Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Hosting Software and Control Panels : question for PerlBill users

[DarkSky WS]

Hi,

Currently PerlBill allows you to add extra signup fields on the signup form, but you are limited to a "Yes/No" radio button question or a text edit field type question.

As part of our hosting services we offer customers to choose between PLESK or cPanel. I would like to be able to have a radio button field on the PerlBill signup form with these two choices.

Does anyone know of a way to customize PerlBill to allow this?

Thanks,

Rob

[aah-jim]

Unless you decide to edit the perlbill templates which would require editing the database aswell if you wanted to add the chosen option to the order database record, the easiest way of doing it would be to have the text field and ask the user if they are signing up for Plesk or cPanel,
Thanks

[DarkSky WS]

yeah - that's what I thought.

[igy]

Well, It is possible I do it all the time whenever there is an update and it is pretty easy to do stuff in the cgi.

Not sure if I am allowed to show you this if not please let me know and i will remove the link but go to

www.cpskins.com/billing I added a bunch of custom fields and really changed the way it works. I even added a coupon system and few more cool things.

But its not hard to do. There are 4 main files i think 2 in the under the includes folder and 2 under the admin folder.

[DarkSky WS]

wow - that's all Perlbill? nice customization. I'd like to see how you did that.

[igy]

I also integrated the download system to use the same l/p as perlbill and in the admin section it shows me all the services I offer and i just attach a file to it so when they order I just approve and everything is complete

[DarkSky WS]

That's pretty cool. All I want to do is start by adding the radio button choice I referred to above.

That - and link the product IDs with the IDs in 2checkout to make the payment process a little more seemless.

[igy]

well adding the radio buttons would take you adding one field to a mysql table and then you have to edit 4 .cgi files and a few .tpl files. The only problem is everytime an update comes out to perlbill you have to do them again if you do the update.

[igy]

With 2checkout I don't know why you want to do that. Perlbill makes all the IDs and does all that.

[DarkSky WS]

For automatic monthly recurring billing I have to set up that product in 2checkout with a specific ID. PerlBill then needs to pass that product ID to 2checkout. Doesn't it? All perlbill does for me at the moment is forward the customer to 2checkout for payment processing. It all works, I am just trying to streamline it.

Rob

[igy]

Yeah your right sorry I do onetime payments right now. Hosting companies haven't started yet. So I am sure I will be getting into the same stuff.

[DarkSky WS]

ok - so what's the quick and dirty way to stick that extra radio button in there?

[igy]

Well I hope you know a little cgi and have played around with perlbill and the tpls and understand all that stuff. I have been doing it for well over 8months now so I know it pretty good but here is the basics. Just make sure you have a backup of these files.
Add the field to mysql table users

you need to modify enough in these 2 files so you can add the field to the register form
functions.cgi
register.cgi

under /includes/admin
billing_subs.cgi - I think if i remember right
customers_subs.cgi - most important

Then a few tpls so that you can view in in the billing system. Just look at the url you will see like validate_user so you modify validate_user.tpl pretty much

Sorry for keeping it really basic but it will take a long time to really go into detail. But what you do is add the field in Users table and where ever you added it lets say after company. Search in those files i posted for company and after pretty much copy what is there for company and change company to your field.

Well thats the basics

[DarkSky WS]

makes sense.. thanks