Knowledgebase

The WHMCS Link Compliance Module is used to monitor hosting services that must display a promotional link, banner, or branding reference back to your business website.

It identifies hosting services that are in scope, checks their homepages on a schedule, stores evidence, and helps staff track issues through incidents and an internal action queue. In version 1, it does not automatically suspend clients.

Part A: First-Time Setup

1. Activate the Addon

1. Go to System Settings > Addon Modules.
2. Find WHMCS Link Compliance Module.
3. Click Activate, or Upgrade if you are updating an existing installation.

2. Enter and Validate Your Licence

1. In the Addon Modules list, click Configure for the module.
2. Enter your License Key.
3. Click Check License.
4. Confirm that the licence status changes to Active.

Important: The licence is validated from the Addon Modules configuration screen, not from inside the module tabs.

3. Allow Staff Access

1. Go to System Settings > Staff Management > Admin Roles.
2. Edit the role(s) that should have access to the module.
3. Enable permission for WHMCS Link Compliance Module.
4. Save your changes.

Part B: Configure Module Behaviour

Open Addons > WHMCS Link Compliance Module, then go to the Settings tab. Work through the settings from top to bottom, then save your changes.

Cron and Scheduling

These settings control how often the module runs and how many services are checked at a time.

• Enable daily cron processing – Turn this on to allow automatic scheduled checks.
• Batch size – Set how many services are checked in each daily run. A common starting point is 10.
• Minimum days between automatic checks per service – Set how long the module should wait before checking the same service again. A common starting point is 7 days.
• Dry run – Useful for testing. Checks are recorded, but tickets and workflow actions are not triggered.

Scope

These settings determine which hosting services the module should monitor.

• Specify the product IDs or product group IDs that should be included.
• You can optionally restrict checks to certain server IDs.
• You can also require a custom field on the product, such as Requires Community Link = Yes.

Tip: At least one of your scope methods should match the plans that require your promotional link or banner.

DNS and Platform Validation

These settings help the module decide whether a website is still hosted with you or whether its DNS is unclear.

• Enter your allowed server IP addresses.
• Optionally add your nameservers.
• This helps the module separate:
  • websites definitely hosted with you,
  • uncertain or CDN/proxied websites,
  • and websites no longer pointing to your hosting.

Important: Leave Treat off-platform DNS as link non-compliance turned off unless you fully understand the risk of false positives, especially for sites using Cloudflare or other proxies.

Link Detection

These settings control what the module looks for on client websites.

• Approved destination URLs – Add one per line, such as https://yourbrand.com/
• Approved hostnames – For example, yourbrand.com
• Banner image URL substrings – Such as community-hosting-badge
• Text link phrases – For example, Hosted by Your Brand

The module can detect approved text links and linked banners that point to your required destination.

Crawl and HTTP Settings

These settings control how the module fetches websites.

• Homepage only is the recommended default.
• Max extra same-host pages should usually remain at 0 unless you need shallow extra checking.
• The hard cap is 3 extra pages.
• Set your timeout, maximum redirects, and User-Agent as needed.
• Enable Platform incident automation if you want internal incidents created for uncertain DNS or HTTP cases.

Note: Platform incidents do not create client tickets by default.

Workflow Thresholds

These settings control what happens after repeated link failures.

• Example:
  • 1 failure = internal review
  • 2 failures = client ticket
  • 3 failures = escalation

Only enable Automatically open client tickets after you have confirmed that your Ticket Department ID is correct and your link-detection rules are accurate.

Tickets and Templates

If you want the module to open support tickets automatically:

• Enter the numeric Ticket Department ID from WHMCS.
• Edit the ticket subject and body templates.
• You can use merge fields such as:
  • {client_name}
  • {domain}
  • {product_name}
  • {required_link_target}
  • {days_to_comply}
  • {comply_by_date}
  • {evidence_summary}

The Internal staff review template is used for internal queue items and staff workflow notes.

Exclusions and Whitelisting

• Excluded domains are never checked.
• Whitelist entries can force domains in scope if needed.

Part C: Import Services and Run Checks

1. Sync Inventory

1. Go to the Tools tab.
2. Click Run sync now.

This reads your WHMCS hosting data and populates the eligible services list based on your scope rules.

2. Confirm the List

1. Open the Eligible services tab.
2. Confirm that the expected domains and services are listed.

3. Test a Site

1. Click Check now on an individual row, or
2. Use Tools > Run batch with a small limit to test several services.

4. Let Cron Run

Once Enable daily cron processing is enabled and your WHMCS daily automation runs, the module will process a fair batch of services each day, subject to licence status and locking.

Part D: Daily Use

• Dashboard – Overview counts and recent audit runs
• Non-compliant – Services currently needing attention
• Check results – Latest checks with category, compliance code, and platform details
• Incidents – Open issues, repeated failures, manual actions, and ticket tools
• Action queue – Internal follow-up tasks for staff
• Logs – Audit runs, action history, and system activity

Important Limitations

• The module focuses mainly on the homepage, with only limited optional extra-page checking.
• Links that appear only after heavy JavaScript may not be detected automatically.
• Unreachable or uncertain hosting is not the same as a true link breach unless you deliberately change that behaviour.
• Current version does not auto-suspend clients.