Parallels Plesk Panel - 11.5 Customer's Guide

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Parallels® Panel

Parallels IP Holdings GmbH

Vordergasse 59

CH-Schaffhausen

Switzerland

Phone: +41 526320 411

Fax: +41 52672 2010

Global Headquarters

500 SW 39th Street, Suite 200

Renton, WA 98057

USA

Phone: +1 (425) 282 6400

Fax: +1 (425) 282 6445

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Willy-Brandt-Platz 3

81829 Munich, DE

Phone: +49 (89) 450 80 86 0

Fax:+49 (89) 450 80 86 0

APAC Sales Headquarters

3 Anson Road, #36-01

Springleaf Tower, 079909

Singapore

Phone: +65 6645 32 90

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All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Contents

First Steps After Upgrading to Panel 11.5 6

Quick Start with Parallels Panel 8

Set Up Your First Website ............................................................................................................. 9

1. Create Your Site .............................................................................................................. 9

2. Preview Your Site .......................................................................................................... 13

Set Up Mail Accounts .................................................................................................................. 13

1. Create Mail Account ...................................................................................................... 14

2. Access Your Mailbox ..................................................................................................... 15

View Site Visit Statistics .............................................................................................................. 32

Customer Account Administration 33

Changing Your Password and Contact Information .................................................................... 36

Viewing Subscription Summary ................................................................................................... 37

Allocated and Consumed Resources ................................................................................ 39

Hosting Features Available for Your Websites ................................................................. 41

Managing Account Balance and Invoices ................................................................................... 44

Calculating Usage Charges .............................................................................................. 46

Earning Money by Promoting a Provider's Plans .............................................................. 46

Ordering More Resources ........................................................................................................... 48

Viewing Statistics ......................................................................................................................... 50

Log Files ............................................................................................................................ 51

(Advanced) Managing Auxiliary User Accounts .......................................................................... 52

User Roles ......................................................................................................................... 53

Auxiliary User Accounts .................................................................................................... 55

Custom Links..................................................................................................................... 57

Websites and Domains 59

Domains and DNS ....................................................................................................................... 60

Adding Domains ................................................................................................................ 61

Adding Subdomains .......................................................................................................... 63

Adding Domain Aliases ..................................................................................................... 65

Adding Wildcard Subdomains (Linux) ............................................................................... 66

Adding a Domain Forwarder ............................................................................................. 67

(Advanced) Configuring DNS for a Domain ...................................................................... 68

Hosting Settings .......................................................................................................................... 77

General Settings ............................................................................................................... 78

Web Scripting Settings ...................................................................................................... 83

Web Server Settings ......................................................................................................... 90

Website Content .......................................................................................................................... 95

Setting File and Directory Access Permissions ................................................................ 98

(Advanced) Restricting Access to Content ................................................................................ 100

Previewing Websites ................................................................................................................. 102

Web Applications ....................................................................................................................... 103

Installing Apps ................................................................................................................. 105

Managing Apps ............................................................................................................... 106

Granting Auxiliary Users Access to Apps ....................................................................... 106

First Steps After Upgrading to Panel 11.5 4

Linking Apps and Auxiliary User Accounts ..................................................................... 107

Updating Apps ................................................................................................................. 108

Managing Commercial App Licenses ............................................................................. 108

(Advanced) Website Security .................................................................................................... 112

Securing Connections with SSL Certificates ................................................................... 113

Protecting Sites from Hotlinking (Windows) .................................................................... 118

(Advanced) Extended Website Management ............................................................................ 119

Working with a Staging Site ............................................................................................ 120

Setting Up Mobile Sites ................................................................................................... 122

Setting Up Custom Error Pages ...................................................................................... 123

Using Google Services .................................................................................................... 125

Hosting Personal Web Pages Under Your Domains ...................................................... 128

Limiting Bandwidth and Number of Connections to Websites ........................................ 130

Working with Microsoft FrontPage Websites (Windows) ................................................ 131

Using Virtual Directories (Windows)................................................................................ 136

Setting Up IIS Application Pool (Windows) ..................................................................... 149

Web Publishing with Web Deploy (Windows) ................................................................. 151

Creating Websites with Parallels Presence Builder 153

Getting Familiar With Presence Builder .................................................................................... 155

Creating a Website .................................................................................................................... 157

Importing Sites from SiteBuilder 4.5 .......................................................................................... 158

Editing Websites ........................................................................................................................ 160

Structure: Pages and Navigation .................................................................................... 160

Design: Design Templates, Layout, Styles, Color Scheme, and Header ....................... 163

Content: Text, Tables, Images, Video, Forms, and Scripts ............................................ 172

Settings and Tools for Webmasters ................................................................................ 194

Saving and Loading Copies of a Website ................................................................................. 199

Publishing a Website to the Internet.......................................................................................... 201

Publishing a Website Copy to Facebook .................................................................................. 202

Viewing Site Visits Statistics, Comments, and New Orders on the Dashboard ........................ 204

Deleting Websites...................................................................................................................... 206

FTP Access to Your Websites 207

Changing FTP Access Credentials ........................................................................................... 208

Adding FTP Accounts ................................................................................................................ 209

Setting Up Anonymous FTP Access ......................................................................................... 211

Mail 213

Adding Mail Accounts ................................................................................................................ 214

Configuring Mail Account .......................................................................................................... 215

Setting Up Mail Forwarding ............................................................................................. 216

Creating Mail Aliases ...................................................................................................... 217

Setting Up Auto-Reply ..................................................................................................... 218

Protecting from Spam ..................................................................................................... 218

Protecting from Viruses ................................................................................................... 221

Additional Services .......................................................................................................... 222

(Advanced) Configuring Global Mail Settings ........................................................................... 223

Using Mailing Lists..................................................................................................................... 224

Scheduling Tasks 225

Scheduling Tasks (Linux) .......................................................................................................... 226

Scheduling Tasks (Windows) .................................................................................................... 229

First Steps After Upgrading to Panel 11.5 5

(Advanced) Using Databases 232

Creating Databases ................................................................................................................... 233

Accessing Databases ................................................................................................................ 233

Copying Databases ................................................................................................................... 234

Exporting and Importing Databases .......................................................................................... 234

Managing Database User Accounts .......................................................................................... 235

Accessing Databases with ODBC (Windows) ........................................................................... 236

(Advanced) Backing Up and Restoring Data 237

Backing Up Data ........................................................................................................................ 238

Backing Up Account and Websites ................................................................................. 240

Backing Up and Restoring Databases (Windows) .......................................................... 242

Scheduling Backups ........................................................................................................ 243

Managing Backup Files ............................................................................................................. 244

Uploading and Downloading Backup Files ..................................................................... 244

Uploading and Downloading Database Backup Files (Windows) ................................... 245

Restoring Data ........................................................................................................................... 246

Restoring Backups .......................................................................................................... 246

Restoring Databases (Windows)..................................................................................... 247

This chapter is intended for hosting service customers who previously used Parallels

C H A P T E R 1

First Steps After Upgrading to Panel 11.5

Plesk Panel version 9 and earlier. It describes the most important changes in the Panel and addresses possible issues that the users might encounter after their accounts and sites are moved to Parallels Plesk Panel 11 during the Panel upgrade.

The most important concepts you should know

 Domain is replaced by subscription.

The concept of a domain has been replaced with a concept of a subscription - a hosting unit able to run multiple sites (domains and subdomains) over given resources and services. Multi-domain hosting within one subscription is limited to one IP address. Customers who need to host sites on different IP addresses are advised to obtain additional subscriptions.

 Resources of a client are now resources of a subscription.

Customers no longer need to redistribute their resources across domains or subscription: Each subscription is allocated a fixed set of resources according to a hosting plan.

 SSL certificates are typically shared among all domains of a subscription.

All sites in a subscription typically share the same SSL certificate. Customers who want to protect all sites in a subscription should consider purchasing a multi-domain (a wildcard) SSL certificate. It is also possible to have per-domain certificates in case Panel supports SNI.

Peculiarities of SiteBuilder upgrade

 Panel 11 ships with Presence Builder (former SiteBuilder), but you can use

SiteBuilder 4.5 as well.

Parallels Presence Builder is a Panel component that allows fast and efficient creation of websites. When Plesk with SiteBuilder is upgraded to Parallels Plesk Panel 11, the SiteBuilder component is not actually upgraded. Instead, the new Presence Builder is installed on the server, and SiteBuilder 4.5 remains operable; however, operations on websites created in SiteBuilder 4.5 are limited to editing and publishing.

 Transfer of websites from SiteBuilder 4.5 to Presence Builder is supported, with

limitations.

Presence Builder allows websites created in SiteBuilder 4.5 to be imported. However, this feature has certain limitations: some elements may be missing or corrupted in the imported website. We advise you to compare it with the original version and add the missing content manually.

See the section Importing Sites from SiteBuilder 4.5 (on page 158) for more details on importing SiteBuilder 4.5 sites to Presence Builder.

First Steps After Upgrading to Panel 11.5 7

Changes in storing secure content

 httpdocs is the only allowed directory for storing web content accessed over secure

SSL.

The option to use a separate directory for storing web content that should be accessed over secure SSL connections is no longer available. All web content is now stored in a single directory - httpdocs.

The httpsdocs directory may remain in the webspace after upgrading to Parallels Plesk Panel 11, however, we recommend that you place all content in the httpdocs directory when uploading files to the webspace over FTP.

If you used the option to keep SSL-protected and all other content in separate directories, and had APS-packaged applications installed in the httpsdocs directory of a website, then after upgrade, the Panel will switch on the compatibility mode for that site. This will make the apps previously installed into httpsdocs directory accessible to the Internet users, but the apps will not be manageable through the Panel, and you will not be able to install new apps to the httpsdocs directory.

In such a case, if you have the necessary technical skills, you can do the following:

1. Back up all content from the httpsdocs directory and save it to another location. Do not move the files to httpdocs yet.

2. Back up databases used by applications installed in httpsdocs directory. You can do this with the help of the mysqldump utility.

3. Remove applications from the httpsdocs directory.

4. Switch off the compatibility mode through the Panel (at Websites & Domains tab > domain name).

5. Reinstall the required applications.

6. Upload the data you backed up on the step 1 to the httpdocs directory.

7. Restore the applications' databases by importing them to the MySQL database server.

If you are an inexperienced user, we recommend that you leave the previously installed applications and uploaded content in the httpsdocs directory, and host new applications on other websites. If you need to install apps on the site operating in compatibility mode, you can install them to the httpdocs (http://) location on that site.

8 Quick Start with Parallels Panel

According to the latest studies, the Internet has become the most popular source of

In this chapter:

Set Up Your First Website ................................................................................. 9

Set Up Mail Accounts ........................................................................................ 13

View Site Visit Statistics .................................................................................... 32

C H A P T E R 2

Quick Start with Parallels Panel

information in the world, leaving far behind all traditional media such as TV or newspapers. Nowadays, the first thing people do when trying to find services is to searching for them on the web. Thus, a proper web presence is vital for every business. There are a number of ways you can present your company on the Web. A web presence may be as simple as a contacts page, or as complex as a large company website with access to an ERP system. In both cases, you should perform the same steps to get your business online.

