs persist in HostBill that after a year are still not fixed - bugs that are, for us, critical (Estimates/quotes). We've had open bug reports on that open since version 3.

We should also bear in mind that many of the developers will user their own bugrackers on their own infra and we'll just need to maintain links to the upstream developer's sites so that the users themselves will need to take the initiative to go there and submit bug reports - just like other typical projects.

Once we are successful in encouraging third party participation, however, a rating and feedback system will be important - like the one's used at Mozilla for Firefox plugins and extensions.joomla.org

I hope that helps

Kindest regards,

[Lawrence]

NOTE: um... before I go any further with my thoughts and participation here. I think some ground rules need to be laid out about editing other people's posts - it isn't right, I won't consent to it, and i'm certainly not comfortable participating in a forum where those kinds of shenanigans take place - so let's just nip it in the butt right now and put an end to it immediately.

I agree entirely here, and my apologies on going off-topic, but now you can view post-edit history. Post edit history is available to everyone on the forums.

When posts are edited here, it's almost always to fix the title of the topic to make it more suited for the forums, such as adding a bracket. The post edit you've quoted was a title edit to add a bracketed category in the subject of the forum topic.

An update has been made to the forums to allow all users to view post edits, this way nobody's left in the dark. Guests won't be able to see post edits for security reasons.

Anyway, when I went to post suggestions there I noticed that discussion was apparently a closed thread. Not being a fan of discussions that close like that. I doubt seriously I'll ever post or participate in that subforum, especially when we have general discussion forums that will suffice nicely (even better) for such a small niche community of interested parties that doesn't stymie input in that fashion. Nothing personal against it - it's just not a way I choose to participate in any discussion (discussions which one can't actually participate in).

For feature requests, closed topics have either been approved, or disapproved. Rest assured though that no general topic will be closed, just feature requests on the forums. This is to keep locked topics at the bottom so new features get priority recognition. If a feature has been approved, then I feel it's best to lock it, but if you have another reason for keeping it open, please let me know, always looking for suggestions.

I would sugest that this Kris guy, which some folks seem to want to give some kind of benefit of the doubt to, when there's absolutely no doubt in many of our minds about what kind of crass, insensitive, rude, and condescending person he is, should have no place in our bug-tracking system here.

In regards to that bug-tracker request, I can't give any details as it's HostBill related, but keep an eye out for the official HostBill announcements. That's all I can say, Kris won't be using the bug tracker here. Also, I love the idea of a bug tracker for addon / third party modules! I've actually stopped building the tracker for what Kris told me, but I can see there would be great use of something like this for other developers / third parties.

Everything Else

Completely agree!

[tallship]

For feature requests, closed topics have either been approved, or disapproved. Rest assured though that no general topic will be closed, just feature requests on the forums. This is to keep locked topics at the bottom so new features get priority recognition. If a feature has been approved, then I feel it's best to lock it, but if you have another reason for keeping it open, please let me know, always looking for suggestions.

Fantastic on the method for pushing down approved requests to the bottom of the heap where they've actually become insignificant by virtue of being approved, but with regards to input I wanted to contribute on the bugtracker subject, I found that I had to open another thread (lol, this one I think) because the topic had been closed.

Now, there's two issues there. The first one is, that it's kind of useless to keep suggestion topics open well past the time when those items aren't relevant anymore, but just how long is that? In my case, I noticed that the bugtracker suggestion wasn't open very long at all, so I had to open another thread, albeit, not precisely about the same aspect of a bugtracker suggestion.

Perhaps some rather lengthy period of time where comments would still be taken while some might find the topic relevant - we really can't gauge the sentiment of the community if people aren't able to respond.

How long to leave suggestions open that haven't been approved? Oh, I don't know. A fixed time might leave trivial and inconsequential threads at the top for too long, but I doubt there's a way to have the system auto-close them after say, a month of no activity.

So for that Lawrence, I'll defer to your wisdom on that matter

Also, I love the idea of a bug tracker for addon / third party modules!  ...I can see there would be great use of something like this for other developers / third parties.
Completely agree!

