Parallels Plesk Panel - 11.5 User Guide
Parallels® Panel
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Contents
Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel 5
Acquainting Yourself with the Panel Interface ............................................................................... 7
Managing Your Profile ................................................................................................................... 9
Viewing Your Subscription Properties ......................................................................................... 10
Viewing Resources ........................................................................................................... 11
Viewing Permissions ......................................................................................................... 13
Viewing IP Addresses ....................................................................................................... 14
Understanding Service Plans and Subscriptions 16
Properties of Hosting Plans, Add-ons and Subscriptions ........................................................... 18
Visibility of Hosting Features in the Control Panel ............................................................ 20
Resources ......................................................................................................................... 21
Permissions ....................................................................................................................... 24
Hosting Parameters .......................................................................................................... 28
Mail .................................................................................................................................... 37
DNS ................................................................................................................................... 38
Performance ...................................................................................................................... 38
Logs & Statistics ................................................................................................................ 39
Applications ....................................................................................................................... 39
Additional Services ............................................................................................................ 39
Syncing Subscriptions and Plans ................................................................................................ 40
Starting Your Business in Panel 42
Changing Branding and Interface Settings 44
Managing Customer Accounts 47
Managing Subscriptions 48
Backing Up and Restoring Data 50
Configuring the Control Panel for Using FTP Repository ............................................................ 51
Backing Up Your Account with Your Sites .................................................................................. 51
Scheduling Backups .................................................................................................................... 52
Restoring Data From Backup Archives ....................................................................................... 53
Downloading Backup Files from Server ...................................................................................... 54
Uploading Backup Files to Server ............................................................................................... 54
Removing Backup Files from Server ........................................................................................... 54
Website Management 55
Quick Start with Parallels Panel .................................................................................................. 57
Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel 4
Set Up Your First Website ................................................................................................. 58
Set Up Mail Accounts ........................................................................................................ 62
View Site Visit Statistics .................................................................................................... 81
Customer Account Administration ............................................................................................... 81
Changing Your Password and Contact Information .......................................................... 85
Viewing Subscription Summary ........................................................................................ 86
Managing Account Balance and Invoices ......................................................................... 93
Ordering More Resources ................................................................................................. 97
Viewing Statistics .............................................................................................................. 99
(Advanced) Managing Auxiliary User Accounts .............................................................. 101
Websites and Domains ............................................................................................................. 108
Domains and DNS .......................................................................................................... 109
Hosting Settings .............................................................................................................. 125
Website Content .............................................................................................................. 143
(Advanced) Restricting Access to Content ..................................................................... 148
Previewing Websites ....................................................................................................... 150
Web Applications ............................................................................................................ 151
(Advanced) Website Security .......................................................................................... 160
(Advanced) Extended Website Management ................................................................. 166
Creating Sites with Presence Builder ........................................................................................ 199
Getting Familiar With Presence Builder .......................................................................... 202
Creating a Website .......................................................................................................... 204
Importing Sites from SiteBuilder 4.5................................................................................ 205
Editing Websites ............................................................................................................. 206
Saving and Loading Copies of a Website ....................................................................... 245
Publishing a Website to the Internet ............................................................................... 247
Publishing a Website Copy to Facebook ........................................................................ 248
Viewing Site Visits Statistics, Comments, and New Orders on the Dashboard .............. 250
Deleting Websites ........................................................................................................... 252
FTP Access to Your Websites ................................................................................................... 252
Changing FTP Access Credentials ................................................................................. 252
Adding FTP Accounts ..................................................................................................... 253
Setting Up Anonymous FTP Access ............................................................................... 255
Mail Accounts ............................................................................................................................ 256
Adding Mail Accounts ...................................................................................................... 257
Configuring Mail Account ................................................................................................ 258
(Advanced) Configuring Global Mail Settings ................................................................. 265
Using Mailing Lists .......................................................................................................... 266
Scheduling Tasks ...................................................................................................................... 267
Scheduling Tasks (Linux) ................................................................................................ 268
Scheduling Tasks (Windows) .......................................................................................... 270
Website Databases ................................................................................................................... 272
Creating Databases ........................................................................................................ 273
Accessing Databases ...................................................................................................... 273
Copying Databases ......................................................................................................... 274
Exporting and Importing Databases ................................................................................ 274
Managing Database User Accounts ............................................................................... 275
Accessing Databases with ODBC (Windows) ................................................................. 276
Backing Up and Recovering Websites ...................................................................................... 277
Backing Up Data ............................................................................................................. 278
Managing Backup Files ................................................................................................... 284
Restoring Data ................................................................................................................ 286
Parallels Plesk Panel offers an easy and convenient graphical user interface that
C H A P T E R 1
Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel
enables you to start your hosting business quickly and maintain it effortlessly. With
Panel, you set up your hosting offers, manage customer accounts, and do other tasks
to run and grow your business. Your customers benefit from using Panel too since it
gives them a complete set of tools for creating and editing their websites. For serving
both resellers and customers, the Panel GUI is divided into two parts:
Server Administration Panel.
In this panel, you set up and maintain your business. Here you create hosting plans
and customer accounts, manage subscriptions, and so on. For a comprehensive
overview of operations available to you in the Server Administration Panel, see the
section Acquainting Yourself with the Panel Interface (on page 7).