Before proceeding any further, you will need to take the following two essential steps:

 Purchase a customer account from a hosting provider.

Your customer account provides access to the services that are vital for a web presence Internet connectivity, disk space to store your website content, and so on. For more information about customer accounts in Panel, refer to the chapter Customer Account Administration (on page 33).

 Register a domain name.

This is the name people will use to access your site from their browsers. For example, www.example.com.

These two elements - an account for web hosting management and a domain name make up your website.

In this chapter, we will explain how to create your first website, fill it with content, create mailboxes for users of the site, and, finally, view the site visits statistics.

Advanced Hosting Features

Once you are comfortable with basic Panel capabilities, try out some advanced hosting features: Expand website functionality by installing web applications (on page 103), secure your sites with SSL certificates (on page 113), employ databases (on page 232), and much more.

Note: Hosting providers can turn off some of the advanced features to make your Control Panel look simple and user friendly. We have used the (Advanced) prefix to designate the sections about features that may be turned off. If you require one of the advanced options, contact your hosting provider.

Quick Start with Parallels Panel 9

Set Up Your First Website

Next in this section:

1. Create Your Site ............................................................................................ 9

2. Preview Your Site .......................................................................................... 12

Next in this section:

Presence Builder............................................................................................... 10

Content Management Systems ......................................................................... 10

Uploading Content ............................................................................................ 11

Now that you have a customer account and a domain name, the first thing you will want to do is create a website. The information about the possible ways to do it is provided in the section 1. Create Your Site (on page 9)

When your site is ready, you may want to take a look at the result in your browser. Learn how to do it in the section 2. Preview your Site (on page 12).

1. Create Your Site

There are three general ways to create a website:

 Employ a web design studio to create a site for you, and then you will just maintain its

content.

 Create a site by yourself using Presence Builder - the powerful tool that allows you to

create professional-looking websites in a few mouse clicks. Learn more in the section Presence Builder (on page 10).

 Create your website in a third-party Content Management System - an editor that allows

you to easily create and edit website content such as pages, scripts, applications, and so on. To learn more about creating sites in third-party content management systems, see the section Content Management Systems (on page 10).

If you have purchased a ready-made site or created it by yourself, you should upload the site content to your account to make the site visible on the web. There are two ways to upload content:

 Using FTP. Learn more in the section Uploading Content Using FTP (on page 12).  Using an integrated File Manager. Learn more in the section Uploading Content with File

Manager (on page 12).

10 Quick Start with Parallels Panel

Presence Builder

Presence Builder is a tool that enables users with no knowledge of HTML markup or graphic design skills to create professional-looking sites. This tool provides a simple visual editor and a huge set of templates for different websites. The editor allows you to create web pages, add content of different types (text, images, video, scripts), and edit website settings such as website name, keywords, icons, and so on.

To create websites in Presence Builder, ensure that your hosting subscription includes this option. If it does not, choose another way or upgrade your subscription.

 To create a website with Presence Builder:

1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click your domain name.

2. Click the link Launch Presence Builder.

3. Select a topic that best suits your website.

4. Edit the website:

a. Structure: add more pages, remove the predefined pages that you do

not need.

b. Content: change the predefined content to your own, add text,

images, videos, scripts, and other required elements.

c. Design: change the layout and color scheme.

5. Publish the website.

Find more information about creating websites with Presence Builder in the section Building Websites with Presence Builder.

Content Management Systems

Content Management Systems (or CMS) are applications that provide a graphical user interface for adding and editing website content: pages, scripts, files, multimedia content, and so on.

Before you can create a website in a third-party CMS, you should install the CMS on your hosting account. Note that you can install the CMS only if your hosting subscription allows it.

 To create a website using a CMS:

1. Go to the Applications tab.

2. Find the CMS you need in the list of available applications, and install it as

described in the section Using Website Applications (on page 103).

3. Create your website in the CMS. For information about creating websites with your CMS, refer to the relevant documentation.

Quick Start with Parallels Panel 11

Uploading Content

Next in this section:

Uploading Content Using FTP........................................................................... 12

Uploading Content with File Manager ............................................................... 12

If you already have a website created by yourself or a web design studio, just upload the website files and folders to your provider's server. You can do this in one of the following ways:

 Using FTP. This way is better when several people manage a website's content because

it does not require access to your customer account. You can just create FTP users for them. Learn more about this method in the section Uploading Content Using FTP (on page

12).

 Using Control Panel File Manager. This way is more convenient since it uses the Control

Panel GUI and provides a set of useful features, for example, a visual HTML editor and a file permissions manager. Find more information on the features of File Manager in the section Uploading Content with File Manager (on page 12).

12 Quick Start with Parallels Panel

Uploading Content Using FTP

 To publish a website using FTP:

1. Connect to your webspace on the server with an FTP client program, using your FTP account username and password.

You can change your username and password in the Panel at the Websites & Domains tab > Web Hosting Access.

The FTP address should be ftp://your-domain-name.com, where your-domain-name.com is your site's Internet address.

Enable the passive mode if you are behind a firewall.

2. Upload the files and directories of your site to the httpdocs directory. If you use CGI scripts, place them in the cgi-bin directory.

3. Close your FTP session.

You can also set up additional FTP accounts if you need to collaborate on website content with other users. For more information, see the section Adding FTP Accounts (on page 209).

Uploading Content with File Manager

To upload a website from your computer to Panel server with File Manager, open the Files tab of Control Panel and drag the website folder to the central area of this tab. You can also upload your website as a compressed ZIP file and then extract the contents using the archiver integrated in File Manager.

With File Manager, you can also do the following:

 Edit HTML files in the visual editor.  Preview website pages.  Edit files in the text editor.  Manage the files' access permissions.

Learn more about uploading and editing website files and folders with File Manager in the section Managing Website Content (on page 95).

Quick Start with Parallels Panel 13

2. Preview Your Site

Next in this section:

1. Create Mail Account ...................................................................................... 14

2. Access Your Mailbox ..................................................................................... 15

After you uploaded website files to the webspace, you can check how your site will look in a web browser, even before the information about the new site has spread in the Domain Name System.

 To preview a site:

1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to several webspaces associated with your account, select the re quired webspace in the Subscription menu at the top of the screen.

2. Go the Websites & Domains tab.

3. Click Preview below the domain name of the website that you want to preview.

You site will open in a new browser window.

Note: The contents of password-protected directories might be inaccessible in the Preview mode.

Sometimes, you may need to show your site to someone when your domain name is not registered yet. There are several ways to do it without giving a person access to your customer account. Learn more in the section Previewing Websites (on page 102).

Set Up Mail Accounts

Once your website is ready, you can start creating mail accounts. You can choose, for example, to create mail accounts for all users within your organization. Note that the number and size of mailboxes is limited by your hosting plan.

14 Quick Start with Parallels Panel

1. Create Mail Account

 To create an e-mail address:

1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at the top of the screen, select the required webspace.

2. Click the Mail tab.

3. Click Create E-mail Address.

4. Type the left part of the e-mail address before the @ sign, and, if you have

several domain names on your account, select the domain name under which the e-mail address will be created.

5. Leave the Mailbox checkbox selected.

Clearing this checkbox makes sense only if you want to use this address as a mail forwarder, which will forward all incoming mail to another address.

6. Specify the mailbox size or use the default size defined by the provider's policy or your service plan.

7. Specify a password consisting of five or more Latin characters.

8. Click OK.

Quick Start with Parallels Panel 15

2. Access Your Mailbox

Next in this section:

Access from Webmail ........................................................................................ 15

Access from Microsoft Office Outlook ................................................................ 16

Access from Microsoft Outlook Express ............................................................ 20

Access from Mozilla Thunderbird ...................................................................... 24

Access from Apple Mail ..................................................................................... 27

There are two ways to access a mailbox for sending and receiving e-mail messages:

 Set up and use an e-mail client program on your computer. Typically, in such programs

you should specify the following settings:

 Username. In this field, specify your full e-mail address. For example,

johndoe@example.com.

 Password. Most likely, the password to your e-mail account.

 Mail server protocol. This property defines whether you want to keep copies of

messages on the server or not. To keep the copies on the server, select the IMAP option. If you do not want to keep them on the server, select POP3. Selecting IMAP will also allow you to train the SpamAssassin spam filter on e-mail messages you receive, if SpamAssassin is enabled on the server.

 Incoming mail server (POP3/IMAP). Type your domain name. For example,

example.com. The POP3 port is 110. The IMAP port is 143.

 Outgoing mail server (SMTP). Type your domain name. For example, example.com.

The SMTP port is 25. This server requires authentication.

To get detailed instructions on configuring popular e-mail clients to work with your mailbox, see subsections of this section.

 Use a web browser to connect to the webmail interface.

Note: If you cannot access your mailbox following the instructions in this section, this might be caused by mail server settings. Contact your hosting provider to resolve the issue.

Access from Webmail

 To access your mailbox through webmail, do any of the following:

 In a Web browser, visit the URL webmail.example.com, where example.com is the

Internet address of your website. When prompted, specify your full e-mail address as the username (for example, mail@example.com), and specify the password that you use for logging in to the Panel.

 When logged in to the Panel, click the Mail tab, and in the list of e-mail addresses, click

an icon corresponding to the e-mail address you need.

16 Quick Start with Parallels Panel

Access from Microsoft Office Outlook

 To set up Microsoft Office Outlook 2010:

1. Open Microsoft Office Outlook.

2. Go to File > Info > Add Account.

3. Select the checkbox Manually configure server settings or additional server types.

Click Next.

Quick Start with Parallels Panel 17

4. Select the Internet E-mail option and click Next.

18 Quick Start with Parallels Panel

5. Specify the following:

 Your name.

 Your e-mail address.

 Account type. If you want to keep copies of messages on the server, select the IMAP

option. If you do not want to keep any messages on the server, select the POP3 option. Selecting IMAP will also allow you to train the SpamAssassin spam filter on email messages you receive, if SpamAssassin is enabled on the server.

 Incoming mail server. Type your domain name. For example, example.com.

 Outgoing mail server (SMTP). Type your domain name. For example, example.com.

 User Name. Specify your full e-mail address. Example: johndoe@example.com.

 Password. Most likely, this password coincides with the password you use for logging

in to Panel.

 Require logon using Secure Password Authentication (SPA). Leave this option cleared.

Quick Start with Parallels Panel 19

6. Click More Settings, open the Outgoing Server tab and check My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication.

7. Click Next.

8. Click Finish.

20 Quick Start with Parallels Panel

Access from Microsoft Outlook Express

The instructions provided in this section were verified against Microsoft Outlook Express 6. They might not work with earlier or later versions of Microsoft Outlook Express.

 To set up Microsoft Outlook Express:

1. Open Microsoft Outlook Express.

2. Go to Tools > Accounts.

3. Click the Add button and select the Mail item.

4. Enter your name as you want it to appear in any messages you send, and

click Next.

Quick Start with Parallels Panel 21

5. Type your e-mail address, and click Next.

22 Quick Start with Parallels Panel

6. Specify the following settings:

 Protocol of your incoming mail server.

If you want to keep copies of messages on the server, select the IMAP option. If you do not want to keep any messages on the server, select the POP3 option. Selecting IMAP will also allow you to train the SpamAssassin spam filter on e-mail messages you receive, if SpamAssassin is enabled on the server.

