As was hinted in the blog entry last week, IP.Nexus 1.2 shall bring support for selling hosting packages.
Right away I'd like to mention that this at the moment will work with any server using cPanel and WHM - we will of course gauge interest for other control panels for future versions.
Hosting Packages
You set up hosting packages just like regular products and advertisement packages. There is a contextual settings tab which displays hosting-specific settings, and these packages then show up in the store:
Each package is assigned what we call a "Server Queue" - this is a collection of servers which the account may be created on.
So for example, you could have your "advanced" packages only use higher-powered servers. Servers can be part of multiple queues.
When the account is created, the server in the queue which has the least accounts is chosen to create the account on.
Purchasing a Hosting Package
When purchasing, users will be asked if they want to choose their own domain or use a subdomain of one of your domains. You can of course make only one of these options available.
If the customer chooses their own domain, they'll be shown your nameservers, and if they choose a subdomain, they'll be shown a list of options - both of these you can set up in the Admin CP.
Client Area Management
Customers can view their account information in the client area along with all other purchases:
From here they can also launch the control panel, FTP and change their password.
You can also configure options to allow users to purchase additional bandwidth for that billing cycle, if their bandwidth limit is reached.
Admin CP Management
The purchase page in the Admin CP shows the same information that is available in the client area, along with the control panel and FTP buttons:
Clicking the edit button will allow the administrator to edit specific allowances on the account, without the need to log into WHM:
The administrator of course, does not need to manually suspend and terminate accounts. If the customer does not renew their account, it will be suspended, and, after a certain number of days (configureable in the Admin CP), terminated.
Of course, using the normal package cancel function allows administrators to manually suspend accounts.
Server Management
In the Admin CP, you can view all of your servers along with the current load. From this page you can also reboot a server.
Clicking on a server will show you a list of accounts on that server. You will also see an overview of how much diskspace is in use and how much is allocated (so you can see if you're overselling). Nexus will also check all the accounts in it's local database against the server to check for any discrepancies:
Discrepancies can include an account not on the server but in the database (and vice versa), domain names not matching and account is suspended on the server but active in the database (and vice versa):
In addition to auditing each server, there is an "Audit All Servers" button which will check all servers for discrepancies.
We're sure that there will be many questions and comments about this new functionality - if there's anything you'd like to see not mentioned here, please post in our feedback forum.
By Mark