JumpBox Official Blog

Hello,

We are pleased to introduce the newest addition to JumpBox Open, the JumpBox for Magento eCommerce.

Magento is an open source eCommerce application that allows merchants to build, create, and manage online storefronts. Magento’s customizable solution features tools for site management, marketing promotions, search engine optimization, and catalog management. Winner of ‘08 awards from Infoworld magazine and SourceForge.net, Magento’s open source eCommerce platform is the most flexible eCommerce solution available today. Free from vendor lock in merchants can upgrade features quickly, and add specific functionality as needed. Magento helps you do eCommerce, the JumpBox for Magento helps you do it quickly and easily. With enhanced features like backup and restore, the JumpBox for Magento is the perfect eCommerce solution.

Build, create, and manage online storefronts - Magento is available to JumpBox Open subscribers immediately.

Magento features tools for site management, marketing
promotions, search engine optimization, catalog management, and more. Winner of ‘Best of 2008′ awards from Infoworld magazine and SourceForge.net, Magento is the most highly respected open source ecommerce solution available today.

Here are 3 cool sites from around the world built with Magento:

• Based in London, UKKO is a new luxury menswear brand for fashion conscious golfers both on and off the course. Fore!

• Famed table radio producer Tivoli Audio expands online in the Czech Republic with Magento.

• From the USA, NerdyShirts.com sells unique tee shirts for nerds. Our favorite? Mii Love.

Magento gives you ecommerce. The JumpBox for Magento helps you get started quickly and easily. Take the JumpBox for Magento for a spin and see for yourself!

Setting JumpBoxes Free

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve made a number of changes to the JumpBox web site and in the process made a nice selection of JumpBoxes available as FREE downloads. Currently there are 12 JumpBoxes available on the FREE Downloads page and we’ll be adding more as time goes by. The list of free JumpBoxes currently includes: Joomla 1.5, Movable Type, Moin Moin, TikiWiki, SugarCRM 4.5 and SilverStripe along with several more. Please check out the FREE downloads page for the current list.

Online Trials for Subscriber Only JumpBoxes

Another cool thing we’ve just introduced is a new online trial mechanism that allows anyone to try out the subscriber only JumpBoxes with nothing more than a web browser. Just look for the orange “Try this JumpBox” buttons on the site and you can get a one hour, full function trial of any JumpBox without having to download a thing. We think this feature is pretty cool, but it’s still somewhat experimental so if you try it out, please let us know what you think about it.

Why subscribers love JumpBox Open

If you haven’t subscribed to JumpBox Open, here’s what you’re missing:

• Fast, secure, agile solutions to your problems. JumpBox Open provides award winning applications that deploy in minutes. On top of that, Backup and Restore functionality keeps your data secure and gives you the flexibility to deploy to almost any environment.
• An investment that constantly gains value. JumpBox Open subscribers received an additional 15 applications this year at no added cost. Applications for Human Resource Management, Blogging, Project Management, and more.
• More for less - With growing
  budget constraints, reduced staffing, and less time available, the
  value of JumpBox Open has never been more clear. “Get more done for less.” Less time, less frustration, less cost. Subscribers automatically receive every new application and updated releases over their subscription.

Now is a great time to subscribe to JumpBox Open

Updated JumpBoxes

• JumpBox for Bugzilla 1.1.3 (More Info)

  Bugzilla is a web-based bug tracking system that allow individual or groups of developers to keep track of outstanding bugs in their product. Bugzilla competes with many commercial bug tracking systems and has many features its expensive counterparts lack.

  Updated to Bugzilla 3.0.6 which fixes some security issues. (Bugzilla release notes)

• JumpBox for LAMP Deployment 1.1.3 (More Info)

  The JumpBox for LAMP Deployment is a great utility system that allows you to easily deploy applications where a tailored JumpBox may not exist. It contains MySQL plus PHP, Perl, Ruby and Python along with PHPMyAdmin to help you manage the database. Using the JumpBox for LAMP Deployment you can easily deploy many popular PHP applications as well as CGI based Perl, Ruby and Python applications.

