Articles

If you missed it then you'll be pleased to know that Jomres v5 was released in May. This version marks a change in the way that we do business in that the Jomres Core system is now a free download and we are monitising the software by licensing downloads of plugins instead of both Jomres Core and it's plugins. It means that the Jomres core system is now free to install and upgrade, allowing us to remain true to the meaning of Open Source software.

New Features :

Despite wanting to have a little summer hiatus, we seem to have worked our socks off to bring you more features than ever before. Below is a brief list of some of the new functionality in Jomres :

1. Javascript Compression.
2. Price Conversion using Yahoo's currency service (and a currency conversion switcher plugin for Jomres_asamodule). Fully automatic exchange rate conversion functionality, allowing a site visitor to choose an exchange rate that they wish to see prices displayed in. Not all exchanges rates are supported, but most (circa 130 currencies) are. The whole feature set is seamless and requires no intervention from the site manager at all, and if required the feature can be disabled via an option in the administrator area's Site Configuration page.
3. Automatic user location recognition, meaning that the current switcher's location is determined from their IP number and the currency code that's most applicable to them is chosen for them, although of course they can use the currency code switcher to change that if they wish.
4. We've rewritten all of the Jomres jQuery calls to use instead jomresJquery, meaning that there should no longer be conflicts with templates that also use the jQuery noConflict mode. Take that, ye little blighters!
5. New Select Combo code for the search modules, which is quicker and easier to maintain and just....works better.
6. A configurable option to open the booking form in a modal popup if required. Some users with a long list of tours, rooms and/or optional extras were finding that the very small component area offered by many templates made navigating a busy booking form difficult, therefore we've implemented a very popular option to open the booking form in a modal popup. This makes the booking form the focus of the page, so the potential guest has less on the screen to confuse them.
7. In addition we've added a sliding price summary panel to the booking form, again a feature that's proven popular with those users with many options to show in the booking form.
8. Further optimisation of the system to reduce the number of queries performed when generating the property list. We've had good feedback from users who tell us that these changes have improved page load times of the property list.
9. Added a feature where an optional extra can be set to be automatically selected in the booking form.
10. Modified Google maps to use their new style ui.
11. Modified edit property functionality to allow users to scroll around a Google map and drag a pointer to set their lat and long. If lat is not set, then Jomres will query google to get a rough approximation of their location to get the ball rolling.
12. Implemented a feature to configure the property type order as it appears in the property type selection dropdown.
13. Added a delete multiple black bookings feature to Jomres, will require the v5.5 version of the black bookings plugin.
14. Added balance after deposit paid row to booking form price summary panel.
15. Added a feature that by default filters out non-active guests from the guest list.

This is just a selection of the new stuff in the system, as always there are hundreds of other changes, tweaks and adjustments to make the system even better.

Plugin news :

As usual a few plugins have been updated to work with the current version of Jomres, and we've added one new major plugin called Piwik's Analytics and it's associated plugin Piwik's Integration. Please see this forum post : http://www.jomres.net/index.php?option=com_kunena&func=view&catid=7&id=9691&Itemid=290 This is a little like Google's analytics but it carries two significant benefits.

1. The Piwik's installation hosted on your own server so there's no need to share your analytics data with Google and you're not beholden to their server's responses before your page will render.
2. The data is collected in realtime, so if you've just released a new promotion you can see it's impact in real-time, instead of having to wait a day for the data to be compiled by Google.

There are a new selection of Ajax based plugins that allow searching via different methods, including a dedicated sidebar module that'll allow impressive filtering on things like the number of stars, required features and price range. See here fore more information http://manual.jomres.net/site_managers_guide_plugins_ajax_search.html

We have three new "portal" plugins, called Portal UI, Portal Dashboard and Portal Property List. The Portal UI offers a simplified interface for non-property managers which uses themed buttons instead of the standard Jomres icons. Portal Dashboard brings a new ajax driven calendar for displaying bookings, and Portal Property List provides a cleaner, more spartan property list for those who want it.