The dpivision.com Ltd Weblog

Swashbuckling is an activity normally carried out on the high seas.

But piracy is as rife as ever online.

Notice anything familiar about these screenshots?

You’d be forgiven for thinking someone had got their hands on our carefully crafted creations but unfortunately, that’s not the case.

After a quick trawl of the Internet, our research revealed there are plenty of websites out there imitating both our www.dpivision.com and www.cannybill.com.

It’s just a good job we’re all flattered by it here!

dpivision.com Ltd – Original

Pirate Site 1

Now this person really hasn’t bothered to change very much at all!

Pirate Site 2

And again, another company taking our design and just adding their logo but worst of all, doing a terrible job of it!

CannyBill – Original Site

Pirate Site 1

Well again not much effort has been put in to change our original design. They’ve changed the logo and some text but that’s about it!

Pirate Site 2

Well this is not a pirate site as such, just someone taking our CannyBill and Tradingeye sites and featuring them in their own portfolio!

We are pleased to announce two new features for www.cannybill.com.

Custom Domain Names

By default your CannyBill admin login, order forms and customer my account URL is whatever-you-want.cannybill.com or clientorderform.com e.g.

http://company.cannybill.com or http://company.clientorderform.com

We have developed a new feature which now lets you have your own custom domain name rather then using the default CannyBill ones e.g.

http://billing.domain.com or http://www.domain.com

This is a great way to white label CannyBill as not only have you got full control over the design but now also the URL. Please note however that if you do use your own domain name for CannyBill you would also need to setup and buy your own SSL Certificate.

Under the admin -> settings -> invoice settings -> simply enter the custom domain name of your choice and save your settings. You will now need to change the DNS of your domain name e.g.

billing.mydomain.com. IN CNAME company.cannybill.com.

Please note the dot(.) at the end of domain names.

PayPal Payments Pro

We are please to announce the integration of the PayPal Pro payment gateway with CannyBill. The great advantage of PayPal Pro over the standard PayPal integration which is already built in the is the ability to have auto/recurring billing and also the fact that your customers do not get re-directed to PayPal to enter the credit card number, that’s all taken care on-site.

More information of PayPal and PayPal Pro can be found below:

https://www.paypal-business.co.uk/website-payments-pro.asp

Under admin -> settings -> Payment Gateways -> simply enter your PayPal credentials and you’re all set to go!

We are pleased to announce a new estimates feature for www.cannybill.com.

From your admin -> settings -> invoice settings -> you can enable the estimates feature.

Now the estimates feature has been activated you can now go ahead and create your 1st estimate. Simple go to the admin -> invoices tab -> and click on create new invoice.

Now instead of selecting the invoice option, select estimate from the drop down menu and enter all the required information such as the description and price.

That’s it, you’re all done, your 1st estimate has been created and you can now sent it to your customer with an optional PDF version attached.

Under the admin -> invoices tab -> you can switch between looking at all your invoices or estimates you have created.

Come and meet and greet the Dpivision.com Ltd team as we host the after hours fun to a day with a top designer.

Designer and author Andy Clark from Stuff and Nonsense is stopping off in Newcastle to host an Advanced CSS Styling workshop at the Copthorne Hotel in October.

And we have joined forces with him to host and sponsor an evening of socialising at The Salsa Club, giving people the chance to unwind, swap top tips and beef up their contacts book.

The one-day masterclass offers ideas on how to use the most up-to-date CSS techniques of the moment, including:

- How to design balanced, inspired layouts using advanced CSS positioning techniques
- New ways to work with colour using RGBa
- Using multiple background and border images
- How to use text and box shadows
- About CSS gradients, reflections and transitions

Places are running out very quickly so book your place now!

http://forabeautifulweb.com/announcing/newcastle_upon_tyne_2009/

For the CannyBill sponsored after party, we are extending the invitation to our customers.

So come along and say hello to the team at The Salsa Club, West Gate Road, Newcastle on October 30 from 6.30pm onwards and fill yourself up with some of the tastiest free nachos and best Mexican beer.

Just so we know how much free food and booze to order, drop us a line to say you’ll be coming at info@dpivision.com.

We are very pleased to announce the complete integration for the www.vps.net platform using www.cannybill.com.

VPS.NET is a Cloud Hosting provider who set out to build a cloud that was both powerful and easy to use, their node architecture makes hosting in the cloud possible for everybody, it comes with standard features such as instant server deployment in both the US and UK, hardware self healing and daily billing.

Cloud computing at your finger tips!

• Create web based order forms to sell nodes and virtual machines.
• Enable your customers to manage every aspect of their VPS via their own customer portal!

Login to you CannyBill admin panel and go to settings -> Plugin Modules -> and enter your VPS.NET login API credentials.

Now its time to create a web based order form which your customers can signup to. Go to the Packages tab -> Create New Order Group (department) -> and select the VPS.NET option.

One your order group has been created, you can setup the prices for each node you want to sell.

Once your order form has been setup with the correct pricing, click on the magnifier icon to preview your order form and simply copy/pate the URL to a buy now button on your website. Don’t forget, you can integrate your order form into any website as you have full control over the header/footer HTML and the CSS style sheet.

Please find some live order form examples below:

http://www.cannybill.com/demos.html

Your customers can now buy their nodes and select their virtual machine all though a streamlined ordering process.

Once the order has been placed and paid for, your customers get emailed their login details for their very own customer portal giving them full control over their VPS.

Your customers can view and manage every aspect of their VPS from performing a graceful shutdown to a power off or reboot.

Customers can also manage their console, view CPU usage and bandwidth charts to enabling backups on their system.

VPS nodes can also easily be added or removed from any virtual machine all within a few easy steps.