The hostname you entered is already in use. Please choose another.

[hostEONS]

A lot of our clients are getting error "The hostname you entered is already in use. Please choose another." while placing order for VPS, a lot of them don't understand the error and just skip the order

I understand you have recently added this validation but it's causing a lot of problem with orders, hostnames are not domain, if client wants to use same hostname for their VPS it should be their decision, we don't need to impose on them

So how can we disable this validation, i already check configureproduct.tpl but could not find any option to disable it

Please help 

[unknownsolo]

Were you able to find a solution to this? Not sure why VPS hostnames go through validation now. This should be removed for VPS and dedicated servers. 

[hostEONS]

WHMCS won’t give a solution even submitted ticket

I had to finally modify their template and add some code to randomly generate hostname and hide the hostname field 

[unknownsolo]

Oh wow! Not sure what is the logic behind this? I understand for domains, but not VPS and dedicated servers. I am hoping this a glitch and will get fixed soon since it does not make sense at all!

[unknownsolo]

Unfortunately this is what I got back from support: 
 

Quote

 

Thank you for contacting WHMCS!

I am afraid it isn't possible to disable that restriction, nor would it make sense to do so. A hostname is intended to be an unique name for a server and can only resolve to one server, so it wouldn't be possible to use it to access multiple servers. Each server needs to have an unique hostname to avoid any unexpected issues.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or concerns.

 

 

 

They need to understand that not all use cases are the same and these VPS's and dedicated servers are standalone and should at least make this validation optional. I mean its optional for domain names where it shouldn't be, and not optional for VPS's and dedicated servers where it should be.

[steven99]

Well, their answer isn't completely wrong either as you would not want to have a customer with multiple services using the same FQDN or multiple client's using the same FQDN for any service.  Also, hostnames are usually "server.example.com" instead of just "example.com".  (there might be a RFC on that also)  Adding a note to the hostname field to use that format may help those that read it and are confused on why the error comes up. 

Though would agree it should be optional validation.

[hostEONS]

This change cost us a lot of orders as we did not noticed it for few days and then took another few days to resolve it by modifying the template 

They should not try to impose some thing just because they feel its' right, it should be optional, now I've to completely remove the hostname field from the order form and randomly generate hostname and pass it on as a hidden field

[unknownsolo]

I may have to go with the hiding the hostname route. I just dislike the fact that customers will get a random hostname and they will have to go and manually change it later.

 

I understand what they are saying about hostnames, what I dont understand is them forcing this option on us providers. WHMCS is a billing and automation system only. They should only focus on that and let us focus on how we set up our networks. Asking for this to be optional is not unreasonable especially when it was not enforced before the update.

[WHMCS John]

Hi all,

I'm interested to hear what kind of values you are using in the Hostname field that are not accepted by the validation introduced in v7.6?

What is the use-case for that particular value?

[hostEONS]

2 hours ago, WHMCS John said:

Hi all,

I'm interested to hear what kind of values you are using in the Hostname field that are not accepted by the validation introduced in v7.6?

What is the use-case for that particular value?

It’s about not allowing duplicate hostname, some users don’t understand the error and they just leave costing us $$$

Why do you want to decide for the provider how they do their business?

[unknownsolo]

@WHMCS John

Im glad this got your attention. I am a bit frustrated by this new validation so I apologize in advance if my questions sound rude.

Why would WHMCS give us the option to skip domain validation but not give us the option to skip hostname validation? If anything, its the other way around. Why is WHMCS controlling how we should have our hostnames setup? Shouldn't that be kept up to the server automation module/customization templates/etc? and not the billing system? Why all of the sudden out of nowhere this is strictly enforced and not optional? If its too much work to create a simple checkbox to enable/disable this, at least let us know where we need to manually edit to disable it without breaking the whole workflow.

Again, I truly do understand the concern about having duplicate hostnames - In a single network that is. Most VPS providers and dedicated server providers run standalone services so having duplicate hostnames do happen. You can't possibly expect every single VPS/Dedicated server customer to have their own unique hostname?

To give you the perfect example - which is also how I randomly found out about this - a customer purchased a VPS then immediately opened a ticket complaining that they couldnt create the VPS with their preferred hostname because "ubuntu18" was taken! Imagine going to Azure/AWS and trying to spin up a VM called "ubuntu18' but told you can't because some other customer has that name!

All you have done with this new strictly enforced validation is taken a step back by going from a fully automated system for creating a VPS to introducing manual steps for us, providers, and manually take hostname requests and frustrate customers. You are not fixing a broken system by doing this, you broke a working system. We can still go in and manually change hostnames by other means such as directly from the OS, or from the provisioning module, just not from WHMCS.

I hope you see where all of the frustration is coming from and urge you to reverse this action, improve on it by making it optional, or at the very least, show us how to manually edit it out. WHMCS is all about flexibility and this is the exact opposite. 

 

[WHMCS John]

5 hours ago, hyperexpert said:

To give you the perfect example - which is also how I randomly found out about this - a customer purchased a VPS then immediately opened a ticket complaining that they couldnt create the VPS with their preferred hostname because "ubuntu18" was taken! Imagine going to Azure/AWS and trying to spin up a VM called "ubuntu18' but told you can't because some other customer has that name!

Thanks for providing this example, it's most helpful.

It's interesting to hear that "ubuntu18" is a value you would have accepted in the hostname field, because it sounds more like a server name than a hostname to me.

In this event what was your typical procedure? For example would your staff need to contact the customer to determine the full hostname they want to use and then manually adjust it before provisioning the service?

[hostEONS]

27 minutes ago, WHMCS John said:

Thanks for providing this example, it's most helpful.

It's interesting to hear that "ubuntu18" is a value you would have accepted in the hostname field, because it sounds more like a server name than a hostname to me.

In this event what was your typical procedure? For example would your staff need to contact the customer to determine the full hostname they want to use and then manually adjust it before provisioning the service?

We are using WHMCS and doing auto provisioning of VPS, so now when client is not able to move forward with the order form then just leave and sign up with some other provider, we even don't have contact information of client or what error they got as they did not reached checkout page and were even not able to register with us ?

WHMCS is for automation why do you even expect us to waste time in contacting client to explain that please somebody has already taken that hostname so please order using another hostname ?

Why do you want providers to change the way they are doing business and loose new orders and also add extra work of contacting clients ?

Above all you have an unwanted field ns1 and ns2 in VPS and server order forms, just wondering how many providers actually really need it ?? especially if it's an unmanaged service ?

[unknownsolo]

The hostname field at checkout has always been used as the server name too. Take SolusVM for example, their free module and even the paid module from ModulesGarden uses the hostname field for both server name and hostname. The same goes for EasyDCIM's dedicated server module and Proxmox module. Just give us the option to disable validation and we should be good to go 🙂 Or show us where to manually disable it for now at the very least. Isn't it better for WHMCS to leave it up to the provider to decide how to validate their orders anyways? This was never a problem before so why now?

I don't really care as much for the ns fields for dedicated servers and VPS's (and I think I speak on behalf of every single VPS provider out there) since I've been hiding those fields without any issues and no one ever asked for them at checkout to begin with.

[hostEONS]

If you want to disable Hostname and use randomly generated hostnames just look for syntax for smarty templates for some function that would generate random numbers

We are using hostnames in this format

vps<randomnumber>.hosteons.com 

We have even hidden hostname and ns fields from order form

[unknownsolo]

I guess this is just going to get ignored! 

[Furkann]

Is there an easy way to get out of this situation? I would like to know what solutions you came up with. I am facing the same problem.