Enable all Domain Checker Extension Categories by default

[bluesteam]

Hello,

I find the domain checker extension categories useless to say the least!   I know that my clients pretty much NEVER even understand what a ccTLD is or a gTLD etc!

So they don't even KNOW to click those buttons to show the domain extension they are looking for so my clients just get confused!

Now, the problem is that what WHMCS considers POPULAR doesn't include my own countries tld extension so now when the client is looking for the cost of my countries tld's they can't find it because they don't think for themselves that they need to click a certain category to display the tld to get the pricing!

So what they simply do now is enter garbage.tld in to the search field and see what the tld costs in the search results rendering the whole cateories options useless and ifthey happen to enter a domain that actually exists, it doesn't show the price.

So the only way around this I figured is to enable ALL the options by default to show ALL tld's when the page loads.

Is this possible and if so, how could I do it?

Thanks

Edited March 12, 2019 by bluesteam
added tags

[brian!]

1 hour ago, bluesteam said:

Now, the problem is that what WHMCS considers POPULAR doesn't include my own countries tld extension so now when the client is looking for the cost of my countries tld's they can't find it because they don't think for themselves that they need to click a certain category to display the tld to get the pricing! 

yeah, there are some really weird entries in the "Popular" list... 🙄

1 hour ago, bluesteam said:

Is this possible and if so, how could I do it?

ignore the hook link at the bottom of the thread and just edit the domainregister.tpl template as outlined in the post... i'll revisit the hook when I get more time (or inclination!).

btw, and apropos of showing domain pricing, you also have a default pricing page in WHMCS that can show all TLDs/Pricing/G&R Fees etc... just add /domain/pricing to the end of your WHMCS URL and you should see it.

[bluesteam]

Thank you Brian 🙂 It works when the page first loads but falls apart the moment the client clicks on a category and then deselects the category.  But it will do the trick for now.

WHMCS really dropped the ball on this one....and they aren't going to pick it up it seems.

 

Thanks for the tip on the Domain pricing.  I will definitely be using that.

Edited March 12, 2019 by bluesteam

[brian!]

1 hour ago, bluesteam said:

It works when the page first loads but falls apart the moment the client clicks on a category and then deselects the category.  But it will do the trick for now.

you could remove the entire category code block from the template and that solves that problem of the user trying to filter...

                <h4>{lang key='pricing.browseExtByCategory'}</h4>

                <div class="tld-filters">
                    {foreach $categoriesWithCounts as $category => $count}
                        <a href="#" data-category="{$category}" class="label label-default">{lang key="domainTldCategory.$category" defaultValue=$category} ({$count})</a>
                    {/foreach}
                </div>

or if you want to do it with CSS in a custom.css file...

.domain-pricing h4,
.tld-filters
{display: none;}

you could do it with hooks and language overrides, but I suspect that would take more time than just editing the template again or the css.

1 hour ago, bluesteam said:

WHMCS really dropped the ball on this one....and they aren't going to pick it up it seems.

actually, we didn't know it at the time, but it was a sign of things to come from WHMCS - *they* will decide for us what a "Popular" domain is; *they* will decide to introduce SSL Checks seemingly any request for the feature (though no doubt to increase their MarketConnect income $$$)... I could go on with many more examples, but what's  the point....

when they introduced the TLD categories to the database with v6 in 2015 (yes, it really was that long ago and predates the v7 Pricing Matrix), they defined 173 "Popular" TLDs - just checking v7.7.1, there are still 173 (I assume they're still the same) and I listed them in the thread below from 2015.

Quote

academy,agency,archi,asia,associates,bar,bargains,best,bid,bike,biz,blackfriday,blue,boutique,build,builders,buzz,cab,camera,camp,capital,cards,careers,catering,cc,center,ceo,cheap,christmas,cleaning,clothing,club,co.com,codes,coffee,com,community,company,computer,condos,construction,contractors,cooking,cool,country,cruises,dance,dating,democrat,diamonds,directory,domains,education,email,engineering,enterprises,equipment,estate,events,exchange,expert,exposed,farm,fish,fishing,flights,florist,foundation,futbol,gallery,gift,glass,graphics,gripe,guitars,guru,holdings,holiday,horse,house,immobilien,industries,info,ink,institute,international,kim,kitchen,kiwi,land,lease,lighting,limo,link,luxury,maison,management,marketing,media,menu,mobi,nagoya,name,net,ninja,onl,org,partners,parts,photo,photography,photos,pics,pictures,pink,plumbing,productions,properties,pub,recipes,red,rentals,repair,report,rest,reviews,rich,rodeo,services,sexy,shiksha,shoes,singles,social,solar,solutions,supplies,supply,support,systems,tattoo,technology,tienda,tips,today,tools,trade,training,uk,uno,us,vacations,ventures,viajes,villas,vision,vodka,voyage,watch,webcam,wiki,works,xn--3ds443g,xn--6frz82g,xn--80asehdb,xn--80aswg,xn--c1avg,xn--fiq228c5hs,xn--ngbc5azd,xn--nqv7f,xn--q9jyb4c,xyz,zone,

