8.5 Release Notes

This WHMCS version reached End-of-Life status on May 31st, 2023.

Version History

Latest UpdateVersionRelease Type
11-30-20228.5.2General Availability (Security)
06-15-20228.5.1General Availability (Maintenance)
06-09-20228.5.0General Availability
05-13-20228.5.0Release Candidate
04-20-20228.5.0Beta

Upgrade Requirements

Before upgrading through this WHMCS version, make certain that your system meets the following requirements:

DependencyMinimum RequirementRecommended
ionCube® LoaderionCube Loader 10.2.0ionCube Loader 10.4.3
MySQL®MySQL 5.2MySQL 8.0
PHPPHP 7.2PHP 7.4

New Features

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.

Learn more…

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.

Learn more…

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.

Learn more…

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.

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.

Learn more…

Updates and Improvements

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, and, in the WHMCS 8.5.0 GA 1 release, we added a list of recently-visited features to the sidebar menu.

Learn more…

Updates to iDeal via Mollie Module

We have updated the iDEAL via Mollie module to use the new Mollie API.

Because Mollie has deprecated their prior XML API, in WHMCS 8.4 and earlier this module will cease to function.

Deprecations

BuycPanel

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.

SiteLock VPN

SiteLock® discontinued its support for SiteLock VPN in May 2022. As a result, new purchases and renewals of SiteLock VPN are no longer possible.

This will not currently affect clients’ currently-active SiteLock VPN purchases, but renewals will not be available in the future.

Removals

GMO Internet

We have removed the GMO Internet module.

For Developers

Custom Actions

In the WHMCS 8.5.0 RC 1 release and later, 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.

Due to these changes, you may need to update custom hooks that use menu item methods (for example, the getChild() and removeChild() methods) and the menu item names for existing SSO buttons may have changed. For example, the Log In to cPanel menu item in WHMCS 8.4 and earlier is now the cpanel menu item.

Learn more…

Custom Actions in Sidebar Menus

In the WHMCS 8.5.0 GA 1 release and later, custom actions can appear in Client Area sidebar menus in addition to Home Page panels.

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…

Deleted ClientDelete Hook

We have deprecated the ClientDelete hook and recommend using the PreDeleteClient hook instead.

Template Changes

For a list of changed files and a graphical view of the exact changes, see the GitHub® repositories below:

Last modified: June 14, 2024