With the new release of WHMCS I want to install it and alter a few templates to match the new design and such. However I obviously don't want to do this to my live website so a development copy is in order. However WHMCS won't function properly if you house the license under any other domain than the one it's been issued for.

So how could I go about safely testing and messing with a copy of WHMCS without it affecting the main site? I was considering using a nulled version but that's kind of a grey area (since I do have a legal license to begin with).

Any ideas? How do others test changes before putting them live?

You might wanna post this on WHMCS' forum or contact them directly to see what can they do for you.

Dont use a null version.
Ask them if they can give you a 15day trial license in order to test it.

You said templates right??

Easy peasy lemon squeezy hehe

Go to the templates folder, and copy either default or portal (the one you wanna use)
Once done, name it to anything such as 'new' 'beta' 'test'

Once renamed you can edit anything in the folder template wise and to see it, simply do this

index.php?systpl=newtemplatename

To go back to your usual change the systpl=default whatever

Pretty easy, we wanted multiple sites and this worked for us, and helps on creating new templates.

Enjoy

Paul has the right idea on this - multiple templates can be accomplished by used the tags that he's specified. We've done the same thing here when testing new templates or edits to the client area before going live.

To Paul & Handson:

Sometimes when you upgrade from one version to another, the template files will experience changes. Your current customised template may be screwed up during the upgrade.. Your suggestion isn't invalid, but it won't really work unless we don't mind using the default template (unintegrated/uncustomised) templates..

No one said anything about it being different versions, but even still you can use an old template on a new version, hell we are not even touching v5, just a waste of time for nothing really new.

If we did the old template would still apply and be functional on v5.

The only way you can screw it up is by not using brains during an upgrade, on all my upgrades I NEVER copy any template files, I check the update in the wiki for any decent/important changes and upgrade the template file accordingly.

So to be blunt, upgrade and don't overwrite the templates....solved.