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

Projectmanagement: connectedconcepts.nl

Project delivery: Jun 19, 2010

Description: Van Daalen Assurantiën is a company that provides insurance, mortgages, loans, etc. They were in need of a new website and I took care of the design, hosting, e-mail, cms and development.

The website holds more than 40 different forms with numerous validation rules. The customer has total control over the content via the CMS that the website was built on.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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..

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Since these posts do not really reflect my current work I will backdate them with the corresponding project release date.

Some of the posts that aren’t backdated are posts that I wanted to share with you anyway as I myself find these more interesting…

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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);
}

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I transferred all my files, databases and mail account to my “UNLIMITED” everything account that I ordered at GoDaddy in December 2008. So far so good. Everything seemed okay aside from some latency during peak hours.

I opened a ticket to ask if they could do something about the latency and they promptly answered that they experienced no such thing. As a reply I send them a traceroute from my comp to my website and as a comparison a traceroute from my comp to the GoDaddy homepage. A difference of almost  2 seconds.

As soon as I pressed the send button on the support form they already replied that from their location there was no latency. At least nobody can complain about slow support.

But that was just one thing that turned out to be not so great… It turned out that the UNLIMITED everything package wasn’t as unlimited as advertised. You can only create 10 e-mail accounts that do NOT have unlimited space. You have 1000 MB available that you can divide between your e-mail accounts. Now for most people this should do fine, but my local mailbox is now holding around 3 GB that I was planning to mirror online so I could access it via IMAP everywhere I go.

Disillusioned I again went looking for another webhost. In my initial search I also had Site 5 in my list of possible candidates. I looked at their offers once again and it turned out they had some great offer. I had a chat with the online salesperson and asked all the things that I wanted different from GoDaddy and he quickly confirmed that at Site5 there where no hidden agenda’s. Unlimited truly is unlimited.

This means that I also had the option to create unlimited domains that are really separated vhosts, another thing I didn’t have at GoDaddy where I could only work with domain pointers. This is absolutely fantastic since I have several websites that I could host under one main account and give people that are helping me to maintain some of these sites access to only that specific single website account.

I transferred everything once again to my third webhost in a year, but now I believe that this will be the last host I’ll ever need.