Nominet module Feedback

[Chris74]

<rant>

 

There are currently some basic fundamental problems with the WHMCS Nominet module. These stem mainly from the terrible domain details form included in additionaldomainfields.php which really needs to be modified significantly, in order to make the process more fluid and easy to understand for the customer.

 

It currently has two fixed fields that need different information, depending on the choices made via the Registrant field in the drop down menu. Even if you provide very specific and lengthy instructions detailing how to fill out the form - Invariably, customers fail to provide the required info, or provide incorrect info - which could easily be avoided with a better form containing some proper logic and validation. The context and title of the input fields needs to change, depending on the choices made.

 

Here is one simple example...

 

If the customer chooses the registrant type "Individual" from the first field - they are then only required to enter their full legal name in the third field, ignoring the second "company number" field. There is little validation on this form - so if they enter something in field 2 - it gets sent to Nominet anyway, resulting in a failed registration.

 

If the customer chooses the registrant type "Limited Company" from field 1, they are required to enter their registered company number in field 2 and their registered company name in field 3. The fact that field 2 cannot be made mandatory on this form (as it is not required for some registrant types) means that it is often left empty when it is actually required - resulting in failed registrations and more work for us.

 

Obviously, as the field titles do not change, depending on the option chosen, a large amount of text is required to explain all this to the customer - who generally will ignore it and just enter what they want, which will not be properly validated.

 

There are a number of other issues here too - such as the lack of an optional "trading as" field which should only appear if the "sole trader" registrant type is chosen and the requirement to provide details of more than one individual should a "partnership" registrant type be chosen.

 

WHMCS have paid little attention to the requirements laid out in the Nominet documentation and they have built an illogical form that does less than the bare minimum required - and it's been like this for years.

 

It's as if they started to do work on it, got the process to a very basic shell and then decided that was good enough. Surely if you are writing a product that is designed to register UK domains - you'd make a good effort at it the first time around - the thinking time and expertise required to build a decent form is minimal, but this current process is just sub standard. For a market leader in their field, WHMCS are really letting themselves down with this crap.

 

On top of this, someone at WHMCS thought it would be a good idea to add a "trading as" field to the details of any UK domain registered via a client that has a company name in WHMCS - and add that to ALL their new registrations, no matter what registrant type was chosen. Another perfect example of how WHMCS have completely mis-interpreted the requirements of the Nominet registration process. To me, it shows an astounding lack of intelligence.

 

Currently, the legal registrant info cannot be changed after the domain has been registered, without the customer contacting Nominet directly and paying a fee - so this crappy form can cost the customer more than the price of their domain to correct later. Also, domains that have been incorrectly registered will get suspended by Nominet until the issue is fixed. More work for everyone!

 

As a result of this terrible module, thousands of customer's domains have been incorrectly registered. It just sucks! I'm truly embarrassed as a supplier of UK domains that we offer to our customers what appears to be a domain signup process written by a college student embarking upon their first basic PHP project. It's a joke.

 

Anyway....

 

It is fair to say that WHMCS has been fundamental in contributing to the serious data quality problems that exist in the UK registry at this time.

 

Nominet have introduced a new data quality policy which will be in place as of the 6th of May and can be found here...

 

http://www.nominet.org.uk/how-participate/policy-development/current-policy-discussions-and-consultations/data-quality-policy

 

We want to make sure that all our domains are registered properly and in accordance with the registrar's rules. Currently, this is just not happening and I've given up on WHMCS ever making any improvements to this. They don't seem to understand how the Nominet registration process works at the customer end (or they don't seem to care) - despite there being public documentation here....

 

http://registrars.nominet.org.uk/registration-and-domain-management/field-definitions-and-registrant-types

 

Everything needed to build a solid registration form can be found on that page. It really does require conditional fields that appear when needed - which can easily be done with javascript. The necessary logic is not very complicated.

 

</rant>

[Si]

Totally agree. Fed up with having to manually amend Nominet orders to get them to process. Glad I'm not the only one with these issues. Rant away Chris74

 

Frankly, I'm amazed no-one else has replied to your post. Come on Nominet tag holders. You must all be in the same boat. Eh?

[Alex - Arvixe]

You've got my support. Hopefully this gets looked into as it really does seem they started it and just pushed it aside when they got a basic working concept going.