  Minor update. (Release notes)

• JumpBox for Moodle 1.1.5 (More Info)

  Moodle is a course management system that allows educators to create online learning communities for their students. It has an open design with a large developer community creating plugins, themes and modules. It’s used all over the world in environments large and small and is one of the better supported Open Source course management systems. The JumpBox for Moodle is a great way to get up to speed with Moodle and requires a minimal investment in time and money. It’s a production ready installation of Moodle and includes the JumpBox management tools and backup system to help make operations as simple as possible. If you’ve ever wanted to give Moodle a try, the JumpBox is the easiest way to do it.

  Fixed an issue with how Unicode was being handled in the database. (Release notes)

• JumpBox for PunBB 1.1.5 (More Info)

  PunBB is a lightweight discussion forum that provides the essential features to host a thriving community without the tedious database, web server and application setup. It may have fewer bells and whistles than other forum applications but it has an intuitive user interface and renders XHTML-compliant output.

  Updated to PunBB 1.3 which adds a number of enhancements. This JumpBox is also now a FREE download. (PunBB release notes)

Deploying Ruby on Rails Applications

One of the major barriers in deploying Ruby on Rails applications on a wide scale is the fact that so many potential prerequisites might be expected of a target system. Never mind Rails itself, you’ll also need to install Ruby, Ruby Gems, packages designed specifically for the host operating system, and possibly GCC if any of your dependent gems require native compilation (and they often do). What I have just described is the case in almost all but the most trivial of Rails deployments.

Obviously these issues present a major challenge when you’ve developed your Rails application on Linux and you’re attempting to make it available to users who might well be attempting to deploy your application on Windows. The situation becomes even more complex when your users are non-technical people who’ve never had to install Ruby, much less Cygwin and the many packages that it may or may not provide. And why should your users have to be technical? They just want to get your shiny new CRM system up and running in the amount of time it might take to install any other application.

So how do developers address this problem? Well, many of them simply avoid distributing their applications, instead opting to host them as services, and in doing so, they target the operating system and configuration that they know works. Even this approach can be problematic in that finding a hosting provider that supports the exact operating system and configuration one might require, often resulting in the developer being forced to colocate hardware rather than leverage a hosting provider’s internal facilities.

Enter JumpBox

The mission of JumpBox is to develop software solutions that almost entirely eliminate the problems of deploying software in heterogenous environments. It accomplishes this via the use of virtual appliances that are capable of running on nearly any operating system and on all of the major virtualization platforms.

So now, instead of banging your head against the wall attempting to configure a server with the many dependencies and settings it will require to host the application you’re attempting to utilize, you need only launch one of our appliances, answer a few basic setup questions, and your new application is up and running.

The JumpBox for Ruby on Rails

Our latest appliance is the JumpBox for Ruby on Rails. The purpose of this JumpBox is to serve as a deployment system for your Rails applications. We understand that developers prefer to use their own tools for developing and deploying their applications, and so our JumpBox for Ruby on Rails politely remains out of your way until you’ve decided that it’s time to deploy your application.

We feel that the proposition of significantly reducing installation and configuration support issues will be compelling enough of a reason to consider deploying your Rails application with the JumpBox for Ruby on Rails. Now, instead of being required to install Ruby, MySQL, Apache, and a potentially vast array of dependencies, your end user need only install a virtualization platform such as VMWare, Parallels, or Xen. If they so desire, they can also easily host your application in a Cloud Computing environment such as Amazon EC2.

How Does it Work?

Technically, it’s rather simple. The JumpBox for Ruby on Rails is a self-contained Ubuntu Linux environment that, upon startup, immediately hosts fully functioning Apache, Ruby, MySQL, and Ruby On Rails environments. With only a minimal amount of preparation, you can use your favorite deployment method to install and host your Rails application on the JumpBox.

