To be continued...

The blog is continued at help.hotspotsystem.com/updates ! See you there :)

Free Trial Module for Hotspot PRO locations

This is a long awaited and requested feature.

The new Free Trial module allows to give out automatic free accesses (for those who accept the terms).

What is the purpose of this?

1. You can offer an unlimited free access in a Pay-Per-Use location with low bandwidth limits. Other users can pay for faster packages.
2. You can offer a limited free package (for example 10 minutes test drive, or 100 MB free access). After the access expires, users have to pay.

For more information please read our knowledgebase article.

Introducing SNMP Monitoring Service (beta)

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an Internet-standard protocol for managing and monitoring devices on IP networks.  SNMP is supported by lots of routers, switches, servers.

Currently we support bandwidth monitoring of devices that are directly connected to the internet.

Why is it useful?

In a hotspot environment bandwidth has a very important role. It defines the speed which your hotspot users can use the internet thus it defines their satisfaction of the service that hotspot operator provides.

If you could monitor the global bandwidth of your internet line, you would know when it reaches the maximum capacity so you can expand or limit the access of the hotspot.

An example of a 24 hour period based on 5-minute average bandwidth

What devices can you monitor?

Currently you can monitor a device or router which is directly connected to the internet and have SNMP support. It doesn't needs to be a hotspot router, however you need to have a working hotspot router at the location which is sending life signals properly. This is required so we know the actual WAN IP address of the router which you want to monitor.

TIP: If your router is not sending life signals, it means that something is blocking the call from the router to our servers. Be sure to turn off firewalls on your network, especially any SPI firewalls you may have.

How does it work?

Once set up properly, our system is querying your device in every minute to check how much traffic went through in the past minute. From this data, 4 chart is created, a daily chart calculated from 1 minute average date, a weekly from 30 min averages, a monthly from 2 hours averages and a yearly chart from 12 hour averages.

How to setup?

1. First you need to enable SNMP on your device. For example if you are using dd-wrt, this can be found under Services menu.

DD-WRT SNMP Service

2. You need to set a secure Community String for both RO (Read-Only) and RW (Read-Write). Recommended string is minimum 15 characters, combination of uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers. 

3. Be sure that UDP Port 161 is enabled in your firewall.

4. You need to create a new monitor in the Control Center. First you need to select your device and add the network interface you would like to monitor under Reports > SNMP Monitor menu. The IP addresses and locations are collected from the database which stores life signal data from your hotspot routers.

5. Once you select the location (IP), click on "List Interfaces". For the first time, you need to enter the same RO Community String which you set in Step 2.

6. Our system tries to communicate to your device through SNMP to list the available network interfaces. Once you get the list you need to choose the interface you would like to monitor. You should choose the interface which has the highest Total traffic (this is measured from the moment you plug in the device).

You are done. You need to wait approx. 10 minutes for the first data to come in. Under SNMP Monitors you can see the daily chart, if you click on the chart you can see all the 4 charts. You can also find a list of monitored devices on the bottom of the page where you can edit the interface name to a friendly name and you can also remove the monitor. 

How much does this service cost?

Currently the service is free during the beta phase (1st of October, 2012). You need to have a PRO or Hotspot FREE Vouchers / SMS / Social or Basic PLUS subscription for the location you want to monitor. We will announce the pricing later.

HOTSPOT FREE SOCIAL PROMOTION until September, 2012

Get a FREE ROUTER with every Hotspot FREE SOCIAL 600 subscription!

Subject of Promotion:

• - In case of Hotspot FREE SOCIAL 600 subscription you can get a FREE* Hotspot In a Box router (Ubiquiti AirRouter Indoor) with free shipping ($164 USD Value)
• - In case of Hotspot FREE SOCIAL 300 subscription you can get 50% OFF from Hotspot In a Box router (Ubiquiti AirRouter Indoor) and free shipping (Save $82.5 USD from the original $165 USD price)
• - In case of Hotspot FREE SOCIAL 50 subscription you can get 15% OFF from Hotspot In a Box router (Ubiquiti AirRouter Indoor) and free shipping (Save $25 USD from the original $165 USD price)

For more information click here: http://www.hotspotsystem.com/en/hotspot/hotspot_social_wifi_promotion.html

Hotspot FREE SOCIAL (Facebook Hotspot) 2.0

We released an improvement version of Hotspot FREE SOCIAL.