Control Panel.
When someone subscribes to one of your hosting plans, Panel sets up an account
for the subscriber. Under this account, the customer can add domain names and
mailboxes, edit website content, and carry out other hosting management routines.
Customers perform these operations in a separate panel called the Control Panel.
To learn more about operating in the Control Panel, refer to the section Website
Management (on page 55).
So, after logging in to Panel, customers see the Control Panel while resellers see the
Server Administration Panel. This is for convenience, to separate the administration of
customer accounts from administration of websites and hosting services.
However, you will need to go to the Control Panel in the following cases:
To assist customers with performing their tasks. In this case, you log in to the
Control Panel on a customer's behalf.
To create and manage your own websites. In this case, you create your own
subscription and log in to the Control Panel using your account.
The links that let you log in to the Control Panel using your own and your customers'
accounts are located in the list of subscriptions (Server Administration Panel > Hosting
Services group of the navigation pane > Subscriptions.)
6 Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel
Your Panel Account and Subscriptions
In this chapter:
Acquainting Yourself with the Panel Interface .................................................... 7
Managing Your Profile ....................................................................................... 9
Viewing Your Subscription Properties................................................................ 10
When you subscribe to a reseller plan, you get a reseller account in Panel. This
account stores your profile information and is linked to your subscription - the package
of hosting resources that you lease for reselling and use for your own needs.
Your account has a unique username and a password that you use to log in to Panel.
You can change these at any time. The section Managing Your Profile (on page 9)
explains how to do it.
To allow you to easily monitor the current state of your resources and services (for
example, disk space currently consumed by your account and your customers), Panel
automatically calculates the resource usage and displays it to you on the appropriate
pages. To learn how to track the usage of your hosting resources and services, refer to
the section Viewing Your Subscription Properties (on page 10).
Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel 7
Acquainting Yourself with the Panel Interface
When you log in to Parallels Plesk Panel, you see the Home page with a summary on
allocated and used resources.
The top banner area provides the following links:
A link with your name. Click this if you need to update your contact information. Find out
more about updating contact information in the section Managing Your Profile (on page 9).
Log out. This is where you close your session when you have finished working with the
Panel.
Help. This provides context-sensitive help with a search function.
The navigation pane on the left provides access to the following sets of functions:
Home. This is where you start working with the Panel. On this page, you can see the
following elements.
Overview. This widget contains information about your hosting package and provides
links to the detailed information about available hosting resources and your
permissions. The section Viewing Your Subscription Properties (on page 10) provides
information that helps you understand the Panel resources and learn how to view the
set of resources that you can use or sell.
My Subscriptions. This is where you see a list of your own websites hosted on the
Panel server.
Customers. This is where you perform operations on customer accounts. Particularly, you
can accomplish the following tasks from this page:
Create, modify, suspend, unsuspend, and remove user accounts.
View traffic usage reports.
Domains. This is where you view information about hosted websites and their domain
names, and go to the Control Panel for managing them.
Subscriptions. This is where you manage customer subscriptions to your services.
Subscription is a way a customer obtains services and resources provided by a service
plan.
Service Plans. This is where you manage your service plans. Service plan is a set of
resources and services provided to hosting service customers by means of subscriptions.
There are also service plan add-ons that extend the amount of resources and services
provided with a subscription.
Tools & Utilities. This is where you configure and manage system services, and view
resource usage statistics.
Profile. This is where you fill in your contact information. Learn more about the contact
information and other profile settings in the section Managing Your Profile (on page 9).
Change Password. This is where you change your password for logging in to the Server
Administration Panel.
Interface Preferences. This is where you set interface language and skin. Learn more about
changing Panel appearance in the section Changing Interface Settings.
8 Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel
To see information about a tool or an item on the page, place the mouse pointer over an item
without clicking it, and a small tooltip box appears with supplementary information regarding
that item.
The main working area on the right provides access to the tools available for the section
currently selected in the navigation pane. Additional operations are accessible from the More
Actions menus.
To navigate through Parallels Plesk Panel, you can use a path bar: a chain of links that
appears in the right part of the screen, below the banner area.
To return to a previous screen, use the shortcuts in the path bar, or the Up Level icon in the
upper-right corner of the screen.
To sort a list by a certain parameter in ascending or descending order, click on the
parameter's title in the column heading. The order of sorting will be indicated by a small
triangle displayed next to the parameter's title.
Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel 9
Managing Your Profile
Your account in Panel stores your access credentials and contact information such as e-mail,
address, and phone number. Depending on how you subscribed to a Panel reseller plan, you
can choose your username and password yourself or receive them from your hosting
provider. To change your account password, click the Change Password link in the navigation
pane. Your username can only be changed by your provider. If you forget your password and
cannot log in to Panel, click the Forgot Your Password? link on the login page. Then enter your
username and the e-mail specified in your contact information into the corresponding fields.
When you fill in this information, Panel will send your password to the specified e-mail
address.
If the contact details in your profile require updating, or you want to add or remove some of
them, click the Profile link in the navigation pane or the link with your name at the top of the
page and Panel will take you to a page where you can manage the details.
