TMM Insider Newsletter June 2008 (Vol. I, Issue 3)
Recent News
Too Much Media Takes Over Vegas!
Representatives from Too Much Media will be on-hand at next month's X-Biz Summer Forum in Las Vegas, NV on July 9-11. Come check out the latest releases of all products, including NATS v4.0 and CARMA v1.3. If you are attending the forum, please come find us and we will be happy to field any questions or concerns you may have. Please let us know what you think, as we always welcome any feedback you may have for us!
CARMA 1.3 Release date set for 06/16/2008!
We at Too Much Media are constant striving to provide you with the most up-to-date, cutting edge software solutions. We have been working hard on our latest major revision of CARMA, and we are pleased to announce that the release date for CARMA 1.3 is set for Monday, June 16, 2008. Check out the details of what we've added in the Recent Feature Additions Section below! If you are interested in receiving an upgrade, please submit a ticket at http://clients.toomuchmedia.com.
Recent Feature Additions & Bug Fixes
NATS v3.1
WebBilling Integration
NATS is now fully integrated with WebBilling, a payment processor that specializes in European Direct Debit transaction processing. For more information on WebBilling and their services, or to signup with WebBilling, please visit http://webbilling.com/ach-check-processing/online-check-processing.html or contact JoeD at joed@webbilling.com <mailto:joed@webbilling.com>.
GTBill Integration
NATS now supports credit card processing for GTBill. If you are interested in using GTBill as a payment processor, please visit http://www.gtbill.com or email support@GTbill.com.
Data Encryption Update
Based on the request from a number of customers, you can now choose whether or not to store sensitive data (such as email addresses or tax id's) encrypted in the NATS database. While having your data encrypted will not affect your view in the NATS admin, it is not possible to return partial matches in any of the admin searches. The option to switch back/forth will only be available while a TMM tech support specialist is performing an upgrade. If you would like to take advantage of this feature, please submit a ticket at http://clients.toomuchmedia.com. _*PLEASE NOTE THAT PASSWORDS WILL ALWAYS BE ENCRYPTED IN YOUR NATS DATABASE*_.
CCBill Polling Fix
We recently found and corrected a bug that would cause the expire date for rebilling CCBill members to be set incorrectly in certain circumstances.
Account Rep Access To Admin Overview
We now provide a configuration variable ($config['ALLOW_ACCT_ADMIN_REPORTS']=1) that allows account reps to view the admin overview.
Content of The Day Fixes
We have made a number of internal changes to make our Content of the Day Module module more stable and easier to use.
Epoch & Email to Owner Fix
There was a bug introduced either on or after v3.1.46.1 that caused the email address of the owner to be decrypted incorrectly when trying to send an owner email when an Epoch initial transaction is received. This has been corrected in the latest release.
Deep Linking Fix
After sanitizing all of the appropriate variables, some of the tracking/redirect scripts were not properly rebuilding the query string used for deep linking. This has been resolved in the latest release.
NetBilling Reporting Changes
Netbilling has recently made enhancements to their transaction reporting interface. Although this does not affect any current customers, the latest version of NATS 3.1 takes advantages of these changes.
CCBill Affiliate Changes
We have made changes in the order in which fields appear when visiting ccbill_ref.php, which is used to merge existing CCBill affiliate accounts.
Australian Dollar Support
The Australian dollar (AUD) is now a supported currency in NATS.
get_paid_date
This is a new Smarty function that has been added to our list of NATS template functions that outputs the last date an affiliate was paid. Details on how this function works can be found at http://kb.toomuchmedia.com/idx/0/687/.
CCBill EU Debit Fix
NATS will now correctly convert EU Debit transactions from CCBill.
CCBill Regional Pricing
NATS will now support CCBill's regional pricing feature. This allows CCBill to bill someone in currencies other than your own, and NATS will convert the transaction back to your base currency when the transaction is posted back to NATS.
NetBilling Cross-Sales Fix
NATS can now correctly process netbilling cross-sale transactions.
Custom Fields and Special Billers
NATS will now store custom information for your members when they decide to join via a dialer or other special biller.
Third Party Sale Fix
Affiliates will now get webmaster referral payments on any third-party transactions that are referred through NATS.
Forget Password Improvements
The script that handles forgotten passwords has been modified to be more stable under certain unique circumstances.
Manual Sale Changes
NATS will now give proper affiliate credit when adding a manual sale for an upgrade.
Distinguish Failed Logins From Timeouts on Login Page
NATS will now have a parameter in the URL distinguishing whether the affiliate/admin was denied access because their login failed or their session timed out.
24-hour Format Bug
There was a bug in NATS that caused NATS to only store initial transaction in a 12-hour format instead of the intended 24-hour format. This has been resolved in the latest version.
