osTicket www.osticket.com is a popular open source customer support ticket system based on PHP and MySQL. It supports both web-based and email based ticket systems. So your customers can either log on to your website to raise a support ticket or they can simply send an email to support. osTicket integrates both channels into a simple web-interface which lets your support staff manage the tickets and provide support to your customers.
There are commercial systems out there which have a whole lot of features that most support staff seldom uses. osTicket is a good way to start your support operations and then (maybe) if your needs are not being met, you might think about changing it. Notice since it is open source you might easily be able to customize it to meet your needs.
Of course, being open source, it is also complete free.
This open source project was recently revived by its authors after a lull of over a year. They started releasing a new version of the product in January this year with the latest release a few days ago. They have a very active forum community of over 700 members with over 1300 posts catering to various topics around osTicket.
Technical Specifications
osTicket requires a web server that can run:
- PHP 4.3 or better
- MySQL 4.1 or better
That’s it. Being PHP and MySQL driven, you can be sure that it will run on your hosting provider’s space. If you host it on IIS on a Windows box, then also you are safe because Windows version of both PHP and MySQL are available.
In terms of hardware, there are no specific requirements. Most shared webhosting hardware is good enough to run this. The users only need to interact with this using a browser.
Installation
osTicket is very simple to install. For the purpose of this review, we will assume that you are installing this on a shared hosting space. The steps for any other installation are very similar.
We are going to walk through the installation steps one by one. Before we begin there are a few steps that need to be taken care of:
- You need to have a web hosting space with the ability to FTP files to it. If you don’t know how to do that you should get in touch with your webhosting support.
- You need to create a MySQL database on your webhosting account and note down the access details to the database (server name, database name, user name, and password). Once again documentation from your webhost or support from them can help you in this regard.
- Finally, you need to download the installation files from http://osticket.com/downloads.php. As of writing this article, the latest version is 1.6 RC4. The file is downloaded as a zip file. You need to extract the contents into a temporary location on your computer.
Let’s begin:
1. Create Folder - Open up your FTP client and navigate to the where you want to install the osTicket software. Now this is a tricky step. Depending on your needs you may take different steps. Most people like to have their support site on a path below their main site. So for example, if your main site is www.onlineobservations.net, then you would want your support site to be www.onlineobservations.net/support or www.onlineobservations.net/help or something similar. To enable this, navigate to the root folder of your main site (in our example: www.onlineobservations.net) and create a folder there called support (or whatever name you want to call it).
2. Copy Files - The files that you extracted earlier from the latest release of the installation files should contain two folders: scripts and upload. Copy all the files in the upload folder to the folder you created in step 1. Make sure that you preserve the folder structure of the extracted files. After the upload is complete, folder structure under your support folder should look like this:
(The exact view may be a little different depending on your FTP client, but importantly all these folders and files should be directly under your support folder.)
3. Another way to do things - A lot of webhosting providers also provide alternate ways of uploading files to the server and you can use any of them. As long as you create a folder where you want the support system to reside and copy the files mentioned in Step 2 in that folder.
4. Tweak some settings - Before we proceed further we need to make a small tweak to the file permissions on one of the files we just uploaded. This file is modified automatically during the setup process and hence should have the correct security permissions to allow that to happen. This file is ostconfig.php. Once again there can be multiple ways to define permissions for the file. You can do this through your FTP client or even through an interface that your web hosting provider may offer. If you are not sure how to do it, your best bet is to contact support at your web host to help you out.
What we need to do is to set permissions on ostconfig.php so that it is writeable by the web server. The easiest (though not the safest) thing to do is to give it all permissions (we will be able to revert those later). So, set the permission on your file to 777 (on Windows environment, this is an equivalent of giving Full Control to Everybody).
5. Now Install - Once we have done all of the above, we begin the installation. Fire up your browser and type in the following address in it: http://yourdomain/support. Here replace the yourdomain by the address of your website and support by whatever was the name of the folder you created in Step 1. Now, if everything in the previous steps was done properly you shouldn’t see any errors. If you see any errors then go back and check that each step was executed properly. If everything went fine you should see this screen:
You can fille out the Title, Url, Email, Admin Login Details, and Database details. We created a MySQL database as part of the preparation and the details from that step go in there. We now click Install.
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PHPMotion is a truly free open source media social networking platform supporting video and audio social networking.
It’s downloadable from www.phpmotion.com website after you had registered to the software support forum.
Latest stable version was 1.2 but I tested and evaluated version 2 beta which worked without any crashes and with only small inconveniences.
The product installation was quick however you must have lot of open source modules pre-installed to your server, including LAME MP encoder, Libbogg and Libvorbis, Mencoder and MPlayer, FFMpeg-PHP, GD Library 2, etc. which was taking a week of my time to get those running afterwards to find out that my service provider does not support background processes and MP3, MPEG files download.
So you should consider the hosting service where those modules are already installed. PhpMotion website lists four of hosting ready service providers, where the starting price $2.99 was per month.