If you are offering a simple click-through authentication where users have to accept the terms, you may want to try out Hotspot FREE SOCIAL where you can get more LIKEs to your Facebook Business page in return for giving out Free Wi-Fi acccess.

WHAT'S NEW ?

+ You can get new Likes to your Facebook Page from your splash page directly. Advantages: Page load times and data traffic is significantly less which leads to more conversions.

+ You can get the email address of authenticated Facebook Users

+ You can post a message to your customer's Facebook Wall so you can reach and drive more people to your business

+ Improved for mobile usage (works much better)

WHAT IS THIS ALL ABOUT AND HOW DOES THIS WORK? You can read all here: Hotspot Free Social: Social Wi-Fi is here!


HOW CAN I SET THE NEW FEATURES? 

In the Control Center > Manage > Locations > click on name > Modify Hotspot Data > Social Settings you can set up your hotspot the way you like.

Social WiFi Usage examples, Marketing Tips for Managing your Facebook Page and more: http://www.facebook.com/hotspotsoftware

CUSTOMER TICKETS: SUPPORT BETWEEN OPERATORS - CUSTOMERS REVISED

Support between you and your customers is an important thing to maintain the quality of your service. Therefore we have revised this area and introducing a new feature in the Control Center called "Customer Tickets".

Before today customers could fill out an online form from your splash page, which was sent to you by email. Then you could reply to the user.

This approach has a big disadvantage: if your customers had problems with accessing your hotspot, they couldn't access their mailboxes to read your reply.

With the new ticketing feature, we store tickets and messages in our database and we provide an URL for the customer so he/she can track your answers on your splash page directly. He/she can also reply there or via email (he/she will reply to a generic hotspotsupport.com email address so we can track the message). 

From the operator's view, when a customer sends a message, we inform you via email when a message arrives. Then you can log in to the Control Center and go to Tools & Settings > Customer Tickets where you can read, follow all messages which are listed by case and reply from there.

We will improve this feature further in the following months, we would be glad if you could send your ideas, suggestions on how we could improve this feature further.

UBIQUITI AIROS SECURITY EXPLOIT - UPDATED FIRMWARE

A vulnerability of AirOS has been discovered recently which may grant remote users administrative access to Ubiquiti equipment running AirOS v3/4 and AirOS v5 without requiring authentication. Therefore a newly updated hotspot firmware has been released for AirMax series (802.11 devices were not affected). 

WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND to upgrade the firmware on your AirMax device (Rocket M, NanoStation/LocoStation M, NanoBridge M, Bullet M, PicoStation M, PowerBridge M, AirBridge M) as soon as possible.

You can download the new firmware from this URL: http://www.hotspotsystem.com/firmware/hss/Ubiquiti/Airmax/

Initial Release Of Hotspot Free Social

Hotspot FREE SOCIAL is a service which helps you create the 'buzz' for your business. You can offer free Wi-Fi internet connection in return for getting "liked" on your Facebook Page. When someone LIKEs your page it can be seen by all of their friends. This increases your business' visibility, customer engagement and your sales! It also helps you to grow your customer database for future promotions.

Example Splash Page with Hotspot FREE SOCIAL

Furthermore, the service helps you learn more about your customers. You will see gender and age information, their originating country/town, languages they are using, etc. (this information is provided by Facebook).

Future Plans:

We will add several new options to Hotspot FREE SOCIAL within a few weeks. This will include an option to have a custom message posted by the customers' wall like: 'I am enjoying free Wi-Fi at Joe's Cafe.'
Furthermore you can request permissions from the user to have an access to his/her personal details like name, email address, etc.


Pricing:

Hotspot FREE SOCIAL is starting from $9.90 per month. For this money you can get max. 50 likes per month. Hotspot FREE SOCIAL 300 and 600 are also available.


