Tisdale
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9 years ago
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When you're offering dedicated servers, you are more than likely to have an endless list of configurable options for the customer to build his server upon. In order not to have an endless list that specifies each combination of every disk size of secondary disk that hasn't even been selected, or RAID-5, RAID-10 options that haven't been selected and so on, websites that offer this service would normally create dependencies between configurable options.
Creating dependent configurable options allows you to specify exactly which child configurable options would be displayed when a parent option is selected and which would be hidden if a certain option is not selected.
For some odd reason WHMCS doesn't offer this, as if it's not that important feature for a hosting business. The reality is that if any type of online business requires dependent configurable options it is a hosting business.
It's not just an issue of endless list when you have too many options to be displayed all at once.
Consider this:
You're offering a selection of CPUs to choose from. But not all of them you can offer with 128GB RAM, so what are you supposed to do? Display the 128GB under the option "Memory" for the customer to choose even if he had chosen a CPU that you can't provide it with?
So the solution is to create conditional configurable options and specify which options are not being displayed when certain options are selected.
Also, if a customer's selection means that no options were displayed for him at all under a certain option name ('RAID Controller' for example), there's no need to pass each unselected option name to the summary and to the cart. If the list is too long, you don't always want to say for each unselected option that hasn't even been displayed for example: 'RAID Controller: none' in the cart. The list would be too long and irrelevant. In that regards, there's already a problem with the existing functionality of WHMCS, because it doesn't allow you to display a configurable option without having one of the options pre-selected by default, and that's not always what you want to have.
Creating dependent configurable options allows you to specify exactly which child configurable options would be displayed when a parent option is selected and which would be hidden if a certain option is not selected.
For some odd reason WHMCS doesn't offer this, as if it's not that important feature for a hosting business. The reality is that if any type of online business requires dependent configurable options it is a hosting business.
It's not just an issue of endless list when you have too many options to be displayed all at once.
Consider this:
You're offering a selection of CPUs to choose from. But not all of them you can offer with 128GB RAM, so what are you supposed to do? Display the 128GB under the option "Memory" for the customer to choose even if he had chosen a CPU that you can't provide it with?
So the solution is to create conditional configurable options and specify which options are not being displayed when certain options are selected.
Also, if a customer's selection means that no options were displayed for him at all under a certain option name ('RAID Controller' for example), there's no need to pass each unselected option name to the summary and to the cart. If the list is too long, you don't always want to say for each unselected option that hasn't even been displayed for example: 'RAID Controller: none' in the cart. The list would be too long and irrelevant. In that regards, there's already a problem with the existing functionality of WHMCS, because it doesn't allow you to display a configurable option without having one of the options pre-selected by default, and that's not always what you want to have.
Merged Ideas
Configurable option depends on another configurable option
In case the title is a bit confusing or misleading, I'm gonna give you an example of what I'm suggesting:Let's say I'm selling a game server where the price is based on slots, and the client can choose between two datacenters. One of my datacenters is located in a country, where dedicated servers are expensive to have hosted, so I want the price per slot to be a little higher when the client select 'Datacenter 2' on the order form. Both the Datacenter selection and the Slot selection is a configurable option.When the client is selecting 'Datacenter 2', the price of the Slot option should change.If you are a webhosting company, you could probably also use this. Let's say bandwidth is expensive in Country A - when a client selects Country A, the price for 10GB monthly traffic could increase. I don't really know much about webhosting, so I wouldn't know if the given example would be realistic, but I sure know that I would love this feature!
In case the title is a bit confusing or misleading, I'm gonna give you an example of what I'm suggesting:Let's say I'm selling a game server where the price is based on slots, and the client can choose between two datacenters. One of my datacenters is located in a country, where dedicated servers are expensive to have hosted, so I want the price per slot to be a little higher when the client select 'Datacenter 2' on the order form. Both the Datacenter selection and the Slot selection is a configurable option.When the client is selecting 'Datacenter 2', the price of the Slot option should change.If you are a webhosting company, you could probably also use this. Let's say bandwidth is expensive in Country A - when a client selects Country A, the price for 10GB monthly traffic could increase. I don't really know much about webhosting, so I wouldn't know if the given example would be realistic, but I sure know that I would love this feature!
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I would gladly pay some money for this, however due to the fact everything of WHMCS' core is behind a encoded wall this is impossible and therefor limiting our clients and therefor limiting us to generate revenue.
FYI: we don't use any of the automation feautures of WHMCS. We receive an order, we process it by hand and hand it over to our billing department.
I do believe that WHMCS isn't as good as it once was when it first started and isn't bringing new features to its system, they are only extending features based on their partnership with cPanel (like the cPanel single sign on) and neglecting other basic features like this feature - while also giving options to disable certain options (maybe because they are Out of Stock or coming soon).
I took the liberty to open a support ticket and asked WHMCS about this. I was amazed when I got the answer back that WHMCS never considered adding this. The hosting market, especially webserver, is one of the quickest growing and changing markets in the world. Every customer is different and every customer has different requirements.
If we cannot offer this customer what he wants, due to limitations of WHMCS, he will take his business elsewhere and we will lose a potential customer and therefor income. This a definite no-no for us. We value our customers and we actually listen to ours. Apparently WHMCS has different ideas on this. Especially considering nothing has been done with this request and it's already over a year old...!
WHMCS advertises itself as and I quote "The world's leading web hosting automation platform". I find this weird because you cannot even give your customer something simple as dependent configurable options. Even our old (still in use) ordering system had this feature. Heck, even simple contact forms have options like this (check MachForm for instance).
It's weird and astonishing that this request hasn't been granted and been added yet. It seems WHMCS is still stuck in the 90's in regards to adaptability.
I somehow doubt this will ever be added (or when it's to late and we found a different solution), because bugs (which I reported almost 2 months ago) aren't solved till today. Oh well...
Just my 2 cents... (not that it's worth much to WHMCS apparently)
Like if I wanted "VPS 1", but only "VPS 2+" offers WHMCS free of charge, it would hide the option to select a free WHMCS licence? - If i'm correct I completely agree with you!
Like if I wanted "VPS 1", but only "VPS 2+" offers WHMCS free of charge, it would hide the option to select a free WHMCS licence? - If i'm correct I completely agree with you!