Once your Rails application has been successfully deployed onto the JumpBox, bundling it for redistribution is as simple as performing a backup in the JumpBox administration portal. The contents of this backup can be used to install your application, its databases, and its gem dependencies on another JumpBox for Ruby on Rails simply by performing a restore operation.

Note that as this is a beta release of the JumpBox for Ruby on Rails, the deployment process will likely change in the future, becoming more flexible and streamlined. We are approaching our JumpBox for Ruby on Rails with an eye toward the overall needs of the Rails developer community, and in doing so, welcome any and all feedback that you may have for us.

Hello,

In the past week we’ve released 12 updated JumpBoxes and we’re now almost complete with the transition to the new JumpBox Platform 1.1. At this point everything except the JumpBoxes for TWiki and OpenLDAP have been updated. Those two should follow later this week.

This 1.1 platform update is a very important one and is the foundation that will allow us to deliver a number of interesting capabilities in the coming months. The first new capability was introduced last week with the ability to run a select set of JumpBoxes on Amazon EC2. We’ve now published a tutorial on our blog that will walk you through the process of getting a JumpBox running on the Amazon service. We currently have JumpBoxes for MediaWiki, Wordpress, Movable Type and Bugzilla available as public AMIs for the service. AMIs for the full collection of JumpBoxes will be included in JumpBox Open Plus and Premium subscriptions shortly after we complete updating everything to the new 1.1 platform.

Of additional note: the newly updated JumpBox blog is now running on a JumpBox for Wordpress using Amazon EC2 as a hosting platform. EC2 has some limitations as a hosting service but it’s a very convenient way to get a JumpBox running on the internet and we’ve been able to take advantage of JumpBox platform features like S3 backups to work around some of the limitations of EC2. We’ll be sharing more of our experiences in this area along with additional tips on running JumpBoxes in EC2 on the new blog. Subscribing to the blog is highly recommended if you want to learn how to maximize the value of using JumpBox.

Updated Production JumpBoxes

For all of these the only change is the update to the new JumpBox Platform.

• JumpBox for Trac 1.1.0 (Download)

  Updated to the JumpBox Platform 1.1. This JumpBox still includes Trac 0.10.4. The Trac project has made 0.11.0 the new stable release and we will be issuing a new build of the JumpBox in a few weeks to support that version. If you’re interested in getting that new version it’s highly recommended that you first update to this new platform 1.1 based release.

• JumpBox for OTRS 1.1.0 (Download)

  Updated to the JumpBox Platform 1.1 and OTRS 2.2.7.

• JumpBox for Alfresco 1.1.0 (Download)

  Updated to the JumpBox Platform 1.1. We had intended to update this to Alfresco 2.9 for this release but some problems were encountered with that version and we had to stay with Alfresco 2.1. A new build of this JumpBox with Alfresco 2.9 will be coming in a few weeks.

• JumpBox for SugarCRM 5.x 1.1.0 (Download)

  Updated to SugarCRM 5.0.0f.

• JumpBox for Moodle 1.1.0 (Download)

  Updated to the JumpBox Platform 1.1 and Moodle has been updated to 1.9.1 in this release.

• JumpBox for vTiger 1.1.0 (Download)

  Updated to the JumpBox Platform 1.1. vTiger version is still 5.0.4 in this release.

• JumpBox for Moin Moin 1.1.0 (Download)

  Updated to the JumpBox Platform 1.1. Moin Moin version is still 1.6.3 in this release.

• JumpBox for PunBB 1.1.0 (Download)

  Updated to the JumpBox Platform 1.1. PunBB version is still 1.2.17 in this release.

• JumpBox for TikiWiki 1.1.0 (Download)

  Updated to the JumpBox Platform 1.1. TikiWiki version is still 1.9.11 in this release.

• JumpBox for Project Pier 1.1.0 (Download)

  Updated to the JumpBox Platform 1.1. Project Pier version is still 0.8.0.2 in this release.

Updated Beta JumpBoxes

• JumpBox for Redmine 1.1.0 (Download)

  Updated with Redmine 0.7.2. We’re still waiting for Redmine to stabilize before making this JumpBox production.