10 Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel
Viewing Your Subscription Properties
Next in this section:
Viewing Resources ............................................................................................ 11
Viewing Permissions ......................................................................................... 13
Viewing IP Addresses ....................................................................................... 14
The number of hosting resources and services available to you for reselling or to use for your
own needs is defined by your reseller subscription. A subscription can limit the use of a
resource to a certain value, for example, allow you to consume 75 GB of disk space.
Alternatively, it can allow a resource to be used without limits. In addition, the subscription
defines what services you can use and what server management actions you can perform:
manage DNS zones, access application catalogs, and so on.
To view the information about your subscription, click the My resources and permissions overview
link on the Home page.
The subsections of this section tell you more about reseller subscription properties:
Panel resources sold in reseller subscriptions: Section Viewing Resources (on page 11).
Permissions and services: Section Viewing Permissions (on page 13).
IP Addresses: Section Viewing IP Addresses (on page 14).
Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel 11
Viewing Resources
This section lists Panel resources included in reseller subscriptions. To view the resources
allotted for your account, go to Home > My resources and permissions overview.
Overselling policy
Defines if you can sell more resources than allocated to you with the plan. If overselling is
allowed, you are governed by actual resource usage instead of initial resource allocation. If
overselling is prohibited, you can create only the number of service subscriptions limited to
the total amount of disk space or traffic provided to you with your plan.
Overselling is a marketing strategy based on the following scheme: a reseller, who was
allotted, for example, ten gigabytes of disk space, allocates five gigabytes of disk space for
each of their customers, assuming that none of them will actually use all of their allocated
disk space.
Domains
The total number of subscriptions that you can create for your customers and for your own
purposes.
Subdomains
The total number of subdomains that can be hosted within the subscription.
Domain aliases
The total number of additional alternative domain names that can be used for websites within
the reseller subscription.
Disk space
The total amount of disk space that can be used by your own websites and sites of your
customers. It includes disk space occupied by all files related to your reseller subscription:
contents of websites, databases, applications, mailboxes, log files and backup files.
Traffic
The amount of data that can be transferred from the subscription's websites and FTP/Samba
shares during a month.
Additional FTP accounts
The maximum number of FTP accounts used to access the files and folders hosted with a
subscription.
Databases (Unix hosting)
The total number of databases that can be created on the Panel database servers and used
by the subscription's websites.
12 Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel
MySQL databases and Microsoft SQL Server databases (Windows hosting)
The maximum number of MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server databases respectively that can
be created on the database servers registered in the Panel and used by websites hosted
with the subscription.
MySQL databases quota and Microsoft SQL databases quota (Windows hosting)
The maximum total amount of disk space (in megabytes) that the MySQL and Microsoft SQL
Server databases respectively can occupy.
Mailboxes
The total number of mailboxes that can be hosted within the subscription.
Mailbox size
The maximum amount of disk space that can be allocated to a mailbox for storing e-mail
messages and auto-reply attachment files. You will not be able to specify the bigger mailbox
size in your service plans.
Mailing lists
The total number of mailing lists that can be hosted with the subscription.
Customers
The maximum number of customer accounts that you can create and serve.
Web users
The total number of personal web pages that can be hosted on the websites within
subscription. This service is mostly used in educational institutions that host non-commercial
personal pages of their students and staff. These pages usually have addresses like
http://example.com/~webuser.
Java applications
The total number of Java applications or applets that can be hosted on websites within the
subscription
Sites published with Presence Builder
The total number of websites that can be created, published, and then edited with Presence
Builder.
Mobile sites
The total number of websites that can be hosted with the UNITY Mobile online service, which
optimizes sites for viewing on mobile devices.
Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel 13
FrontPage accounts (Windows hosting)
The maximum number of Microsoft FrontPage accounts that can be used within the
subscription.
Shared SSL links (Windows hosting)
The total number of shared SSL links that can be used within the subscription.
IIS application pools (Windows hosting)
The total number of dedicated IIS application pools that can be allocated for websites
created within the reseller subscription.
ODBC connections (Windows hosting)
The total number of ODBC connections that can be used within the subscription.
ColdFusion DSN connections (Windows hosting)
The total number of ColdFusion DSN connections that can be used within the subscription.
Viewing Permissions
Your permissions either denote the operations available to you as a reseller in the Panel, or
define which services and privileges can be enabled in the subscriptions of your customers.
If a particular permission in your reseller subscription is set to Off, then a service subscription
will not provide the corresponding service or a privilege. A disabled permission also means
that you are prohibited to perform the designated action in the Control Panel. For example, if
your subscription does not provide a privilege to use Scheduler (Scheduler management is Off),
then none of your subscribers will be able to use it, and neither will you.
Reseller-specific privileges (the ones that do not affect service subscriptions you create for
your customers) are as follows:
Subscription creation in Server Administration Panel and domain creation in Control Panel. Shows
whether you can create hosting service subscriptions, add domains, create websites, and
set up web forwardings.
Ability to use API RPC. Shows whether you can remotely manage Web sites through
custom applications. The remote API is an interface that can be used for developing
custom applications integrated with Web sites, which could be used, for instance, for
automating setup of hosting accounts and provisioning of services for customers
purchasing hosting services from your site. To learn more, refer to the Parallels Plesk Panel
11.5: API RPC Protocol Reference.
Access to the Panel. Shows that you can use the Panel graphical user interface.
