New install questions

[Gerald V. Livingston II]

Preparing to set up a new system then manually move our customer base
(under 10,000) and I have a few questions.

1. Should I install 1.4.x or go ahead and st up 1.5.x? Online docs, though
incomplete, are for 1.5.x indicating 1.4.x support is beginning to wane.

2. I know I can get the base system operational, I've done it for testing
(a couple of years ago). There are questions on admin though:

Here is our basic business model and I'd like suggestions on how to set up
the packages to handle it properly. I recall being a bit befuddled about
the whole services/packages arrangement when I played with Freeside
previously. 

Section I

1. Basic internet dialup at $10/month. No contract, no discounts, no
initial setup fee, no connect tracking in the billing system. Monthly,
quarterly, semi-annual, annual prepayment options -- automatic billing on
the anniversary date at the above intervals (ie. sign up on 12 March for
quarterly and get auto-billed on 12 June for the next quarter).

2. Unlimited (within reason) additional free email accounts that need to be
tracked for removal at account close.

3. Free personal web space that needs to be tracked for removal if
activated by the customer.

Ie. We want to be able to add a new customer and mark that they are a
dialup customer this includes 1 dialup connection and 1 email address
matching the dialup username. Cost is $10/month (or $30/Q, $60/SA, $120/A).

POP tracking is neither required nor desired, we lease all POPs nationwide
and have no particular interest in which POP a user connects to.

When the user is added we would like exports to be generated to activate
the user on our Radiator server for dialup and a text export in a
particular format which can be fed through scripting to "adduser" on our
current mail server (Ipswitch IMail -- hopefully to be replaced with a
Postfix server soon --- but that's my baby too, one project at a time
<sigh>).  

No other usage tracking interaction with Radiator is required.

If possible we would like the system to be able to disable an account on
Radiator if it is placed on hold for non-payment in billing -- I haven't
read that far into the docs to know if it can be done. We currently do it
by hand by changing the password in Radiator.

Some sort of verification needs to happen to avoid duplicate usernames.

And, the twister -- the above is our primary business model -- but....

2 domains are involved due to another local ISP more or less turning his
business over to us for unpaid debt. Because of billing system issues those
users have not yet been integrated into our current system and the pricing
is different ($12.75/month -- discount for prepay -- $10 initial setup
fee). This means a separate set of packages for those users. Same deal with
free email/web space.

We are letting the second userbase dissolve by attrition and lack of
advertising but expect many users to stay active for several years to come
so it has to integrated as well. We still get the occasional new user in
this domain from word of mouth as well (since customer support and
available POPs improved after we took the business).

Section II

1. Two very basic web hosting packages primarily used by our already
established customers. Same deal, flat rate, no extras that I know of. They
are currently billed quarterly only.

2. One of the hosting packages, if combined with the standard dialup, bills
monthly at the combined rate (but only if they have both).

3. When we add bandwidth the owner plans to expand our hosting offerings
using Cpanel or some such package. That is not currently a concern but will
be over the next few months.

4. Currently, all web hosting setups are done by hand and I expect it to
stay that way. The webmaster wants total control and final verification. I
agree with him. So, the hosting packages need only exist in billing and
should not require any exports unless the status changes when hosting
offerings expand. DNS will always be handled by hand.

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If I can get the above set up the actual DOING of it should help me
understand the package/service setup well enough to add more options at a
later date.

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New signups are currently handled through a custom https/php page that
connects to the Authorize.Net gateway. After the initial charge is accepted
the script generates a notification to the tech on duty with the user/pass
info for manual entry into Radiator and IMail -- it saves the complete
billing to a secured CSV text file that I import to the billing system
weekly.

At some point I'll decide if I want signups completely automated but we
like to have visual verification before account activation to help spot
obvious cases of potential fraud or spammers that we don't want as
customers (we've had people try to sign up who's return notification
address was similar to makemoneynow$$$@yahoo.com or 
xxxphotos at msn.com -- no thank you, don't need the $10 that bad).

For now we will probably keep the https/php signup pages but we would like
to be able to enter the customer's complete billing info once, on Freeside,
and have the Radiator and email account info automatically exported and
activated. We'd like the same for the free addons, add the extra to the
account and have that new info exported to the proper server (email or
personal web server via an adduser command).

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We want billing to be handled daily. Run by had at first then automatically
but a skim of the docs makes it appear that part will be trivial after the
installation of Business::OnlinePayment.

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Any assistance and pointers appreciated. Starting with which version to
install so I can make use of any further info <grin>. The boss gave me
WAAAAYYY too much server for this system so I'm going to make it a
firewalled Samba storage server for some of our critical config files as
well. I still have to get Debian installed using a 2.4.27 kernel rather
than the current 2.4.18 in "stable". The server has dual 250G
SATA drives that I'm going to RAID0 together. It also has an onboard Intel
Gigabit NIC that I know isn't supported by 2.4.18 <sigh>. Like I said,
WAAAAYYY to much box for a billing server.

Gerald,

Sysmatrix.net billing and mail server administrator