• JumpBox for Silverstripe 1.1.0 (Download)

  Updated to the 1.1 JumpBox Platform and Silverstripe 2.2.2. This release of Silverstripe is much improved over the previous releases with a more polished UI and a little more functionality out of the box. Silverstripe is intended to be used a little differently than the more popular CMS systems like Joomla and Drupal. Where those systems are intended to allow you to create the entire site online, Silverstripe is geared toward allowing non-technical users to edit the content of a site that’s been created by a separate web designer.

Hello,

We’re happy to announce the availability of six new JumpBoxes based on the JumpBox Platform 1.1. These are the first production releases made on this new and considerably improved platform. Here are just a few of the things that have changed with this platform revision.

1. The underlying operating system has been updated to Ubuntu Linux 8.04 LTS. This has brought a number of other updates to things like Apache, MySQL and other libraries used with the applications.
2. The backup system now supports Amazon S3, JumpBox to JumpBox and direct download as backup options. The addition of Amazon S3 is particularly nice as it gives you a really easy way to setup offsite backups.
3. There’s a new one click tool to turn on SSL encryption for the application.
4. A web stats package is now included by default and can be turned on with a single click.
5. There’s a new tool to help you configure the JumpBox to send email.
6. You can now put JumpBoxes into “maintenance mode” which allows you to keep users out of the application while working on administration tasks.
7. In general lots and lots of bug fixes, security improvements and a number of little niceties like friendlier 404 pages have been added.

We’ll be publishing much more information on this new platform in the coming weeks as we work on getting all the existing JumpBoxes updated.

Other News

• With these new releases, licenses are only available with a JumpBox Open Subscription.
• Three of the new JumpBoxes are exclusively available to JumpBox Open Subscribers. Existing Open subscribers will receive download links along with license keys within the next day or so.

New Production JumpBoxes

• JumpBox for Movable Type 1.1.0 (Download)Movable Type is a powerful, multi-user blogging platform. It’s widely used as a business blogging tool thanks to the ease with which you can create multiple blog sites. It has a large community and many add-ons available.
• JumpBox for Drupal 6.x 1.1.0 (Download)Drupal is an Open Source, web content management (WCM) system. It provides a simple, intuitive interface that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website without programming skills. This JumpBox is for Drupal 6.x.
• JumpBox for SugarCRM 5.x 1.1.0 (Download)SugarCRM is a market leading customer relationship management (CRM) application. SugarCRM’s open source architecture easily adapts to any business environment by offering a more flexible, cost-effective alternative than proprietary applications. This JumpBox is for SugarCRM 5.x.

New Production JumpBoxes - Exclusively Available to JumpBox Open Subscribers

• JumpBox for Nagios 1.1.0 (Info)Nagios is an Open Source host, service and network monitoring system that will watch your network and alert you to problems before your clients or end-users do. The system runs checks on hosts and services that you specify using plugins that return status information to Nagios. When problems are encountered the system will send notifications to system administrators so that they can take action on the problem.
• JumpBox for MySQL 1.1.0 (Info)MySQL is probably the most widely used relational databases around. It’s used as an integral component in many JumpBoxes and is also useful to have available in an easy to use standalone version. This JumpBox includes MySQL 5 along with PHPMyAdmin setup and ready to run. It’s a great tool for developing database backed applications and can also be used along with other JumpBoxes if you need to move the database into a separate virtual machine.
• JumpBox for LAMP Deployment 1.1.0 (Info)The JumpBox for LAMP Deployment is a great utility system that allows you to easily deploy applications where a tailored JumpBox may not exist. It contains MySQL plus PHP, Perl, Ruby and Python along with PHPMyAdmin to help you manage the database. Using the JumpBox for LAMP Deployment you can easily deploy many popular PHP applications as well as CGI based Perl, Ruby and Python applications.

Thanks for supporting JumpBox and as always, feel free to send us feedback.

Kimbro Staken

JumpBox Inc.