Customer account creation. Lets you create user accounts and subscriptions for your
customers in the Panel.
Allow overselling. Lets you set up oversell policy, meaning that you yourself can define if
overselling is allowed to you or not.
14 Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel
Overselling allows you to sell more resources than is allocated with a plan. If overselling
is allowed, a reseller is governed by actual resource usage instead of initial resource
allocation. Overselling is a marketing strategy based on the following scheme: a reseller,
who was allotted, for example, ten gigabytes of disk space, allocates five gigabytes of
disk space for each of their customers, assuming that none of them will actually use all of
their allocated disk space.
Meanings of the other permissions are the same as in the service subscriptions (on page
24).
To view the full list of your subscription permissions, go to Home > My resources and
permissions overview > Permissions tab.
Viewing IP Addresses
To view the IP addresses included in your hosting package, go to Tools & Utilities > IP
Addresses. Your IP addresses are listed and the following supplementary information is given:
An icon in the S (Status) column shows if your IP address is properly configured on
the network interface. If your IP address was removed from the network interface by your
provider, an icon will show .
An icon in the T (Type) column shows if you were allotted a dedicated IP address, and
if the address is shared among other customers of your service provider. A dedicated
IP address is not used by other users, so you can use it to host either:
A single e-commerce website secured with Secure Sockets Layer encryption.
or
A number of websites that do not need Secure Sockets Layer encryption.
Note: Shared IP addresses should be used for hosting only non e-commerce websites.
The Certificate column shows which SSL certificate (for what domain name) is tied to an
IP address.
The FTP over SSL column (on Windows-based servers) shows whether it is possible to use
secure FTP connection (FTP over SSL) on one of the domains hosted on this IP address.
The Hosting column shows a number of websites hosted on an IP address. To view the
domain names of these websites, click the number in the Hosting column.
You can perform the following operations on IP addresses:
Change IP allocation type. You can mark your IP addresses as shared or dedicated
before you use them for hosting websites. This allows the Panel to distinguish between
them and to not let you use a dedicated IP address for several customers at once. A
dedicated IP address can be used in subscriptions of a single customer, while a shared
IP address can be shared among different customers' subscriptions. Note that SSL
protection with authentic digital certificates and Anonymous FTP services are available
only to a dedicated hosting account on a dedicated IP address. Shared hosting accounts
can also have SSL protection, but visitors of such protected sites will receive error
messages in their browsers.
Assign an SSL certificate to an IP address. This will assign the selected SSL certificate to
all websites hosted on that IP address.
Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel 15
Select a default website. Because users can refer to a web resource on your server by
typing an IP address and there can be several websites hosted on that address, the
Panel needs to know which of the sites to show in such cases. The Panel automatically
assigns the first website created on an IP address as the default website; however, you
can select any other website and make it default.
To change an IP address allocation type (shared, dedicated), assign another
SSL certificate to an IP address, or select the default website:
1. Go to Tools & Utilities > IP Addresses, and click the IP address you need.
2. Make the required changes, and click OK.
When you start your hosting reselling business, you should define how you will offer
C H A P T E R 2
Understanding Service Plans and Subscriptions
your hosting resources and services to customers. Parallels Plesk Panel lets you
organize your business by means of service plans and subscriptions.
A service plan is a combination of hosting resources that you sell to your customers.
For example, a plan can provide customers with the web hosting service, five gigabytes
of disk space on the server, and ten gigabytes of data transfers each month.
There are also add-on plans that let you offer additional resources and services to
subscribers, such as, for example, an additional gigabyte of disk space.
When customers want to host a website on a Panel-managed server, they subscribe to
a plan that offers the resources they need. In other words, a subscription is a set of
resources defined by a plan and available to a certain customer.
The section Properties of Hosting (Add-on) Plans and Subscriptions provides a complete list
of Panel server resources and services that you can include in your hosting plans.
Allocation of Resources and Services
Service plans define potential services; the Panel does not check if a service or a
resource that a service plan should provide is actually available, whether in the system
in general or in your reseller subscription. For example, when creating a plan, you can
choose to allow subscribers to connect to the server shell over SSH even if your
subscription does not provide the Management of access to the server over SSH privilege. In
such a case, the Panel will let you do this and will show no error or warning messages.
Subscriptions provide actual resources and services that are allocated during the
creation of each subscription.
Understanding Service Plans and Subscriptions 17
Relations Between Subscriptions and Service/Add-on Plans
In this chapter:
Properties of Hosting Plans, Add-ons and Subscriptions ................................... 18
Syncing Subscriptions and Plans ...................................................................... 40
Normally, a subscription is associated with a service plan, and this association is
reflected in a list of subscriptions: each subscription name contains the service plan
name in parentheses at the end. The amount of resources and services provided with a
subscription can be extended by associating the subscription with add-on plans. A
subscription can be associated with several add-ons, but each add-on can be added to
the subscription only once.
It is also possible to have subscriptions that are not associated with any service plans
or add-on plans. We call such subscriptions custom subscriptions, and their names are
extended with "(Custom)" in the list of subscriptions. Having a custom subscription may
be useful if you want to provide services on specific terms that differ from the usual
offerings in your business model.
At any time, you can change the association between a subscription and plans in the
following ways:
Associate the subscription with another service plan.
