Installing WHMCS on Windows

[phenglai]

Greetings everyone. I am hoping you guys can help me out as I have exhausted almost all resources trying to get WHMCS installed on a Windows server.

 

Here is the background. I, like most of you, havea hosting company and need a better tool to manage everything. I run only Windows servers and I have limited knowledge of Linux so putting up a Linux box is really not an option for me at this point.

 

I have tried installing WHMCS on several servers and so far I am having no luck. I have opened support tickets with WHMCS and they have sent me here to see if you guys have any other suggestions before I call it a day. When I install, the install passes all tests and the install compeltes cleanly

 

The Problem:

I have Windows Server 2003 RS, MySQL 5.0.45, PHP 5.2.1 (ISAPI), and IIS 6.0 installed on my server. I have followed all the instructions for installing WHMCS. I can get the application installed and I can do anything I want in the admin area. I have been able to set up servers, products,coupons, etc. What does not work is the Client Area. When I visit the client area, I get a blank page. I have been told that I need to give write permission to the template_c folder. To date, that folder has: IUSR_MACHNAME, IIS_WPG, IWAM_MACHNAME, Network Service, Everyone, and the Anonymous user with Full Control to that folder. The client area is still blank. When I view source on the page, I get nothing. IIS is just sending a blank page. I have been told this can be installed on Windows and that is has been in the past.

 

WHMCS has examined the php.ini and said everything looks good there. The only other suggestion I have received from another forum was to install cURL but I have the curl support that comes with PHP enabled.

 

Should I be running FactCGI instead of the native PHP?

 

I am open to try almost anything to try and get this to work. Thanks for your time and I look forward to your suggestions.

 

Jerel

[TheHostHouse]

Hey,

 

Well I am running WHMCS on a Windows Server 2003 machine, MySQL 5.0.45 and IIS 6.0. So basically the same as you, except that I am running PHP 5.2.5 (ISAPI) and it works fine for me.

 

Are you running a control panel on that server, such as DotNetPanel or anything like that?

 

Did you install PHP using the Windows Installer, or by using the manual way?

 

Regards,

 

James

[phenglai]

Thanks for the reply.

 

I have tried every way you mention. I use DNP as a control panel and I set the site up via DNP. This particular server only has DNP Server and not the ES or Portal. I installed PHP on this server manually. I tried bringing this server up to PHP 5.2.5 but broke some clients phpBB installs and rolled back to 5.2.1.

 

On a completely different box I have all the above but PHP 5.2.5 not managed by DNP and everything was installed by hand with WHMCS running as the only site and running as the default site.

 

I am going to assume your install went flawless and just worked correct?

 

Jerel

[TheHostHouse]

Ahh well, we are using DotNetPanel too.

 

The WHMCS install seemed to work basically "out of the box" for us.

 

Have you given the DotNetPanel user permission? I'm not quite sure what yours would be as I don't know the domain name but ours is "thehosthouseco_web" (for the domain thehosthouse.co.uk). If you haven't given that full permission try that.

 

If you've already done that, I'd guess it was a problem with the way PHP was installed. If it's possible could I see a PHPInfo file? Either by posting it here, or PMing it to me if you want to keep it private.

 

Regards,

 

James

[mylove4life]

Ahh well, we are using DotNetPanel too.

 

The WHMCS install seemed to work basically "out of the box" for us.

 

Have you given the DotNetPanel user permission? I'm not quite sure what yours would be as I don't know the domain name but ours is "thehosthouseco_web" (for the domain thehosthouse.co.uk). If you haven't given that full permission try that.

 

If you've already done that, I'd guess it was a problem with the way PHP was installed. If it's possible could I see a PHPInfo file? Either by posting it here, or PMing it to me if you want to keep it private.

 

Regards,

 

James

 

Windows user here too... I have seen this before with many other php scripts and it's aways a permision error some where. If you have your own box use a tool like filemon and check it when you run the script, it will let you know there is a problem....

[phenglai]

Ahh well, we are using DotNetPanel too.

 

The WHMCS install seemed to work basically "out of the box" for us.

 

Have you given the DotNetPanel user permission? I'm not quite sure what yours would be as I don't know the domain name but ours is "thehosthouseco_web" (for the domain thehosthouse.co.uk). If you haven't given that full permission try that.

 

If you've already done that, I'd guess it was a problem with the way PHP was installed. If it's possible could I see a PHPInfo file? Either by posting it here, or PMing it to me if you want to keep it private.

 

Regards,

 

James

 

I have given access to the _web user that folder and still no luck. I can post the php.ini file here shortly or I will PM it to you. Nothing private init really, just path statements.

 

Windows user here too... I have seen this before with many other php scripts and it's aways a permision error some where. If you have your own box use a tool like filemon and check it when you run the script, it will let you know there is a problem....

 

I have access to the servers as they are in the datacenter and I own them so thats a good thing. I will get filemon and give that a shot.

 

Jerel

[phenglai]

OK,now we are getting somewhere. When the application tries to run, it is looking under my php folder instead of under the whmcs folder that I installed the application under. Is there a setting I do not have correctly set up?

 

Jerel

[phenglai]

When running filemon, I get buffer overflow errors in index.php from the root of the application as well

[mylove4life]

I think we are going to have to remote into the server to see what's up... If you want to send me the admin remote desktop login info, I'd be happy to see if I can figure it out..

[phenglai]

This problem has been resolved. It appears that if you remove the dot from the include_path setting then the templates cannot be found. I could watch the files get generated and placed in template_c but for some reaons it would not produce the page. My gut feeling is that Smarty cannot find them because its using the include_path but WHMCS writes them to the correct location.

 

So the solution if you are getting a blank page in the client area is make sure you include path looks like so:

 

include_path = ".;C:\youpath"

 

I hope this helps someone in the future and thank WHMCS and everyone in this post for helping with this. Now I am off to do some configuration.

 

Jerel