Hello,

We’re happy to announce the production release of the JumpBox for Moodle and to celebrate, we’re offering 10%off JumpBox Open Subscriptions. That’s 21 JumpBoxes, all for a single price, and the value just keeps growing as we release new applications.

To take advantage of this offer use the following coupon during checkout.

Coupon code: MOODLE-LAUNCH-PROMO

This offer ends at midnight PST on May 16. That’s only a few days away.

Moodle is a very popular course management system used by educators around the world to create learning communities for their students. This JumpBox was a popular request so we’re thrilled to add it as the newest member of the JumpBox Open Collection.

Now on with our regularly scheduled summary of update activity in the Open Collection.

News

• The JumpBox Platform 1.1 beta is moving along nicely. With the most recent updates we’ve moved the underlying operating system to Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. This will be the version of Ubuntu that all 1.1 Platform based JumpBoxes will ship with. We’re expecting the initial production release of 1.1 based JumpBoxes within a few weeks. If you haven’t tried out the new platform now is a great time to visit the Proving Grounds and kick the tires a little. The new platform is a big improvement and you can learn more about what’s new in this blog post.

New Production JumpBox

• JumpBox for Moodle 1.0 (Download)This is the first production release of the JumpBox for the Moodle course management system. This JumpBox contains Moodle 1.9. Existing JumpBox Open Subscribers should have already received keys for this JumpBox.

Updated Production JumpBoxes

• JumpBox for DokuWiki new version 1.0.4 (Download)Updated to DokuWiki 2008.05.05
• JumpBox for Bugzilla new version 1.0.3 (Download)Updated to Bugzilla 3.0.4
• JumpBox for phpBB new version 1.0.1 (Download)Updated to phpBB 3.0.1

Updated Beta JumpBoxes in the Proving Grounds

• JumpBox for Nagios 0.9.3 (Download)Updated with latest JumpBox Platform 1.1 beta and fixes for a bug related to backup restoration.
• JumpBox for MySQL 0.9.1 (Download)Updated with latest JumpBox Platform 1.1 beta.
• JumpBox for SugarCRM 5 0.9.1 (Download)Updated with latest JumpBox Platform 1.1 beta and SugarCRM version 5.0.0d.
• JumpBox for MovableType 0.9.2 (Download)Updated with latest JumpBox Platform 1.1 beta.

That’s all for this week. Thanks for supporting JumpBox and as always, feel free to send us feedback.

Kimbro Staken

This is a summary of recent activity in the JumpBox Open Collection.

News

• Get JumpBox updates on Twitter. Along with this email and our blog you can also get updates on new JumpBox releases by following us on Twitter. Twitter will usually be the first place to find out about new JumpBox releases.
• Google recently announced the Google App Engine scalable hosting service and we found it quite interesting so we put together a free JumpBox for Google App Engine Development. If you’re a developer and are wondering what it’s like to develop for Google App Engine, the JumpBox is a great way to play around with it.

Have questions, comments or suggestions, please let us know how we can help.

Updated Production JumpBoxes

• JumpBox for Wordpress new version 1.0.8 (Download)Updated to Wordpress 2.5 - This is a fairly significant update to Wordpress that brings a heavily refined administration interface.
• JumpBox for OTRS new version 1.0.2 (Download)Updated to OTRS 2.2.6 - Minor bugfix release.
• JumpBox for Moin Moin new version 1.0.1 (Download)Updated to Moin Moin 1.6.2 - Minor bugfix release.

New Beta JumpBoxes added to the Proving Grounds

• JumpBox for LAMP Deployment 0.9 (Download)This JumpBox provides a simple way to deploy PHP, Perl, Python or Ruby web applications. It’s great for staging, local deployment and for a jump start on deploying apps where no dedicated JumpBox exists. We have lots of interesting plans for this, this initial release is fairly basic.
• JumpBox for Movable Type version 0.9 (Download)Initial release with Movable Type 4.1, based on the JumpBox Platform 1.1 beta.
• JumpBox for SugarCRM 5 version 0.9 (Download)Initial release with SugarCRM 5.0.0b, based on the JumpBox Platform 1.1 beta.

