Hi,

I NEED HELP!!!

I am in the process of creating a new web hosting company, and I need some more information about automated credit-card billing and account set-up. I have seen dozens of posts about online payment gateways, such as ibill, revecom, and worldpay. What I want is a payment gateway that is fully transparent to the user, so when they click the sign-up or order button, it redirects them to a page where they enter in their credit-card information. Then, after they click submit, it charges their credit card automatically using the payment system, and then processes a script on my server that sets up their account. Is this possible to do without much up-front costs?

Also, I have another small, quick question. If a client of mine signs up for a 50MB account, how can I limit in size the directory that the client uses to the ordered 50MB? Is there also a way to make it so that once the client's directory on my server gets above 50MB, it just automatically notifies them and charges them for it instead of limiting the space?

Any help of any kind for these two issues is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
-Brent

Well this might be better off in the Resellers and Start Ups Forum, but...

Yes, all this is possible, but it needs to be software driven (meaning scripts on the server(s) ).

Companies like Alabanza.com offer exactly what you are looking for (pretty much out of the box, so to speak). Do a search for Alabanza and you should find some things (such as pricing which is absent from the Alabanza site).

Other than that, you seem to have an idea of what this requires. I am not sure there are any other complete payment to account set up systems out there. I don't know much about spera or ensim and if they can exactly do what you want. Cpanel servers are close to this, but I don't think entirely fluid quite yet.

Maybe someone can shed light on exactly what point Cpanel, or Billadmin or ??? is at with total automation?

Well, I can tell you that the Smart Hosting Controller from Smarthostingtools.com does that. Automatic billing.

Arnoud



To admin: If this post is not allowed, just delete it.

Hi,

I know that all of this needs to be software driven, but I am not going to invest into third-party control panel; I am writing my own. What I want to know how to do is accept credit cards on my web site, and once the credit card charging is complete, it automatically processes my account set-up scripts that I have written. If I sign up for revecom, ibill, worldpay, or the like, how can I have it so that after processing the customers credit card, it automatically calls my set-up script? How do mosts hosts do it? Do most hosts check their email to see new set-ups and manually set them up? Is it possible to have worldpay and others to automatically call a set-up script?

Thanks.
-Brent

Originally posted by Brent
Hi,

I know that all of this needs to be software driven, but I am not going to invest into third-party control panel; I am writing my own. What I want to know how to do is accept credit cards on my web site, and once the credit card charging is complete, it automatically processes my account set-up scripts that I have written. If I sign up for revecom, ibill, worldpay, or the like, how can I have it so that after processing the customers credit card, it automatically calls my set-up script? How do mosts hosts do it? Do most hosts check their email to see new set-ups and manually set them up? Is it possible to have worldpay and others to automatically call a set-up script?

Thanks.
-Brent

Well, writing a script to set up any valid accounts automatically is easy enough to do. The same goes for having it set up their account a specific way, depending on what plans and features that they select.

The issue for automatic set up with billing might seem a hassle to integrate, but it's likely not. Basically, have the people sign up and have all that information written to a session file. Once the information has been verified at least and there's no problems and nothing missing. Then it's a valid account request, it displays a page saying that they've input the valid information for their hosting plan, and that they now need to fill out the CC order form or whatever. You can simply to this;

When they fill out the order form, it often takes them to a page on some remote CC billing site or your own scripts. So, what you can do, is (for example in Perl) do an LWP call to the secure server page on the CC order server, which will then grab that page that it output and if their information is correct and valid, it executes a sub routine or function, that will effectively set up that session file's account information... which will do some checking to ensure other things, of course and make sure there's no problems.

So, basically, it's two things done. However, you can do it in one step; and that's to have the CC information on the same form they fill out for hosting, use the same basic structure of the implementation and have it either accept the information or tell them to return to the previous page and ensure the information is correct for the account sign up, or the CC order stuff. This way, it can just output a simple page saying there's an error or saying "Your account has been set up, you'll be receiving an email soon with your information"... or something similar. All transparent and simple. All it takes is some coding.

Originally posted by Tim_Greer


When they fill out the order form, it often takes them to a page on some remote CC billing site or your own scripts. So, what you can do, is (for example in Perl) do an LWP call to the secure server page on the CC order server, which will then grab that page that it output and if their information is correct and valid, it executes a sub routine or function, that will effectively set up that session file's account information... which will do some checking to ensure other things, of course and make sure there's no problems.

I don't exactly understand. What do you mean?!? When the user is redirected to the CC processing page, how does it work so when they finish entering in the credit card information, it calls the session file?

