NewBie Refugee Questions: Affilaite, OpenSRS, Credit Card...

[Bobo]

Hello, Matt:

 

We just purchased your product, being as we are refuges from the ghastly ModernBill system. I have had only headaches with their system, which is a billion miles away from your simple, fast, logical and intuitive billing software, Matt. Really impressed. Congratulations. Wow, wow, wow, I wish I had discovered this product earlier...

 

We are now dying to go live, and finalizing the last few touches as we configure and customize the program.

 

I note a few issues that are important to me. I hope some of these have immediate or existing solutions:

 

1)- Affiliate system:

 

When a logged in client arrives on the home page of the billing system, he sees a message that says this:

Earn 5% of every payment each customer you refer to us makes for the entire duration of their hosting account

.

 

Now I am a little confused because what this implies is that the Affiliate will be earning 5% on a hosting account for ever, that is, each time the customer pays their hosting bill, the Affiliate gets 5%. Is that the spirit of that message?

 

What I want is for the Affiliate to receive his 5% on the initial purchase, and that's it. I don't want this to be a permanent payout. How can I make sure the behaviour is as I want, and this message says something else in accordance with my affiliate policy/configuration? I see no place where the default behavior of the Affiliate system can be configured, so that it would state clearly on this page that the payout is a one-time payout on the initial purchase only.

 

As an example: a customer purchases a hosting account worth $100 for a quarter. The Affiliate gets 5% on that, that is $5. And that's it.

 

2)- OpenSRS

 

I badly need this module as I have several customers who order foreign domains such as .fr, .nl, etc., which only OpenSRS supports among the big boy registrars, and some for a very low price.

 

3)- Credit Card Display in Order Form

 

It looks like all sorts of credit cards get displayed in the order form. This is not good as my Authorize.net account supports only Visa and Mastercard. I do not wish to offer the other types of cards. It is therefore important that I be able to display only these two options, and not all the others. How can this be done?

 

4)- Different domain name terms

 

It seems that WHMCS lacks the ability to offer domains in variable terms. Basically, it seems I can only configure one exclusive term per domain. It can only be one year, two years, threes years etc., but the customers do not get the choice of deciding their own terms. While this is not a show stopper, it may be a good idea to give customers the choice of more than one term for domain names, so that if they want the domain for three years instead of one, then they can choose to have it for three years. This means building into the system the flexibility for defining as many terms as possible for the customers to choose from. This is what you do for the hosting packages. The same should be great for domain names too.

 

5)- SSL resale support

 

With ModernBill, I had the ability to sell SSL certificates via their API. I wonder how this could be made possible via WHMCS? I kind of doubt I will be able to continue to use their API if I am not longer using ModernBill. However, perhaps there is a way I can continue to sell SSL with the account I have with them? It would be nice, though, if there was a way for me to still hook up to their API via WHMCS and still sell the SSLs.

 

6)- Knowledge Base

 

In the Knowledge base system, it seems that the top categories do not display the number of articles that exist in sub-categories. In other words, if I have a top category and two sub-categories containing 5 articles each, the top category would not show that it contains any article. It would remnain at zero.

 

7)- Import Script:

 

It also looks like your script does not actually import data from ModernBill 5.1.5, which I am currently using. I tried it, it did not work. So, does this mean your import script works only with ModernBill 4.x?

 

Thanks in advance for answering my questions.

 

Bobo.

[Matt]

Hi,

 

By default the affiliate system pays on a recurring basis. You can set on a per product basis if the payout should only a one time payout. There is a tab "Affiliate Settings" when setting up a product where you set this. And you would have to edit the affiliate page template and modify the text according to the affiliate system settings you setup.

 

An OpenSRS module is currently in development.

 

You can alter the card types that get displayed during the order process by editing the creditcard.tpl template file. The dropdown options are contained there.

 

It seems that WHMCS lacks the ability to offer domains in variable terms. Basically, it seems I can only configure one exclusive term per domain. It can only be one year, two years, threes years etc., but the customers do not get the choice of deciding their own terms. While this is not a show stopper, it may be a good idea to give customers the choice of more than one term for domain names, so that if they want the domain for three years instead of one, then they can choose to have it for three years. This means building into the system the flexibility for defining as many terms as possible for the customers to choose from. This is what you do for the hosting packages. The same should be great for domain names too.