Add and remove add-on plans.
Remove the subscription association with the service plan and add-ons.
Syncing Service Plans and Subscriptions
When you change the properties of a service plan, Panel automatically applies the
changes to all subscriptions to this plan. If you want to prohibit automatic updating of a
certain subscription, you can lock this subscription. To learn how to configure the
synchronizing (or syncing) of your plans with subscriptions, see the section Syncing
Subscriptions and Plans (on page 40).
18 Understanding Service Plans and Subscriptions
Properties of Hosting Plans, Add-ons and
Next in this section:
Visibility of Hosting Features in the Control Panel ............................................. 20
Resources ......................................................................................................... 20
Permissions ....................................................................................................... 24
Hosting Parameters ........................................................................................... 28
Mail ................................................................................................................... 37
Subscriptions
Properties of a hosting plan and subscription are grouped as follows:
Resources
Includes validity period, policy on overusing resources, system resources like disk space
and traffic, and service resources like websites, subdomains, mailboxes, databases and
so on.
Permissions
Includes provided services and privileges.
Note: Some permissions prevent settings of the following services from syncing (on page
40). See the details in the Permissions section (on page 24).
Hosting Parameters
Includes parameters of the provided hosting service.
Mail
Includes parameters of the provided mail service.
DNS
Specifies if the DNS zones of the subscription's domains should be master or slave.
Note: In case the DNS zone management privilege is provided, this parameter is not synced,
and subscribers can set up this parameter on a per-domain basis.
Performance
Includes parameters that affect performance of all services provided with the plan.
Logs & Statistics
Includes settings of how statistics and logs of the plan's subscriptions should be stored.
Note: Hosting, Mail, DNS, Performance, Logs & Statistics parameters are fully visible and editable
in the Administrative Panel only for service plans. For subscriptions, these parameters are
available only in the Control Panel. To view or modify the parameters of a particular
subscription, go to Subscriptions and click Control Panel to the right of the subscription name.
Also note that the availability of these parameters to a subscriber depends on the
permissions.
Applications
Lets you select which applications available to you should be provisioned to your
customers.
Understanding Service Plans and Subscriptions 19
DNS .................................................................................................................. 38
Performance ...................................................................................................... 38
Logs & Statistics ................................................................................................ 39
Applications ....................................................................................................... 39
Additional Services ............................................................................................ 39
20 Understanding Service Plans and Subscriptions
Visibility of Hosting Features in the Control Panel
Visible to a
Customer
Visible to the
Administrator
Resource Limit > 0
Permission = True
Yes
Yes
Resource Limit > 0
Permission = False
No
Yes
Resource Limit = 0
Permission = True
No
No
Resource Limit = 0
Permission = False
No
No
Since version 10.4, Panel hides from customers those hosting features that are not provided
in their subscription. The visibility of GUI elements responsible for a certain feature is
determined by permissions and resource limits of a subscription. Note that when you (as the
administrator) log in to the customer's Control Panel, you see GUI elements regardless of
customer's permissions. The table below explains GUI visibility logic.
For example, when the number of Domains in a subscription is 10 and the Domains management
permission is off, a customer does not see the Add New Domain button in the Control Panel.
Nevertheless, this button is available to the administrator that logs in to the customer's
Control Panel.
Resources Without Numerical Limits
If the resource type is logical or in other words, it can be just switched on or off (such as
scripting language support), its visibility is controlled by a certain permission only. For
example, if the Hosting settings management permission is granted, a customer is able to toggle
the support of various scripting languages for their site. If the permission is not granted, the
customer sees the list of languages that are switched on for their site in the read only mode.
The disabled languages are not shown in the list.
Understanding Service Plans and Subscriptions 21
Resources
Resources (located at Service Plans > select a plan > Resources tab) define what system
resources are provided with the subscription.
Overuse policy
Defines what happens if the subscription's usage of disk space and traffic reaches limit
values:
Overuse is not allowed will suspend the subscription only if you select the checkbox Suspend
subscription when its disk space or traffic usage goes beyond the limit. If you do not select it,
websites will not be suspended; only a notice will be sent to the subscribers.
You can set up sending of notifications as soon as usage of disk space or traffic reaches
a particular value (the Notify upon reaching options), in order to prevent subscriptions from
suspension. The notifications will be sent according to the server notifications policy.
Overuse is allowed will let the subscription operate properly.
The option When limit on usage of a resource is reached, send e-mail according to the server
notification settings triggers sending notifications according to the server notifications
policy.
Note: The overuse policy does not apply to the limits set on size of mailboxes. Therefore,
even if you enable overuse, be sure to allocate enough disk space to mailboxes.
Disk space
The total amount of disk space allocated to the subscription. It includes disk space occupied
by all files related to the subscription: content of websites, databases, applications,
mailboxes, log files, and backup files.
Traffic
The amount of data that can be transferred from the subscription's websites and FTP/Samba
shares during a month.
Notify upon reaching
Available only if overuse is not allowed. This sets the soft quota for disk space or traffic
usage in order to prevent subscriptions from suspension. When the quota is reached, the
Panel sends notifications to users' e-mail addresses specified in Settings > Notifications:
Resource usage limits exceeded by subscription.
