As many of our users will already be aware, we’ve always had a real strong focus in WHMCS on making things easy to customise and extend, to allow companies like yourself to take the core WHMCS system, and build upon that to create all kinds of integrated automation solutions specifically tailored to your business.

And building on that, WHMCS 5 includes some exciting new developer related functionality that we hope will benefit both developers and users alike.

Over recent years, our developer community has gone from strength to strength, and with that so too has the number of addons and customisations available for WHMCS. So in V5, we wanted to find a way to bring that more to the fore – and hence the integrated Addons Directory was born. Accessed via the existing Addons tab, what this does is gives users an easier and more direct route to browse & search the available addons for WHMCS, and developers a way of getting their contributions more exposure by bringing them directly to all our users right from within their own admin control panel. Think of it like our very own App Store :)

But that’s just the start, here’s the real good stuff:


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Admin Homepage Widgets – The V5 admin homepage now consists of widgets - movable blocks, with access permissions defined per admin role so admins only see the items that apply to them, and that allows each admin user of WHMCS to customise and tailor the homepage exactly to their needs. But that's not all, any addon module, provisioning module or registrar module in WHMCS can register and define additional widgets to the system.
Client Area Addon Modules Output – Another addition to addon modules in V5 is that you can now generate client area output from them also. This means that an addon module is no longer restricted to just admin side pages and features, but can now be used to define additional client area content & pages, in much the same way as a server/provisioning module can do already.
New Hook Points – V5 includes numerous additional hook points, but 2 key ones are new hooks that allow you to create client area loginshare modules, which you can use to be able to authenticate customers against an existing database, and automatically create new profiles in WHMCS when needed, and that will accept HTML returns for output in the and sections of the WHMCS client area, allowing hooks to generate and return output such as javascript, popups, etc… without the need to edit any templates.
Hooks Support in Provisioning & Registrar Modules – Server & Registrar modules can now also make use of the hooks system in WHMCS, allowing them to go much further than ever before. Based on the same popular hooks integration method that addon modules use, a hooks file can now exist in all 3 module types in order to tie into any of the available hook points throughout WHMCS.
Language File Overrides – This one won’t just benefit developers, but if your addons or customisations require defining additional language file lines, or editing existing ones, language override files will now allow you to keep these customisations separate from the core language files, simplifying upgrading and ensuring that your customisations won’t be overwritten.
New API Functions – As is normal in every release we do, we’ve also added a number of additional API functions based on user requests in recent months, and expanded the options in some existing ones to give greater flexibility and functionality that can be utilised by both the local and external API systems.[/INDENT]


If you’re not a developer then some of the above might have you scratching your heads, but in simple terms we’re giving developers the tools to be able to create even better and more integrated solutions that will extend and enhance what WHMCS can do for you. And not just third party developers, we also have a growing number of official addons, for the things that don't necessarily apply to everyone and warrant being in the core system @ www.whmcs.com/go/20/officialaddons

If you’re a developer and would like to get your hands on some of these features early so that you can take advantage of them in time for the launch, register your interest for the beta today @ www.whmcs.com/go/19/betatesting