I am pleased to announce the release of Xasset 0.6 beta. Version 0.6 sees the addition of:

1. Payment processing. Xasset manages the sale and distribution of digital media such as software or MP3 files. Once purchased, buyers can view their licenses. Xasset provides several payment gateways via a plug-in architecture. The first payment gateway implemented is payment via Paypal and verification via Paypal's IPN system. More payment gateway modules to follow.

2. Sales tax is catered for by defining countries and zones. An example of a zone would be the EU. The United Kingdom is setup to belong to the EU and then the EU is assigned a VAT code. Any buyers originating from the United Kingdom will then be charged VAT.

3. Support of multi-currencies. A base currency can be defined. Additional currencies can be defined which clients can then choose from. All package prices are recalculated according to the selected currency's exchange rate.

4. Applications can have several products defined, allowing different pricing structures for volume buying. Payments structures can also be set for factors such as license period and maximum download times to better manage your digital assets.

5. Digital assets are secured by providing a controlled download route. Each download request is checked against a valid license against the logged-in user.

6. Download logging.



Please bear the following in mind:

1. Paypal supports the following currencies only: CAD, EUR, GBP, JPY and USD.

2. The 0.6 release primarily focuses on the Payment Gateway functionality and architecture. Expect to see some missing or un-implemented features in the main Xasset module. These should be addressed in the 0.7 release.

3. This is still beta code and should not be used in a production site. Expect to see Warnings, Notices and Fatal Errors. The purpose of this release is to receive feedback from the Xoops and security developer community. I will not be held responsible if this module breaks your site.

Plans for Xasset 0.7:

1. Notifications.

2. Better internationalisation support via the Xoops languages architecture.

3. Plug-in architecture to support license code and key generation to activate shareware software on completion of payment processing (probably in v0.8).

4. Invoice table to store transaction details. Will we need this? Might want to store transaction id, sales fees etc... in here.

5. Documentation and user manual.

6. Bug fixes.

7. User suggestions from version 0.6

Download:
1. The 0.6 release can be downloaded this location :http://dev.xoops.org/modules/xfmod/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1196

Installation:

1. Please un-install any previous Xasset versions before installing version 0.7. No support is given at this stage for upgrading 0.5 and 0.55 Xasset databases.

2. Install Xasset 0.6

3. Enable the Paypal module under Payment Gates in the Xoops Control Panel to install the Paypal gateway as this is not installed during Xasset installation.