Also, using CDNs or setting expiry times into the future for mostly static files such as CSS and JS also significantly improves page load as clients will grab these files once and use their local cache until their expire. This also poses issues for web developers that is easily overcome by versioning these files – literally adding a version number to the bundles – for example min.bundle-v6.css would be version 6 of the CSS minified and bundled file.

We’ve been doing both of these for a long time with the sites we build. We’ve now generalised, documented and packaged the tool we use for this and released it under a BSD license so others can benefit. See our page on GitHub to download this tool and for examples of its use:

https://github.com/opensolutions/Minify

This tool will:

• automatically find all CSS/JS files in a given directory named xxx-blah.css where xxx is a three digit ordering / sequence number;
• minify these files and create a single file bundle including them in the correct order;
• automatically generate template include files allowing production / development mode (i.e. use individual CSS/JS or bundles based on an application option);
• versioning for those using CDNs, future expiry dates, etc to ensure clients load fresh JS/CSS bundles.

If you use it, please drop us a note to let us know how you get on! 

Just over a week ago, we released V2 of ViMbAdmin which was a complete UI refresh.

Thanks for all the feedback and bug reports since then.

Today, we’re pleased to announce the immediate availability of 2.0.6 which has a number of incremental fixes and improvements including:

• Domain is now ‘sticky’ when moving between mailboxes, aliases and logs making it much easier to browse a single domain;
• A cookie is now used to remember the page length for individual users;
• We now use grouped icons with tooltips rather than labelled buttons throughout;
• The horrible your IP address has changed message is gone.

As usual, a full change log is available here and the packaged release can be downloaded directly here.

And here’s the new improved look:

We’ve also closed a lot of bugs, improved the functionality and navigation and added a couple of small features.

Let us know what you think!

Here at Open Solutions, we manage networks, build Internet infrastructure, consult and develop web applications for many customers. Tracking the time our engineers spent on different projects – especially those on the front line hopping from customer to customer – was becoming an issue.

And we had enough. So we built TallyStick. Necessity, as the saying goes, is the mother of invention.

We believe in web applications that are simple, beautiful and functional. And after an exhaustive search, we couldn’t find one to fit our needs… so we built it. And who better to build a time tracking application for IT and other consulting professionals than those same professionals!

TallyStick allows you to focus on what you love to do while it takes care of tracking and accumulating the time you spend on projects. We believe it’s simple, efficient and quick. And we hope you agree.

As of today, TallyStick is live and open for business. Please sign up, take advantage of the one month’s free trial (with no credit card details required) and tell us what you think.

Also, all users signing up during the beta period will receive a lifetime discount of 10% on that account!

We are now making a concerted effort to find them, clean them, maintain them centrally and release them for the good of others.

To that end, we have created a repository on GitHub for the task with a detailed readme file:

• https://github.com/barryo/nagios-plugins

They main goal of Nagios plugins that we write and release are:

• BSD (or BSD like) license so you can hack away to wield into something that may be more suitable for your own environment;
• scalable in that if we are polling power supply units (PSUs) in a Cisco switch then it should not matter if there is one or a hundred – the script should handle them all;
• WARNINGs are designed for email notifications during working hours; CRITICAL means an out of hours text / SMS message;
• each script should be an independant unit with no dependancies on each other or unusual Perl module requirements;
• the scripts should all be run with the --verbose on new kit. This will provide an inventory of what it finds as well as show anything that is being skipped. OIDs searched for by the script but reported as not supported on the target device should really be skipped via various --skip-xxx options.
• useful help available via --help or -?

0.3.4   2011-09-06
 - fix: https://github.com/opensolutions/ViMbAdmin/issues/3
 - add: Support new mailbox password hashes: crypt, sha1 and
        salted sha1 and md5. Issue 9 from Google Code:

http://code.google.com/p/vimbadmin/issues/detail?id=9

 - fix: Changes in 0.3.2 prevented wildcard aliases
 - add: MD5-CRYPT hashing used by, for example, Dovecot.
        This addresses:

http://code.google.com/p/vimbadmin/issues/detail?id=6

0.3.3   2011-09-02
 - fix: Critical regression introduced in 0.3.2 preventing the
        editing of aliases

0.3.2   2011-09-01
 - fix: https://github.com/opensolutions/ViMbAdmin/issues/1
 - add: optional parameter in application.ini (skipVersionCheck)
        to tell ViMbAdmin to skip the version check on login
        See: https://github.com/opensolutions/ViMbAdmin/issues/2
 - fix: we now check for duplicate mailboxes (and aliases)
        rather than letting Doctrine throw exceptions for
        uniqueness constraints. Thanks maysara for the report.
 - fix: validate new aliases and mailboxes which was not being
        done previously

0.3.1 was released on August 23rd and it’s the sixth release since our last announcement.

Changes include:

• Various changes required for the migration to GitHub.
• A major fix of a bug preventing users to edit aliases.
• New favicon based on logo from Limeworks Australia – http://www.limeworks.com.au
• New autocomplete functionality (used on the Edit / Add Alias page)
• New logo thanks to Limeworks Australia – http://www.limeworks.com.au
• New login screen designFix a critical bug fix preventing email being sent during first use set up

As always, the full change log is available at:

https://github.com/opensolutions/ViMbAdmin/blob/master/CHANGELOG

As such I have converted my co-workers and we have migrated ViMbAdmin to GitHub. We feel that the project is in an early enough stage to not cause too much annoyance with the current user base. We do sincerely apologise for all and any inconvenience caused.

Do you want to continue with your SVN installation?

Feel free to svn switch your base from Google Code to the following which tracks our master (i.e. stable / production / release) branch:

http://svn.github.com/opensolutions/ViMbAdmin.git

Migrating to Git

Just follow the instructions at:

https://github.com/opensolutions/ViMbAdmin/wiki/Install-using-git

and skip the database setup. Just copy over your application/configs/application.ini file to the new Git clone.

Using Official Packaged Releases?

No problem – you’ll now find new versions at:

https://github.com/opensolutions/ViMbAdmin/archives/master

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Old Church Road
Lower Kilmacud Road
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Co. Dublin.