Offer domain redirects instead of hosting

[growe]

This may sound like a strange request from a hosting company but hey... sometimes we still need to offer services when we are not doing the hosting.

 

Customers can currently order a new domain, transfer a domain or even create a subdomain off a domain we currently own. That is easy and is standard in WHMCS. My question is, how can I configure WHMCS to redirect that domain to an external location instead of creating a hosting account. I know it is a strange request from a hosting company but I have a need to offer this for a specific project I am working on.

 

I am not sure if there is a better way to do it but my thought is to park the domain on top of a given domain of ours and then redirect the parked domain. Easy enough to do if manually doing it in cPanel but how can I config WHMCS to do it automatically when ordered.

[Wabun]

I would be interested to find out how as well, as I am puzzled how this other big company 'one and...' is doing this with their UK domains?

[Kian]

Depends on how you "host" DNS zones and nameservers. Plesk? cPanel? Registrar API and if it's so what Registrar? Something else?

[growe]

In my case...

- cPanel

- Usually eNom (sometimes ResellerClub)

 

The registration of the domain is not the issue as when registered it would point to our Name Servers. WHMCS already handles that very well. I am only looking for WHMCS to not create a new hosting account via cPanel but rather create the redirect instead. The only way I can think to do it is to have WHMCS park the domain on top of a given domain of ours and then create a redirect for that domain. If WHMCS doesn't already do this then maybe a new module is needed to do it.

[Brandonm]

Why not use eNom nameservers and enable DNS Management?

[Kian]

Because having your own nameservers infrastructure is better for a couple of reasons.

 

Anyway back on topic URL redirect requires a webserver (apache, iis...). There's no way to redirect domains with DNS. Probably the best option is creating a centralized URL redirect hosting but you still need to allow clients to manage them. Basically it's a customized solution with a client plus admin interface but in this way you are not forced to "spam" hosts inside cPanel. I don't think that WHMCS already supports this kind of system.

Edited November 2, 2013 by Kian