Updated Beta JumpBoxes in the Proving Grounds

• JumpBox for Drupal 6 version 0.9.1 (Download)Fixed a bug with the setting of Time Zones in Drupal.
• JumpBox for Redmine 0.6.3 (Download)Fixed some critical issues that prevented subversion from working.

Coming Soon

Some updates that are almost ready for release.

• The JumpBox for SilverStripe will be updated to the JumpBox Platform 1.1 beta and a new version of SilverStripe. This will make this JumpBox much more usable.

That’s all for this week. Thanks for supporting JumpBox.

Kimbro Staken

Google recently announced a new cloud based application deployment system called Google App Engine. We found this to be a pretty interesting system and since the SDK they released is Open Source we decided to put together a JumpBox for it.

It’s a great solution if you want to play with the Google App Engine SDK without really installing it on your system. It’s also perfect as an integration point for a small team working together on a Google App Engine project.

Google made it possible to build applications for App Engine using several different mechanisms and the JumpBox comes with CGI, Google Webapp and Django environments setup and ready for development. It’s also a really great way to just kick the tires of the different frameworks before committing to development.

Also, since this is a JumpBox our backup system is included which allows you to backup your source code and development data to network shares or Amazon S3.

The JumpBox for Google App Engine Development is just something we put together because it looked interesting, if people find it useful we’ll continue developing it and tracking Google’s SDK releases. I think there are a lot of things we could add to it to make it a really useful tool for developing apps. If you have any suggestions definitely let me know.

Get more information and download the JumpBox

We have two new beta JumpBoxes available in the Proving Grounds:

	Nagios is a network monitoring system that watches your network and notifies you of any problems. The JumpBox makes it really easy to get it running. Due to the nature of Nagios, configuration still requires additional work, but the JumpBox gives you a good jump start on the process.
	MySQL is the worlds most popular Open Source database. It’s a core component of many systems and the JumpBox for MySQL provides a very quick way to get a MySQL instance complete with PHPMyAdmin running.

Both are based on the JumpBox platform 1.1 Beta and include all the great new enhancements described here.

The other exciting news is that we’ve opened the Proving Grounds up to the public. You’ll notice there’s now a link at the upper right corner of this site which takes you to our testing community. The Proving Grounds is the place where we make pre-release JumpBoxes available for testing before moving them to production status. We’ve got a ton of interesting candidates in the pipeline so be sure to check out the Proving Grounds for the latest and greatest.

We crossed a big milestone today with the release of 6 new production JumpBoxes.

• ProjectPier project management software
• Cacti network graphing system
• phpBB discussion forums
• Moin Moin Wiki
• TikiWiki content management system
• PmWiki Wiki

With the addition of these applications there are now 20 different applications available as production JumpBoxes.

We have our first graduates of the Proving Grounds:

• Alfresco CMS
• OTRS Trouble Ticket System
• Mantis Bug Tracker
• Bugzilla

are all now battle-tested and available for production use and purchase. Thanks to all the Proving Grounds members who submitted feedback and helped us work out the kinks in these apps.

We also have seven new applications that just entered the Proving Grounds:

• phpBB discussion forums
• Moodle school course management system
• Cacti RRD graphing package
• MoinMoin wiki software
• TikiWiki content management system
• PmWiki wiki software
• Redmine project management software

We’ve made some of the pre-release apps available to the public for download but to get beta keys to unlock the pre-release apps you’ll need to belong to the Proving Grounds. And there will always be a few apps that we keep exclusive to PG members.

We’re also running a promotion right now - all JumpBox Basic Registrations are $24.99 until noon MST on December 14th, so if you were on the fence about registering yours, now’s the time.

Lastly, we’re doing a webinar with the folks from Virtual Iron in an hour (11am PST today). The presentation will be captured and available online afterwards but if you’d like to participate and ask questions, tune in here.