“When it’s done”, well its nearly done!
For 2 or 3 years people have been asking us when the next version of MCP will be coming out and our reply was always the same: “When its done“. Leading many people (myself included!) to wonder if it would ever really come out.
At long last I am delighted to announce,
Its been a real labour of love to get it to this stage and we are really proud of how MCP4 has turned out.
MCP4 has been in private Beta, with a few select customers, since November last year. It reached feature complete status a few weeks back. Right now it’s going though our QA process, also the support side, video tutorials, installation & user guides, are been worked on, feverishly! We have taken on-board all the criticisms people have with the current support files/layout, this is why we are giving ourselves an extra 7+ weeks just to get everything just perfect.
Hopefully will be updating this blog 2 or 3 times a week in the build up to MCP4s release, with lots of details and one or two special announcements;), so be sure to subscribe to our blogS RSS Feed. Its safe to say we have learned alot during the last two years, so I’m hoping to share some of my and the teams experiences and also give people an insight into how professional membership software like MCP4 gets developed.
Next Blog: Getting your hands dirty
See you than.
April 28th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Just to let people know, if you have any questions about MCP4, feel ask them here in the comments. I’ll try address them in the comments or in the next blog post.
April 28th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Sounds good, is this version mysql based? What about plugins for phpBB & Wordpress?
Chrs,
J
April 28th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Hopefully this new version will sort out some problems I’ve had with MCP over the past few years. Will the new version:
1. pull data from the MCP website, or will it finally be completely self contained on the customer’s server? (What happens if the MCP site closes, and I still don’t know what data is being transferred from my server to the MCP server, if any.)
2. have the stupid 5 second daily update delay that does not take me back to where I was? (It is one of the most annoying aspects of MCP for me - it did not happen on earlier versions and daily updates still happened.)
3. will 2CheckOut.com work properly again with MCP? (I am not happy that I was expected to pay to get the workaround update - not good PR from MCP, though I understand that it does cost money to sort out problems caused by changes made to third party sites.)
April 29th, 2008 at 2:16 am
@James
Yes, MCP4 uses a database, it in fact supports over 40+ database types, including MySQL.
There is already a plugin for phpBB2, we may add a plugin for phpBB3 if people want? As for Wordpress, no plugin yet, but as this blog uses Wordpress, it’s highly likely that we’ll create one.
@Graham
1. All the images, javascript and css will this time be stored on the local server. So even if our website goes down, everything will still work fine. Very little chance of us closing, we’ve been in business 7+ years and just after investing 2 odd years creating MCP4, we’ll likely be open for a good while yet, even just to cover our costs;)
2. Good news for you on this one. While the daily backup is obviously still there, it now completes the action you had requested, then returns you to where you came from, so no interruption.
3. Yes! We in fact there is improved support for 2CO, MCP4 uses the new Single Page Checkout, this cuts down the number of payment screens from 4 (or 5 depending on choice) to 2 (payment and receipt page). This should lead to a bump in conversions.
We had a lot of people give feedback on pet peeves like the daily backup, I think we have pretty much resolved or removed them all, so MCP should be a big improvement for all.
April 29th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Hooray!!!
I am looking forward to updating to MCP4 ASAP.
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Its a miracle
Ok so its finally almost done I remember talking to you about this years ago as you know I worked on the original drafts of MCP4 with you guys for this long awaited PHP version …
Can’t wait I hope that some of my code and ideas makes it into this version.
also Robert will you finally have a forum up again as you did in the very beginnig where we can all shre ideas and such this is very important in my opin …
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:03 pm
This is really good news!! Thanks guys really look fwd to it.
I am also hoping for some sort of forum. Invaluable to getting the most out of any software.
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Will this version finally automatically email reminders when accounts expire as an option? Also, it’s terrible with respect to people using the browesr back button if they make a mistake with their username/pass with paypal. It gives an error and I have to manually add people half the time.
Thanks.
May 3rd, 2008 at 4:28 am
@Dave
Yes, MCP4 has been in development for quite a while. Some day I’ll blog about it and let people know the (very!) long history. Hopefully you’ll spot a few ideas of your own in the new version, we tried to accommodate everyone who submitted ideas / suggestions.
As for the forum: Yes, there will be a forum, new Spam tools like Akismet make it feasible again. We are actually planning on taking on a new person, who’s main job will be running the forum.
@Z
Thanks for your support, much appreciated
@Bill
Yes, you can setup automated emails, that get sent out automatically (requires Cron job access) after X seconds, after the user signs up. So this allows you to send out emails at predefined times.
Regarding the Back Button issue, this has been eliminated in MCP4. If the user fails for some reason (like username already taken, password too short, etc…), instead of getting an error screen, that they would have to press “Back” on, the user instead will get an inline error, with all their previously submitted info, you can see a screen shot of it here: http://www.mcp4.com/blog/examples/inline_error.gif
This approach is far more user friendly and much easier to follow.
May 3rd, 2008 at 6:14 am
I’d like it so 10 days prior to their access being expired, they can get a reminder. I do not use recurring monthly billing and it’s on a yearly donation basis.
Thanks.
May 4th, 2008 at 5:23 am
that is possible with MCP4, you just setup the ‘reminder’ email to get sent out 30672000 seconds (355 days) after signup.
Updated: fixed slight error.
May 31st, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Thanks can’t wait to see this.
Robert a big question I get from clients and users alike is how does one know when there exp is up without them asking us?
I remember there was a little known feature in the orig ver of MCP that was somthing like im talking about but that never worked correctly.
I hope that there will be a simple way that when a member enters in there codes it can show info like Sorry your account is now expired please re-new your account! and have the option of showing a PP buy button so renewals can then be seemless. It should also output the info something like …
Username: Don West
Signup Date 07/16/08
Exp Date 07/16/09
Membership Type: Standard 1 year
Membership Status: Valid!
Basically it should output whatever was set in the admin as the membership type so on the fly the member can see all there info, many have asked us about this and this would be a feature I feel worth adding if this was not already in the mix.
Also there should be a way the user can update there info on the fly this was somthing that never worked right do to the way the original was coded to work it wanted to see you pass through a page first before showing this form from what I remeber and this caused some probs so my hope is all this has been worked out in the latest ver, just tossing some info out there that I have been wondering about …
DC
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:38 am
@Dave,
That is a good idea, and it is possible via MCP4. However, it is not a feature that is there ‘out of the box’, as it is really only of use to people who sell one off products and want users to manually signup again after expiration.
Regarding the users updating their info on the fly, yes it is inbuilt into MCP4. Users can change their email or password settings. They can also update their personal profile (name, address, country, etc…) via their own User control panel. The User control panel also lists all their purchases / subscriptions.
I’ll make sure that the demo gets put online this week to let everyone play around with it.