 Incoming mail server. Specify your website's Internet address.

 Outgoing mail server. Specify your website's Internet address.

Quick Start with Parallels Panel 23

7. Click Next.

8. Specify the following:

 Your account name. Type your e-mail address in the Account name box.

 Your password. Most likely, this password coincides with the password you use for

logging in to the Panel.

 Remember password checkbox. Leave it selected if you do not want to be prompted to

enter password each time your e-mail program connects to the mail server to check for new mail, and click Next.

9. To complete setting up your e-mail program, click Finish.

24 Quick Start with Parallels Panel

Access from Mozilla Thunderbird

The instructions provided in this section were verified against Mozilla Thunderbird 12. They might not work with earlier or later versions of Mozilla Thunderbird.

 To set up Mozilla Thunderbird:

1. Open Mozilla Thunderbird.

2. Go to Tools > Account Settings > Account Actions > Add Mail Account.

3. Specify the following:

 Your name, as you want it to appear in any messages you send.

 Your e-mail address and password.

Quick Start with Parallels Panel 25

4. Click Continue.

5. If Thunderbird fails to find the settings automatically, specify the following:

 Account type. If you want to keep copies of messages on the server, select the IMAP

26 Quick Start with Parallels Panel

6. Click Create Account.

If you set up a mail account manually, please use the following typical combinations of connection security and authentication method settings. If the settings do not work for you, ask your hosting provider about the correct combination.

On Linux:

 Connection security: STARTTLS  Authentication method: Encrypted password

On Windows, IMAP:

 Connection security: None  Authentication method: Encrypted password

On Windows, POP3:

 Connection security: None  Authentication method: Password, transmitted insecurely

Other parameters that you may need when configuring your account manually:

 POP3 port: 110  IMAP port: 143  SMTP port: 25  Username. Your full e-mail address. For example: johndoe@example.com.  Incoming server address (POP3/IMAP). Specify your website's Internet address. Example:

example.com

 Outgoing server address. Specify your website's Internet address. Example: example.com

Quick Start with Parallels Panel 27

Access from Apple Mail

The instructions provided in this section were verified against Apple Mail 3.6 (Leopard). They might not work with earlier or later versions of Apple Mail.

 To set up Apple Mail:

1. Run Apple Mail.

If you run it for the first time and do not have any mail accounts configured in it, skip the next step: Apple Mail will take you directly to creating one.

2. Open the Adding Mail Account wizard:

a. Click Mail > Preferences....

b. Select the Accounts tab.

c. Click the + button at the bottom left corner.

3. Enter the account information:

 Your full name

 Your full e-mail address

 The password you use to log in to the Panel.

28 Quick Start with Parallels Panel

4. Click Continue.

5. Fill in the following incoming mail server information:

 Account Type: select whether you want to use IMAP or POP protocol.

We recommend selecting IMAP if you use SpamAssassin as a spam filtering solution: IMAP account is a requirement for SpamAssassin learning which messages are spam and which are not.

 Incoming Mail Server: type in the name of domain which serves your mail (which follows

the @ sign in your e-mail address).

 User Name: enter your full e-mail address.

 Password: leave it auto-completed (Apple Mail takes it from the previous step).

Quick Start with Parallels Panel 29

6. Click Continue.

7. (Optional) Specify the incoming mail security options:

a. Select the Use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) checkbox.

b. Select the authentication method.

Keep the default method if you are not sure which to select.

Apple Mail displays this setup screen only if a mail server bundled with Panel supports SSL for the selected account type (POP or IMAP).

30 Quick Start with Parallels Panel

8. Click Continue.

9. Fill in the following outgoing mail server information:

 Outgoing Mail Server: type in the name of domain which serves your mail (which follows

the @ sign in your e-mail address).

 Use only this server: selected.

 Use Authentication: selected.

 User Name: enter your full e-mail address.

 Password: leave it auto-completed (Apple Mail takes it from the previous step).

Quick Start with Parallels Panel 31

10. Click Continue.

Apple Mail displays overall description of the mail account that is going to be created.

11. Select the Take account online checkbox and click Create.

32 Quick Start with Parallels Panel

View Site Visit Statistics

Finally, when your site works fine and search engines return it in search results, it is the best time to evaluate site efficiency by viewing the visits statistics.

 To find out how many people visited a site, from what countries, and what

pages of the site they viewed:

2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name for which you want to view the statictics

3. Click Web Statistics.

The site visitor statistics will show in a new browser window.

4. To view statistics for web pages viewed from the SSL -secured area of your site, select SSL Web Statistics in the menu.

5. To view statistics for files downloaded over the file transfer protocol (FTP), select FTP Statistics in the menu.

Alternately, you can view the visits statistics for a site by visiting the following URL: https://your-domain.com/plesk-stat/webstat. When prompted for username and password, specify your FTP account username and password.

You have successfully completed the quick start part of the guide. Feel free to read about other features that are available to you in the Control Panel.

As described in the section Quick Start with Parallels Panel (on page 8), the first step in

C H A P T E R 3

Customer Account Administration

establishing your company's web presence is signing up to the services provided by a hosting company (hosting provider). After you subscribe to a hosting plan, a customer account in Panel is created to enable you to log in to Panel and use the hosting services and resources like mailboxes, disk space, and bandwidth.

Customer Account and Multiple Subscriptions

Panel allows you to subscribe to as many hosting plans as you need. For example, if you do not want your main site to share hosting resources with a company's branch site you can subscribe to another hosting plan under the same customer account. In other words, a customer account is a personalized access to all your subscriptions (see the picture below).

34 Customer Account Administration

Another reason for using multiple subscriptions is that subscription is limited to only one IPv4 and one IPv6 address. Thus, all domains within a subscription share the

same IP address (v4 or v6). If you need to host sites on different IP addresses, you should additionally order the same plan for as many IP addresses as you need. This can be useful, for example, if you want to secure connections to each of your sites with a separate SSL certificate. For information on how to purchase an additional subscription, refer to the section Ordering More Resources (on page 48).

If you have multiple subscriptions under a single customer account, you can easily switch among them from the Account tab. To be more specific, the Account tab provides access to operations that apply to all your subscriptions. All other tabs (like Mail, Users, or Domains & Websites) are, on the contrary, subscription-wide. This means that to change mail settings on a particular subscription, you should first switch to it before clicking Mail.

System Users

For each hosting subscription, Panel creates a system user - a user account in the Panel server operating system. Customers obtain their system users' access credentials from their service providers and use these credentials for connecting to the server through FTP, SSH, and so on. In addition, all operations with files and directories in Panel are performed on behalf of system users. For example, when a customer adds a new file in File Manager, the subscription's system user becomes the owner of the file.

Adding Resources to a Subscription

Purchasing a new subscription for extending hosting resources is not always necessary. You can always improve just one of your subscriptions. For example, add extra disk space or SSL support. This can be done by switching to another hosting plan or by purchasing hosting plan add-ons. Learn more in the section Ordering More Resources (on page 48).

Managing Customer Account

In Panel, you can perform a number of administrative operations on your customer account:

 Change an account password and personal information. Learn more in the section

Changing Your Password and Contact Information (on page 36).

 View the list of services and resources provided by subscription on the Account tab.

For detailed information about all subscription features, refer to the section Viewing Subscription Summary (on page 37).

 Make payments to renew your subscription. Learn more in the section Managing

Account Balance and Invoices (on page 44).

 View statistics on your account: For example, disk space or traffic usage. Learn

more in the section Viewing Statistics (on page 50).

Customer Account Administration 35

Allowing Other Users to Access Your Account

In this chapter:

Changing Your Password and Contact Information ........................................... 36

Viewing Subscription Summary ......................................................................... 37

Managing Account Balance and Invoices .......................................................... 44

Ordering More Resources ................................................................................. 48

Viewing Statistics .............................................................................................. 50

(Advanced) Managing Auxiliary User Accounts ................................................. 52

If the number of hosting maintenance operations is too large to be handled by one person, you can delegate some of them to other people. For this purpose, you can create auxiliary user accounts grouped by means of user roles. For example, you can create a group that is allowed to only upload content to websites. Users in this group will not be able to perform any operations except for managing website content. For more information about auxiliary users, refer to the section (Advanced) Managing Auxiliary

User Accounts (on page 52).

36 Customer Account Administration

Changing Your Password and Contact Information

 To change your password for access to the Control Panel:

1. Click a link with your name at the top of the screen.

2. Type a new password, and click OK.

 To change a username or password that you use for connecting to your

subscription over FTP or SSH:

1. Click the Websites & Domains tab.

2. Click Web Hosting Access.

3. Type the new username or password, and click OK.

 To change your contact information:

1. Click a link with your name at the top of the screen.

2. Click the Contact Details tab.

3. Update your contact information and click OK.

Customer Account Administration 37

Viewing Subscription Summary

When you subscribe to hosting services, a user account is created in the Panel to allow you to manage your websites and mailboxes on your own.

You can view the following information about your account:

 Current subscriptions to service plans.

You can be subscribed to a number of service plans at once, and, therefore, can have several subscriptions associated with your account. If a billing system is connected to the Panel, then you can also purchase additional subscriptions, upgrade or downgrade them, and pay your invoices.

 Allocated and consumed resources.  Hosting features available for your websites.  Operations you can perform in your Panel.  Account balance, unpaid invoices, and monthly fee for your hosting package.

 To view the information about your account and your current subscriptions:

1. Click the Account tab.

A list of your current subscriptions is shown.

2. If the billing system is integrated with the Panel, then the following information is shown:

 Account credit balance. This is how much money is available in your billing account.

 Due invoices balance. This is how much money you owe to your provider. Here, you can

pay all invoices at once by clicking Pay All Outstanding Invoices, or pay one of invoices by clicking a Pay Now link in the list titled Latest Outstanding Invoices. You can also view all invoices by clicking the link Show all invoices, or print an invoice by clicking an invoice number and then clicking Print.

 Latest to-do items. This shows reminders from the system about the actions you need to

take.

 List of all your subscriptions. You can use links in the list to perform the following

operations:

 View subscription properties by clicking a link with subscription name.

 Select a subscription that you want to manage through the Control Panel by

clicking the corresponding link Switch to Subscription.

 Order an SSL certificate for a site by clicking Request SSL Certificate. This operation

is described in the section Ordering SSL Certificates.

 View properties of already ordered SSL certificates by clicking Show Certificate Info.

 View or change domain information, contact information, and DNS settings

specified at a registrar's site, by clicking Show Domain Info. These operations are described in the section Registrar's DNS Settings in Panel (on page 74).

3. To view detailed information about resource allotments, available hosting options, and permissions for operations, click a subscription's name.

38 Customer Account Administration

4. Do any of the following:

Next in this section:

Allocated and Consumed Resources ................................................................. 39

Hosting Features Available for Your Websites ................................................... 41

 To view a list of allocated and consumed resources, click the Resources tab.

 To view a list of hosting features available for your account, click the Hosting Options

tab.

 To view a list of operations that you can perform in your Hosting Panel, click the

Permissions tab.



