Direct Admin

Owned by HostBill (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Sept 26, 2024 by HostBill
3 min read

Overview

DirectAdmin is an easy to use yet effective web hosting control panel. With the DirectAdmin module for Hostbill you can now provide your customers with the best performance allowing them to manage all vital aspects of their hosting account directly from HostBill client portal: manage Domains, FTP, SSL certificates, setup email accounts, manage databases and much more.

Activating the module

  1. If the module is included in your HostBill edition you can download it from your client portal.
  2. If the module is not included in your HostBill edition you can purchase it from our marketplace and then download it from the client area.
  3. Once you download the module extract it in the main HostBill directory.
  4. Go to Settings → Modules → Hosting Modules, find and activate Direct Admin module.

Connecting HostBill with Direct Admin

  1. Proceed to Settings → Apps → Add new App
  2. From Applications list select Direct Admin
  3. Enter:
    • Name - Name of this connection
    • Hostname - hostname of your DirectAdmin installation
    • IP Address - IP for your DirectAdmin, use if no hostname is set
    • Choose max number of accounts - enter max number of active accounts this server approx can handle
    • Server Status Address - deprecated feature
    • Username - your DA admin/reseller username 
    • Password - your DA admin/reseller password 
    • Control Panel URL - url (protocol included) to your direct admin server for clientarea login link
    • Secure - tick if valid ssl is installed on directadmin 
    • Secret for DNS Tool - enter secret code used in DirectAdmin DNS Helper
    • Custom port - enter if other than 2222
    • Admin password - required if you plan to use Installatron with HostBill
    • Webmail - pick webmail used by Directadmin

      4. Verify entered credentials by clicking Test Connection to check if HostBill can connect
      5. Save Changes


Adding Direct Admin product

  1. In HostBill go to Settings → Products & Services, and Add new order page
  2. From Order Types select Shared Accounts
  3. Enter your orderpage name, select orderpage template. Save Changes
  4. Add new product in the new orderpage. Provide product name and setup price and then Save Changes.
  5. In product configuration section proceed to Connect with App, select Direct Admin and App server created in previous steps.


For more generic product configuration details including price, automation, emails settings refer to Product Configuration article.

Configuring Metered Billing

Direct Admin module supports metered billing feature. To configure your metered billing package in product configuration in "General" tab select "Metered" under Price. Following variables can be measured and bill automatically:

  • Badwidth

  • Disk usage

  • Domain Pointers

  • FTP Accounts

  • Databases

  • Email Forwarders

  • Mailing Lists

  • Autoresponders

  • Subdomains

  • Domains

Configuring Client Functions: Unblock IP Address

In Products & Services → Your Order Page → Your Product → Client Functions you can enable Unblock IP Address function to allow client to unblock/whitelist IP address of his (or other if allowed) in CSF installed on direct admin

Important CSF info

For this feature to work, ensure to create empty touch file on your DirectAdmin server:

 /var/lib/csf/csf.da.skip


When enabled, this function comes with configuration options:

  • Widget description: enter description of function visible in client portal once customer access it
  • Max recent unblocks: Limits number of unblocks a single user can request in certain interval
  • Custom IP address: When enabled client will have option to unblock/whitelist ANY ip address
  • Whitelist IPs: When enabled, client will have option to whitelist his IP address
  • Protect ip addresses with specific comment - when enabled and comment set, addresses with configured CSF comments cannot be removed

Configuring Client Functions   

In Products & Services → Your Order Page → Your Product → Client Functions you can control what features customer will have access to in client portal, by clicking Enable/Disable next to the given option.
Use Edit button to adjust function appearance in the client portal.

For Direct Admin you can enable the following client functions dedicated to this module:

  1. Unblock IP Address
  2. Access Control Panel
  3. Access WebMail
  4. Account Usage/Info
  5. Add-on Domains
  6. Backup Management
  7. Cron Jobs
  8. Database Management
  9. Domain Aliases
  10. Domain Redirects
  11. Email Management
  12. Email Forwarding
  13. FTP Management
  14. Login to File Manager
  15. Login to phpMyAdmin
  16. SSL Certificates
  17. Sub-domain Management
  18. CloudLinux PHP Selector
  19. CloudLinux Node.js apps
  20. CloudLinux Resource usage
  21. CloudLinux Python apps
  22. SSH Keys management
  23. Custom Error pages management
  24. Installed Perl modules listing
  25. Lets encrypt support in SSL Management
  26. Apache Handlers management
  27. DNS management
  28. Domain Pointers management
  29. Logs Browser

As well as number of standard client functions, such as 

  1. Change Billing Cycle
  2. Change Label
  3. Change Ownership
  4. Edit Forms
  5. Graphs
  6. Login Details
  7. Manual Service Renew
  8. New Direct Link
  9. Related Services
  10. Service Auto Renewal