Domain Expired even though still not expired in WHMCS

[KaiSchwarz-cnic]

Hey guys!

I am reaching out to you in this way and in urgency as we discovered a major bug in WHMCS Core that is highly critical. WHMCS itself has a bug regarding its Renewal System.

I guess, you know about the domain life cycle as shown in the image, so

Expiration Date -> Auto-Renew Grace Period (ARGP) -> Redemption Period.

We return null / not supported (we also tried 0 / 0d yesterday as potential fix on our end, but not helping) in the Registrar TLD Sync for ARGP as we do not support it.

The expiration date we return per domain in the Domain Synchronization Process is always to be seen as expiration date + ARGP. That means, we just expect a resulting domain life cycle with

Expiration Date -> Redemption Period

on our end in WHMCS.

0 / null which we correctly return as value for the Grace Period Setting in the Registrar TLD Sync is not considered / taken over by WHMCS. Therefore they keep using their default value for the Grace Period. This again means that it results in this domain life cycle:

our expiration date (= expiration date + ARGP) -> default ARGP -> Redemption Period

So, WHMCS expects the domain to have a way longer expiration date than it really has and finally it may lead to losing domain names. Highly critical...

WHMCS confirmed our bug report. The related bug id is: #CORE-17488. I expressed the urgency for getting it fixed asap to the WHMCS Core/Support Team.

There's actually imho just one workaround:

UPDATE `tbldomainpricing` SET grace_period = 0 WHERE autoreg = 'ispapi';

HTH / Have a nice day!

Kai

[andp97-netsons]

Hi, @papakai

I think can be related to this topic:

Is there any way to disable option that causing WHMCS to remove domain in grace period from invoice? (Log Activity description: "Removed Domain Renewal Line Item" ) . . . What is strange is that this is happening to some domains that enters grace period, the rest are normally included in invoice regardless of whether they in grace period or expired.

https://whmcs.community/topic/294602-how-to-disable-option-that-removes-domain-from-invoice-removed-domain-renewal-line-item/

You have any evidence of this CORE isssue on your side? Any WHMCs activity log?

[KaiSchwarz-cnic]

Hi @andp97-netsons,

The issue you mentioned is completely unknown to me. Never heard about that one. But I agree, it sounds like other registrars might also have the renewal system issue I addressed in this thread and that it could be related somehow to your mentioned issue. But this isn't necessarily the case.

I can just say that WHMCS confirmed our bug report early this morning by patch id #CORE-17488. Like always they do not provide an ETA for the patch rollout and ask to monitor the changelog -> https://docs.whmcs.com/Changelogs.

I hope this answers your question?

[KaiSchwarz-cnic]

with v7.2.19 I've rolled out a minor change as preparation step for WHMCS' Core Patch. They've not yet replied back with the right way, but from my point of view, I expect them to patch it to perfectly fit our prepared work. We return now 0 for graceDays and no longer null. It actually doesn't make a difference, but I expect that they leave "null" still pointing to the ARGP default value, but start supporting 0 correctly as 0d.

[KaiSchwarz-cnic]

Feedback from WHMCS Support: CORE-17488 is targeted for resolution in version 8.5 of WHMCS

No promises, this might still change to 8.6 or so. I addressed again the urgency of this matter.

[KaiSchwarz-cnic]

8.5 RC1 -> bug not patched there.

[KaiSchwarz-cnic]

I am having instead a task in current sprint where we introduce the use of grace days - no longer waiting on WHMCS' Core Team to help with patching something... Still, we cannot provide an ETA on it, we have not forgotten our customers and like always we do our best regarding WHMCS Bug workarounds.