Customer Account Administration 39

Allocated and Consumed Resources

If you are subscribed to a number of service plans at once, then you have several subscriptions. For each subscription, the following types of allocated resources are listed in the Panel at the Account tab > subscription name > Resources tab:

 Disk space. This is the total amount of disk space allocated to your account with

subscription. This amount includes all data related to your websites, e-mail accounts, applications, backups, and log files.

 Traffic. This is the total amount of data in megabytes that can be transferred monthly from

all your websites.

 Domains. This is the number of websites that can have separate second-level domain

names, such as, for example, example.com. For information about setting up websites, refer to the sections Set Up Your First Website

(on page 9) and Adding Domains (on page 61).

 Subdomains. This is the number of additional websites that can have third-level domain

names, such as, for example, news.example.com. For information about setting up subdomains, refer to the section Adding Subdomains (on

page 63).

 Domain aliases. This is the number of additional domain names that can be set up to point

to one of your sites. For example, example.fr and example.de can both point to example.com.

For information about setting up domain aliases, refer to the section Adding Domain Aliases (on page 65).

 Mailboxes. This is the number of mailboxes that can be created under all your websites.

For information about creating mailboxes, refer to the chapter Mail (on page 213).

 Mailbox size. This is the amount of disk space that can be occupied by a mailbox.  Total mailboxes quota. This is the total amount of disk space that can be used by all

mailboxes under all your domains. This option is available only on Windows-based customer accounts.

 Mailing lists. This is the total number of mailing lists that can be set up under all your

websites. Note that there are mailing lists and mail groups, which serve the same purpose, but are slightly different in functionality. Mailing lists support archiving and premoderation of messages, while mail groups can only be used for sending one message to a number of recipients at once.

For information about setting up and using mailing lists, refer to the section Using Mailing Lists (on page 224).

 Additional FTP accounts. This is the number of FTP accounts that can be set up for

accessing the webspace, in addition to the main FTP account that was created when your subscription was activated.

For information about setting up FTP accounts, refer to the sections Changing FTP Access Credentials (on page 208) and Adding FTP Accounts (on page 209).

 Databases (Linux). This is the number of databases that can be hosted for all your

websites. Databases are a standard means of organizing data storage that allows dynamic websites, web applications, and their users to store, search, and retrieve information.

For information about working with databases, refer to the chapter (Advanced) Using

Databases (on page 232).

40 Customer Account Administration

 MySQL databases and Microsoft SQL Server databases (Windows). This is 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). This is the maximum

amount of disk space (in megabytes) that the subscription's MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server databases respectively can occupy.

 Java applications. This is the number of Java applications packaged in WAR format that

you can install on your sites.

 Sites published with Presence Builder. This is the number of sites that you can create and

publish using Presence Builder, if Presence Builder option is included in your hosting package.

 Mobile sites.This is the total number of websites that you can host with the UNITY Mobile

online service, which optimizes sites for viewing on mobile devices.

 Web users. This is the number of user accounts that you can create for hosting web pages

for other users under your domains.

 FrontPage accounts. This is the number of Microsoft FrontPage user accounts that you can

create for collaboration on site content using FrontPage. This option is available only for Windows-based customer accounts.

 Shared SSL links. This is the number of websites that you can secure with an SSL

certificate shared by your provider. This option is available only for Windows-based customer accounts.

 ODBC DSN connections. This is the number of connections to external databases that you

can create for web applications running on your customer account. This option is available only for Windows-based customer accounts.

 ColdFusion DSN connections. This is the number of connections to external databases that

you can create for web applications written in Adobe ColdFusion, which are running on your customer account. This option is available only for Windows-based customer accounts.

Customer Account Administration 41

Hosting Features Available for Your Websites

Depending on your service plan, the following hosting features may be available for your websites (listed at the Account tab > subscription name > Hosting Options tab):

 SSL support. This allows you to secure connections to websites with SSL encryption.

For information about securing sites with SSL, refer to the section Securing Connections with SSL Certificates (on page 113).

 Web statistics. This allows you to view website visits statistics presented in diagrams and

charts. For information about viewing website visits statistics, refer to the section Viewing Statistics

(on page 50).

 Custom error documents. This allows you to create custom HTML pages and configure web

server to show them instead of typical error messages, such as 404 Not Found. For information about setting up custom error documents, refer to the section Setting Up

Custom Error Pages (on page 123).

 Support for programming and scripting languages, such as PHP, CGI, Perl, Python, Microsoft

ASP, ASP.NET, Adobe ColdFusion, SSI.

 Microsoft FrontPage support and Microsoft FrontPage over SSL support. These allow you to use

Microsoft FrontPage to create and edit website content. These options are available only for Windows-based customer accounts.

 Remote Microsoft FrontPage authoring (Windows). This allows you to use Microsoft

FrontPage to create and edit website content directly on the server. This option is available only for Windows-based customer accounts.

 Dedicated IIS application pool (Windows). This provides isolation and improved stability for

web applications working on sites.

 Additional write/modify permissions (Windows). This option allows the web applications to

use a file-based database (like Jet) located in the root of httpdocs folder.

 Allow web users to use scripts. This 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.

The following is a list of permissions for operations that you can perform in your Panel (shown at the Account tab > subscription name > Permissions tab):

 DNS zone management. Manage resource records in the DNS zones of websites. DNS

stands for Domain Name System. It is a service that enables web browsers to locate websites by domain names.

For information about configuring DNS settings for your websites, refer to the section (Advanced) Configuring DNS for a Domain (on page 68).

 Hosting settings management. Manage web hosting settings, such as custom web server

settings or support for scripting languages.

42 Customer Account Administration

 PHP safe mode management. This option is available only for Linux-based customer

accounts. It allows you to switch PHP safe mode on or off for websites. Safe mode is a security restriction that does not allow scripts written in PHP to perform potentially dangerous operations on the server. You might need to switch off the safe mode for PHP if you use some web applications written in PHP and if they do not function properly.

 Management of access to the server over SSH and Management of access to the server over Remote

Desktop. Securely upload web content to the server through Secure Shell (Linux) or a

Remote Desktop connection (Windows).

 Anonymous FTP management. Set up a folder on the server which should be accessible to

the Internet users over FTP protocol. This folder can have an address like, for example, ftp://downloads.example.com. This feature is called anonymous FTP because the users will not need to specify a username and password to browse, download, or upload files.

For information about setting up FTP folder with unrestricted access, refer to the section Setting Up Anonymous FTP Access (on page 211).

 Scheduler management. Schedule execution of programs or scripts in the server's operating

system. For information about scheduling tasks, refer to the chapter Scheduling Tasks (on page

225).

 Spam filter management. Set custom settings for protection from unsolicited commercial e-

mail, also known as spam. For information about setting up spam filtering, refer to the section Protecting Mailboxes

from Spam.

 Antivirus management. Set custom settings for protection from viruses and other malicious

software that spreads itself through e-mail. For information about setting up virus protection, refer to the section Protecting Mailboxes

from Viruses.

 Data backup and restoration using the server repository. Use the backup and restore functions

of the Panel to back up and restore websites, mail accounts, settings, and keep your backup files on the server.

For information about backing up and restoring data, refer to the chapter (Advanced) Back Up and Restore Data (on page 237).

 Data backup and restoration using a personal FTP repository. Use the backup and restore

functions of the Panel to back up and restore websites, mail accounts, settings, and save your backup files to an FTP folder on another server.

For information about backing up and restoring data, refer to the chapter (Advanced) Back Up and Restore Data (on page 237).

 Web statistics management. Set custom preferences for visitor statistics reports.

For information about configuring and viewing website visitor statistics, refer to the section Viewing Statistics (on page 50).

 Log rotation management. Set custom preferences for recycling (rotation) of web server

logs. Web server records information about connections to your sites and errors occurred on attempts to retrieve missing files. You can use these log files for website debugging purposes.

For information about working with web server access logs, refer to the section Log Files (on page 51).

 Access to Application Catalog. View and install applications on websites. For information

about applications, refer to the section Employing Website Applications (on page 103).

Customer Account Administration 43

 Setup of potentially insecure web scripting options that override provider's policy. This allows you

to override the hosting security policy, if it is applied by the provider.

 Domain creation. Set up and manage new websites.

For information about setting up websites, refer to the sections Set Up Your First Website (on page 9) and Adding Domains (on page 61).

 Subdomains management. Set up and manage new websites with addresses like

forum.example.com. For information about setting up subdomains, refer to the section Adding Subdomains (on

page 63).

 Domain aliases management. Set up and manage additional domain names for a site.

For information about setting up domain aliases, refer to the chapter Adding Domain Aliases (on page 65).

 Additional FTP accounts management. Set up and manage additional FTP accounts. To

enable collaboration on website content, you can set up FTP accounts for other users and specify which directories of the site should be accessible to them.

For information about setting up FTP accounts, refer to the section Adding FTP Accounts (on page 209).

 Java applications management. Install and manage Java applications distributed in WAR

archives and obtained separately from third-party vendors or application developers. For information about installing Java applications, refer to the section Installing Java

Applications.

 Mailing lists management. Set up and manage mailing lists.

For information about setting up and using mailing lists, refer to the section Using Mailing Lists (on page 224).

 Hosting performance settings management. Limit the bandwidth and number of connections to

websites. For information about restricting bandwidth usage for sites, refer to the section Limiting

Bandwidth and Number of Connections to Websites (on page 130).

 IIS application pool management. Set custom preferences for IIS application pool (available

only on Windows-based customer accounts). For information about setting up IIS application pool, refer to the section Setting Up IIS

Application Pool (Windows) (on page 149).

 Additional write/modify permissions management. Set additional write/modify permissions for

websites that use file-based databases (available only on Windows-based customer accounts).

 Shared SSL management. Secure connections to your sites with SSL protection by using an

SSL certificate shared by your provider. For more information, refer to the section Using Shared SSL Certificates (Windows) (on page

117).

 Hard disk quota assignment. Adjust hard quotas on disk space if that is supported by your

customer account.

 Database server selection. Select a database server for creating databases, if multiple

database servers are available.

44 Customer Account Administration

Managing Account Balance and Invoices

The operations described below are available if your Control Panel is integrated with Parallels Parallels Customer and Business Manager.

 To view your account balance and pay for hosting services:

1. Click the Account tab.

2. The following information is shown:

 Account credit balance. This is how much money is available in your account.

 (Optional) Usage charge. If your subscription allows consuming hosting resources

over the plan limit, this number shows how much money you should pay for these resources in addition to your subscription price. To view the detailed information about how much resources you used over limits, click the link See details below the charge amount. To learn how the system calculates usage charges, see the section Calculating Usage Charges (on page 46).

 Due invoices balance. This is how much money you owe to your provider. Here, you

can pay all invoices at once by clicking Pay All Outstanding Invoices, or pay one of invoices by clicking a Pay Now link in the list titled Latest Outstanding Invoices.

 Latest to-do items. This shows reminders from the system about actions you need to

take.

 (Optional) Affiliate programs. Your provider may let you earn money for promoting

their plans. To start earning, you should join their affiliate programs. Here you can find the link to join affiliate programs or the info about your money you earn if you already joined the programs. To learn how to get profit from affiliate programs, see the section Earning Money by Promoting a Provider's Plans (on page 46).

