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Dependent Configurable Options



253 Votes
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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!

28 Comments

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Evolve Web Hosting commented 2nd July
With 235 votes, how many more does it need to be put on the roadmap @whmcs?
Steve Duckfield commented 11th May
555
Official Response
WHMCS commented 13th April 21
Thank you for contributing and voting for this feature. We are looking to get some more specific information about how exactly you envision this working. In what ways should the dependencies between options be able to be configured? And how should the interface and experience work for this, both for admins and for customers?

Thanks!
Ricardo commented 29th April 21
Hi there,
Let me give an example: I am selling a server and I offer two OS choices: CentOS Linux and Windows 2016 Server, and I also offer the option for unmanaged (no-cost) or managed server (with cost)
User selects CentOS Linux and he wants managed server. For CentOS Linux the managed server costs let's say 50 bucks. But if the user selects Windows Server, it the cost should be 75 bucks.
Or lets say a different example: instead I offer two possible locations, Europe and Asia. I also offer a Backup Space option, so users can backup data. Storage space is more expensive for me at Asia, so if the user select location A (Europe) the backup space has one price, but if he chooses location B (Asia) it will have another price.

How to implement:
Well, on the admin area, I would say you could call them "dependent configurable options" or alike and they have to be assigned to a parent. It will then load the options of the parent, and you'd select the option each depends on.
For the customer, when he would select a given option, it would refresh the values.

Thank you for picking on this idea, I think its really important. Cheers!
Birender Singh Budhwar commented 14th July 20
This features should be present into WHMCS as it very important while configuring VPS or Dedicated servers like control panels options otherwise its a big mess with client if they order something and after that it will become big mess.
Ricardo commented 14th December 19
This is definitely a most needed feature and it's being comprehension how a company such as WHMCS lets years and years go by without implementing this.
If my customers order a Windows machine, they can't have cPanel. If they choose CentOS they can. As easy as it gets, no explanation for so many feature requests and nothing. It's a total shame.
Imam Arief Rahman commented 15th January 19
this feature is a must for the next, without this feature really ruins the user experienced
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 :)