The administration panel allows setup the site basics and paths for ffmpeg, flvtool and mencoder, maximum sizes and parameters for conversion, auto approval, commenting options and several limits.
General system messages where customizable so I assume that the system can be setup to use any language.
It also shows general statistics, such as how many videos have in the system separated by private and public and how many videos were played today many plays. It also shows member statistics, such as how many joined today, waiting approval and how many suspended members; group and video comment statistics.
I was lacking the true site statistics about number of visitors and bandwidth usage per day, week, and month.
The member’s panel allows approving, suspending and deleting members.
Administrators are able to manage advertisements in top, bottom, left, right and in home page which all should be entered as HTML code.
The module also manages media approval, media categories and comments.
There was a possibility to send HTML or text newsletters to all site members.
The system shows biggest groups and you are able to set groups as featured and videos as featured with both have also separate management option.
Featured audio was not yet implemented.
Pictures can be set to be approved and the approval process will be done by the site administrator.
Videos and comments can be also flagged.
I found also that there was additional look for the site already available called Zer0One Darkbase which I installed to my service. However this was not working with version 2, so hopefully more web designer will be interested to develop their own themes to newest version.
Site outlook can be customized easily by modifying the CSS files and HTML templates.
Usability
The main page shows most recent and most popular videos.
After the login you will be redirected to the page where selections are: Continue to watch video now, Listen my audio now, Go to my favourites, Complete/Update my profile, Upload/manage my videos now, Upload/manage my audio now, My friends and Privacy notification settings.
Profile features where not customizable by the administration module so user is limited to picture, basic information like gender and birth date, location information and boxes for “More about me”, “Interest and hobbies”, “Favorite movie”, “My type of music”, “More about my high school”, “College/University”, “Work Place” and personal website/blog.
Those information boxes were not customizable using the administrations module, which could have given site owners more customization possibilities to separate target groups.
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Nucleus CMS www.nucleuscms.org is an open source content management blogging platform with many features and plug-ins available to grow your business online.
Nucleus CMS is available for free under the GNU General Public License. NucleusCMS was created by the Nucleus Group in 2002. It was later developed and expanded to be the extensive version that exists today, by the international community called the CMS Team. Nucleus CMS was developed to have multiple weblog content visible on one page. It is designed with the ability to have multiple authors and administrators logging in to post or change configurations as necessary.
You can set up several categories to have a commenting and a voting system provided to enable your readers to share their thoughts and opinions of your posts. All of your urls are optimized for both reader and search engines. You can set the system up to automatically display your posts for future dates. This comes in handy for times when you will be going on vacation or will find yourself unable to post on a regular basis.
There are many changes you can make to create your own unique look through skins, templates, and CSS files.
Many plugins are available to add to the features of your site such as NP_Newsletter, NP_blogstats, calendar, chat, weather forecasts, amazon search, and so many more. Plugins are designed by members of the community and are added daily to the growing database.
This system is simple enough for anyone to learn and expandable enough to allow you to build almost any website you imagine.
Is this software compatible with your server?
NucleusCMS can be used on any web server that has PHP and MySQL installed. In some hosting packages this software can be automatically installed with a few configuration settings within the Fantastico control panel. Otherwise a manual install will have to be done by uploading the files to your server via FTP.
You will need to know where to access your files, usually under the file manager option in your control panel, to FTP your extracted files into the correct folder. You can use this software as a standalone site, meaning you can choose to install in the root directory of your domain, and have the store as you main index; or you can choose to install in a sub directory as an add on, an example being http://yoursite.com/blog
You will need some HTML and CSS knowledge to edit skins and templates or to do some of the settings.
Getting you blog installed and online
If you are downloading and installing the software manually you can obtain the download at http://nucleuscms.org/download.php You will need to unzip the folder with your favorite zip utility such as WinZip. If you are using Windows XP you can just right click on the zip file and choose the unzip option. Often times if you just double click the folder it will unzip as well.
Once the folder has been unzipped to your desktop you will be needing to upload your folder to your server using an FTP client such as Filezilla, CuteFTP, or SmartFTP. An FTP client enables you to transfer large amounts of files quickly and directly into where you would like it to be on your hosting server without any long time manual hassles of uploading each file alone.
Once you have entered you host address, username, and password (all things that should have been in your welcome email when you signed up with your hosting account), the FTP client connects your computer directly to your server.
Depending on what hosting company you are with, your files might be listed under www. or public-html.
Drag the nucleuscms folder with your mouse to the left hand side and drop it in the folder on your right (whatever folder you created for your blog) or into your root directory if you plan to have it for you main page/site layout.
Make sure to upload .php files in ASC II mode. It may not work otherwise. As long as you are doing a simple extraction and you upload the folder as created you should have the files remain intact as required.
You will need to change the CHMOD settings (permissions) on a few files. The following are the changes needed:
- config.php - change to 666 (allows to update automatically instead of manually)
- /media/directory - change to 777
- all files under /skins/directory - to be able to change and edit SkinFiles plugin change to 666 or to be able to create new files change to 777
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Magento is a feature-rich, professional open source e-commerce solution that offers merchants complete flexibility and control over the look, content, and functionality of their online store.
