Introduction

Now that you have installed WHMCS and used the Setup Wizard to prepare your application for accepting orders, it is time to get even more precise with the configuration options and explore the WHMCS General Settings. 

The General Settings contain a massive array of configuration options that allows you to fine-tune everything from Domains, Support, and Orders to Localization, Security, and Social preferences. In this tutorial, in particular, we will focus on the “General” tab under the WHMCS General Settings.

Of course, there are many more tabs to explore, so check them out in our WHMCS General Settings tutorial series!

Getting Started

To access the General Settings, please log inside your WHMCS admin area. After you log in, please point your attention to the top right corner. There you will see the wrench icon. Please click on it, and after the drop-down menu presents itself, click on the "System Settings" icon from the revealed options. 

This action will redirect you to the "System Settings" page, where you will see all the available WHMCS system settings. 

To access the "General Settings," please click on the "General Settings" content box, which will be the first option under the "All Settings" title.

General Tab

The tab which will show up by default will be the "General" Tab. Under the "General tab", you can define various information related to your company's name, address, logo, and URL. 

On top of that, you can enable maintenance mode, set which theme you want WHMCS to use, and enable friendly URLs.

Let's explore each option individually so that you can understand them plainly.

• Company Name - Please use this text field to enter your company name. If you have gone through the Setup Wizard, the company name you chose will be auto-filled here.
• Email Address - Please fill in this text field to define the default sender email address used for all messages sent by WHMCS.
• Domain - Please use this text field to set the domain of your WHMCS installation. It will default to your currently used domain name - in our case, “hostarmadatutorials.com”.
• Logo URL - In this text field, please enter your logo URL. This logo will be displayed in emails sent by WHMCS. You can leave it blank if you want to keep your logo private from emails.
• Pay To Text - In this content box, please type in the email address that will appear on the client's invoices and where they will send payments.
• WHMCS System URL - In this text field, please enter the WHMCS system URL. For example, if you have installed WHMCS in a "/billing" directory, please set the URL as "https://hostarmadatutorials.com/billing". Always use the SSL version of the URL (HTTPS).
• System Theme - Please use this drop-down menu to set WHMCS's system theme. It is up to personal preference, and if you like the default one, you should keep the default one.
• Limit Activity Log - Please use this text field to set the highest number of System Level Activity Log entries you want to keep. We recommend setting the default value as high as possible. We believe 10000 lines of system-level activity are insufficient to keep track of all events in your admin area.
• Records to Display per Page - Please use this drop-down menu to select how many System Activity log entries will be displayed per page. The default value should be sufficient here as long as the entry count is set as high as possible.
• Maintenance Mode - Please use this tickbox to enable or disable maintenance mode when needed. Maintenance mode will prevent customers from accessing WHMCS. This option is excellent when you make significant changes to WHMCS's configurations or visual changes to the Client Area.
• Maintenance Mode Message - When maintenance mode is enabled, you can let your customers know what you are doing. Please use this content box and type in the message you want your clients to see when you enable maintenance mode.
• Maintenance Mode Redirect URL - Please use this text field to type in a URL where you want WHMCS to redirect customers whenever maintenance mode is enabled. This option is very situational and has limited applications. We only recommend using it if you have a good reason for it. If misused, customers may think your client portal needs to be fixed. 
• Friendly URL - Before we explain what friendly URLs are, please visit our knowledge base article and read more about the difference between a domain, website, and URL. Friendly URLs are web addresses that are easy to read and describe the page's content within them. This configuration makes it easier for people to memorize the URL and enable search engines to index the content properly. By default, WHMCS has selected the most optimal setting - "Full Friendly Rewrite". If you host your WHMCS with HostArmada, leave the default option selected, as our servers support apache mod_rewrite, and "Full Friendly Rewrite" will work flawlessly.
• Advanced Settings - WHMCS includes advanced configurations when it comes to Friendly URLs. Clicking the "Advanced Settings" link will provide you with additional options and information to manually optimize your WHMCS environment and settings for Friendly URLs. These settings are split into two tabs:
• Path Mode - Please use the "Path Mode" tab to manually change the detected system URI path mode and display which modes the environment supports.
• Rewrite File - Please use the "Rewrite File" tab to specify how WHMCS should control the .htaccess file. WHMCS uses rewrite rules to convert inbound HTTP and process Friendly URLs effectively.

Once you have chosen the desired settings on this page, please click on the blue “Save Changes” button located at the bottom of the page. Otherwise, please click the grey “Cancel Changes” button on the right side of it to revert them.

This wraps up all the settings in the WHMCS “General” tab. Hopefully, you found our explanations helpful, and you were able to use the settings within this tab to fine-tune your WHMCS even more.

Conclusion

Please follow our next tutorial in line, which will go through the “Localisation” tab. It contains settings related to the WHMCS's localization, such as default language, time & date format, and country.