Sites published with Presence Builder
The number of websites that can be published with Presence Builder.
Domains
The total number of domain names that the subscriber will be able to host within the
subscription. This includes websites, web forwarding configurations that point to websites
hosted on other servers, and domain names on which a website or web forwarding is not yet
set up (domains with no hosting).
22 Understanding Service Plans and Subscriptions
Mobile sites
The total number of websites that can be hosted with the UNITY Mobile online service, which
optimizes sites for viewing on mobile devices. UNITY Mobile hosts the optimized site copies
on their own servers.
How it works:
1. A user creates a website with the domain name example.com and clicks the link Create
Mobile Site in the Control Panel.
2. The user is prompted to specify a domain name for access to the mobile site copy. The
user specifies mobile.example.com.
3. The Panel connects to the UNITY Mobile hosting servers, sets up an account with UNITY
Mobile for the domain name mobile.example.com.
4. The user’s browser opens the UNITY Mobile website, where the user is automatically
logged in to their account and prompted to import their website from the Panel-managed
server.
5. After the site is imported and optimized for mobile viewing, it becomes accessible by the
address mobile.example.com. The Panel’s DNS server keeps a CNAME record pointing
to the site on a UNITY Mobile server.
The user can now perform the following operations on mobile site using links in the
Control Panel:
Open site editor.
Change mobile site name.
Remove mobile site.
For more information about UNITY Mobile services, visit their website at
http://www.unitymobile.com.
For instructions on managing mobile sites through the Control Panel, refer to the Customer's
Guide, section Setting Up Mobile Sites.
Subdomains
The total number of subdomains that the subscriber will be able to host within the
subscription.
Domain aliases
The total number of additional alternative domain names that the subscriber will be able to
use for their websites.
Mailboxes
The total number of mailboxes that the subscriber can host within the subscription.
Mailbox size
The amount of disk space that is allocated to each mailbox in a subscription for storing e-mail
messages and auto-reply attachment files.
Understanding Service Plans and Subscriptions 23
Total mailboxes quota (available only for Windows hosting)
The total amount of disk space in megabytes available for all mailboxes within the
subscription.
Mailing lists
The total number of mailing lists that the subscriber can host within the subscription.
Additional FTP accounts
The maximum number of FTP accounts used to access the files and folders created within a
subscription. This number does not include an account that is always created during the
subscription creation.
Databases (Unix hosting)
The total number of databases that can be created on the Panel database servers and used
by the subscription's websites.
MySQL databases and Microsoft SQL Server databases (Windows hosting)
The maximum number of MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server databases respectively that can
be created on the Panel database servers and used by the subscription's websites.
MySQL databases quota and Microsoft SQL databases quota (Windows hosting)
The maximum amount of disk space (in megabytes) that the subscription's MySQL or
Microsoft SQL Server databases can occupy respectively.
Validity period/Expiration Date
The term for a subscription.
In service plan properties, it is Validity period: it is used only when a subscription is created:
the Panel derives the subscription expiration date from it.
In subscription properties, it is Expiration date: At this date, the subscription will be suspended,
meaning that all sites within the subscription will be suspended, their Web, FTP and mail
services will no longer be accessible to the Internet users, and the subscriber and their users
will not be able to log in to the Control Panel.
Subscriptions are not renewed automatically, so to bring a subscription's services back to
operation, you will need to manually activate the subscription (on page 48).
Java applications
The total number of Java applications that can be hosted on the subscription's websites.
Web users
The total number of personal Web pages that the subscriber can host for other users under
their websites. This service is mostly used in educational institutions that host noncommercial personal pages of their students and staff. These pages usually have addresses
like http://example.com/~webuser.
24 Understanding Service Plans and Subscriptions
FrontPage accounts (Windows hosting)
The maximum number of Microsoft FrontPage accounts that the subscriber can create within
the subscription.
Shared SSL links (Windows hosting)
The total number of shared SSL links that the subscriber can use within the subscription.
ODBC connections (Windows hosting)
The total number of ODBC connections that the subscriber can use within the subscription.
ColdFusion DSN connections (Windows hosting)
The total number of ColdFusion DSN connections that the subscriber can use within the
subscription.
Permissions
Permissions (located at Service Plans > select a plan > Permissions tab) define what privileges
and services are provided with the subscription.
DNS zone management
Allows the subscriber to manage the DNS zones of their domains.
Note: If this permission is granted, then the DNS service settings are not synced.
Hosting settings management
Allows modifying parameters of the hosting service provided with the subscription: changing
hosting account features, setting up custom web server settings, and switching on or off
support for programming and scripting languages, custom error documents, SSL support,
and (Windows only) Microsoft FrontPage support. In addition, it allows you to toggle the
following permissions: Hosting performance settings management and Common PHP settings
management.
Note: If this permission is granted, then the mentioned hosting parameters are not synced.
Common PHP settings management
Allows the subscriber to adjust common PHP settings individually for each website
(subdomain) in their subscription.
Note: If this permission is granted, then the common PHP settings are not synced.
Setup of potentially insecure web scripting options that override provider's policy. Allows the
subscriber to override the hosting security policy, if it is applied by the provider.
Understanding Service Plans and Subscriptions 25
Management of access to server over SSH (Linux hosting)
Allows the subscriber to access the server shell over SSH under their system user account.