 List of all your subscriptions. You can use links in the list to perform the following

operations:

 To view subscription properties, click a link with subscription name.

 To select a subscription that you want to manage through the Control Panel, click

the corresponding link Switch to Subscription.

 To order an SSL certificate for a site, click Order a Certificate. For more information

about this operation, see the section Ordering SSL Certificates.

 To view properties of already ordered SSL certificates, click Show Certificate Info.

 To view or change domain information, contact information, and DNS settings

specified at a registrar's site, click Show Domain Info. For more information about these operations, see the section Registrar's DNS Settings in Panel (on page 74).

Customer Account Administration 45

 To choose a payment method that you would like to use for paying for

Next in this section:

Calculating Usage Charges ............................................................................... 46

Earning Money by Promoting a Provider's Plans ............................................... 46

services:

1. Go to the Account tab > Billing Accounts.

A record about the payment method that you used for purchasing the services for the first time is shown.

2. Do any of the following:

 To view or change settings for a billing account, click the corresponding link in the

Billing account name column, specify the information about your bank card or account, and select the subscriptions that should be paid by it. Click OK.

 To add a new billing account, click Add New Billing Account, select the payment method,

and click Next. Then choose the account owner (you or an auxiliary user that will be able to use this account), specify the required information about your bank card or account, and select the subscriptions for which you will pay with it. Click OK.

 To remove a billing account, click the corresponding Remove link.

46 Customer Account Administration

Calculating Usage Charges

If the pay-as-you-go web hosting is allowed for a plan, Business Manager calculates usage charges - total costs of hosting resources overage - for the plan's subscribers basing on

resource usage statistics that Business Manager collects from the connected Panels on a daily basis. No matter what billing mode and billing cycles you use, this happen on the first day of each month: The system finds the average daily overage of each resource except traffic and multiplies it by the month length and the monthly usage price of this resource.

Traffic

The traffic usage charge is calculated in the following way: Business Manager counts the total traffic overage for a month and multiplies it by the monthly traffic usage price. For example, if subscribers download 10 GB of files during a month while the plan limit is 5 GB, then the traffic overage is 5 GB. Assuming that the traffic usage price is $1 for a 1 GB, such subscribers will pay (10 GB - 5 GB) * $1 = $5 traffic usage fee.

Other Resources

For calculation usage charges for other resources, Business Manager uses the average daily usage values. For example, if a customer uses 500 MB of disk space over the subscription quota for 15 days and then uses extra 700 MB for other 15 days, the average overage will be (500 * 15 + 700 * 15)/30 = 600 MB. If the disk space usage price is $1 for 1 GB, then the customer will pay $0.6 for disk space overage this month.

Calculating Usage with Add-ons

If a customer purchases additional resources in the middle of a month, then the system subtracts the resource amount provided by the add-on from the daily resource usage of each day starting from the add-on purchasing day.

For example, if a customer uses 500 MB of disk space over the plan limit for a whole month and purchases the add-on that provides an additional 1 GB of disk space on the 7th day of the month, then the usage charge will include the payment for only 7 days of 500 MB of disk space overage.

Earning Money by Promoting a Provider's Plans

Panel lets you earn money for promoting your provider's service plans. Particularly, you can get a certain commission for each subscription ordered in the provider's online stores by people who signed up using your referral link.

Customer Account Administration 47

Participants of affiliate programs (affiliates) distribute links to their provider's online stores. Each link is unique, so the system defines who brought a new customer and adds the commission to the link owner's affiliate balance. This commission is defined by the terms of the affiliate program and may vary depending on an online store. The commission consists of two different elements:

 Initial rate - a percentage that the affiliate earns from the price of each order placed using

the affiliate's link.

 Recurrent rate - a percentage that the affiliate earns from each invoice issued for

subscriptions that were ordered using the affiliate's link.

Affiliates can use money they earn only after the provider pays out the money to them. Depending on the affiliate program conditions, the provider can pay out the commission either to the affiliate's account credit balance or transfer the money outside the system, for example, by check or cash. Normally, the provider pays out affiliates' commissions when they exceed the affiliate program's payment threshold. When the threshold is exceeded, affiliates can request the provider to pay out the commission by using the button in the Control Panel. Alternatively, affiliates can delay payments in order to earn a larger amount.

Becoming an Affiliate

To start earning money, click the link Become an Affiliate on the Account tab. Once became an affiliate, you will get the access to the list of the provider's affiliate programs and your affiliate links. To see the programs list and your links, click the Affiliate Programs list on the Account tab.

Tracking Your Earnings

To see your current affiliate balance, go to the Account tab and find the balance in the Affiliate Programs group. If you want to see detailed information about your earnings, click the link Revenue from Referrals.

To request a payout after exceeding a payment threshold, go to the Affiliate Programs page, select the programs and click Request Payout.

Note: If none of your affiliate balances exceed the corresponding thresholds, you will not see the Request Payout button.

Example

For example, your provider offers you an affiliate program with 10% commission rate and $20 payment threshold. You share your affiliate link with your friends, and three of them

subscribe to a web hosting plan which costs $50. The total commission that you get to your affiliate balance is $50 * 3 * 10% = $15. This amount is less than the program's payment threshold, so to receive credits, you should bring more customers to the online store with your link. When you do this and your balance exceeds the payment threshold which is $20, the provider will add this balance to your credits. When you receive them, you can use them to pay for your subscriptions or subscribe to new services in the provider's online stores.

48 Customer Account Administration

Participating in Multiple Programs

Your hosting provider may have multiple online stores with different currencies. If the provider offers affiliate programs for stores with different currencies, you will receive separate commissions in the corresponding currencies. For example, if you distribute links to stores with USD and EUR currencies, your affiliate balance contains two separate affiliate balances, one for each currency. Your provider pays out the commissions separately as well. For example, your affiliate balance is USD 50 and EUR 40 and the payment thresholds of the corresponding programs are USD 40 and EUR 45, your provider will pay out USD 50 to your credits and your affiliate balances will be USD 0 and EUR 40.

Ordering More Resources

The operations described below are available if your Control Panel is integrated with a billing system.

 To add more resources to your subscription or upgrade to another service

plan:

1. Click the Account tab.

2. In the list of subscriptions, locate the subscription that you want to upgrade

to another service plan, and click a link with the currently used plan's name.

3. Click Upgrade.

If there is no Upgrade link, then it means that you cannot upgrade to another hosting plan from your Control Panel, and you need to contact your provider.

4. Do any of the following:

 To add resources to your subscription without upgrading to another plan, select the

options you would like to add and click Adjust Add-ons.

 To upgrade to another service plan, click Order Upgrade.

 To reduce the amounts of resources or downgrade to another service plan:

1. Click the Account tab.

2. In the list of subscriptions, locate the subscription that you want to

downgrade to another service plan, and click a link with the currently used plan's name.

3. Click Downgrade.

If there is no Downgrade link, then it means that you cannot downgrade to another hosting plan from your Control Panel, and you need to contact your provider.

Customer Account Administration 49

4. Do any of the following:

 To reduce the amounts of allocated resources without downgrading to another plan,

select the options you would like to reduce and click Adjust Add-ons.

 To downgrade to another service plan, click Order Downgrade.

 To subscribe to a hosting plan in addition to your main plan:

1. Go to the Account tab and click the Add Subscription link.

2. Select the hosting plan to which you want to subscribe, and click Buy Now.

Follow the instructions on the screen to complete the order.

50 Customer Account Administration

Viewing Statistics

Next in this section:

Log Files ........................................................................................................... 51

 To view the reports on disk space and traffic usage by your account:

1. If you have several subscriptions associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at the top of the screen, select the required subscription.

2. Click the Statistics tab.

The following information is presented in charts:

 Disk space used by the following files and directories in the subscription:

 Websites

 Mail accounts

 Databases

 Logs

 Backups

 Chroot directories

 Configuration files

 Anonymous FTP directory

 Traffic used by FTP, web, and mail services during the current month.

FTP field shows the information about the total size of files transferred to and from the webspace over the file transfer protocol.

HTTP field shows the information about the total amount of data transferred from all of your websites over HTTP protocol, that is, retrieved by web browsers.

POP3/IMAP field shows the total amount of data received by all mail accounts under your domains.

SMTP field shows the total amount of data sent by all mail accounts under your domains.

3. Do any of the following:

 To view a report on the amount of data transferred to and from your sites over FTP,

click FTP Statistics.

 To view a report on the amount of data transferred to and from your FTP directory,

which is accessed without authorization, click Anonymous FTP statistics.

 To view a report on the amount of traffic used by services during a certain month, click

Data Transfer Statistics, and select the required month from the menu.

Customer Account Administration 51

Log Files

All connections to the web server and requests for files that were not found on the server are registered in log files. These log files are analyzed by the statistics programs running on the server, which then present graphical reports on demand. You may want to download these log files to your computer for processing by third-party statistics programs, or view their contents for web server debugging purposes.

 To prevent these log files from growing too large, you should enable automatic

cleanup and recycling of log files:

2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab > Logs > Log Rotation.

3. Click Switch On. If you see only the Switch Off button there, this means that log

recycling is already switched on.

4. Specify when to recycle log files and how many copies of each log file to store on the server. Also specify whether they should be compressed and sent to an e-mail address after processing.

5. Click OK.

 To view the contents of a log file or download it to your computer:

2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab > Logs. A list of log files opens.

3. Do any of the following:

 To view all entries in a log file, click the log file name. If you want to view only a few

last lines from the log file, type the number of lines into the input box under the Settings group, and then click the log file name.

 To download a file to your computer, click the corresponding icon .

 To remove a processed log file from the server, select the corresponding checkbox

and click Remove. Confirm removal and click OK.

 To download log files to your computer via FTP:

1. Connect to the Panel server via FTP.

2. Go to the /var/www/vhosts/<domain_name>/logs directory and copy

the log files to you computer.

52 Customer Account Administration

(Advanced) Managing Auxiliary User

Next in this section:

User Roles ........................................................................................................ 53

Auxiliary User Accounts ..................................................................................... 55

Custom Links .................................................................................................... 57

Accounts

If you want to allow other users to access the Panel for managing websites and installed applications, or to use e-mail services under your domains, then you need to create user accounts for them.

Auxiliary Users and User Roles

Auxiliary user accounts are created based on user roles. The roles include privileges to access certain areas of the Panel and perform operations in the Panel. There are several predefined user roles, namely: Accountant, Application User, Owner, and Webmaster. You can review and modify the Accountant, Application User, and Webmaster roles to suit your needs, or you can create your own custom roles. For more information on user roles and user account creation, refer to the sections User Roles (on page 53) and Auxiliary User Accounts (on page 55) correspondingly.

After auxiliary user accounts are created, the users will be able to log in to their accounts in Panel and use shortcuts in their Panels to access their mailboxes and work with applications. In addition, you can extend the list of links available to your auxiliary users with your custom links. These can be links to corporate resources, sites on the web, and so on. Learn more in Custom Links (on page 57).

Auxiliary Users and Multiple Subscriptions

Since Panel 10.4, if your customer account includes more than one subscription, you can allow auxiliary users to access only a specified subscription. If the Access to subscriptions property of a user account is set to a certain subscription, the user will always log in to this subscription and will not be able to switch to other subscriptions.

