Location:

Type: Full-time
Experience: Mid-Senior level
Functions: Other, Information Technology
Industries: Internet, Information Technology and Services, Program Development, Marketing and Advertising

Job Description:
Comrads is looking for experienced PHP Programmers! Are you that motivated and creative PHP web developer with a passion for Internet? Do you have affinity with marketing automation and web-based applications such as DAM, MOM and MRM? Do you want a challenging job and be part of a motivated team that continues to develop and progress? Then we are pleased to get in contact with you.

We offer a dynamic job within an enthusiastic and young organization with an informal atmosphere and good, market-based benefits.

Skills:
Minimal 5 years of experience within a similar job position.

Excellent knowledge of:
PHP, MySQL, AJAX, Scripting (o.a.JavaScript), XML(-RPC), HTML, Flash and Actionscript.

Experience with:
Object-oriented programming (OOP), ITIL, RUP, Adobe Flex, Zend Studio, SVN, Adobe Acrobat, Dreamweaver, PDF-Lib, InDesign, QuarkXpress, Photoshop, Illustrator, Hosting & web server management (Apache), Operating Systems (Mac OSX, Red Hat Linux, Windows).

Company Description:
Comrads is a independant marketing application service provider and we support our clients to execute their marketing communications as effectively and efficiently as possible by means of marketing automation. This enables our clients to realize more return on their marketing budget and are able to focus on their core activities. Therefore, Comrads implements web-based marketing applications to support the marketing and communications processes of our clients. Based on an ASP-model we develop and implement tailored brand & asset management platforms, Web-to-print modules, Document management systems, webshops, etc. Interested? Then we are pleased to get in contact with you.

Additional Information:
Local candidates only, no relocation (Amsterdam Area, Netherlands).
No third party applications.
Acquisition to this vacancy is not appreciated!

WHMCS is an all-in-one client management, billing & support solution for online businesses. WHMCS handles everything from sign up to termination, with automated billing, provisioning & management. With WHMCS, you're in control with a very powerful business automation tool.

In addition to my previous post where I made a Mollie module for iDEAL, I now also created a CardGatePlus payment module.

Card Gate Plus is a little bit cheaper then Mollie (instead of €0,99 you only pay €0,75 per transaction in the highest category). Card Gate Plus also accepts way more ways to pay.

Amongst the options are: Visa, Mastercard, iDEAL, Wallie, Giropay, Mistercash and Maestro.

If you want a copy of the Card Gate Plus payment module for WHMCS I would be happy to sell it to you for a small fee.You can order it here.
After payment you will receive the package immediately.

WHMCS is very very handy if you handle multiple domains. The systems comes with multiple domain registrars and payment gateways, but with my luck the ones I need aren't included.
Since I'm Dutch and conduct most of my business in Holland I needed to hook it up to TransIP as my registrar and to a random iDEAL payment provider.

iDEAL for the ING bank is included with WHMCS, but since I have my bank account with the Rabobank it isn't going to be much use for me.

TransIp offered a WHMCS module for download themselves which you can find here. Now I only needed a iDEAL payment provider.

If you are only doing a few transactions per month then it isn't lucrative to get a contract with a big bank like the Rabobank. It will cost you more then 50 Euro a month and have to pay transaction costs on top of that.

I did some research and found out that Mollie has a very good deal. With Mollie you do not have a setup fee, you don't have a monthly fee and you don't have batch fees. You only pay € 0,99 for successful transactions.

Now that I made my choice I needed to hook it up to WHMCS. The developers of WHMCS have a very complete API with very good documentation. Mollie has a few example classes for download as well, so it was just putting the pieces together and juggle the variables between the hook and the callback script and voilà.

If you want a copy of the Mollie payment module for WHMCS I would be happy to sell it to you for a small fee.
You can order it here.
After payment you will receive the package immediately.

Purmerend, april 2010 - Comrads built a custom solution to create, produce, order and distribute publication materials. This online solution also contains a webshop (with ordermanagement and realtime stock information).

The system also communicates realtime with the ERP system of Reumafonds as well as with the ordermanagement system of the logistics supplier.

Purmerend, january 2010 - Since the beginning of this year Comrads redesigned the Draka brandportal. The Asset Bank was completely upgraded to the latest standards, the integrated 'Stationery webshop' was  completely revamped and the design itself was upgraded. Comrads created one complete system with all basic elements for every brandexposure you can think of.

The Draka Brand Point platform enables all Draka employees and external Draka contacts worldwide to browse and download (media)assets, order business cards, envelopes, stickers, etc.  All actions are regulated trough an extensive permission system that features multiple roles, groups and document rights.

I usually just use IMAP for my e-mail within Outlook on my office computer and IMAP with Thunderbird when I'm home on my laptop with Ubuntu, but my laptop gave me some troubles at home so I took my girlfriends laptop and fired up my webmail.

Damn!, Squirellmail is so incredibly ugly and gui-unfriendly compared to Horde or any other webmail project you come across. Not only do the themes stink, but it misses out on several basic functionality like sieve filtering and per-user SpamAssassin preferences.