Also, lets the subscriber set up such hosting parameter as SSH access to server shell under the
subscription's system user.
Note: If this permission is granted, then the mentioned hosting parameter is not synced.
Management of access to server over Remote Desktop (Windows hosting)
Allows the subscriber to access the server via Remote Desktop protocol.
Anonymous FTP management
Provides the anonymous FTP service, which lets the subscriber set up a directory shared
over FTP protocol and available to anonymous users. A subscription should reside on a
dedicated IP address in order to provide this service.
Scheduler management
Allows the subscriber to schedule running of scripts or utilities.
Spam filter management
Lets the subscriber customize filtering settings of the SpamAssassin spam filter.
Antivirus management
Allows the subscriber to change settings of the server-side protection of incoming and
outgoing mail from viruses.
Data backup and restoration using the server repository
Allows the subscriber to back up and restore their websites, and use the storage on the
server for keeping backups.
Data backup and restoration using a personal FTP repository
Allows the subscriber to back up and restore their websites, and use external FTP servers for
storing their backups.
Web statistics management
Allows the subscriber to select which Web statistics engine should be used, and whether
reports should be accessible via a specific password-protected directory.
Note: If this permission is granted, then the mentioned hosting parameter is not synced.
26 Understanding Service Plans and Subscriptions
Log rotation management
Allows the subscriber to adjust the cleanup of processed log files for their sites. Also, allows
the subscriber to remove log files.
Note: If this permission is granted, then the Logs & Statistics parameters (on page 39) are not
synced.
Access to Application Catalog
Provides the subscriber with access to prepackaged applications that can be installed on
websites. If you select this option, be sure to select the PHP support checkbox on the Hosting
Parameters tab.
You can view a list of applications available from your provider by doing the following:
1. Set up your own website by using a plan or a custom subscription that grants access to
the Application Catalog.
2. Go to the Server Administration Panel > Subscriptions, and click the Manage Hosting link
corresponding to your domain name. The Control Panel will open in a new browser
window or tab.
3. In the Control Panel, go to the Applications tab > All Available Applications.
There is also a page in the Server Administration Panel, where you can view and update
installed applications, and purchase license keys for commercial applications at Parallels
Online Store: Tools & Utilities > Application Vault.
For instructions on installing applications and license keys, refer to the Customer's Guide,
section Using Website Applications.
Domains management
Allows the subscriber to add domains, create websites and set up web forwarding.
Subdomains management
Allows the subscriber to set up additional websites accessible by <subdomain>.<domain>
addresses.
Domain aliases management
Allows the subscriber to set up additional alternative domain names for their websites.
Additional FTP accounts management
Allows the subscriber to manage FTP accounts for accessing the subscription's files and
folders.
Java applications management
Allows the subscriber to install Java applications on their websites.
Understanding Service Plans and Subscriptions 27
Mailing lists management
Allows the subscriber to use mailing lists provided by the GNU Mailman software.
Note: If this permission is granted, then the Enable mailing lists parameter (on page 37) is not
synced.
Hosting performance settings management
Allows the subscriber to adjust performance PHP settings individually for each website
(subdomain) in their subscription. In addition, lets the subscriber set up the limits on
bandwidth usage and number of connections to their websites.
Note: If this permission is granted, then the following settings are not synced: PHP
performance settings, performance settings (on page 38) for bandwidth usage and the number
of connections.
IIS application pool management (Windows hosting)
Provides the subscriber with a dedicated IIS application pool and the means to manage it:
enable or disable it, and set up the maximum amount of CPU power that the pool may use.
Note: If this permission is granted, then the Logs & Statistics parameter (on page 39) called
Use dedicated pool is not synced.
Additional write/modify permissions management (Windows hosting)
Allows the subscriber to toggle the hosting parameter Additional write/modify permissions.
These permissions are required if a subscriber's web applications use a file-based database
(like Jet) located in the root of httpdocs folder. Please note that selecting this option might
seriously compromise the websites' security.
Note: If this permission is granted, then the hosting parameter Additional write/modify
permissions is not synced.
Shared SSL management (Windows hosting)
Provides the shared SSL service, and allows the subscriber to set up shared SSL links for
their websites within the subscription.
Hard disk quota assignment
Allows the subscriber to set up the hosting parameter Hard disk quota.
Note: If this permission is granted, then the mentioned hosting parameter is not synced.
Database server selection
Allows subscribers to select a database server for their databases, as opposed to using the
default database server. For details about default database servers, see the section Hosting
Parameters (on page 28).
28 Understanding Service Plans and Subscriptions
Access to advanced operations: Website Copying and Website Maintenance Mode
Specifies whether the website copying and maintenance mode are available to the
subscriber in the Control Panel > Websites & Domains > Show Advanced Operations. If denied, the
Website Copying and Website Maintenance Mode links are not available to the subscriber.
Password-protected directories management
Specifies whether the protected directories feature is available to the subscriber in the Control
Panel > Websites & Domains > Show Advanced Operations. If denied, the Password-protected
directories link is not available to the subscriber.
Ability to manage auxiliary user accounts
Specifies whether the subscriber can manage auxiliary user accounts on the Control Panel >
Users tab. If denied, the Users tab is not available to the subscriber.