Customer Account Administration 53

User Roles

 To create a user role:

1. Go to the Users tab > User Roles tab > Create User Role.

2. Specify the following:

 User role name.

 Access to Panel services. Grant the required permissions for operations to the user:

 Manage users and roles. Add, modify, and remove user accounts and roles. Note that

even if this permission is not granted to a user, the user will be able to browse contact information of other users after logging in to the Panel.

 Create and manage sites. Set up, modify, remove domain names and subdomains,

host websites and change web hosting settings.

 Configure log rotation. Manage settings for recycling of web server access and error

log files. View, download, and remove log files.

 Configure anonymous FTP service. Set up a directory accessible to all Internet users

over FTP without authorization.

 Create and manage scheduled tasks. Schedule execution of scripts or programs on

your customer account.

 Configure spam filter. Set up spam protection for mailboxes.

 Configure antivirus. Set up virus protection for mailboxes.

 Create and manage databases. Add, modify, and remove databases stored on your

customer account.

 Configure and perform data backup and restoration. Back up and restore data related to

your customer account, websites, and mailboxes under your domains.

 View statistics. View reports on disk space and traffic usage by your websites, and

website visits.

 Install and manage applications. Install applications on websites and manage them.

 Design sites in Presence Builder. Create websites using Presence Builder.

 Upload and manage files. Manage files and directories located in the webspace by

using the Panel's file manager.

 Create and manage additional FTP accounts. Set up additional FTP accounts for other

users.

 Manage DNS settings. Manage DNS settings for domains.

 Install and manage Java applications. Install on websites third-party Java applications.

 Create and manage mail accounts. Create, modify, and remove e-mail accounts.

 Create and manage mailing lists. Create, modify, and remove mailing lists.

 Access to apps. Select the applications that the user should be able to access and use.

All web applications installed on the server are listed in this area.

For more information about installing applications and providing access to users, refer to the section Granting Auxiliary Users Access to Apps (on page 106).

54 Customer Account Administration

 Access to the billing operations. Grant these permissions if you want users of this role to

view and pay invoices for your subscriptions.

3. Click OK.

 To modify user role properties:

1. Go to the Users tab > User Roles tab.

2. Click a link with the role name that you want to change.

3. Change the role properties as required and click OK.

 To remove a user role:

1. Go to the Users tab > User Roles tab.

2. Select a checkbox corresponding to the role you want to remove and click

Remove. Note that it is impossible to remove the Owner role and other roles that are assigned to one or more users.

3. Click Yes to confirm the removal.

Customer Account Administration 55

Auxiliary User Accounts

 To create a user account:

1. Go to the Users tab > Create User Account.

2. Specify the following:

 Contact name.

 E-mail address. The e-mail address will be used as a user name for logging in to Panel,

unless you specify another name in the Username box.

 To create a new e-mail address for the user, select the option Create an e-mail

address under your account,

type the desired left part of the address which goes before the @ sign, and, if you have a number of domains on your account, select the domain name under which the e-mail address should be created.

 To associate with this user account an external e-mail address, select the option

Use an external e-mail address, and specify an existing external e-mail address.

 User role. Select the required user role from the menu.

 Access to subscriptions. Allow a user to access only a specified subscription. The All

value grants them access to all subscriptions within your customer account.

 Username. The user name for access to Panel.

 Password. The password for access to Panel.

3. Leave the User is active checkbox selected. Otherwise, the user will not be able to access the Panel and use applications on your customer account.

4. Click OK.

5. Now, if you want to add contact information for the user, click a link with the

user's name, and then click the Contact Details tab, and specify the user's contact information.

6. Click OK.

Now you can notify the user about creation of his or her account and ability to access Panel. Provide the user with the address to open in his or her browser, the username (which is the user's e-mail address), and the password that you specified in the account settings.

 To change user account properties:

1. Click the Users tab.

2. Click a link with the user's name.

3. Make the required changes and click OK.

56 Customer Account Administration

 To suspend or activate a user account:

1. Click the Users tab.

2. Click a link with the user's name.

3. Do any of the following:

 To suspend a user account, clear the User is active checkbox. The user will no longer

be able to log in to the Panel and access applications.

 To activate a user account, select the User is active checkbox.

4. Click OK.

 To remove a user account:

1. Click the Users tab.

2. Select a checkbox corresponding to the user account you want to remove,

and click Remove. Note that you cannot remove your own account.

3. Click Yes to confirm the removal.

Customer Account Administration 57

Custom Links

You can add custom hyperlinks to the Panel and make them visible for your users. The links may lead to web resources, such as your corporate site, or to a web application that can process online requests and accept additional information about the users who click these links.

You can specify what information about users should be passed:

 Subscription ID.  Primary domain name associated with a subscription.  FTP account username and password.  Customer's account ID, name, e-mail, and company name.

You can place the links in the following locations of the Control Panel, and decide who should be able to see them:

 On the Websites & Domains page in the Control Panel, visible only to you. This is achieved

by selecting the Customer's Home page option in the link properties.

 On the Websites & Domains page in the Control Panel, visible to you and your users who

are allowed to log in to the Control Panel. This is achieved by selecting the Common access option in the link properties.

 On the Websites & Domains tab in the Control Panel, visible to you and your users who are

allowed to log in to the Control Panel. This is achieved by selecting the Websites & Domains page of Subscription option in the link properties.

 To add a custom hyperlink to the Control Panel:

1. Go to the Account tab > Additional Services, and click Add Link to Service.

2. Specify the following settings:

 Type the text that will show on your button in the Button label box.

 Choose the location for your button.

 Specify the priority of the button. Your custom buttons will be arranged in the Panel in

accordance with the priority you define: the lower the number, the higher the priority. Buttons are placed in the left-to-right order.

 To use an image for a button background, type the path to its location or click Browse

to browse for the desired file. It is recommended that you use a 16x16 pixels GIF or JPEG image for a button to be placed in the navigation pane, and 32x32 pixels GIF or JPEG image for buttons placed in the main frame or desktop.

 Type the hyperlink of your choice to be attached to the button into the URL box.

 Using the checkboxes, specify whether you want the customer information and other

data to be transferred within the URL. These data can be used for processing by external web applications.

 In the Tooltip text input field, type in the help tip that will be displayed when the users

place the mouse pointer over the button.

58 Customer Account Administration

 Select the Open URL in Parallels Panel checkbox if you want the destination URL to be

opened in the main frame of the Panel, otherwise, leave this checkbox cleared to open the URL in a separate browser window or tab.

 If you want to make this button visible only to you, select the Show to me only checkbox.

3. Click Finish to complete creation.

 To remove a hyperlink button from the Panel:

1. Go to the Account tab > Additional Services.

2. Select a checkbox corresponding to the link that you want to remove and

click Remove.

As described in the chapter Quick Start with Parallels Panel (on page 8), creating your web

In this chapter:

Domains and DNS............................................................................................. 60

Hosting Settings ................................................................................................ 77

Website Content ................................................................................................ 95

(Advanced) Restricting Access to Content ........................................................ 100

Previewing Websites ......................................................................................... 102

Web Applications .............................................................................................. 103

(Advanced) Website Security ............................................................................ 112

(Advanced) Extended Website Management..................................................... 119

C H A P T E R 4

Websites and Domains

presence always starts with purchasing a domain name. The domain name (or simply, domain) is the name people use to access your site from their browsers, for example,

www.example.com. The domain registration is carried out by authorized companies domain name registrars. Hosting providers often carry out this function. For detailed information about how to manage domains in Panel, refer to the section Domains and DNS (on page 60).

However, a domain is not a website. To make it accessible from the web and fill it with content, you should subscribe to hosting services (obtain a customer account). That is to supplement your domain with Internet connectivity, some disk space to store your content, mail services, and so on. Thus, a website is a domain with provided hosting services.

Panel provides a full range of operations in regard to domains and websites:

 Adding and removing domains, subdomains, and aliases.  Managing the content of your websites.  Installing various web apps.  Securing connections to your websites and much more.

This chapter provides detailed information on all the possible operations on websites and domains in Panel. Note that some of these operations may be unavailable according to your hosting plan.

60 Websites and Domains

Domains and DNS

Next in this section:

Adding Domains ................................................................................................ 61

Adding Subdomains .......................................................................................... 63

Adding Domain Aliases ..................................................................................... 65

Adding Wildcard Subdomains (Linux) ................................................................ 66

Adding a Domain Forwarder .............................................................................. 67

(Advanced) Configuring DNS for a Domain ....................................................... 68

As described above, a domain name is the name that people type in their browsers to access your website.

A domain name is hierarchical and can consist of a number of parts called labels:

 The label furthest to the right is called the top-level domain. For example, com is

the top-level domain of www.example.com. The number of top-level domains is limited and all of them are managed by separate international authorities.

 The second-level domain is the label that we mainly use to imply the purpose of our

website. In www.example.com it is the example part. The combination of the second-level and top-level domain names specifies the exact location of your website.

 Each label to the left is a subdomain of the domain to the right. For example, www

is the subdomain of example.com. Subdomains can be convenient when you want to isolate some content from the main site, e.g. you can organize your personal blog on myblog.example.com. For information on how to add subdomains in Panel, refer to the section Adding Subdomains (on page 63).

If you want to host more than one website under your subscription, you can register more domains and add them to your subscription. Registering new domains may be available to you in the Control Panel if your hosting provider allows this. For information on how to purchase and add domains in Panel, refer to the section Adding Domains (on page 61).

In fact, domain names exist only for convenience; the real communication between browser and web servers uses IP addresses - the numerical host identifiers. For example, the real address of www.example.com may be 192.0.2.12 (IPv4). To resolve domain names into IP addresses, web hosts use DNS technology. For more details about how DNS is implemented in Panel, refer to the section (Advanced) Configuring DNS for a Domain (on page 68).

DNS allows several domains to be resolved into one IP address. Such additional names are called domain aliases. This is convenient when you have purchased several domains that you want to point to the same website. For information on how to add aliases to existing domains, refer to the section Adding Domain Aliases (on page 65).

Websites and Domains 61

Adding Domains

If your hosting package includes more than one domain name (website), then you can easily add new domains to the server. Before you start adding a new domain that will use a second-level domain name, like example.com, be sure to register this domain name. If your hosting provider provides the domain name registration service, you can do this from the Control Panel as described below. Otherwise, you should register your domain name with another domain name registration authority.

You can set up the following types of site configurations through Panel:

 Website addressed by a second-level domain name. The following services are available

for websites:

 A unique Internet address (domain name), like example.com.

 Additional domain names (domain aliases).

 Subdomains - divisions of a site accessible by easy-to-remember addresses

that are added to the main site, like mail.example.com.

 Separate FTP accounts for collaboration on the site content. For every FTP

account, you can specify which directories can be accessed.

 Creating content using Presence Builder.

 Simplified deployment of applications, such as content management systems,

photo galleries, shopping carts, blogging platforms, and many more.

 Secure data exchange implemented by SSL protocol. This requires that a site

be hosted on a dedicated IP address, which is not shared among other users and sites.

 Mailboxes and mailing lists.

 Viewing statistics on site visits.