You are incorrect here. This is already possible and can be done from the Configuration > Domain Pricing page.

 

As for SSL sales support, there is no built in API support at the current time but you can certainly accept orders for them and then set them up manually using the existing account you have.

 

With regards to the knowledgebase, you are correct. I'll look into having this modified.

 

And yes, our MB import script currently only works with MB4.4x If you are willing to send us your MB 5 database then I can see what we can do in creating an import script for this.

 

Matt

[Bobo]

By default the affiliate system pays on a recurring basis. You can set on a per product basis if the payout should only a one time payout. There is a tab "Affiliate Settings" when setting up a product where you set this. And you would have to edit the affiliate page template and modify the text according to the affiliate system settings you setup.

 

Thanks, Matt. I understand now.

However, I am not too sure the logic of the system is clear. The configuration of Affiliate payout at the product level seems to contradict the default Affiliate configuration in "Affiliate" tab of the general configuration areas. The problems I see there are the following:

 

In the general configuration area, the configuration here specifies only a percentage value. I believe that there needs to be an option here that would be like the ones on the product page, and allow configuration of either a fixed value or a percentage value. This way, you could make the message that appears in the Client Area to be congruent with the choice here. For instance, if I chose a fixed value here, then a message appears in the Client Area that indicates the fixed value. But if I indicate a percentage, then a message displays the percentage in the Client Area. And, of course, the affiliate configuration in the general configuration area would be the default configuration, and would be overidden by product specific affilaite configuration. Ideally, if someone just wants a general rule to apply to all products, they would only need to define it here once. They would override this at the product level only if they need to exclude a given product from this rule. Better yet, a text field in this tab where the admin can enter a specific text with explanatory instructions would be great. That way, this text would appear in the client area and the prospective affiliate would know exactly what is meant, and the various terms. I know one can modify the templates to get this to happen, but a configuration option here allowing for a textual explanation would make it much easier and prevent one from having to edit templates. Or, alternatively, a text field for inputing a URL to a page that explains the terms of the Affiliate program could be introduced here.

 

An OpenSRS module is currently in development.

 

Excellent. Thanks.

 

You can alter the card types that get displayed during the order process by editing the creditcard.tpl template file. The dropdown options are contained there.

 

Thanks. This helps. However, here again, I think it would be a good idea to have an option in the admin area where one can select or define which card types one supports. While being able to modify templates is good, it is never really a good idea as it exposes one to lots of additional work should the software be upgraded down the road. One would be forced, in this case, to redo the templates modifications each time the software is upgraded. A rather painful process. So, whatever you can do to alleviate the pain of template modification is always welcome.

 

It seems that WHMCS lacks the ability to offer domains in variable terms. Basically, it seems I can only configure one exclusive term per domain. It can only be one year, two years, threes years etc., but the customers do not get the choice of deciding their own terms. While this is not a show stopper, it may be a good idea to give customers the choice of more than one term for domain names, so that if they want the domain for three years instead of one, then they can choose to have it for three years. This means building into the system the flexibility for defining as many terms as possible for the customers to choose from. This is what you do for the hosting packages. The same should be great for domain names too.

You are incorrect here. This is already possible and can be done from the Configuration > Domain Pricing page.

 

Not sure about this. Perhaps you did not understand me well. Yes, I saw that I can specify domain registration terms in the admin area. However, this does not do what I was talking about. In other words, currently, once I set a term, say, 2 years, that becomes the only term that customers will be offered and see in the order form.. The way ModernBIll does this is different. Their domain price configuration form is similar to your product price configuration form. That is, it has fields for both the terms and the prices, and only the terms with a price defined will appear on the order form. What this does is that it allows you to configure the same TLD with several price options. Say, I want to give customers the option of buying a domain for 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 years? Well, when the domain pricing is displayed, it will display price options for 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, 4 years and 5 years. This means the customer is able to choose which term they want, instead of me forcing them to order for only one specific term. To see what I am talking about, click this MB URL (globalwebco.net/clientarea/clients/orders/cart.php) which leads to our ModernBill domain order form. Click the blue Purchase domain only button. Type an available dot com domain such as "franceborhshs.com". When the price displays for that domain, you will see a dropdown list with 10 price options from 1 to 10 years. In WHMCS, I can only have one price option at a time based on one pre-determined term. Customers cannot choose another term than what I specified in the domain pricing area. So, if I configure a TLD for 2 years, they see only 2 years. They cannot choose to order the domain for 5 years, for instance. Perhaps there is something I am not understanding here?

