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.
I like this idea
This feature would be amazing, I would also recommend that it be created as it would appeal to any game host and serve the game hosting community and whmcs in turn.
So basically you want options to hidden or un-hidden based on what people select?
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!
This is a large idea and has been requested several times by the community, I completely agree this should be a large part of WHMCS.
Agree 100%
This is a common feature that can greatly improve the collection of product data. Please add this feature!
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)
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).
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.
Anyhow; I talked to several people on the WHMCS forums and they all shared the same view; WHMCS isn't that great anymore. Mostly unused items are added, which aren't considered to be useful, bugs aren't solved as quickly as before and support only gives out standard answers or aren't helpful at all. I can confirm the last two.
1. Bug aren't fixed anytime soon.
I mentioned this earlier already, but I reported a bug (#CORE-9555) 2 months ago. It isn't a big bug, but annoying nevertheless. In short; it concerns when you transfer a domainname and add the recommended domains, it will ask for transfer codes for all domains (including the ones to be registered). This bug was reported already 2 months ago and as of yet, nothing has been solved! Quite shameful I must say.
2. Support is not that great.
I was using our original license and also wanted to setup a development account (= dev license) for our testing server, so in case of updates, I could test them first here. Anyways, requested a dev license and installed it. I copied over all my original files to the developer version (including .htaccess) and had a question, so asked support (through support ticket). Next thing I know is that our developer license is revoked (by Phyllis B.)...! Why? Because they said the develop site was accessable to the outside world. Well, wrong. As stated I copied over the .htaccess and I had white-listed their WHMCS' used IP's so they could investigate a problem I mentioned earlier. Sorry, but that's plain stupid and shortsighted. Even after I explained it took several tickets before he finally understood what I meant. Come on, really? This is called support? Just revoke my developer license, because of an error on their part?
I took a look at HostBill in the meantime. Though it will be hard to convince my boss to make the move from WHMCS to HostBill after investing so much time and money in getting WHMCS to be workable for us. However if it must, we must. Clearly WHMCS is becoming limited the more we use it even though it's not even live for customers! I hold my breath when / if we put it online. Currently our old / outdated ordering system is still being used, though old it has all the features we need, but cannot be updated anymore and therefor not so safe.
I am personally really starting to regret to make the choice to go for WHMCS. Should have diggen in deeper and explorer HostBill a bit more and better. Oh well. Lesson learned so far and won't burn my fingers twice.
So WHMCS: listen to your customers; get more adequate staff / support, don't give plain default answers as search the forums, or look in the apps store (most of the stuff is outdated anyways there, even apps dating back to 2009 lmao). And customer ideas if they actually seem good (like the one above). If we lose customers, WHMCS will lose also customers (they WILL look for alternatives). Don't expect us to think that WHMCS is the holy grail; it might look that way, but it isn't... Clear and simple.
Sidenote; apparently WHMCS finds it more important to have a "good" looking website, rather than improve (requested) features and bugs, because they updated their website last month or so (support link is harder to find now also, might be deliberate).
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.
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).
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 :)
That would be a very usefull feature!!
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.
Any hope to have this super useful feature in the next release?
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.
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,
This is a needed feature for over 9 years now !!
Right now i had to achieve it by jquery with some hardcode. Please make it in the core!
+1 to insert it into the core!
this feature is a must for the next, without this feature really ruins the user experienced
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.
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