Multiple Hosting Accounts made easy for Domains

One of the things Tim has been working on lately that has me excited is deeper API integration between WordPress and cPanel. This Spring we migrated and are now hosting Princeton’s cPanel offerings. Additionally, Tim has been working on some custom integrations for their existing setup. They have 3 distinct cPanel server instances that provided their community members with a personal account, department account, and/or dev account.

We use WHMCS (the client management software for cPanel servers) to automate account creation which is something Princeton was not using previously. So rather than using a separate WHMCS instance for each service, Tim wanted to run them all through one WHMCS instance. So when you logged into WHMCS the system would be able to determine what kind of account you have (department, dev, and/or personal) and which type you do not, allowing you to sign-up for more than one flavor. For example, in the screenshot above I can login to my Dev account, or sign-up for a personal or departmental account. What’s more, when you are in a particular cPanel account, you can switch between accounts/servers seamlessly:

Why this might matter is one of the features we get asked for a lot is how folks using domains can get more than one cPanel account. Up and until now we had to use the Reseller workaround, which is a fairly onerous manual setup, and has been recently causing some issues. Thanks to Tim’s awesomeness, we can now allow Domain admins at the various schools to create additional accounts without any extra work in cPanel. Essentially, Tim is using the API calls to WHMCS and cPanel to create the new account as well as the reseller dropdown within the account. This is very cool because hopefully we should soon be able to make this part of the basic Domain’s setup.

Since we have been able to build capacity at Reclaim there’s been a bit more time for us to turn to other concerns like infrastructure updating and development. The intensity that was 2016/2017 was a good thing, but there is a challenge to growth. All work and no play makes Reclaim a dull company. Luckily we have hired extremely well, and that’s starting to pay off just when we need it most. Tim can return to some of the experimental development work; Lauren can start to learn the intricacies of DoOO setups; Meredith can continue mastering the complexities of support; and I can blog, dammit 😉