You also mentioned using my own CC processing script rather than a third party. How would that work?

Thanks.
-Brent

Originally posted by Brent
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Tim_Greer


When they fill out the order form, it often takes them to a page on some remote CC billing site or your own scripts. So, what you can do, is (for example in Perl) do an LWP call to the secure server page on the CC order server, which will then grab that page that it output and if their information is correct and valid, it executes a sub routine or function, that will effectively set up that session file's account information... which will do some checking to ensure other things, of course and make sure there's no problems.[/B]


I don't exactly understand. What do you mean?!?


The LWP module grabs the whole page and can process it to see that they had a confirmation for their order, which is the resulting page when the CC order information is transparently done. The LWP module will send the information in the header from your secure connection on your end (because that's where they'll actually be posting this information to) and when it's posted to your local script, your local script creates a session file and waits while the script then does the LWP call to the CC order server's secure connection, by passing that information in the headers, as if it was posted from your site. In one request, LWP sends the information and gets a response from the CC order server, which would time out otherwise, and then grabs the HTML template off the resulting page on the CC order server and can filter things, change things, or just check the results for a something that confirms the order was a success on the CC order's server's results.

Once that's done, it let's your local script know things are okay on the other end and to go ahead and run the routine that will take that session file in question and set up the account depending on what's in said file. If the order doesn't go through or is invalid, they can try as many times as you allow them, or until you tell that session file to be deleted if it's over so-old. Of course, not CC information will be stored in the session file (don't do that).


When the user is redirected to the CC processing page, how does it work so when they finish entering in the credit card information, it calls the session file?


As described above, they will not even have to know about any CC processing page, if you have the fields in your hosting order form, along with the hosting information, so it can all be set up at once. This way, they fill out one form properly and submit the data and the result is that they have everything set up and verified and they needn't do anything else at all. The session file is simply called to be set up, as soon as the LWP module confirms a valid result. There's other languages that can do this, or you can write you own program or module. Perl and PHP (and I think Python) have some type of LWP-ish calls already... I know Perl and PHP do.


You also mentioned using my own CC processing script rather than a third party. How would that work?
Thanks.
-Brent [/B]

That's hard to explain, but you basically just have a script that does what I said and sends the information transparently from your SSL connection to the CC server's. it would still have to go through them, but it's all be on your site when it runs. Anyway, I'm sure there's some solutions to have your own script and merchant account somehow, but I've never checked into that.

Originally posted by Brent

If a client of mine signs up for a 50MB account, how can I limit in size the directory that the client uses to the ordered 50MB? Is there also a way to make it so that once the client's directory on my server gets above 50MB, it just automatically notifies them and charges them for it instead of limiting the space?

Any help of any kind for these two issues is greatly appreciated.

Hi,

Does anyone know the answer to my other question?

Thanks.
-Brent

Originally posted by Brent
Originally posted by Brent

If a client of mine signs up for a 50MB account, how can I limit in size the directory that the client uses to the ordered 50MB? Is there also a way to make it so that once the client's directory on my server gets above 50MB, it just automatically notifies them and charges them for it instead of limiting the space?

Any help of any kind for these two issues is greatly appreciated.

Hi,

Does anyone know the answer to my other question?

Thanks.
-Brent

Yes, add disk quota's. You can do hard and soft limits. This way, they have say 50 Megs limit, but have another 5 Megs of grace disk space that will allow their scripts to write logs and add files, etc. without erroring. As for reporting, yes, you can have it alert them and even you, if you want. Just write a script to check the disk usage and compare them to the quota limit... if it's getting close or at or over, it reports accordingly. I'm sure there's tools to do this for you that are likely free.

Originally posted by Tim_Greer


Yes, add disk quota's.

I'm kind of new with this, what are disk quotas? I am going to be wiping the memory of my 4-year-old AMD-K6 233MHz Compaq and loading it with FreeBSD (or is redhat better? I haven't done this yet so info on the best unix/linux flavors would be helpful), apache web server, cgi, php, and a ton of other web hosting software; then I am going to co-locate it (I guess that's what you call it) at my friend's house and hook it up to his DSL connection. How would a disk quota be set (automatically?) in these circumstances?

Originally posted by Tim_Greer

Just write a script to check the disk usage and compare them to the quota limit... if it's getting close or at or over, it reports accordingly. I'm sure there's tools to do this for you that are likely free.

Where would a script like this be available?

Thanks.
-Brent