HTTP Method Not Allowed

[smithygotlost]

So many pages in WHMCS are saying HTTP Method not allowed Its getting annoying as its in code we cannot edit.

 

setup/auth/two-factor/save
utilities/tools/serversync/1

To name a few, How can we get this sorted ? Running latest WHMCS, checked all hotfixes..

[brian!]

17 hours ago, smithygotlost said:

To name a few, How can we get this sorted ?

have you tried changing the Friendly URL settings to Basic URLs to see if that makes any difference.

[smithygotlost]

These are in admin area. Shouldnt make any odds there ?

[smithygotlost]

as you mentioned yes that was it. But how can that be a thing surely its a bug ?

 

On top of this changing it back to friendly urls then corrupted the files saying The file configgeneral.php is corrupted.  and broke the whole site.

Edited June 19, 2020 by smithygotlost

[brian!]

16 hours ago, smithygotlost said:

These are in admin area. Shouldnt make any odds there ?

initially, Friendly URLs were only used in the client area - though they were never 100% stable and would often give errors depending upon which page, and which FU setting, you were using.

and then a few major releases ago, Friendly URLs started to be applied in the admin area too - so in recent versions, the same FU settings are used in both admin and client areas...

when I saw that 'setup/auth/two-factor/save' type URL causing an error, my first thought was (un)Friendly URLs. 😞

16 hours ago, smithygotlost said:

as you mentioned yes that was it. But how can that be a thing surely its a bug ?

as I said, the feature has always been buggy in my eyes - even now, there are still often pages I can't access in the admin area if I don't change the FU setting (usually to Basic URLs).

16 hours ago, smithygotlost said:

On top of this changing it back to friendly urls then corrupted the files saying The file configgeneral.php is corrupted.  and broke the whole site.

the files won't have been physically corrupted by a change to FU - that corruption message might be an IonCude loader issue depending on your PHP version.

[smithygotlost]

So its actually the .htaccess it changes which causes the corruption. Which is odd. i have a backed up version a version its borked going to see if i can figure it out. WHMCS ticket has been open a week and no reply. Yet they will want me to pay for updates again soon.

[smithygotlost]

Right so the long and short of it are WHMCS sucks. It doesnt care what else is in the file it just voids it. So things like what version of php to use ect its not interested in just removes the lot this then causes an issue on the site as its using the wrong version of IonCube based on what the server has as a default...

That was a MASSIVE waste of time

[yggdrasil]

Your best shot is WHMCS support, since most functions are encoded nobody really knows how stuff works except them.

[smithygotlost]

7 hours ago, yggdrasil said:

Your best shot is WHMCS support, since most functions are encoded nobody really knows how stuff works except them.

Hey bud, yea i tried that they never replied to the ticket, i have found the issue basically when you enable Friendly urls like someone said above they all stop working on HTTP method, when you set them to basic they work again. However if you work on say a Cpanel server like i do the .htaccess responsible for running the site  contains information on the PHP version. When you update between friend and basic URLS WHMCS complete over writes the htaccess. this in turn removes the php versions Cpanel put their, Ion cube then slits its wrists in panic and "Corrupts" WHMCS.

 

Found a community with a few hundred people having this issue going back from when Friendly URLS where put in yet WHMCS refuse to admit its a problem and/or Fix it. Yet still want the monthly fees off us.

Time to start looking for an alternative to WHMCS.

[brian!]

9 hours ago, yggdrasil said:

Your best shot is WHMCS support, since most functions are encoded nobody really knows how stuff works except them.

I think you'd have to go to those above Support, e.g the developers, to find someone who *knows* how it works.

[yggdrasil]

2 hours ago, smithygotlost said:

Hey bud, yea i tried that they never replied to the ticket, i have found the issue basically when you enable Friendly urls like someone said above they all stop working on HTTP method, when you set them to basic they work again. However if you work on say a Cpanel server like i do the .htaccess responsible for running the site  contains information on the PHP version. When you update between friend and basic URLS WHMCS complete over writes the htaccess. this in turn removes the php versions Cpanel put their, Ion cube then slits its wrists in panic and "Corrupts" WHMCS.

 

Found a community with a few hundred people having this issue going back from when Friendly URLS where put in yet WHMCS refuse to admit its a problem and/or Fix it. Yet still want the monthly fees off us.

Time to start looking for an alternative to WHMCS.

There is not fix for this. Search the forums.

Here comes the problem. .htaccess rewrites the URL's on the web server, this worked until WHMCS 6 because it was raw/plain PHP and even if the rules did not work perfectly for your server, you could adjust them slightly and then modify some URL or paths in your templates.

Starting with version 7 WHMCS moved to the Laravel framework. Like all PHP framework this uses routing, it means index.php is used to route every single call. Path and URL's are hard-coded in most frameworks and that is usually no issue because frameworks are open source and people can modify or adjust anything and everything. WHMCS put those hard coded paths and links behind obfuscated code called Ioncube. The result is that you have no control over how the URL and paths works now with WHMCS. If the SEO friendly URL's don't work for your server, I'm sorry to say this but you are screwed because there is no way to fix this with .htaccess rules. The reason is that even if you create rules to modify the URL's, WHMCS is trying to resolve something else internally. I had nothing but problems with SEO url's since version 7. I had to create many hooks and PHP patches that try to read the existing URL and then redirect the user to the proper URL, thinks like voting on articles, search, and many other things.

