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Dependent Configurable Options



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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.
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!

52 Comments

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Anderson Pereira commented 18th July 18
+1 to insert it into the core!
Vito Li commented 7th June 18
Right now i had to achieve it by jquery with some hardcode. Please make it in the core!
robby hicks commented 2nd June 18
This is a needed feature for over 9 years now !!
Philipp Eßwein commented 6th May 18
Jup, this is needed and would be awesome!

E.g. my VPS servers... I also got 512MB servers but then Windows OS shouldn't be allowed to use...
Or gameservers,
Anderson Pereira commented 15th February 18
Please Devs, take a look at this! More than 40 votes, and a VERY useful feature.

Now after v7.5, please focus on expanding current features flexibility.
John Dekerson commented 15th February 18
Any hope to have this super useful feature in the next release?
Tim Gordon commented 25th November 17
Yes, This is a much-needed requirement, as all CPU/MB does not supports say RAM up to 256 GB, So we must have a parent to child configuration option, I am sure if WHMCS decides they can easily incorporate conditional parent-child configuration. If required We are ready to do beta testing for WHMCS.
sonics commented 14th October 16
That would be a very usefull feature!!
Mudasser Jamil commented 11th July 16
This could be very useful feature specially for hosting companies. There are many features for VPS, Dedicated server and other products are depending on each other. Otherwise there are more chances user select the wrong combination of features and we have to go through refund process.

Really looking forward to see this feature soon :)
Mich commented 1st March 16
Exactly. The topic starter explained it much better than I ever could do. And also his remark about RAID configurations hits the nail on it's head.
Not all servers / controllers can handle RAID 5 or 6. So why offer this, while they can only do RAID 1 or RAID 10.
To be honest it really counters what WHMCS advertises on their website and elsewhere "The world's leading web hosting AUTOMATION platform".
I must admit, my English isn't very good, as it isn't my native language, but 'automation' means to me that it doesn't require a lot of human input. When I have to email a follow-up to a customer who ordered a Pentium 4 with 128GB RAM and a single harddisk in RAID 10 through WHMCS (because it was possible); well, let's just say that's not what I call automation. (stupid example, but still, you get the point).
Nathan Hilton commented 1st March 16
This would also be a good idea for other sites to use, not just Hosting companies.

I would love this feature so I can provide better virtual/dedicated servers configurations...
E.g. Operating System could have dependent configuration, like if someone selects CentOS or CloudLinux, another configuration can pop up with the option to have cPanel installed on it.
Mich commented 1st March 16
To be quite honest; we have spend a lot of money so far in changing (through hooks and scripts) to make WHMCS work for us as it should, however it's still not perfect. The main issue is the one mentioned above. It's really annoying that even the simplest programs are able to pull this off. If A1 is selected then display B3, B4 and B5. If A2 is selected then display B1 and B2. If A3 is selected then display only B6. It's really not rocket science...
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.
Nathan Hilton commented 29th February 16
I completely agree Michael! Loads of order forms already have this functionality, including other billing systems like HostBill.

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).
Mich commented 29th February 16
I was looking for something similar and asked the current company who creates hooks and scripts for WHMCS if they could add something like this. I was astonished when I heard this wasn't possible due to issues with WHMCS' core scripts.

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)
Roberto Diaz commented 5th August 15
This is a common feature that can greatly improve the collection of product data. Please add this feature!