I had some spare time on my hands so I went looking for a Squirellmail alternative. Very quickly you will find that there aren't that many (good) webmail clients around. There is GoogleMail, Horde, Roundcube, Zimbra and a few lesser known ones. GoogleMail isn't an option since we don't like to host our e-mail elsewhere, Zimbra isn't because it is more of an collaboration suite then it is a webmail client and Horde isn't an option once you compare it to Roundcube

RoundCube is an excellent open source experience for an AJAX webmail, and what will really attract you to Roundcube is its advanced user interface with drag and drop functionnalities which make it very easy to organize your email. RoundCube Webmail is written in PHP and requires a MySQL database. The user interface is fully skinnable using XHTML and CSS 2. Roundcube also offers extensions in the form of plugins. This enables you to use SpamAssassin options per-user, Sievefiltering per-user, etc.

Roundcube was definitely the webmail program the fitted our needs most. We quickly installed it next to our Squirellmail installation. The installation was super-easy and super-fast. Then installed the ManageSieve and SpamAssassin plugins and I thought we were good to go.

Then a colleague mentioned that he couldn't set a auto-reply from within RoundCube. He was planning to take a few days off and wanted to set an out-of-the-office notification. I quickly looked in the RoundCube repository for a auto-reply function but it is only available for a specific Windows mailserver. On the forums of RoundCube the programmers state that there will be no such official plugin or feature made available since they think it is not something the webmail program should manage.

I disagree.

I think users should be able to set their auto-reply message from within their webmail and not having to go trough Usermin or Webmin to do so.

Since SquirellMail DID have the auto-reply functionality available and SquirellMail also runs on PHP and MySQL I decided to just take that plugin and port it to RoundCube. I wrapped the whole thing in a RoundCube plugin format and voila, it works brilliantly.

The plugin writes a file to the users homedir where the SendMail server picks it up and fires the 'Vacation' plugin that sends an auto-reply.

Anyone who wants the plugin can download it here.

Update - If you can't use FTP to put the forward files you may try using the squirrelmail_vacation_proxy program. Not that I do not support this program nor the use of it.

You may download it here.

Update - There is now a SourceForge project concerning this plugin. You can download the files there and contribute to it as well.

Support and questions can also be put in the projects forum.

Comrads

Purmerend, may 2009 - Since the beginning of this year ING and Postbank merged as one. Comrads put the combined ING brand identity into ING Merkwereld: one complete system with all basic elements for every brandexposure you can think of. The ING Merkwereld platform also takes care of the production process that is highly automated.

The ING Merkwereld platform enables all ING employees and external ING contacts to browse and download (media)assets. All actions are regulated trough an extensive permission system that features multiple roles, groups and document rights.
Read the complete article in Print Buyer 05/09 (Dutch).

Project Url: http://www.directemerken.nl (intranet so not available outside Achmea network)

Projectmanagement: Joostenmediamakers.nl

Project delivery: Jun 01, 2009

Description: The intranet of Achmea, FBTO, dDD and Centraal Beheer are combined in directemerken.nl. Earlier I developed the complete backend based on Modx CMS for directemerken complete with newsarchive, multiple security levels, etc.. Now they requested a team based extension on the intranet where every department could have their own little part complete with project archive, news archive, team member pages etc..

Project Url: http://www.nibincasso.nl

Project delivery: May 22, 2008

Description: NIB Incasso is a major debt collection agency in the Netherlands. It is always innovating in the way they contact their debtors.

NIB Incasso presents their clients with a a-la-carte concept for debt collection. Their clients can choose from several building blocks to create a work flow that fits their own ways best. They can choose between numerous letters in a specific order, calling from debt-collectors to the debtors, sms, etc.

They asked me for a new way and I came up with the following concept: ideal E-mail

E-mail is the one thing that is missing from the flow and it is so much cheaper than a letter on expensive paper with a stamp. The concept was quickly approved and developed by myself with the following screens / steps:

Step 1: NIB Incasso gets debtor information from their client and put it in the debt collection system

Step 2: The debt collection system will generate a batch of e-mail addresses with corresponding invoice details for all clients who have iDEAL E-mail in their workflow

Step 3: The e-mail is sent out to the debtors

	Step 4: The debtor receives the mail with customized text (this text can be different for all clients and clients can have several sorts of letters)
	Step 5: The debtor clicks on the link in the text or on the header image to go to a personalised landingspage where they can pay the invoice online via iDEAL (Dutch payment provider)
	Step 6: The debtor's original e-mail represents the current invoice status
	When the e-mail is older then 14 days the header automatically states that they can not use that e-mail anymore to pay their invoice. This is because NIB incasso sends them a new one with higher costs after 14 days or the client has requested a next step in the workflow after that time.
	When an invoice is not found or the encoded URL is being altered the viewer gets a screen that states that there is no status information.