[brian!]

You've got my support.

mine too.. often its easier (time consuming - but ultimately less hassle) to not have .uk domain registrations automated and do them manually through the online service... I had too many errors through WHMCS and I have effectively given up on using it to register .uk domains - which is ridiculous as it was one of the reasons I switched to WHMCS in the first place.

 

now that we seem to be having a quiet time with regards to security issues , I would hope that getting the basic fundamentals of registering domains right is high on the agenda... but who knows.

 

*sighs*

 

i'll look forward to installing an update on 5th May, followed by the necessary fixes on the 7th & 8th ! (even I can't decide if i'm being sarcastic or just resigned to something like that occurring again this year!)

 

then in June we have the opening up of the .uk registry... fun times ahead.

[spellinn]

Fully agree with this.

 

At present I don't see any way that WHMCS can help me comply with the new data validation rules that Nominet have introduced.

 

Sounds like an opportunity for a third party module developer to fill that gap?

 

Regards

 

Neil

[Si]

Every UK domain reg through nominet module for the past few months needs manual involvement. Surely others are having the same issues. When processed, it throws this up:

 

Legal Type is missing. Please check field on domains tab

 

The legal type is not missing, but you have to go in and assign a new legal type. There is no form validation, ie when a customer states they are an 'Individual' but yet places a company registration number in the company number box, the module accepts it without query. No matter what happens, or what scenario is presented, it seems UK domains with the nominet module always needs manual input to complete the order. Surely WHMCS are aware of this?

[searley]

another issue is ordering .ltd.uk domains and not entering a registration number... or checking registrant name roughly matched the domain name

[xperience]

Yep I agree with everything said here.

 

Also want to make sure that the new .uk domains will be supported.

[nathany]

The ltd.uk issue is definately seconded and the general comments made by everyone else. Given the data quality changes it would be handy if WHMCS could optionally integrate with a service like 'postcode anywhere' to validate addresses.

[xperience]

...it would be handy if WHMCS could optionally integrate with a service like 'postcode anywhere' to validate addresses.

 

We've been using Postcode Anywhere for years - it's exceptionally easy to integrate with any form. Although I agree it would be useful if the functionality was built into WHMCS.

[Jo Stonehouse]

I'd like to add my support to this post. The Nominet module is incredibly inadequate.

 

Another issue that we find problematic is that WHMCS creates a new contact for every registered domain. So if a client registers 100 domains, there will be 100 contacts created in Nominet each with one domain in. The module needs to be adding a domain to the same contact as the main account or to the account of the WHMCS sub-contact the user specified when adding the domain if one had been previously linked.

 

What this has meant is that clearing up the data validation mess is made even harder as we have thousands of unnecessary contacts in Nominet that all need data to be cleared up.

[othellotech]

What this has meant is that clearing up the data validation mess is made even harder as we have thousands of unnecessary contacts in Nominet that all need data to be cleared up.

 

The whole 'contact/account' setup at Nominet is a c0ckup and should never have been implemented in the first place - it worked perfectly for 10+ years without any of that rubbish

 

What WHMCS *needs* to do to handle domains crrectly is implement 'dependancies' in the additional fields - so Company Number becomes mandatory when RegistrantType = Ltd, whois opt-out only selectable if type is Individual and so forth

(plus dozens of other deficiencies in the domain-addons concepts)

 

Something to discuss with them in person " HostingCon in 2 weeks _again_ I think.

[brian!]

in case anyone missed it, here's the blog post from Matt about Nominet...

 

http://blog.whmcs.com/?t=89631

[malfunction]

in case anyone missed it, here's the blog post from Matt about Nominet...

 

http://blog.whmcs.com/?t=89631

where he explains that you're all wrong and everything is fine with the Nominet module, just needs a couple of little tweaks, that's all

[Si]

Don't worry, knowing nominet - with any luck they'll announce on the 9th June that they are cancelling the launch (as they do regularly with all of their scheduled maintenance announcements).

 

This is a total mess and domain registration is going to be an even bigger pain in the **** than it already has been with the nominet module in whmcs.

 

WHMCS' nominet module is not in a good place as it is right now

and now with Nominet's new processes over this .uk launch the whole thing is going to be a shambles. (and that's me being very polite about it).