 

As for SSL sales support, there is no built in API support at the current time but you can certainly accept orders for them and then set them up manually using the existing account you have.

 

I suppose that is what I will probably end up doing. Manual configuration of SSL orders after receiving an order on my WHMCS.

 

With regards to the knowledgebase, you are correct. I'll look into having this modified.

Excellent.

 

And yes, our MB import script currently only works with MB4.4x If you are willing to send us your MB 5 database then I can see what we can do in creating an import script for this.

 

Thanks for the offer. However, not sure if it would be a good idea. Privacy and legal issues for my customers would not really allow me to do this with a database containing our customer information. I could do a fresh install of MB5, and then collect the empty but configured database and send it to you. But my guess is that you could probably do this as well, if you just want to have an idea of the MB5 database structure. MB5 is available for a free trial, so anybody can actually install it and test it this way. Do you want me to do this, or do you think you can do it yourself? or is this method not good for you and would not allow you to configure a good import script? In other words, can you do this with a database containing no customer info, but configured with the right types of tables? The default install of MB5 does come with sample prepopulated fields, though.

 

Other than this, for now, I am already loving to work with your product. So easy to set up, so logical and intuitive in the way you tied it all together. Looking at how simple you make it just makes me think of how hard it was to configure the same tasks in MB. Gosh, I can't wait to get this system live. Great, great, great product.

 

Thanks.

[othellotech]

Not sure about this. Perhaps you did not understand me well. Yes, I saw that I can specify domain registration terms in the admin area. However, this does not do what I was talking about. In other words, currently, once I set a term, say, 2 years, that becomes the only term that customers will be offered and see in the order form.. The way ModernBill does this is different. Their domain price configuration form is similar to your product price configuration form. That is, it has fields for both the terms and the prices, and only the terms with a price defined will appear on the order form. What this does is that it allows you to configure the same TLD with several price options. Say, I want to give customers the option of buying a domain for 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 years?

 

I struggled with the exact same issue until Matt explained it to me ...

 

You can create *multiple* combinations of tld/period.

So to price .coms for 1,2,3, 4,5 years

 

click add - .com 1 year (price) - save

click add - .com 2 year (price) - save

click add - .com 3 year (price) - save

etc

WHMCS "groups" them together in tld then period order

 

I agree it seems a very awkward way to handle what could be accomplished by having 10 input fields and becomes (somewhat) easy to miss that you've not priced one tld for one period without printing the very long page and ticking them all off, but it does work.

 

Biggest issue I'm facing on domain pricing is the lack of separating out registration, renewal and transfer prices.

[bucketshop]

Rob,

 

Thanks for your mini tutorial

 

That helped a lot

[Bobo]

 

I struggled with the exact same issue until Matt explained it to me ...

 

You can create *multiple* combinations of tld/period.

So to price .coms for 1,2,3, 4,5 years

 

click add - .com 1 year (price) - save

click add - .com 2 year (price) - save

click add - .com 3 year (price) - save

etc

WHMCS "groups" them together in tld then period order

 

I agree it seems a very awkward way to handle what could be accomplished by having 10 input fields and becomes (somewhat) easy to miss that you've not priced one tld for one period without printing the very long page and ticking them all off, but it does work.

 

Biggest issue I'm facing on domain pricing is the lack of separating out registration, renewal and transfer prices.

 

Ooooooohhhhhh! I can see clearly NOW!!!!!

 

Thanks Rob.... So Matt did understand me, but he did not guide tell me how to do this. It is certainlt something that no one can readily figure out.

 

And yes, transfers, registrations and renewals ought to be distinguishable. I have not yet gotten to understand all that this program can do, but I hope Matt will be adding some of these "little" things that end up making a difference. But it is not a show stopping situation, so I suppose we will have to be patient until Matt is able to deal with the nitty gritty features that make life easier. I still remain impressed by the script's ability to do everything so simply. My God, what a difference from MB!

 

Thanks.