This was all done with the GD library and a bit of PHP code. The trick is to link the email image to a serverside php script that will get the base image and print in the rest of the details of the debtor with GD.

function statusImage ($SourceFile, $Begunstigde, $Saldo, $Omschrijving, $Kenmerk, $Klantkenmerk, $Betaaldatum, $DestinationFile) {
   list($width, $height) = getimagesize($SourceFile);
   $image_p = imagecreatetruecolor($width, $height);
   $image = imagecreatefromjpeg($SourceFile);
   imagecopyresampled($image_p, $image, 0, 0, 0, 0, $width, $height, $width, $height);
   $white = imagecolorallocate($image_p, 255, 255, 255);
   $grey = imagecolorallocate($image_p, 128, 128, 128);
   $black = imagecolorallocate($image_p, 0, 0, 0);
   $font = 'Vera.ttf';
   $font_size = 8;

   imagettftext($image_p, $font_size, 0, 494, 31, $white, $font, $Begunstigde);
   imagettftext($image_p, $font_size, 0, 494, 44, $white, $font, $Saldo);
   imagettftext($image_p, $font_size, 0, 495, 59, $white, $font, $Omschrijving);
   imagettftext($image_p, $font_size, 0, 495, 72, $white, $font, $Kenmerk);
   imagettftext($image_p, $font_size, 0, 495, 85, $white, $font, $Klantkenmerk);
   imagettftext($image_p, $font_size, 0, 495, 98, $white, $font, $Betaaldatum);

   if ($DestinationFile<>'') {
	  imagejpeg ($image_p, $DestinationFile, 100);
   } else {
	  header('Content-Type: image/jpeg');
	  imagejpeg($image_p, null, 100);
   };
   imagedestroy($image);
   imagedestroy($image_p);
};

if ($paid=='Openstaand') {
	$SourceFile = '/httpdocs/images/nietbetaald.jpg';
	$Begunstigde = ':  '. $row_dossierdetails['dossier_begunstigde'];
	$Saldo = ':  '. $row_dossierdetails['dossier_saldo']. '  EUR';
	$Omschrijving = ':  '. $row_dossierdetails['dossier_nummer'];
	$Kenmerk = ':  '. $row_dossierdetails['dossier_klant'];
        $Klantkenmerk = ':  '.$row_dossierdetails['dossier_klantkenmerk'];
	$Betaaldatum = ':  '. $row_dossierdetails['dossier_factuurdatum'];
	statusImage ($SourceFile, $Begunstigde, $Saldo, $Omschrijving,
        $Kenmerk, $Klantkenmerk, $Betaaldatum, $DestinationFile);
}

elseif ($paid=='Betaald') {
	$SourceFile = '/httpdocs/images/betaald.jpg';
	$Begunstigde = ':  '. $row_dossierdetails['dossier_begunstigde'];
	$Saldo = ':  '. $row_dossierdetails['dossier_saldo']. '  EUR';
	$Omschrijving = ':  '. $row_dossierdetails['dossier_nummer'];
	$Kenmerk = ':  '. $row_dossierdetails['dossier_klant'];
       	$Klantkenmerk = ':  '.$row_dossierdetails['dossier_kenmerk'];
	$Betaaldatum = ':  '. $row_dossierdetails['dossier_betaaldatum'];
	statusImage ($SourceFile, $Begunstigde, $Saldo, $Omschrijving,
        $Kenmerk, $Klantkenmerk, $Betaaldatum, $DestinationFile);
}
elseif ($paid=='Vervallen') {
	$SourceFile = '/httpdocs/images/vervallen.jpg';
	statusImage ($SourceFile, $Begunstigde, $Saldo, $Omschrijving,
        $Kenmerk, $Klantkenmerk, $Betaaldatum, $DestinationFile);
}
elseif ($paid=='Geen informatie beschikbaar') {
	$SourceFile = '/httpdocs/images/geenstatus.jpg';
	statusImage ($SourceFile, $Begunstigde, $Saldo, $Omschrijving,
        $Kenmerk, $Klantkenmerk, $Betaaldatum, $DestinationFile);
}

There are lots of tricks that are almost to easy to implement that will give you results you never expected. To get you started or learn you some tricks on e-mail marketing we first go over the kinds of e-mail that is used. After this series of 10 posts you hopefully see the benefits from every single type and have learned to use them the right way.

There are basically 6 types of e-mail messages

• Corporate e-mail
  • normal e-mail messages that you send out dozens of times a day
• Newsletter e-mail
  • Newsletter e-mails that you send out every x days to your customers / contacts just to keep them updated
• Campaign e-mail
  • This can be used to generate traffic to your website or for example get attention for a certain product you like to sell
• Site e-mail
  • E-mail that is sent from your website, help desk, support system, contact form, etc...
• Follow-up e-mail
  • E-mail that you send after a user for example has requested some information and you want to know if everything was received in good order
• Personal e-mail
  • E-mail that you send on your customers birthday or for example send out when he gets back from his vacation

In the next couple of weeks I'll cover each of the above categories one by one in detail.

Part 1: You are reading it now

Part 2: How to get your e-mail addresses for your list(s)

Part 3: Corporate e-mail

Part 4: Newsletter e-mail

Part 5: Campaign e-mail

Part 6: Site e-mail

Part 7: Follow-up e-mail

Part 8: Personal e-mail

Part 9: Tips for launching a e-mail campaign

Part 10: Example cases