 Website or a division of a website addressed by a third-level domain name (subdomain). This

is usually a division of an existing site. It has an Internet address comprising of three parts separated by dots. The following services are available for subdomains:

 Separate document root from the main site. Document root is a directory on the

server where web pages of a site are stored.

 Access over FTP for content management.

 Creating content using Presence Builder.

 Simplified deployment of applications.

 Secure data exchange implemented by SSL protocol.

 Viewing statistics on site visits.

62 Websites and Domains

Adding More Domains

 To host a new website with a second-level domain name:

1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to several webspaces associated with your account, select the required webspace in the Subscription menu at the top of the screen.

2. Click the Websites & Domains tab, click Add New Domain and follow on- screen instructions.

Note: If you select the recommended option, you should connect the DNS settings related and your domain name with the domain name at the registrar's side. To achieve this, enter the Panel name server IP address into the respective NS record of the registrar. The instruction on how to obtain the IP is as follows: go to Websites & Domains > <domain name> > DNS Settings, find the NS record, and then find the A record corresponding to the NS record value. For example, if your NS record is example.com. NS ns.example.com, find the A record with ns.example.com, for example, ns.example.com. A 192.0.2.12

The resulting value, 192.0.2.12, is the Panel name server IP you need.

3. Click OK.

The new domain name is now shown in the list at the bottom of the screen.

4. If the operation of changing hosting settings is available for your account, then you can click the domain name of the new website to view or change the hosting settings, as described in the section Changing Hosting Settings (on page 77).

You can now start creating your website with Presence Builder or upload your web content to the webspace of the new website, as described in the section Managing Website Content (on page 95).

Registering Domains

If your service provider offers the domain name registration service as well as web hosting, you can initiate a domain registration directly from Panel. To register a domain name, add it as described above and then click the link register it now beside the new domain name on the Websites & Domains tab. This will redirect you to the provider's online store where you can complete the registration.

After you register a domain name, it appears in the Registered domain names list on the Websites & Domains tab. To get information about a domain name registration, for example, the registration price and next renewal date, click the domain name in this list.

Websites and Domains 63

Removing Domains

When you delete a domain from Panel, all data related to the corresponding site are deleted from the server. The first domain name (default domain) that was created for your account cannot be deleted; however, it can be renamed.

 To remove a domain:

1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to several webspaces associated with your account, select the required webspace in the Subscription menu at the top of the screen.

2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the name of the domain or subdomain you want to remove.

3. Click Remove Website or Remove Subdomain.

4. Confirm removal and click OK.

Note: Removing domain names from the Control Panel does not cancel the registration

of these names. If you registered these domains name, you still can use them for your websites.

Adding Subdomains

If your hosting package includes subdomains, which are additional third-level domain names, then you can use them to:

 Organize logically the structure of your site.  Host additional websites or parts of a website on the same server without the need

to pay for registration of additional domain names.

An example of using subdomains:

You have a website your-product.com dedicated to promoting and selling your product. For publishing information related to customer service and online order tracking, you can organize the subdomain "orders" so that your users will be able to access this information directly by visiting the Internet address "orders.your-product.com".

As subdomains have the same status with the additional domains, you can use the same set of tools and services for working with subdomains. For example, SSL protection, Presence Builder, web statistics, and so on.

 To set up a subdomain for a site division or a separate site:

1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to several webspaces associated with your account, select the required webspace in the Subscription menu at the top of the screen.

2. Click the Websites & Domains tab.

3. Click Add New Subdomain.

64 Websites and Domains

4. Specify the following:

a. In the Subdomain name box, type the portion of address that will

be added to the domain name of your main site.

b. In the Document root box, type the desired location of the

directory where all files and subdirectories of this site will be kept. You can use the default directory of the main site, called httpdocs, or specify another directory.

5. Click OK.

The new subdomain name is now shown in the list at the bottom of the screen.

You can now upload your web content to the subdomains webspace (directory on the server), as described in the section Uploading Content over FTP.

Wildcard Subdomains

If you enter the asterisk (*) symbol as a subdomain name, Panel will create a so-called wildcard subdomain.When site visitors enter any subdomain name that is not registered in Panel, they will be redirected to this wildcard subdomain. You can create wildcard subdomains on any domain name level. For example, you can create the *.mystore.example.com subdomain. Learn more about wildcard subdomains in the section Adding Wildcard Subdomains (Linux) (on page 66).

Websites and Domains 65

Adding Domain Aliases

Domain aliases allow you to point several domain names to the same website. This can be useful, for example, for branding purposes.

 To set up a domain alias in Panel:

1. Run the Add New Domain Alias wizard in the Websites & Domains tab.

2. Specify the domain for which you are creating an alias (the primary

domain) and the alias’s domain name, for example alias.tld, and set up the following:

 Synchronization of DNS zone with the primary domain

If this option is enabled, the DNS zone of the domain alias will be in sync with the zone of the primary domain. Any changes made in the DNS zone of the primary domain will be automatically applied to the DNS zone of the alias. For example, if you create the CNAME record like blog.primary_domain.tld, the

corresponding blog.alias.tld record will be added to the zone of the alias.

Note: If a domain alias’s DNS zone is synced with the primary domain, you cannot

modify resource records in the alias's DNS zone.

 Mail service

Panel does not allow creating mailboxes under domain aliases. Instead, the mailboxes of the primary domain are used. If you select the Mail service option, the mailboxes created under the primary domain will also be available under the alias. To enable users to read mail sent to mailboxes under the alias, Panel redirects it to the corresponding mailboxes under the primary domain.

For example: You have an email address mail@domain.tld. Then you set up an alias for

domain.tld, for example, alias.tld. If you select the Mail service option, all mail sent to mail@alias.tld will be available at mail@domain.tld. Otherwise, the mailbox mail@domain.tld will not receive mail sent to mail@alias.tld.

 Web service

If this option is turned on, the website will open in the browser at the alias’s URL. If you clear the Web service check box, the alias will be used for mail only provided that Mail service is selected.

 Redirect with the HTTP 301 code

By default, Panel uses web server internal redirection for aliases. In this case, the alias appears to be a separate website for visitors and for web search engines. This causes the problem because search engines index the content of the alias separately, so your primary domain loses search engine rankings.

To avoid this, you can use redirection with the HTTP 301 code (Moved permanently) by selecting Redirect with the HTTP 301 code. In this case, only the primary domain will rank in search engines. Learn more at

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93633

66 Websites and Domains

 Java web applications

If you use hosting services based on a Linux platform, and you have Java applications installed on your site that you want to make accessible through the domain alias, select the Java web applications option.

Adding Wildcard Subdomains (Linux)

Use wildcard subdomains to redirect visitors from non-existent subdomains to one of your websites, commonly, to your main website. The typical use cases of this feature are:

 Improve website organization and run marketing campaigns.

For example, you do not have the vps-limited-offer subdomain but wish to forward users from limited-vps-offer.example.com to example.com.

 Help users reach your website even if they mistyped a subdomain name.

It is a widespread mistake to mistype a website name if it has the leading www prefix (for example, typing ww.example.com).

 Finally, some website applications (WordPress) use wildcard subdomains to create

dynamic subdomains for convenience and better user experience.

Note: Traffic to existent subdomains will not be affected in any way if you add a wildcard subdomain.

How to Add Wildcard Subdomains

You can add one wildcard subdomain per each of domain names under a subscription. For this, go to the Websites & Domains tab and add a new subdomain which name is "*" to one of your domain names. Example: *.example.com. If you wish this subdomain to have a custom set of scripts or website content, specify a custom document root for this subdomain.

Limitations of Wildcard Subdomains

Wildcard subdomains act like typical subdomains with the following exceptions:

 Linux-only feature. Currently, wildcard subdomains are supported only on Panel for

Linux.

 Renaming is not available. It is not possible to rename such subdomains.  No DNS zone. This type of subdomains does not have own zone record in the

Panel's DNS server. Instead, they have the A record that points to the IP address associated with a corresponding domain name.

 Installation of APS apps is not allowed. Panel users are unable to install APS apps

to wildcard subdomains.

 No Presence Builder sites. Panel users are unable to edit and publish sites to these

subdomains.

Websites and Domains 67

Adding a Domain Forwarder

 To create a domain forwarder in Panel:

Start creating a new domain in Websites & Domains > Add New Domain and specify the following:

 In the Domain name box, type the domain name that you have registered with your

service provider or a domain name registration company and from which you want to redirect visitors.

 Under DNS server configuration, select the option Use our DNS settings.  Under Hosting type, select the Forwarding option.  In the Destination address box, type the URL address to which you want to redirect

visitors.

 Under Forwarding type, select standard or frame forwarding. To learn more about

forwarding types, see Forwarding. (on page 81)

 To make an existing domain a domain forwarder:

On the Websites & Domains tab, click Hosting Settings beside the name of the domain you want to make a forwarder, and click the Change link next to the Hosting type field and specify the following:

 Under Hosting type, select the Forwarding option.  In the Destination address box, type the URL address to which you want to redirect

visitors.

 Under Forwarding type, select standard or frame forwarding. To learn more about

forwarding types, see Forwarding. (on page 81)

68 Websites and Domains

(Advanced) Configuring DNS for a Domain

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical naming system that translates understandable domain names into the numerical identifiers (IP addresses) associated with web hosts. Such translation is called resolving. When you add a domain name (using Websites & Domains > Add New Domain), you should choose the role of Panel in resolving your resources: It can directly process all translation requests, be a backup server, or pass the translation requests to a remote server. This role can be changed for existing domain names (Websites & Domains > domain name > DNS Settings). We discuss details about each of the roles and provide instructions how to assign them next in this section.

Note: If your Panel does not use its own DNS service and does not allow configuring DNS settings on a remote DNS server, you can only view the information about your registered domain name. The link DNS Settings in Websites & Domains will be replaced with Whois Information.

DNS Name Resolving

DNS is based on a hierarchical tree structure called the domain namespace. This global namespace contains all possible domain names and is divided into logical parts

- domain zones (see the picture below). A domain zone is a part of the namespace that

contains the addresses of particular domains. Addresses are stored in a file on a separate name server with authority for that zone. For example, when a browser tries to access www.example.com, it gets the site's IP address from a server with authority for the example.com zone. For more information about how DNS works, refer to the respective documentation. You can find it in numerous sources on the Internet, for example, Microsoft TechNet.

Websites and Domains 69

When you purchase a domain, a registrar gives you access to the settings for the DNS

Next in this section:

Panel as a Master DNS Server.......................................................................... 70

Panel as a Slave DNS Server ........................................................................... 74

Registrar's DNS Settings in Panel ..................................................................... 74

zone responsible for your domain and its subdomains. You can either allow the registrar to manage the zone, or delegate the zone to Panel. The latter option gives you the ability to manage a zone directly from your customer account. For information about how to delegate your zone to the Panel, refer to the section Panel as a Master DNS Server (on page 70).

If you are an advanced user and already have a DNS server that you want to give authority for your zone, you can set up Panel to be a slave (also called secondary) DNS server. In this case, Panel just stores a copy of your zone and you do not have the option to manage it from the Control Panel. The Panel DNS server will be used only if your primary name server becomes inaccessible or inoperable. For information about how to make Panel act as a secondary DNS server, refer to the section Panel as a Slave DNS Server (on page 74).

