What happened to vTiger CRM --the fork of SugarCRM-- after the upgrade to versions 5.2x? Among many good and improved things, the PDF generating libraries have changed paths. Some plug and play, or click and point, PDF making extensions, crafted for 5.1x won't work with the new versions 5.2x -- until they will be upgraded at their turn, of course.

In the while, for the code-minded people, here's the new list of

Faye asked me for some descriptions. I wrote her back in a more descriptive way. Then she asked for more. I added even more description space. But she wants even more, something like drawing sketches or schematics? Sure do, time to install Google SketchUp 8 on my old but sturdy ThinkPad. Only thing is that I'm running OpenSuse Linux and Google SktechUp is an application crafted only for Windows and Mac OSX.

A Norwegian Publishing House, Horn Forlag AS, hired Erik Thorsen's web workshop, Webverksted.no, in order to optimize the online delivery of its outstanding publications.

For years, the Joomla! content management system was doing a great job at handling paper publications over to the web audiences. There is a solid component for Joomla!, called Flipping Book, that takes JPG image files and converts them throughout an Adobe Flash script into an ebook that you can flip, as the name is telling us.

Your online business is growing out of an old e-store application, or you wanna start selling online, and start good. Below are some considerations regarding the shopping cart software we're recommending, and why. A comparative analysis:

With the recent 3.x version, Wordpress is proving capable to handle vast amounts of data along with versatile CMS functions, quite similar to Drupal. Nothing wrong with Drupal. On the contrary, think that Drupal is rather a CMF than a CMS, or a Content Mangement Frame, superior to the Content Mangement System.

But sometimes Drupal is just too expensive to manage. And maybe less cute and GUI friendly than the Wordpress Thesis Theme and its "Big Save Ass Button" -- in our times they called it RESET. All in all, my guessing is that ladies would prefer a glass of Thesis on the Wordpress, while men are fine with just Drupal, cold from the fridge.

Ron said to me: give me a site with a music media player, a flash slider, rotator, whatever, and a blog for sure.

Okey dokey! One Sunday afternoon, with the right eye scouting on RTL's latest gossips, my left eye took advantage of both brain hemispheres: the left one to automate the one-click WordPress install buttons from Dreamhost's panel, the right one to fantasize about embedding preferred YouTube hosted musical videos inside WordPress. Thanks to the well known WP-FLV plugin you may insert an entire playlist from YouTube.

SugarCRM is an exceptional Customer Relationship Management suite of applications. We're using it both for us and several client businesses, integrating it with public web sites and Google Apps. But taken down to a detailed analysis, at the core level, SugarCRM is lacking few important features. Exactly the ones that (quite) every client was asking us about: products, contracts, sales quotes and orders, invoices, and printing them straight from the web "page" to be handled and circulated in the real world. Here's how we met these request:

One of our clients is selling laptop parts. The interrelations between the parts (batteries, screens, power adapters and so on) and their matching laptop brands and types are truly threatening. For instance, one single battery may fit about 3,500 distinct brand/types of notebooks. Drupal's taxonomies are handling this entire jungle with grace. Problem is they're handling it too good. Case in point:

One of our clients asked for a way to print clear quotes from their SugarCRM secure install.

The annoying matter being caused by the otherwise handy sub panels laying beneath the detail view of the quotes, or whatever some module would display in the main.

Solution: comment out all arrays in the following two files:

/modules/Quotes/metadata/subpaneldefs.php

/custom/modules/Quotes/Ext/Layoutdefs/layoutdefs.ext.php

The above paths are working for the Quotes custom module.
Below goes the path for any custom SugarCRM modules:

Needing features like quotes, products, invoices, creating and managing in SugarCRM? The custom modules will deliver the required functionality, minus some minimal, but perhaps essential, aspects.

One of this is the [Import] button in the left bar. The one allowing users to import quotes, products, invoices from a CSV [or .xls] file.

Here's the tip for coding in that [Import] button:

http://www.sugarcrm.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45612

And yes, it works for any SugarCRM module, custom or not, which is currently missing this feature.

Give it a spin!