CARMA v1.3
Content Delivery Network Support
We are excited to announce that we are working with a number of CDN providers to integrate CARMA with their content delivery solutions. Using a CDN in conjunction with CARMA will greatly alleviate your server's workload when dealing a large amount of traffic or content. We currently support Highwinds, and we are in the process of integrating CaveCreek and ISprime as well. If you have another CDN you would like to work with, please submit a ticket at http://clients.toomuchmedia.com.
Content Scan Fix
The content scan feature now correctly ignores any .extra files found in the directory you are trying scan for CARMA content.
News Admin Javascript Fix
There was a bug that was breaking the JavaScript associated with the News Admin when someone used quotes in a section name. This has been fixed as of the latest release version.
New Actor Template Function
We have added a new function called carma_actor_field, which will pull all of the distinct values from a field in your actors table. This function is useful for dynamically building dropdown lists that are used to search on an actor's attributes.
Short Name in show_video.php
show_video will now have the shortname of the video including in it output vars.
Improvements to Most Viewed Function
carma_most_viewed can now output the result for a specific member by passing the memberid to the function.
Improved Stats
We updated CARMA's stats feature so that you can view data based on sites, members, and content.
x-sendfile Support
CARMA now provides support for the apache x-sendfile module. This will allow apache to serve your content files without having the transmission of the file subject to php timeouts and memory limits. This is ideal for anyone trying to publish extremely large content files (>= 500MB per file). If you are interested in this feature in particular, please submit a ticket at http://clients.toomuchmedia.com
Generic Comments
Comments do not have to be associated to a particular content set, meaning your members can leave generic feedback about your site via the comments feature.
Background Importing
We've moved the import function to work as a background process so you can continue to use your admin while videos are being moved into CARMA
CARMA Favorites
We've added a new function that will allow members to tag a content set as a favorite. Now you can make it easy for your members to come back to the content sets they like the most!
Carma Top Actors
We are in the process of adding a new function that will output content sets for a popular actor based on rating or number of views.
CARMA List Improvements
The carma_list function can now pull in even more data from the CARMA database, even actor data!
CARMA Search Additions
You can now use carma_search to search your content by title, description, and set id
XML Parsing Fix
We recently fixed a bug that prevented CARMA from parsing nested XML children in extended data.
Publish Rules Update
We also altered the way CARMA executes publishing rules after a content set is deleted for consistency purposes.
Image Rotation Bug Fix
There was a JavaScript bug involving the rotation of individual images in a photo. This has been resolved.
If you are interested in utilizing any of these features, please submit a ticket at http://clients.toomuchmedia.com and one of our technicians will upgrade you to the latest version of our software.
On The Hotplate
NATS v4.0
We are pleased to announce that NATS v4.0 has moved into its next stage of closed beta-testing on multiple clients. As the testing continues, we will invite more and more clients to test along with us until a release candidate is ready for public distribution. We will continue to keep you up to date as the testing process progresses.
Bulk Importing of Downloadable Adtools
We are currently developing a bulk importer that will allow you to bring a large number of your downloadable ad tools into NATS on one form.
GXBill EU Debit Support
We are currently added EU debit support to our existing integration of GXBill.
FHG Smarty Function
We have added a new NATS template function called fhg which will pull information about your Free Hosted Galleries from your NATS database. This will allow you to generate a listing your free hosted galleries based on a number of criteria.
Group Support for Banners
We are adding the ability to add banners to a group of your choosing, in the same manner you would do so for hosted ad tools or downloadable content.
CARMA v2.0
Initial planning for CARMA v2.0 is under way! We have already created a laundry list of ideas we would like to include, but we are always looking for outside input. If there is something you would like to see in the next major release of CARMA, please let us know by submitting a ticket at http://clients.toomuchmedia.com
TMM Insider Tip: Custom Smarty Functions
Have you ever run into a situation where the built-in functions for Smarty and NATS aren't exactly what you were looking for? Did you know that it is possible and actually fairly simple to add your own Smarty functions to accomplish that one little thing you've been looking to add to your template. With some basic knowledge of PHP, you can create your own function in no time. Details on how to creating your own functions can be found at http://kb.toomuchmedia.com/idx/0/667/ and http://www.smarty.net/manual/en/plugins.php.
Feedback
Is there something that you would like to see here on this newsletter? Have an idea for Tip of the Day? If so, then contact the editor at kevin.wetter@toomuchmedia.com <mailto:kevin.wetter@toomuchmedia.com> Thought of a new feature that you think would benefit all of our clients? If so, please submit a ticket at http://clients.toomuchmedia.com
