We know that Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) are important to you and your customers. We're improving IDN support in WHMCS 8.0 to allow automated provisioning with selected registrars, in addition to our existing support for sales of IDNs.
What's an IDN? If a domain name includes a language-specific script, like Hebrew, Arabic, or Chinese, or some types of Latin characters, it's probably an IDN. Normally, domain names are limited to ASCII characters, but some applications, like WHMCS, can work with specialized technology to allow for a wide range of additional characters.

IDNs are important for your customers because they let you exactly match the names of people and businesses, or match certain words in a given language. Maybe a website devoted to medieval science would want to use "&aether" in its name. Without IDN technology, the "&aether" would be impossible, but with it, they're up and running with no extra delays.

When you include IDNs in your product offerings, you're opening yourself up to a diverse and global customer base.
Beginning in version 8.0, we supports automatic provisioning of IDN domains with eNom, ResellerClub, and OpenSRS. For other registrars, you can process registrations and transfers manually or create a custom module. We also now support IDN for TLD in addition to the existing support for SLD, and support transfers for all supported IDNs.

IDNs, like other domain names, display in UTF-8 throughout WHMCS, as well as in Punycode in the Admin Area. You just need to enable IDN domains, if you haven't already, in Configuration > System Settings > General Settings > Domains.

During checkout for an IDN domain, WHMCS will ask for a language, regardless of whether it's registered in the Client or Admin Areas. You can then change the language at any time until domain registration is complete. There's also improved validation on entered IDN domains.

If you want to use IDN with another registrar, you'll need to use a custom module. We've updated the RegisterDomain function to help with this, and a custom registrar module for IDN support won't require any new functions.

If you want to use IDN with another registrar, you'll need to use a custom module. We've updated our API with new IDN-specific parameters to help with this. For more about creating custom domain registrar modules, including the new parameters, see our Developer Documentation.
Ready to start taking advantage of IDN support? The first step is upgrading to WHMCS 8.0. You can download the release candidate here.