Upgrade options:

If you are using Hotspot FREE SPLASH (which is now known Hotspot FREE BASIC), you can easily upgrade through the Control Center > Manage > Locations > click on name > Modify Hotspot Data > upgrade banner will be on the bottom of the page. If you want to switch from other packages, please write us a Help Desk ticket at http://help.hotspotsystem.com and let us know which package you would like to use (50,300,600).


Free Trial for New Locations:

Once you choose the Hotspot FREE SOCIAL as your business model, you can try out the service by sending customer to our Facebook page (which is the default option). After you pay the subsctiption fee you will be able to set your Facebook page from the Control Center > Modify Hotspot Data > Social Settings.

THE NEXT BIG THING: FACEBOOK MEETS WI-FI

In January 2012 we will introduce a brand new hotspot type, called "HOTSPOT FREE SOCIAL" and we are very excited about it :)

With this solution you can give out free internet access to any customer who "LIKEs" your Facebook page. This is a very good tool to promote your business as ONE LIKE will spread out the word to HUNDREDS of other people too (all friends of each customer).

We are also working on an advanced version of Hotspot FREE Social which will request a permission from the user to allow you to post on their walls. Every time the customer wants to use your wi-fi, a customized message will be posted on their walls like "I am using the free Wi-Fi at Joe's place!".

Social marketing is becoming very important to all businesses and by using the combination of FREE Wi-FI and social media you can create the buzz for your business very quickly and effective.

The service will be available in January, 2012, starting from $9.90/month so stay tuned!

VAT CHANGES

From 1st of January, 2012, VAT changes from 25% to 27%. This affects only operators from the EU without a valid VAT ID.

New Forums Launched - Be part of our community!

We have launched a new Forums section on our website at:

http://www.hotspotsystem.com/wififorums/

IMPORTANT: You can use your existing operator username and password to log in to the forums, you DON'T HAVE TO REGISTER.

If you want to introduce yourself to others, or just have a discussion with other operators, you can start using the new forums now.
You can also leave feedbacks, post case studies and get help from our team and hopefully from other operators as well.

With this new addition you can now reach us the following ways:

- Over the phone or on Skype on weekdays during business hours
- Live chat on weekdays during business hours
- Open a New Help Desk ticket (24/7)
- Hotspot System Wi-Fi Hotspot Forums
- Hotspot System on Twitter
- Hotspot System on Facebook
- Hotspot System Blog

"Remember me" option for Wi-Fi Users at Login

We have added a "Remember me" functionality to the hotspot login pages.

You can hide this option from the Control Center which is especially useful when you are using desktop computers in your location and you wish to avoid that one user may log in with the previous user's details. You can turn this option OFF in the Control Center > Edit location > Splash Page Settings > "Display 'Remember Me' checkbox on Login Pages" checkbox.

If you are using custom skins, you need to update hotspotlogin_loginform.inc.html and main_combined.inc.html for combined login pages.

KNOWN ISSUES:
iOS devices and now the latest OSX Lion brings up a login popup safari when users connects to a wi-fi network and the OS cannot ping apple.com, this is how it knows that you don't have a full access to the internet so it brings up the splash page immediately. Unfortunately this behavior has its disadvantages. First, this is not a regular Safari browser and cookies are handled differently so the "remember me" functional will partially work (if you are using iOS devices), or won't work at all (if you are using Lion where the login popup doesn't handle cookies at all). Another thing is that when the user logs in, the popup disappears and the user won't see the popup which we display for the user with session statistics and logout information.

We have a knowledgebase article about this issue here with a "solution".

Notifications for Secondary Operators

Secondary operators can now get Router Alerts and sales notifications in a similar way as main operators. They can turn on/off alerts and set emails for it in the Control Center > Tools > System Settings menu.

Redirection upon successful login - UPDATE

From now on, instead of redirecting the user to a desired landing page, we display a "Redirect" page for 2 seconds, along with the popup which shows important accounting information for the user before we redirect them to the landing page of your choice.

