cPanel

The BaseKit cPanel plugin allows hosting companies to offer BaseKit website builder to their customers via cPanel. The plugin makes it easy to bundle BaseKit with hosting plans, and takes care of all the technical aspects of integration. This eliminates the need for development work and reduces the time to market.

How it works

The BaseKit cPanel plugin provides a simple UI to your users that will enable them to easily activate a BaseKit account and create and manage one or more websites.

The cPanel plugin talks to a BaseKit environment via the API. You configure the plugin by providing the API URL and credentials of the environment on which your users’ sites will be created and edited.

Commercial model

The BaseKit cPanel plugin does not include any billing functionality. It is intended that a BaseKit website will be bundled with a paid hosting package represented by a cPanel plan. This user may be billed via WHMCS or any other similar platform, but this sits outside the scope of this plugin.

The cPanel plugin is designed to provision BaseKit packages that correspond to cPanel plans; when a cPanel user activates BaseKit, the package provisioned will mirror the cPanel plan.

• XYZ Hosting Company offers three hosting plans to their users that are represented by cPanel plans named Bronze, Silver and Gold.
• BaseKit packages named Bronze, Silver and Gold are created to mirror the cPanel plans.
• When a user activates BaseKit, the package provisioned will mirror the cPanel plan:
  • If a user on the Bronze cPanel plan activates BaseKit, the cPanel plugin will provision a Bronze BaseKit package.
  • If a user on the Silver cPanel plan activates BaseKit, the cPanel plugin will provision a Silver BaseKit package.
  • If a user on the Gold cPanel plan activates BaseKit, the cPanel plugin will provision a Gold BaseKit package.

Features

cPanel Account Activation

Within a users cPanel portal, opening the Basekit plugin for the first time will present the user with an Activate button.

By clicking the Activate button, a new BaseKit user and site is provisioned. A default domain is mapped to the site with the following format:

[cPanel username]-[timestamp].[brand domain]

For example, for cPanel username basekit and brand domain brand-domain.com the default domain would be basekit-201501051351.brand-domain.com.

Sites list

If a user has already activated, they will see a list of their BaseKit sites. Next to each site there are three options:

• Log in: log in and redirect the user to the BaseKit website editor
• Manage: redirect the user to the site management page which offers several functions (see below)
• Delete: permanently delete the BaseKit site

Manage sites

There are two major functions that can be performed here:

Domain Mapping

Users can point any of their cPanel-managed domains to a BaseKit site with a single click. The domain’s DNS records are automatically created and the domain should be immediately ready to be used.

Site Status

If the user has already published their BaseKit site then they can toggle it online and offline by clicking the button.

Installation

To install the Basekit plugin on a WHM server, download the latest version, copy it to the server, and then follow these steps:

Installation Steps:

mkdir ~/basekit-cpanel-plugin
cd ~/basekit-cpanel-plugin
unzip -o -q path/to/basekit-cpanel-plugin-latest.zip
chmod +x install.sh
./install.sh
service cpanel restart

Upgrading from previous versions
To upgrade your old plugin, download the latest version and follow the steps above.

Configuration

With the plugin installed and accessible via WHM, it now needs to be configured to link to your BaseKit environment.

Setup API Credentials

In WHM, within the left-hand sidebar, goto Plugins -> BaseKit Configuration or search for ‘Basekit’ then open BaseKit Configuration. Complete the configuration details within the presented form. This will include your API and brand details, if you don’t know what these are please contact partners@basekit.com.

Upgrade Note
When upgrading the plugin to V2 onwards, the plugin now uses a WHM API Access Key. You will need to generate a new key to complete configuration, if you are unsure how to create one, follow these steps: Generating cPanel API Key.

In certain cases, you may need to manage many instances of cPanel. In this case a single API key can be generated and stored within the following file: /var/cpanel/basekit/basekit_tokenapi

Package Mapping

Once the plugin has been configured, the plugin should talk with the Basekit API. You can now create one-to-one mappings between Basekit subscription packages including multiple addons and WHM packages.

New Account Plan Assignment

Creating a new account in WHM, you can select the plan/package to be assigned to the new account. Once created cPanel will use the Basekit API to prevision a new account holder and site and assign it a default domain. The account holder will be assigned the subscription package and addons that have been mapped for the selected plan.

Account Plan Management

Changes to the assigned plan for an existing WHM account, will update the account holder in Basekit. The mapped subscription package and addons for the selected package will be used.

Downgrading Account

A user account can be de-activated / downgraded from within cPanel, by completing this action, the Basekti account holders packages and addons will be removed. The brands default package will then be assigned.

Uninstallation

In the event you need to uninstall the plugin, you can do so by following these steps:

cd ~/basekit-cpanel-plugin
chmod +x uninstall.sh
./uninstall.sh
service cpanel restart