Over the last few months I've been working on a special new feature which I think my users will absolutely love.

 

One of the biggest hurdles any new website faces is the problem of gaining a foothold on the internet. Getting reputable backlinks to your site and the properties on it is difficult when the big boys like Booking.com, Expedia et al dominate the search rankings.

To help my users overcome this, I will be rolling out a new service called the Jomres Online Booking Network ( OBN ). The purpose of this service is to allow remote Jomres installations to list their properties on a customised Jomres installation. We will not take bookings on this site, instead clicks on properties on the site will bring the guests to your site where, if all goes well, they'll make the booking there.

We're very much at the development phase at the moment. I've done extensive testing these last few weeks in connecting the Jomres Sandbox server to the Online Booking Network server, and now we're ready for the next set of tests, which involves you installing the Superserver Client on your own sites and connecting with the OBN Sandbox.

You can see the Userdemo/Sandbox here.

The Online Booking Network sandbox can be seen here.

How can you help with testing?

You can install the Superserver Client plugins, which will enable linking between servers, and let me know if it works for you or if there are problems.

There are a few prerequisites. The server that you are connecting to the OBN Sandbox cannot be on something like localhost, it must be accessible through a fully qualified domain name. Also, Jomres must not be under a menu item that requires login through either .htaccess password protection or a menu option that is limited to registered users. The OBN Sandbox needs to talk to your Jomres installation freely.

First, please raise a ticket and let me know which license key you will be using for testing. I will need to manually modifiy your license so that you can upload multiple properties to the OBN Sandbox, by default all existing licenses can only upload one property.

Make sure you're running Jomres 9.9.10 and that all plugins have been updated, then install the two plugins that are needed :

Api Feature Superserver & Superserver Client through the Jomres plugin manager.

Once you have done that then you are ready to visit the Administrator > Jomres > Portal > Online Booking Network page in your Jomres administrator area.

online booking network menu link

When you visit this page you should see something like this :

Online booking network connection page

By default this will use the OBN sandbox ( don't try to set it to connect to the Live server, it will not work yet ). All you need to do is click the Connect button, then the two servers will swap api keys and the OBN server will connect with your installation and upload properties until your property limit has been reached.

There are some limitations regarding which property types we will upload to the OBN ( you can see them in the screenshot above ) and we will only import properties that have been published and have at least the main property image uploaded. Providing you haven't hit your property limit, any new properties you add should be sent to the OBN sandbox when they are published.

If you encounter any problems, please contact me through the ticket system and I hope that you agree with me that this is an exciting new service that will benefit all of our users.

 

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ABOUT US

vince picDeveloped and maintained by Vince Wooll, Jomres was initially conceived in early 2005 as a Mambo based solution to a client’s hotel management needs. While it wasn't originally expected to be an online booking system it quickly morphed into one as users requested more and more features.

As the number of feature requests grew Vince knew that he would need to dedicate more time to the project and in July 2005 Jomres was released as a commercial project. Since then Jomres has become the world's oldest online booking plugin for any PHP CMS. It has been used in Joomla 1.0, 1.5, 2.5, 3 & 4 and WordPress 4, 5 & 6.

Aladar joined the project in 2010 after using Jomres for his own projects. He was active on the forum, helping other members of the community and eventually Vince invited him to join the team. Between 2010 and 2018 he was an integral part of the project and made many significant contributions.

Whilst not formally part of the Jomres project, Rodrigo Rocco and Vince have become firm friends. Rod is a freelancer who specialises in doing custom work for Jomres users and developing custom plugins for the system that take advantage of it's modular design. He has built many useful extensions including his fabulous Valentina Template Override Package.

Jomres and the Jomres Logo is trademarked and can't be used without written consent from the owner.

www.jomres.net is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Joomla! Project, Open Source Matters or the WordPress project. The Joomla! & WordPress names and logos are used under a limited license granted by Open Source Matters and the WordPress Projects.

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