now we can all go through that list and see the really Popular ones, but perversely "foundation","futbol","immobilien","kiwi","nagoya","rodeo" etc are considered Popular by WHMCS... I don't think that i've ever been asked to register any of them.

we were always warned that we couldn't edit these database values because WHMCS might overwrite them in a future release - even the TLD list contains TLDs that either don't exist or are brands and therefore we could never sell/register them anyway - so why have them on the list ? they likely downloaded an outdated TLD list from somewhere in 2015 and never thought to check them. 🙄

there was a crumb of a good idea in TLD categories, sadly wasted by WHMCS - not least because after four years, they still haven't introduced a way for the 'normal' WHMCS user to decide which TLDs or popular or not... I mean to you, .co.za should be popular; for me, so should .co.uk - we all live in different regions of the world and so we should be able to decide for ourselves which ones will be popular to our clients. 🙂

technically, it's not difficult for me to change them, but that's not the point - especially with the sword of damocles hanging over those tables by WHMCS if any changes are made to it. ⚔️

[bluesteam]

I couldnt have said it better!  I am surprised that WHMCS is taking this "ruling with an iron fist" approach to these categoris.

anyhoe...Iwill just stick to your original solution for now.  It's not the end of the world.

thanks again Brian 🙂

[steven99]

I could see an addon module manage those popular TLDs if they are in the database to be changed and just a cron hook for example to check they are correctly set -- though that basically means having two database tables for this . 

[brian!]

16 hours ago, steven99 said:

I could see an addon module manage those popular TLDs if they are in the database to be changed and just a cron hook for example to check they are correctly set -- though that basically means having two database tables for this . 

someone has already produced an addon that allowed users to modify which TLDs are in which categories - I don't think it's available in Marketplace, the thread was posted at least 2 years ago and for the life of me I can't find it - searching for 'categories' or 'category' brings more than just one or two unrelated results! 😞

I can still see the screenshot in my head, but I can't even find the thread locally - no doubt, if I could think of the right search term i'd find it... maybe it was mentioned in a now deleted v6 beta community?

looking back in hindsight, WHMCS haven't really made that many changes to these tables - so we could have fixed it back then with little hassle during updates. 🙄

[honesting]

It's a shame how abandoned whmcs feels lately, I hope it doesn't end up being like cpanel. I am looking for a way to list all the domains in the table without categories but support tell me that this is "custom" code. Any ideas? Thank you.

[brian!]

14 minutes ago, honesting said:

It's a shame how abandoned whmcs feels lately, I hope it doesn't end up being like cpanel.

they have the same owners now. 🙄

14 minutes ago, honesting said:

I am looking for a way to list all the domains in the table without categories but support tell me that this is "custom" code. Any ideas?

[honesting]

Yes, thank you again.

[Clive@ANET.com.au]

Good tips!

The standard domain-checker seemed ok to me but always confused my users ...so by updating the template to enable all by default, you've saved me a tone of time and hassle trying to explain how to use it.

Thanks so much for that!

PS If any WHMCS developers are listening:  Please, please add an admin option to enable customising the "popular TLDs"... Please!!!

[brian!]

9 hours ago, Clive@ANET.com.au said:

Good tips!

if it encouraged you to make your first post after registering here almost 8 years ago, it was worth it!

9 hours ago, Clive@ANET.com.au said:

The standard domain-checker seemed ok to me but always confused my users ...so by updating the template to enable all by default, you've saved me a tone of time and hassle trying to explain how to use it. 

it's possible just removing that

9 hours ago, Clive@ANET.com.au said:

PS If any WHMCS developers are listening:  Please, please add an admin option to enable customising the "popular TLDs"... Please!!!

the problem is that WHMCS controls those database tables and users were always warned that WHMCS can/will/may update them - thus overwriting any changes that you might make.

technically, it's not a difficult thing to do to add a TLD to 1 or more categories, it's just that WHMCS might undo those changes during an update.. so then you have to think about workarounds to them doing that...

[hoya8]

We also found this odd that why WHMCS has its own definition of "polular"?

and why this has not been fixed yet?

 

#SDR-091829