Introducing New Payout Methods: USA ACH and Local Bank Transfer through Payoneer

There are 2 additional payout methods for payments that were collected through our primary processor:

USA ACH through Payoneer (NEW)

Direct deposit to a U.S. Bank account.
Payout Currency: USD
Fees: HotspotSystem transfers your money there for free, but Payoneer deduct some fees: $5 setup fee and $3 fee per transfer

Local Bank Transfer through Payoneer (NEW)

In some countries you can get your money via LOCAL bank transfer. The difference between this method and international wire transfer is that the incoming wire transfer will be from the same country (so there won't be additional intermediate bank charges and your bank fees will be probably lower than if you get an international wire transfer).

Payout Currency: USD
Fees: HotspotSystem transfers your money there for free, but Payoneer deduct some fees: $5.95 or $9.95 per transfer depending on your country

Click here for additional information about supported countries, and How to Apply info

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you already have a Payoneer Preapaid Mastercard you have to contact us to switch to these methods instead.

New Feature in Control Center: User Report

You can now list or export your users. The report includes the user's personal details and captured data fields, as well as total usage information (traffic and time), number of logins, number of purchases with total amount and user validity information.

You can access this report from the Control Center under Reports.

New Feature in Control Center: Manage Master Accounts

You can now manage your own Master Accounts. You can list them, create new ones, renew them for yourself. WHen you renew, 6 months will be added to the account.

What is "Master Account"?

With Master Accounts you can create users which can be used to log in to your hotspot locations without having to use a voucher or pay for the access. Master Accounts are also known as "Owner accounts" and usually made for the owners of the hotspots. You can create 2 Master Accounts per location for free.

You can find this as a new menu item in the Control Center under 'Manage'.

New feature in Control Center: Logs

A new panel has been added to the "Show User" page, which is called 'Logs'.

You can now see what happened to the user, these actions include:
- User creation with attributes (bandwidth and other limits)
- User deletion with detailed reason (for example expiration date reached or traffic limit reached)
- All modifications by the operator (changing password, limits, suspend, etc)
- All blocking by the system with reason (for example bad password, or simultaneous device limit reached, etc)

For example you can now check why the user has been expired so you can tell the user easily.

As always, if you click on a transaction you can see all activity and logs regarding to that transaction only. When you search for the user you can see all activity by the user.

CUSTOMIZE DATA CAPTURE

A new option is now available in the Control Center, called Data Capture which was the most requested feature by operators who are using the Hotspot SPLASH solution.

Here you can customize what fields you require from your users. You can turn on fields like email, or phone number, you can even create up to 5 custom question which your users have to fill out. You can find this option under Manage > Locations > click on name > Modify Hotspot Data.



All of these fields will be available for you in the Control Center - once filled out - on the user's pages.

The option is also available for PRO locations (for credit card transactions and voucher registrations too) when the user is required to register.

TIP: you can even create a custom question in multiply languages. For this, you need to create a new skin (or use your current custom skin) and add a new language tag. Choose 'signup_cc' as the section and choose a tag name like CUSTOM1 and define your custom question. Then go to Data Capture settings, add a new custom question and write {CUSTOM1} as the question. When the registration page is parsed this will be replaced with the text you defined earlier in the language your customer is currently using.

This premium feature can be used by Hotspot PRO or Hotspot FREE subscribers as a standard feature, and currently it is also free for operators using Hotspot SPLASH.

If you are using custom skins, and changed the registration pages or the main_combined_autologin.inc.html template, this option will only work if you revert those templates back to original.

Introducing the Language Bar

We have replaced the static language selector on the splash pages with a new one, which can be edited dynamically so you can select which languages you would like to display to your customers. You can even hide all, making only one language available. The new option can be found in the Control Center, under Manage > Locations > Click on name > Modify Hotspot Data > Splash Page Settings.

If you are using custom skins, and edited the header files, you need to revert the header files back to original to see the change. (header.inc.html, hotspotlogin_header1.inc.html, hotspotlogin_header2.inc.html)