Skinning Eneticas Reseller Client Library – Part 1

This is a project I’m undertaking for my web design business. The reseller client code from Enetica incorporates an interface with their RWI with a suite of Perl scripts based on OpenSRS. The HTML is a bit messy and non-standards compliant, so I’m tidying it up to incorporate XHTML and a stylesheet.

There are three sets of scripts in the suite that I intend to use – the domain registration, the domain management, and the hosting order.

PART ONE: Domain registration templates

asnau_elig bad_company_name bad_trademark_name base billing billing_contact bulk_renew comau_claim comau_elig delitem details error extras generic_order

get_renewal_payment get_transfer_details lookupresults main_menu more_details orgau_elig orgasnau_claim prerenew renew_transfer results tech_contact verify_order verify_renew

27 template files referenced in the register.cgi script. That’s an improvement on the 60 odd template files that are still included in the download. At one stage they seem to have had domain registration and domain manage in one script, but they have now split it into two without tidying up the obsolete template files. At least, that’s what I think has happened. I wont go deleting any of the template files just yet.

One of the problems I’ve encountered in the register.cgi script is a couple of issues with the ‘domain extras’ – url forwarding, email forwarding, email forwarding with spam/virus filtering and dns hosting. Firstly the programming doesn’t provide for anything but free url forwarding, so it is a problem if you intend to charge for the service. Secondly the script allows a multiple number of domains to be registered, but doesn’t tally all the extras per domain correctly. Thirdly there is no notification to reseller of domain extras ordered other than dns hosting.

UPDATE: To address the issues I removed the multiple domain ordering options (although I left the shopping cart functionality there just in case). In the config I created a value for the url forwarding cost and replaced the email forwarding array with a single value (since WWD is only offering one email forwarding package, it removed a few complications). I changed the extras template to offer these as checkbox rather than radio options. The code is not elegant but it seems to be working the way I want now, and the new skin looks good.

I notice that the extras options do not write to Enetica’s ordering system, you must still create this manually in the RWI – but at least the options show up on the email notifications now. I estimate spending about 20 hours on this, hopefully my next step of re-skinning the domain management interface will be easier.