Version 8.5 Release Notes

Release Information
Version: 8.5
Release Type: Release Candidate
Latest Update: 13th May 2022
Distribution Types: Full and Via Automatic Updater

Version History

8.5.0	Beta 1	20th April 2022
8.5.0	Release Candidate 1	13th May 2022

Download

Download the latest version of WHMCS from https://download.whmcs.com/

Upgrade Process

WHMCS 8.0 and above requires PHP 7.2 or later. WHMCS 8.0 introduces support for PHP 7.4. Earlier versions of WHMCS do not support PHP 7.4.

You will only see the WHMCS 8 updates within the Automatic Updater if you are running on PHP 7.2 or later. If you are running PHP 7.1 or earlier, to update to WHMCS 8 via the Automatic Updater, you will first need to upgrade to PHP 7.2 or PHP 7.3, and then check for updates and perform the update.

Once you are running WHMCS 8, you can upgrade to PHP 7.4.

View Standard Upgrade Steps

Automatic Updating

If you are running WHMCS 7.0 or later, you can use the built-in Automatic Update utility.

Go to Utilities > Update WHMCS to begin the process.

If the update was released recently, you may need to click Check for Updates before the update will be available.

For more information about updating, refer to the Automatic Updater documentation.

Release Notes

cPanel SEO via MarketConnect

You can now offer cPanel SEO, a tool to help clients optimize their website content and reach the top rankings in Google®'s search results. MarketConnect and WHMCS automatically handle provisioning, renewals, and upgrades between two plans.

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Multi-Year SSL Orders with DigiCert via MarketConnect

You can now offer two-year and three-year DigiCert SSL certificate orders through MarketConnect. WHMCS will automatically handle reissuance and reinstallation throughout the length of the order, including automated emails and renewals.

WHMCS installations should not have existing pricing for multi-year certificates. However, if your installation already specifies custom prices for them, the update process may overwrite them.

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Client Area Home Page SSO

Clients can now use single sign-on (SSO) to access their active services directly from the main page of the Client Area Home Page. Due to this addition, it is now possible to create custom Client Area Home Page panels that span both columns of the desktop web browser page layout.

Custom Actions

In the WHMCS 8.5.0 RC 1 release, custom actions are available for use in provisioning modules. The CustomAction object lets developers define items that can perform actions and then redirect the user to a defined URI. Currently, you can use this to define a list of SSO items that will display on the Client Area Home Page.

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Shopping Cart Cross-selling

You can now configure cross-selling to display recommendations when customers add a related item to the shopping cart. You can control recommendation locations, content, and appearance as well as individually configuring the recommendations to associate with each product.

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Metric Billing for Plesk

The Plesk provisioning module now supports usage billing in the Metric Billing tab at Configuration () > System Settings > Products/Services. This functionality allows you to bill clients for the individual resources they use, such as email addresses, disk space, or bandwidth.

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Improved System Settings and Setup Tasks Display

When you view Configuration () > System Settings, you can now view the list of interfaces in several predetermined categories and use sorting to find features fast. We have also improved how the Setup Tasks list displays.

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Hook System Improvements

Developers can now specifically exclude hook files from execution by prefixing their filenames with an underscore character (_).

The hook system now also explicitly disallows use of the index.php file.

Learn More...

Deprecation and Removal Notices

Removed Modules

We have removed the GMO Internet module.

Additionally, the third-party BuycPanel module has been deprecated and will not function in earlier versions of WHMCS. Upgrading to WHMCS 8.5 will remove the module and update any products that used it to use the Auto Release module instead.