Working with WHMCS & the Liquid Web Reseller Plugin

What is WHMCS & how it can optimize your business

The WHMCS software suite is an all-in-one client management, billing & support interface for web hosting businesses. WHMCS can be used to automate the billing and provision of Web Hosting Services. Most often utilized by resellers, WHMCS can simplify and streamline the process of providing hosting service. To learn more, read our "What is WHMCS".

What does Liquid Web’s WHMCS Plugin do?

WHMCS has many useful features right out of the box, however most of these features are based on control panels such as cPanel or Plesk. This is perfectly fine if you just want to sell shared hosting but if you’re looking to resell cloud based VPS / VMs you will need to install additional plugins / addon modules that contain this additional functionality.

Liquid Web’s WHMCS plugin talks to our Storm API, and exposes this to WHMCS, allowing you to:

• Create cloud based products using our Cloud VPS, Private Cloud, and Cloud Dedicated product lines. Don’t pay for anything until you’ve sold it!
• Automatically provision these products when your client places an order.
• Automatically bill and invoice for these products based on your preferences.
• Expose cloud like features to your clients via WHMCS client area!

If you’re looking to expand your current shared hosting product line, or start up a brand new, 100% cloud based hosting company, you should definitely be using our plugin!

Step #1: Installing the Liquid Web WHMCS plugin

Installing our WHMCS plugin is a rather simple process, simply download the latest version of the plugin, extract it in your WHMCS install directory, then move the files to the modules and includes directories. This can be done via SSH, FTP or even the cPanel File Manager! Here we'll use the SSH method, however you can use any method you'd like.

Our WHMCS plugin can now be found on a publicly available GitHub-based repository. Or a direct download link to the latest installation Zip: Liquid Web for WHMCS.

The directory may not be the same for everyone, so make sure you update the $WHMCSUSER part below. Here's an example of how it's done:

Via SSH (command line) on the server…
cd /home/$WHMCSUSER/public_html/WHMCS/
wget https://github.com/liquidweb/LiquidWeb-WHMCS-Plugin/archive/master.zip
unzip master.zip
cd LiquidWeb-WHMCS-Plugin-master/
rsync -avH includes/ ../includes/
rsync -avH modules/ ../modules/


Of course, you can always ask our support team to assist with the plugin install, simply contact our support team, and we’ll get you all set up.

Step #2: Activate the LiquidWeb WHMCS plugin

With the Liquid Web WHMCS plugin now installed all that's left is to activate it. To complete the activation, login to the WHMCS admin page.

1. Click on the "Setup" tab near the top of the page. Then select the "Addon Modules" option.
   
2. Once the page loads, find the 'Liquid Web Storm Servers Billing' and 'Liquid Web Widget for WHMCS', then click "Activate" for both items.
   
3. After activation, you will see a gray 'configure' button next to each module. Click "Configure" and then ensure that "Full Administrator" is checked in each item. Once checked, click "Save Changes" for each module.
   
4. The final thing we need to do is enable the Liquid Web Cloud Server Widget, which is displayed in the main dash of WHMCS.
   1. To do this, click on the "Setup" tab; then find the "Staff Management" area and select "Administrator Roles".
      
   2. Click on the edit icon for "Full Administrator".
      
   3. Near the bottom of the page you will see an unchecked box in the Widgets area called "Liquid Web Cloud Servers", check this box then click "Save Changes".
      

At this point the Liquid Web WHMCS plugin should now be active and you should be able to start setting up packages and products within WHMCS.

If you’d like to report issues, or provide feedback of any kind, regarding this plugin you can feel free to do so by utilizing the project's GitHub Issues page.

Step #3: Party Time

Congratulations! You’ve just installed and activated Liquid Web’s WHMCS Plugin. You are now equipped with the Cloud, not just any Cloud, Liquid Web’s Cloud.

I suggest you reward yourself somehow, take a break even. Then come back and learn how to create cloud products with Liquid Web’s WHMCS Plugin!