New this week: Register.be domain module, DNS Helper tool for DirectAdmin module, improvements for User API plugin, new Client billing contact setting and more! Read on to explore all new features!

Register.be domain module

Register.be is an accredited ICANN registrar offering domain name registration, web hosting and email services. With this HostBill integration you can effortlessly resell Register.be domain names and benefit from HostBill domain automation features: automated registration, transfer and renewal, automated domain synchronization, which allows your staff members to update HostBill domain records with registry details, ie. to make sure that domain renewal/expiration dates are in sync and automated import of the existing domains from registry to HostBill. In client area, customers can manage contact details related to domains they have registered and update nameservers the domain is pointing to.

More about domain automation in HostBill can be found in this blog post.

DirectAdmin DNS Helper

At HostBill we’ve already launched DNS Helpers for cPanel and Plesk modules and now it’s time for DirectAdmin integration!

DirectAdmin DNS Helper is an extension shipped with DirectAdmin module to help you connect your DirectAdmin installations with one of the HostBill-supported DNS services: Power DNS, Power DNS Slave Zones, OnApp DNS, cPanel DNS or any other DNS that HostBill supports.

The instructions on how to install and configure the connection to HostBill can be found in module’s documentation. For the module to work, you need to setup DNS templates to use your actual master nameserver (i.e. DirectAdmin, Power DNS, cPanel DNS) in your DirectAdmin installations. Once the plugin is pointed to your HostBill install, any time a new zone is created / updated / deleted in DirectAdmin, the extension will notify HostBill about it. Then HostBill will decide what to do next. It can either push this zone to real master nameserver or notify secondary nameserver to create/update slave zone and after exporting such zone, HostBill can assign it to the related customer.

In a result slave DNS (any supported by HostBill) will be notified automatically about new zones in DirectAdmin or DirectAdmin DNS will not be used to handle DNS queries, but as a source of data for actual DNS server that handles requests. With this approach you can benefit from flexible & automated DNS templates built into DirectAdmin on any central DNS server you wish to use with it.

Client billing contact 

New feature in client management allows to add client billing contact – details that will be used for payments. By default billing contact is the client account holder, but from now on it can be changed. As you can see, we’ve also improved admin area client profile view:

User API improvements

User API module for HostBill lets your customer gain access to HTTP REST API to enable integrations with third party apps. API is self-documenting, so your clients will have nice, comprehensive documentation of all methods that your API offers. Module enables a multitude of different API calls, giving the end user multiple possibilities.

In today’s release we’ve added a couple of improvements to the plugin. So what’s new? First of all, we’ve added the possibility to choose authorization method: through basic http auth (default) or based on JWT (JSON Web Token). JSON Web Tokens are an open and standard way for you to represent your user’s identity securely during a two-party interaction. That is to say, when two systems exchange data you can use a JSON Web Token to identify your user without having to send private credentials on every request.

We’ve also added available methods call for services to check what functionalities provides given service. New Sign up call enables registration. We’ve introduced Rate limited calls – now admins have the ability to turn on rate limit (limited availability for one IP address) for some of the calls such us signup, register, reset password etc.