Allow activating APS apps using license keys from the Panel license pool
If granted, users will be able to install certain APS apps without the need to purchase app
licenses from vendors. In this case, app license keys will be taken from the Panel license
pool. Note that you cannot limit the number of app installations a user is allowed to perform.
This permission is relevant only if your Panel license comes in a bundle with APS app
licenses. Learn more about license bundles.
Hosting Parameters
These parameters define the hosting service provided with the plan or subscription. The
parameters can be found in:
Service Plans > select a plan > Hosting Parameters tab
Subscriptions > select a subscription > Customize > Hosting Parameters tab
Note: Unless specifically noted, the parameters are not synced if the Hosting management
permission is granted to a subscription.
Enable hosting
Defines whether the hosting service is actually provided with the plan.
Turn off this option to make up a service plan that provides only mail service. Subscribers of
such a plan will be able to have 'domains without hosting' which will serve mailboxes.
Status of websites in suspended subscriptions
Defines whether sites in suspended subscriptions should be available over the Internet and
which hosting services should be available for these sites.
Understanding Service Plans and Subscriptions 29
In Panel, a website can receive a new status in two ways:
When the site owner or hosting provider changes the status individually for the site (in
Websites & Domains > Edit > Change status). As long as the subscription stays active,
services like mail are available for sites with any status, and these services can be
managed by means of Panel. Learn more in Website Status (on page 130).
After the subscription has been suspended. It can be suspended automatically (when its
expiration date passes) or manually by the hosting provider (using the Suspend button in
the subscription's settings). The DNS and mail services are available for sites in
suspended subscriptions, but cannot be managed by means of Panel.
The setting Status of websites in suspended subscriptions enables you to specify the status
that websites will receive when their subscription becomes suspended.
Websites in suspended subscriptions can have the following statuses:
Disabled. Disabled websites have all associated hosting services disabled. Visitors see
the web server's default page defined by the hosting provider.
Disabled websites are no longer hosted on the server: They are excluded from the web
server configuration. However, the physical directories and files of disabled websites can
be accessed using FTP clients and File Manager.
Important: In Panel versions earlier than 11.5 this status was called Suspended. After
upgrading from earlier Panel versions to 11.5, all websites that had the Suspended status
will receive the status Disabled in order to keep their correct behavior.
Suspended. Suspended websites do not open in browsers. Visitors are redirected with the
search engine friendly 503 HTTP code to the custom maintenance page.
Note: You can customize the maintenance page by using the Edit maintenance error page
link in Control Panel > Websites & Domains > domain name. This link is displayed only if you
select the Custom error documents checkbox in the site settings in Websites & Domains >
domain name > Edit. Site owners can edit the maintenance page too.
Suspended websites remain hosted on the server, which means that the services such as
mail are running and web server configuration for these websites is kept on the server.
Active. The website works as usual.
Hard disk quota
Hard quota imposed on disk space in addition to the soft quota (set with the option Notify upon
reaching (on page 20)). Hard disk quota will not allow writing more files to the web space
when the limit is reached: users will get an "Out of disk space" error at an attempt to write
files.
Note: (Linux hosting) Confirm that your operating system supports hard disk quota before
you set any value other than Unlimited. In case you define a hard quota when it is not
supported, you will get a synchronization conflict on all the plan's subscriptions.
SSL support
Allows setting up SSL encryption on websites hosted within the subscription.
30 Understanding Service Plans and Subscriptions
Web statistics
Selects a statistics engine that will create reports on how the subscription's websites are
visited: how many people visited a site, and which web pages they viewed.
The accessible via password protected directory /plesk-stat/webstat option allows a subscriber view
website statistics at URLs like https://example.com/plesk-stat/webstat using their system
user account login and password.
Note: This parameter is not synced if the Web statistics management permission is selected.
Custom error documents
Allows subscribers to design and use their own error pages that the web server returns with
HTTP error codes.
SSH access to server shell under the subscription's system user (Linux/Unix hosting)
Allows subscribers to upload securely web content to the server through SSH.
Note: This parameter is not synced if the Management of access to server over SSH permission is
selected.
Scripting
Support for programming and scripting languages that should be interpreted, executed or
otherwise processed by a web server: Microsoft ASP.NET framework, PHP hypertext
preprocessor (PHP), Common Gateway Interface (CGI), Perl, Python, Fast Common
Gateway Interface (FastCGI), Microsoft or Apache Active Server Pages (ASP), Server Side
Includes (SSI), ColdFusion, and Miva scripting required for running Miva e-commerce
solutions.
To learn more about adjustable PHP settings, see the section PHP Settings.
Additional write/modify permissions (Windows hosting)
This option is required if subscriber's web applications use a file-based database (like Jet)
located in the root of httpdocs folder. Please note that selecting this option might seriously
compromise the Web site security.
Allow web users to use scripts
Allows scripting at web pages available at URLs like
http://example.com/~<username>/<webpage>, where <username> refers to a web user.
Web users are individuals who do not need their own domain names. This service is popular
with educational institutions that host non-commercial personal pages of their students and
staff.
FrontPage support (Windows hosting).
The options in the FrontPage support group allow subscribers to connect to the server and
create websites with Microsoft Frontpage.
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