A bunch of WHM questions from a newbie

[rbro]

My hosting company has recently acquired our first cpanel/WHM server and I am trying to recreate some of the functionality we currently offer our customers and resellers. We were previously using Viaverio and had designed our own control panels. We have since outgrown them and no longer have our developer available to update our control panels and have stumbled across the WHM/Cpanel solution. If one or more of you knowledgeable folks could answer these questions, I'd appreciate it:

1. We currently offer our resellers a chunk of disk space and the ability to add &unlimited domains& within this chunk of space. Is this functionality available &out of the box& with WHM/Cpanel?

2. Do resold accounts all point to a reseller ip, or just the shared ip for the whole machine? In other words is there way to give each reseller an ip to which he can point all of his name based domains?

3. Can the WHM interface be modified? How? Are there any current skins available for it?

4. Are there any &order forms& available that will create accounts or pre-defined packages as well as bill the credit card using a processor like Authorizenet?

5. Any order forms available that a reseller could use?

6. Is there any way for a reseller to view disk space and bandwidth used on a per account basis?


That's all I can think of for now..I'm sure I'll have more questions, Thanks in advance for your answers....

Rich

 

[Brian Farkas]

Hi Rich,

1. We currently offer our resellers a chunk of disk space and the ability to add &unlimited domains& within this chunk of space. Is this functionality available &out of the box& with WHM/Cpanel?

*** No, this functionality is not possible &out of the box& with cpanel. Some hosts, like MCHOST, have implemented it through custom scripting. ***

2. Do resold accounts all point to a reseller ip, or just the shared ip for the whole machine? In other words is there way to give each reseller an ip to which he can point all of his name based domains?

*** Resold accounts point to the shared IP for the entire machine. You probably _could_ set the resold accounts up on one IP, but this would involve setting them up as normal first and manually changing the IP for each of them... probably NOT something you want to do. ***

3. Can the WHM interface be modified? How? Are there any current skins available for it?

*** I believe this is possible, but do not know the specifics about this as of yet... I think it's a pretty new feature. ***

4. Are there any &order forms& available that will create accounts or pre-defined packages as well as bill the credit card using a processor like Authorizenet?

*** There are a few billing systems like billadmin.com, webhostingbilling.com, and ubersmith by voxel.net. I _believe_ these integrate with cpanel, but I'm only positive about billadmin. ***

5. Any order forms available that a reseller could use?

*** The best way for resellers to do it would be to receive the order via email, and then set it up through their own version of WHM that they receive. I believe there might be a signup script available from nixt.org, but I'm not sure if this works for resellers or not.***

6. Is there any way for a reseller to view disk space and bandwidth used on a per account basis?

*** Yes, simply turn on &View Account Bandwidth Usage& for bandwidth usage. For viewing quotas, &List accounts& will work fine. These are all options on the edit resellers menu. ***

Good luck!

Brian Farkas

 

[rbro]

1. We currently offer our resellers a chunk of disk space and the ability to add &unlimited domains& within this chunk of space. Is this functionality available &out of the box& with WHM/Cpanel?

*** No, this functionality is not possible &out of the box& with cpanel. Some hosts, like MCHOST, have implemented it through custom scripting. ***


What part is not functional? I can create resellers and give them a quota right? I can choose to not limit them to a specific number of accounts, right? So what am I missing? What part of this does not work &out of the box&, or in other words, what would need to be custom scripted?

 

[Brian Farkas]

Hi,
The way WHM is setup, you can predefine accounts -- you can limit the number of ACCOUNTS they can create, but you can't subdivide a specific amount of space/resources. The way most cpanel hosts have it setup is to offer their plans at a discount to resellers. Hopefully this helps to clarify.

 

[rbro]

I am still confused. I can create a reseller quota, right? So let's say I give Joe Reseller 1 GB of space. Then can't I just have him create unlimited accounts, knowing that he's limited to that 1 GB?

 

[Brian Farkas]

No-
You can define different accounts in WHM... for example, you can create packages with 200 MB space, 300 MB space, and 400 MB space. The reseller can then sell these PACKAGES.. so if you wanted to give him 10 100 MB packages, I guess you could do that... but he wouldn't be able to divide up his space however he wanted to.

You don't create a &reseller quota&. His account is completely independent of the other accounts. Instead, you simply define the number of packages he can resell. I hope this makes sense, if it doesn't perhaps someone else can explain it better.

 

[rbro]

I think I understand. Our resellers all get a reseller quota which they can subdivide, we have no interest in having our resellers sell our packages. I guess I'll need to seek some custom development in order to get this thing to work the way we need it to. Any pointers to someone who can do this kind of work?