It's a gigantic mess. If you get a reply from WHMCS they will most likely just tell you they don't give support for customization of installations and another canned reply in order to close your ticket. Your only option is probably to use the ugly non SEO friendly url's if you want everything to work.

Edited July 3, 2020 by yggdrasil

[yggdrasil]

1 hour ago, brian! said:

I think you'd have to go to those above Support, e.g the developers, to find someone who *knows* how it works.

This is a routing problem with Laravel. If they wanted to fix this, it would take them 2 hours tops. The thing is that developers on WHMCS probably use a localhost system to test things out, it works, and they call it a day. Then people install WHMCS on their domain and of course, it does not work because now you have a real domain, or subdomain or its running from a folder and even something like / missing at the end will completely breaks the routing. It works for some pages, but not others. It's inconsistent for sure.

Edited July 3, 2020 by yggdrasil

[smithygotlost]

i understand the premise of .htaccess and fully understand how their URL Re-Writes work. I have no issues with the Ugly urls within reason i can fix that in template and hard use my own URL RE-Write to get around it. Its more frustration that it is an easy fix and they do not bother and the lack of response from their support is made worse by the fact you have to pay for "Support and Updates" to fix stuff you have for all intentions already paid for. Like i say i will be looking for a WHMCS alternative or now i have the time write my own who knows.

[yggdrasil]

1 hour ago, smithygotlost said:

i understand the premise of .htaccess and fully understand how their URL Re-Writes work. I have no issues with the Ugly urls within reason i can fix that in template and hard use my own URL RE-Write to get around it. Its more frustration that it is an easy fix and they do not bother and the lack of response from their support is made worse by the fact you have to pay for "Support and Updates" to fix stuff you have for all intentions already paid for. Like i say i will be looking for a WHMCS alternative or now i have the time write my own who knows.

Well you can't.

This is what I mentioned in my other reply. In the past I did exactly that. I just rewrote some URL's and paths in the template files to match my .htaccess rules and added some custom rules here and there. It was hard work but it worked. I even made then language independent and it was beautiful, each support article on its own URL that told the server what language to load. Worked better than what WHMCS provided out of the box for SEO friendly URL's. Then WHMCS 7 came it was all destroyed.

That is not possible anymore starting with WHMCS 7. Most URL's are not in the template files anymore, that means you cannot change them because you don't have access to them. They are generated on the fly from PHP, like the Laravel garbage magic that so many hard core developer's complaint.

The URL's in WHMCS are now also magic, and not user controllable.

Example:

You decide to rename:

whmcs/index.php/password/reset/begin

to:

whmcs/login/reset

With some of your server rules.

That will not work because once you activate the SEO friendly rules in your admin side on WHMCS, it decides to use its own hard-coded method and it will redirect to what WHMCS decides disregarding your rules completely.

So while you can load the page:

whmcs/login/reset 

Initially. When the user post the form, it will fail because it will try to load whmcs/index.php/password/reset/begin instead of your URL and you cannot modify the POST url because its not in the templates anymore.

To resume. You cannot rewrite URLs or have custom ones anymore with .htacess. It was possible in the past, its not possible now as they are hard coded. And you might say, no problem, I will just modify the code in the templates, well no! They are behind IonCube files. That means you cannot edit those files. Its WHMCS property.

Sounds unbelievable? Well it is. You cannot change the links and url's on your own site because WHMCS decided they are in control now of the HTML output that is displayed on your website and customers.

Don't bother paying for support. They will not help you with this. They don't even know what .htaccess is and support does only get you canned replies, not actually an open channel to the developers that might understand the problem. They will just tell you that support does not include customizations and changes to WHMCS. WHMCS technical support is level 1. I don't bother with that. In most cases they will even argue with you that something is not a bug and you need to insist several times until they admit it as a bug.

There is no WHMCS alternative with all the features. This is why most of us are still here. If there was one, we would all move as fast as possible. Not because WHMCS is bad, all software's have bugs, but because they don't listen to users or care about feedback. They don't even want to allow customers to a bug tracker to see the status or existing bugs which every single software company in the planet has.

In my experience WHMCS was amazing, version 4, 5, 6. Because if there was a bug, you could always fix it somehow but version 7+ is a total black box. Everything is behind obfuscated code that only WHMCS controls, this makes it impossible to do some stuff or even fix things or at least implement workaround until a patch is out. Even files that are open source libraries, they encoded (not sure if by mistake or on purpose).

The problem is they don't really have competition. And that tends to hurt us customers as they don't have to improve over time.

Why does this URL issue in particular angers me this much? Because I'm forced to have the same WHMCS front end like everyone else instead of having something customized to my site. It makes everyone running WHMCS look like amateurs running a similar WHMCS page structure, links and customer flow...

Edited July 3, 2020 by yggdrasil