Question

How to setup a hosting site with WHMCS and Plesk.

Posted on August 3, 2017
CentOS DigitalOcean Applications
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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Aron Jay • August 6, 2017

Accepted Answer

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 Only and 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

https://documentation.cpanel.net/display/ALD/cPanel+DNSONLY

Alternatively, you can just provide your clients the server IP address and instruct them to add A record with that IP on their own DNS providers like CloudFlare or the ones provided by the domain registrar.

Lukas Hertig • December 31, 2018

Hello,

Plesk is now available as a one-click app on DigitalOcean. Just click on “create droplet” and then click “one-click applications” -> Plesk on Ubuntu 18.x . It is a free but full version of Plesk with certain limitations. Details can be found on https://www.plesk.com/upgrade .

Regarding WHMCS, there is a basic integration as mentioned above. And an advanced integration by www.modulesgarden.com .

Regarding DNS, I partially agree with the above answers. Either do it externally or have 2 droplets running as DNS servers and integrate them (Plesk has a slave DNS Extension to manage that). Plus that Plesk has an extension (free) to integrate with your DO DNS account. So you can sync all your domains directly with the DO DNS from Plesk.

thanks Lukas

segorov • April 23, 2018

This is public available on official WHMCS site https://docs.whmcs.com/Plesk