Introduction

Welcome to another part of our WHMCS General Settings tutorial. This tutorial will review another tab from the General Settings, namely, the “Domains” tab. In very simple terms, a domain name represents the “name” of a website or what the internet user types in the browser to reach the respective website. You can imagine how important they are for all people on the internet, therefore, it is vital that you perform the configuration in WHMCS properly to guarantee their easy integration into your web hosting services.

Of course, WHMCS has plenty of configuration choices under the General Settings, and we will examine them in the rest of our WHMCS tutorials in the series.

Getting Started

To access the General Settings, please log inside your WHMCS admin area. After you log in, please point your attention to the top right corner. There you will see the wrench icon. Please click on it, and then click on the "System Settings" option from the revealed icons. 

This action will redirect you to the "System Settings" page, where you will see all the available WHMCS settings. 

To access the "General Settings," please click on the "General Settings" content box, which will be the first option under the "All Settings" title.

Domains Tab

To access the "Domains" tab, please click on the "Domains" tab on the right side of the "Orders Tab". It will contain settings relevant to the way WHMCS registers and renews domain names.

Let's explore each setting one by one to understand them better.

• Domain Registration Options - Please use the three tick boxes below to allow clients to either register, transfer or use their own domain and point it to your nameservers.
• Allow clients to register domains with you - Please select this tickbox to allow clients to register domains during the web hosting order process.
• Allow clients to transfer a domain to you - Please select this tickbox to allow clients to migrate domains during the web hosting order process.
• Allow clients to use their own domain - Please select this tickbox to allow clients to use a domain name they purchased from another provider and point it to your nameservers.
• Enable Renewal Orders - Please select this tickbox to allow customers to see domain renewal options in the Client Area. In addition, this option will enable a renewal category in the shopping cart, letting clients renew their domains at any time. If you uncheck it, they may only renew their domains when their invoice is due for renewal.
• Auto Renew on Payment - Please select this checkbox to enable automatic domain name renewal once an invoice corresponding to the given domain name is provisioned.
• Auto Renew Requires Product - Please select this checkbox to only renew the free domain names (that cost $0.00), which are the primary domain names, match the next due date, and are entirely associated with a web hosting account. This option comes in handy when you offer free domains for your customers and may prevent accidental domain renewal. 
• Default Auto Renewal Setting - Please use this tickbox to enable alignment between the domain renewal and your automation settings. You may control this option individually per domain from the "Product/Services" tab on each client's profile.
• Create To-Do List Entries - Please select this option to automatically add an entry inside the "To-Do-Lists" functionality of WHMCS when there is a domain-related error.
• Allow IDN Domains - Please use this tickbox to enable IDN (Internationalized Domain Names) registration.
• Domain Grace and Redemption Fees - Please use this radio button to enable or disable the domain name grace/redemption period fees. You may set extra costs for customers who do not renew their domain names and let these domains enter the grace or redemption periods. You can configure this in the "Domain Pricing" area of WHMCS, which we will review in a separate tutorial.
• Domain Grace and Redemption Fee Billing - Please use this radio button to select the Grace/Redemption fee behavior. The first option will add the fee to an existing renewal invoice, while the second will enable WHMCS to generate a completely new invoice with the added Grace/Redemption fees.
• Default Nameserver/s - Please use these text fields to define the default nameservers that standalone domain name orders will acquire. These are the domain names the customers purchase without a web hosting product. Please use your Registrar's default nameservers for these fields. 
• Use Clients Details - Please use this tickbox to allow customers to add their own contact/billing/technical details to their domain registration details. If this option is ticked off and the below text fields are filled, WHMCS will use them as the contact/billing/technical information for all registered domain names.
• First Name - Please enter the domain owner's First Name.
• Last Name -  Please enter the domain owner's Last Name.
• Company Name - Please enter the domain owner's Company Name.
• Email Address - Please enter the domain owner's email address in this text field.
• Address 1 - Please enter the domain owner's address in this text field.
• Address 2 - Please enter the domain owner's second address in this text field.
• City - Please enter the domain owner's city of inhabitance in this text field.
• State/Region - Please enter the domain owner's state/region in this text field.
• Postcode - Please enter the domain owner's postcode in this text field.
• Country - Please select the domain owner's country using this drop-down menu.
• Phone Number - Please enter the domain owner's phone number in this text field and use the drop-down menu on the left side to select the country code.

Once you have chosen the desired settings on this page, please click on the blue “Save Changes” button located at the bottom of the page. Otherwise, please click the grey “Cancel Changes” button on the right side of it to revert them.

This wraps up all the settings in the WHMCS “Domains” tab. Hopefully, you found our explanations valuable and used some of our suggestions within this tab to improve the way your WHMCS handles domain names.

Conclusion

Please follow our next tutorial in line, which will go through the “Mail” tab. It includes configuration options you can use to set up WHMCS’s mail functionality and adjust it for your needs.