Magento’s powerful marketing search engine optimization and catalog management tools give merchants the power to create ecommerce sites that are tailored to their unique business needs. Magento is distributed free under the GNU General Public License OSL license.
Magento is a registered trademark of Irubin Consulting Inc. DBA Varien. It is currently listed as in a preview release mode and not recommended for use in production environments. There are articles written by community members who have tried this new program and available for your benefit at http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/
Is this software compatible with your server?
Megento can be used on any server that is Linux or UNIX based. It can be run on a Windows based platform but at the moment there are some known issues that are being worked on and it may cause some conflicts, although, there are some documents on the main site to help. You can find some guidelines here http://www.magentocommerce.com/knowledge-base/entry/magento-installation-guide/print
One of the known issues is the image uploads do not work in Windows.
This system is a Linux based software program and was designed with ease of install on a Linux based platform that has PHP 5 installed. This software is a PHP 5 only application and may cause issues if your system only supports PHP 4, although there is a work around solution found here http://www.magentocommerce.com/knowledge-base/entry/installing-magento-on-a-php4-server
If you do not have any programming knowledge or skills, this system may not be suitable for you unless you have a technical support team who can assist you.
The server requirements for this software are:
- Linux or another UNIX-compatible operating system
- Apache web server (1x or 2x)
- PHP 5.2
- MySQL 4.1
- A sendmail- compatible Mail Transfer Agent (MTA)- if not Megento connects to SMTP server.
Also recommended is the use of APC as a bytecode cache for performance improvements. You can find it in the PECL archives here: http://pecl.php.net/package/APC
Other bytecode cache systems are not supported at this time.
Getting Your Store Installed and Online
You will need to manually install this software on your server by the use of an FTP client such as Filezilla or SmartFTP. You can download the Magento ecommerce software from here http://www.magentocommerce.com/download
You will need to unzip the folder. If you are using Windows XP you can just right click on the folder and choose the unzip option. Often times if you just double click the folder it will unzip as well. If you are not using Windows XP you can find a zip utility for free such as Winzip.
You will want to transfer/upload your extracted Magento folder from your desktop to your hosting account. An FTP client enables you to transfer large amounts of files quickly and directly into where you would like it to be on your hosting server without any long time manual hassles of uploading each file alone. I find Filezilla www.filezilla-project.org is quite an easy to use FTP client.
Once you have entered you host address, username, and password (all things that should have been in your welcome email when you signed up with your hosting account), the FTP client connects your computer directly to your server.
Depending on what hosting company you are with, your files might be listed under www. or public-html. Drag the Magento folder with your mouse to the left hand side and drop it in the proper folder on your right where you would need it to be .
Since this is a rather large program, I highly recommend, if you find that you are having any difficulties transferring the complete files and folders, you may want to see if you can transfer the zipped program and extract the files once they are on your server.
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Mantis is a free security web application (bug tracking system) written in PHP. It stores all found bugs in a database.
No software can be bug free. There is a phase in SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) of Testing. Testing is very important phase of any software. It is important to formally maintain bugs. Normally in most of the companies, Bugs are recorded with a bug tracking system and on release of each version, all old bugs are rechecked.
Mantis, BugZilla, Jira are some of the bug tracking system commonly used by the companies.
Mantis is free and open source under GPL license. It can use MySQL, MS SQL Server and PostgreSQL as a database for storing the bugs. It can be installed on Windows, Linux, Mac OS and OS/2. Last but not least, as it is web based application - it is obvious that it needs web server. It can be either IIS or Apache.
Installing Mantis
If I write how to install Mantis, this paper will go on and on… and it is not necessary as it is already well written at mantis official site. I don’t see any point in reinventing wheel. Installation in easy steps is -
- Install prerequisites
- Web Server
- Database
- PHP
- Get Latest version of Mantis
- Configure Mantis
- Login to admin application
- Create project and users
- Assign permissions to users
Features of Mantis
Mantis is very rich in the features and that is what makes it popular amongst companies. There are many features, though I am pointing out some of the key features here.
Features for Developer/Testing Professional
- Very simple Interface and easy to use
- Supports RSS feeds
- Ability to send mail to users
- Ability to integrate chatting
- Ability of integration with famous source code repository (SVN & CVS)
- Ability to upload files with bugs (This is very useful as reporter can upload screen shot of the bug)
- Ability to define role based on project. (This is very useful in the case of small companies, where one person have multiple roles in different projects).
Features for Top Management
- Reporting ability for managers and high management
- Ability to export report in CSV, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word
Features for Administrator
- Very easy to administration. Creating new project or user is only some clicks.
- Give flexibility of choosing OS, Web Server and Database Server
- Ability to integrate authentication with LDAP and Active directory
- No installation at client end (it is web based so only browser is necessary at client side)
- Easy to customize as per the companies requirement
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