Kindest regards,

[Lawrence]

I'll definitely keep that in mind in regards to keeping topics open longer. You're right though that even after something is resolved, people should be given a fair amount of time to respond appropriately.

Regarding the bug tracker, I'm open to suggestions. I'd like to get something up that'll integrate with the forums, but SMF is a challenge in that area and I don't think SMF will shoot over their built-in bug-tracker system for everyone else to use. It's a completely custom integration, very nice though!

Official HostBill will have news soon. I can't say anything more, but keep an eye out for HostBill's announcements. I know I'm being discreet here, but believe me on this one!

[Enterprisevpssolutions]

New update for hostbill gives us a bug tracker in the hostbill interface. But wait this gets better you have to pay for it.  Why pay to report bugs as it seems we do all the work when it comes to testing the software and sometimes even fixing it.

Bugtracker we've built and use for HostBill project http://hostbillapp.com/features/apps/bugtracker/
Price $99.95 USD Once / $0.00 USD Setup Fee

[TommyK]

New update for hostbill gives us a bug tracker in the hostbill interface. But wait this gets better you have to pay for it.  Why pay to report bugs as it seems we do all the work when it comes to testing the software and sometimes even fixing it.

Bugtracker we've built and use for HostBill project http://hostbillapp.com/features/apps/bugtracker/
Price $99.95 USD Once / $0.00 USD Setup Fee

I think you misunderstood. You can buy that module and use it for your own clients if you want to provide a bug tracker for them, no need to pay for submitting bugs at hostbill.

[TommyK]

Just tried logging in to the help center, but my credentials do not work as they should. Anyone have success logging in there?

http://help.hostbillapp.com/index.php?/

Btw, this verification thingie is pretty darn annoying. =)

For example, this question is not really clear;
Type h3110 in letters, not numbers.:

[Patrick]

I think you misunderstood. You can buy that module and use it for your own clients if you want to provide a bug tracker for them, no need to pay for submitting bugs at hostbill.

Absolutely correct.  I think the fact customers have a "report a bug" option right inside the client area now for hostbill customers to report is an amazing step in the right direction.  He is only offering the module to others who'd also like to use it for their business.  I'm absolutely thrilled that he implemented this. 

Just tried logging in to the help center, but my credentials do not work as they should. Anyone have success logging in there?

http://help.hostbillapp.com/index.php?/

Btw, this verification thingie is pretty darn annoying. =)

For example, this question is not really clear;
Type h3110 in letters, not numbers.:

1 more post and you won't have to verify anymore   L

[TommyK]

Absolutely correct.  I think the fact customers have a "report a bug" option right inside the client area now for hostbill customers to report is an amazing step in the right direction.  He is only offering the module to others who'd also like to use it for their business.  I'm absolutely thrilled that he implemented this. 

1 more post and you won't have to verify anymore   L

Good, then this is the post that sets me free. =)

Were you able to login to the help center at hostbill?

[Patrick]

Sets you free lol...  Welcome!

I just looked at the "register" part and it's very minimal information required to register.  I have a feeling it's a separate login for the bug tracker.  Simply have to register.  The link to the bug tracker in the client area is simply an external link.  I think he's running the bug tracker on a different hostbill install completely apart from customer area.  Like other bug trackers you have to register for those, so that would be my guess.  It's setup the same way.

[TommyK]

Ok, the text was pretty clear on the new site though;

Welcome to Bug Reports & Help Center
To log in - use same access credentials as for hostbillapp.com/clientarea/

[Patrick]

Ok, the text was pretty clear on the new site though;

Welcome to Bug Reports & Help Center
To log in - use same access credentials as for hostbillapp.com/clientarea/

You're absolutely right.  My bad.  Maybe still integrating it since the forums are still offline?  That would be my next guess lol

[TeleMagic]

You're absolutely right.  My bad.  Maybe still integrating it since the forums are still offline?  That would be my next guess lol

I think your right there Patrick as I just sucessfully logged on using my client area Credentials!

Regards

[Patrick]

I think your right there Patrick as I just sucessfully logged on using my client area Credentials!

Regards

Sweet, that's good to hear