Version 1.1.2 is now available as a Stable release (for Joomla only - it is still BETA on Mambo). All clients are encouraged to upgrade to this version as soon as possible, as a number of bugs have been fixed. If you already have 1.1.2 BETA, you still need to upgrade as several bugs have been fixed since then too. In conjunction with this release, we are also offering license keys at a lower price (for a limited time): ?20 per year, or ?55 outright.
If your version of the component is set up to check for updates automatically (this is the case by default, but can be changed on the global configuration page), you should be offered a link to upgrade next time you enter the home page in the back end (this does not apply if you are running 1.1.2 BETA, as the version number has not changed, so you will need to upgrade manually). However, if the connection between your server and ours is slow (ie. it takes longer than 5 seconds to make a round trip), the upgrade link will not appear. In that case, you will need to apply the patch manually (the timeout value has been increased in the next version so it should not be a problem in future).
To apply the patch manually, simply download the correct patch file, unzip it on your PC, and upload the folders to the root of your Joomla site. Alternatively (eg. if your FTP username does not have permission to overwrite the files), you can uninstall and re-install the component (you will not lose any data, but will have to re-upload the HTML2PS/PDF script library if applicable).
For more information about upgrading, please see
http://www.nbill.co.uk/documentation/index.php?page=upgradefromapreviousversion.html.
The latest version uses a new stylesheet for the back-end, which relies on a feature which was added to Joomla in version 1.0.12. If you are using version 1.0.11 or earlier, you should upgrade to 1.0.12 (due to changes made to Joomla, the login feature in nBill does not work correctly with Joomla 1.0.13, so we are recommending that you stick with 1.0.12 for now. A service pack will be released to address this issue shortly). If you cannot or do not wish to upgrade to 1.0.12 (eg. if your installation of Joomla has been customised - 1.0.11 is still regarded as safe from a security viewpoint)
[Edit: Since writing this, some security vulnerabilities have been reported in Joomla version 1.0.12 and all previous versions. You are therefore advised to upgrade to 1.0.13. nBill version 1.1.3 is now compatible with Joomla 1.0.13], or if you have a custom administrator template, you can get the stylesheet to load by making a small hack to the administrator template. This is just to insert the code that has been added in the default admin template for Joomla 1.0.12. The following code is therefore licensed under the GNU/GPL:
In /administrator/templates/<name of your template - eg. default is joomla_admin>/index.php, immediately after the line that says initEditor(); add the following:
// Workaround to include custom head tags from components
if (isset( $mainframe->_head['custom'] ))
{
$head = array();
foreach ($mainframe->_head['custom'] as $html) {
$head[] = $html;
}
echo implode( "\n", $head ) . "\n";
}
nBill will still work just fine without the above hack to load the stylesheet, but it will not look so pretty (eg. the icons on the home page will appear in a vertical list instead of being spread across the page). You do not need to apply the above hack if you are using Joomla 1.0.12 or 1.0.13 AND have the default joomla_admin template on the back end.
You can download the component here:
http://www.nbill.co.uk/component/option,com_docman/Itemid,10/task,cat_view/gid,11/Patch files for manual upgrade are available here:
http://www.nbill.co.uk/component/option,com_docman/Itemid,10/task,cat_view/gid,17/What next?Please see
this announcement for information about upcoming development plans.
