Question
How to setup a hosting site with WHMCS and Plesk.
- Posted on August 3, 2017
- CentOSDigitalOceanApplications
Asked by Jonathan Lindstrom
I’m going to be honest, I probably am not at all qualified to be doing this, but could really use your help. I’m trying to setup a web hosting service for my new nonprofit to host other nonprofit sites. I’ve installed Plesk and WHMCS and have vanity name servers setup for my domain (mrk4.org). The problem is, if someone signs up for a hosting package and purchases or transfers a domain, I still have to add the domain in the DNS Manager on DigitalOcean. It sounds like I need to setup Branded Nameservers… I can’t make sense of this though. Is there a good guide somewhere for accomplishing this?
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You can run your own DNS server for your hosting, depending on the control panel that you provide. If you are providing access to cPanel then you can spin up two servers to serve as a DNS server. Install
Install
cPanel DNS Onlyand setup Bind and Cluster in your full cPanel server. After configuring the cluster and testing that it works as intended, you can disable the DNS server in your primary machine.Here’s the documentation on how you can do that
Alternatively, you can just provide your clients the server IP address and instruct them to add
Arecord with that IP on their own DNS providers like CloudFlare or the ones provided by the domain registrar.Hi @accountse852cac4061fc4dad9
If you want to control the DNS in Plesk/WHMCS, then you need to run your own DNS server, which I wouldn’t recommend. Otherwise you would need to setup at least two droplets acting as DNS servers.
I would probably recommend that people that signs up keep control of their own domain - since they might want to do other things with their domain, like using it for mail, which I’m guessing you’re not going to provide.
Then you tell them to create
Arecords pointing to your droplet at their DNS provider. That’s how a lot of hosting companies work.By doing that, you let everyone keep control over their own domain at their registrar (or whichever name servers they prefer to use).
This is public available on official WHMCS site https://docs.whmcs.com/Plesk