If you decide not to use Panel as a DNS server, all zone management should be performed on a domain registrar's site. Some registrars provide support for remote DNS zone management. If your hosting provider uses this feature, you will still be able to modify the DNS zone from the Control Panel regardless of where your authoritative name server is located. For information about how to switch off the Panel's DNS server and manage your zone remotely, refer to the section Registrar's DNS Settings in Panel (on page 74).

70 Websites and Domains

Panel as a Master DNS Server

For each new domain name, the Panel automatically creates a DNS zone in accordance with the settings configured by your service provider. The domain names should work fine with the automatic configuration, however, if you need to perform custom modifications in the domain name zone, you can do that through your Panel.

 To view the resource records in a DNS zone of a domain:

1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS settings you want to view.

2. Click DNS Settings.

 To add a new resource record to the zone:

1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS settings you want to manage..

2. Click DNS Settings.

3. Click Add Record.

4. Select a resource record type, and specify the appropriate data:

 For an NS record, which specifies the domain name of a name server that is

responsible for a DNS zone of a domain, you need to specify the domain name (or a subdomain), and then the corresponding name server's domain name. If you are defining an NS record for your main domain, then you should leave the domain name field empty. If you are defining a name server for a subdomain, then type the subdomain into the domain name field. After that, type the appropriate name server's domain name into the name server field. For example: ns1.mynameserver.com.

 For A and AAAA records, which associate IP addresses with domain names,

you need to specify the domain name and IP address. If you are simply defining a record for your main domain, then you should leave the domain name field empty. If you are defining a record for a name server, then type ns1 or ns2 into the domain name field. Then specify the appropriate IP address with which to associate the domain name.

 For a CNAME record, which specifies which subdomains (or domain aliases that

look like subdomains, for example, www) should be associated in the Domain Name System with the main domain address, you need to type the subdomain name or www alias, and then, the main domain name.

 For an MX record, which specifies the host name of the preferred mail server for

the given domain, you need to specify the mail domain (or subdomain), the domain name of the mail exchange server responsible for receiving e-mail, and the server's priority. For the main domain, you would simply leave the available field blank. Then type the domain name of your mail server. If you are running a remote mail server named 'mail.myhostname.com', then simply type 'mail.myhostname.com' into the Mail exchange server field. After that, specify its priority: 0 is the highest and 50 is the lowest.

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 For a PTR record, which is required for reverse DNS lookup (an IP address is

translated to domain name), you need to enter the IP address/mask, and then type the appropriate domain name for this IP address to be translated to.

 For a TXT record, which is used for specifying arbitrary human-readable text,

you can type an arbitrary text string, or an SPF record.

 For an SRV record, which is used for specifying location of services other than

mail, you will need to enter the service name, protocol name, port number, and target host. You can also specify the priority of the target host, and relative weight (for records with the same priority) in the appropriate fields.

4. Click OK, and then click Update.

 To modify the properties of a resource record:

1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS settings you want to manage.

2. Click DNS Settings.

3. Click the hyperlink in the Host column corresponding to the resource

record you want to modify.

4. Modify the record as required, click OK, and then click Update.

In addition to the resource records described above, there is also a Start of Authority record. This record indicates that this DNS name server is responsible for the domain's DNS zone. It also contains settings that affect propagation of information about the DNS zone in the Domain Name System.

 To modify the entries in the Start of Authority (SOA) record for a domain:

1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS settings you want to manage.

2. Click DNS Settings.

3. Click SOA Record.

4. Specify the required values:

 Refresh interval. This is how often the secondary name servers check with the

master name server to see if any changes have been made to the domain's zone file. The Panel sets the default value of three hours.

 Retry interval. This is the time a secondary server waits before retrying a failed

zone transfer. This time is typically less than the refresh interval. The Panel sets the default value of one hour.

 Expire interval. This is the time before a secondary server stops responding to

queries, after a lapsed refresh interval where the zone was not refreshed or updated. The Panel sets the default value of one week.

 Minimum TTL. This is the time a secondary server should cache a negative

response. The Panel sets the default value of three hours.

 Default TTL. This is the amount of time that other DNS servers should store the

record in a cache. The Panel sets the default value of one day.

72 Websites and Domains

5. Click OK, and then click Update.

Usage of serial number format recommended by IETF and RIPE is mandatory for many domains registered in some high-level DNS zones, mostly European ones. If your domain is registered in one of these zones and your registrar refuses your SOA serial number, using serial number format recommended by IETF and RIPE should resolve this issue.

The Panel-managed servers use UNIX timestamp syntax for configuring DNS zones. UNIX timestamp is the number of seconds since January 1, 1970 (Unix Epoch). The 32-bit timestamp will overflow by July 8, 2038.

RIPE recommends using YYYYMMDDNN format, where YYYY is year (four digits), MM is month (two digits), DD is day of month (two digits) and NN is version per day (two digits). The YYYYMMDDNN format will not overflow until the year 4294.

 To change the Start of Authority (SOA) serial number format to

YYYYMMDDNN for a domain:

1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS settings you want to manage.

2. Click DNS Settings.

3. Click SOA Record.

4. Select the Use serial number format recommended by IETF and RIPE checkbox.

Note: See the sample of SOA serial number generated with the selected format. If

the resulting number is less than the current zone number, the modification may cause temporary malfunction of DNS for this domain. Zone updates may be invisible to the Internet users for some time.

5. Click OK, and then click Update.

 To remove a resource record from the zone:

1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS settings you want to manage.

2. Click DNS Settings.

3. Select a checkbox corresponding to the record you want to remove.

4. Click Remove.

5. Confirm removal, click OK, and then click Update.

Websites and Domains 73

To restore the original zone configuration in accordance with the default DNS template settings used on the server:

1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS settings you want to manage.

2. Click DNS Settings.

3. Click Restore Defaults.

4. In the IP address menu, select the IP address to be used for restoring the

zone.

5. Specify whether a www alias is required for the domain.

6. Select the Confirm the restoration of the DNS zone checkbox, and click OK.

 To restore the default Start of Authority (SOA) serial number format (UNIX

timestamp) for a domain:

1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS settings you want to manage.

2. Click DNS Settings.

3. Click SOA Record.

4. Clear the Use serial number format recommended by IETF and RIPE

checkbox.

Note: See the sample of SOA serial number generated with the selected format. If the resulting number is less than the current zone number, the modification may cause temporary malfunction of DNS for this domain. Zone updates may be invisible to the Internet users for some time.

5. Click OK, and then click Update.

By default, transfer of DNS zones is allowed only for the name servers designated by NS records contained within each zone. If you are using a Windows-based account, then you can change zone transfer settings.

 If your domain name registrar requires that you allow transfer for all zones

you serve:

1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS settings you want to manage.

2. Click DNS Settings.

3. Click Zone Transfers. A screen will show all hosts to which DNS zone

transfers for all zones are allowed.

4. Specify the registrar's IP or network address and click Add Network.

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Panel as a Slave DNS Server

If you host websites on your account and have a standalone DNS server acting as a primary (master) name server for your sites, you may want to set up the Panel's DNS server to function as a secondary (slave) name server.

 To make the Panel's DNS server act as a secondary name server:

1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS settings you want to manage.

2. Click DNS Settings.

3. Click Switch DNS Service Mode.

4. Click Add Record.

5. Specify the IP address of the primary (master) DNS server.

6. Click OK, and then click Update.

7. Repeat steps from 2 to 6 for each website that needs to have a

secondary name server on your server.

 To make the Panel's DNS server act as a primary back:

1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS settings you want to manage.

2. Click DNS Settings.

3. Click Switch DNS Service Mode.

The original resource records for the zone will be restored.

Registrar's DNS Settings in Panel

If you have external primary and secondary name servers that are authoritative for some of your websites, switch off the Panel's DNS service for each of these sites.

 To switch off the Panel's DNS service for a site served by external name

servers:

1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS settings you want to manage.

2. Click DNS Settings.

3. Click Switch Off the DNS Service.

Websites and Domains 75

Turning the DNS service off for the zone will refresh the screen, so that only a list of name servers remains. Note that the listed name server records have no effect on the system. They are only presented on the screen as clickable links to give you a chance to validate the configuration of the zone maintained on the external authoritative name servers.

4. If you want to validate the configuration of a zone maintained on authoritative name servers, do the following:

a. Add to the list the entries pointing to the appropriate name

servers that are authoritative for the zone: Click Add Record, specify a name server, click OK, and then click Update.

b. Repeat the step a for each name server you would like to test.

The records will appear in the list.

c. Click the records that you have just created.

The Panel will retrieve the zone file from remote name servers and will check the resource records to make sure that domain's resources are properly resolved. The results will be interpreted and displayed on the screen.

If your Control Panel is integrated with a billing system, then the following operations on domains might be available from the Panel:

 Setting a password for access to domain management panel at a registrar's site.  Locking and unlocking domain name for transferring to another provider.  Changing domain registrant and other contact information.  Changing DNS settings for domain zones served by a domain registrar.  Configure automatic renewal of the domain account at the domain name

registration company.

 To set a new password for access to your domain management control

panel at a registrar's site:

1. Go to the Account tab.

2. Locate the domain name for which you want to change settings, and

click the link Show Domain Info next to it.

3. Click Change Domain Password.

4. Type a new password and click OK.

 To lock or unlock domain name for transferring to another provider:

1. Go to the Account tab.

2. Locate the domain name for which you want to change settings, and

click the link Show Domain Info next to it.

3. Click Change Registrar Lock Setting.

4. To allow domain name transfer, clear the Lock checkbox and click OK.

76 Websites and Domains

 To change domain owner's contact, technical, administrative, or billing

information:

1. Go to the Account tab.

2. Locate the domain name for which you want to change settings, and

click the link Show Domain Info next to it.

3. Click Edit Contact Info.

4. Make the necessary changes and click OK.

 To change DNS settings for a domain:

1. Go to the Account tab.

2. Locate the domain name for which you want to change settings, and

click the link Show Domain Info next to it.

3. Click Edit DNS Settings.

4. Specify the domain name servers that serve the DNS zone for your

website and IP address of the server where the website is hosted.

5. If the DNS zone of your website is served by your domain name registrar, then you can also specify other resource records that affect how your website's services are accessible over the Internet.

6. To save your changes, click OK.

 To configure automatic renewal of the domain name:

1. Go to the Account tab.

2. Locate the domain name for which you want to change settings, and

click the link Show Domain Info next to it.

3. Click Automatic Domain Renewal.

4. To allow auto renewal of the domain registration, select the Turn on auto

renewal checkbox and click OK.

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Hosting Settings

Next in this section:

General Settings ............................................................................................... 78

Web Scripting Settings ...................................................................................... 83

Web Server Settings ......................................................................................... 90

The website’s hosting settings are available on the Websites & Domains tab of the Control Panel. All per-website hosting settings form the following groups:

 General.

Hosting type, security, scripting and statistics settings. See General Settings (on page

78).

 PHP.

PHP scripting language settings. See PHP Settings (on page 84).

 Web Server.

Web server settings (Apache (with nginx) or IIS). Web server type depends on Panel version: Apache with nginx is used on Panel for Linux, and IIS on Panel for Windows. See Apache Web Server Settings (on page 90) and IIS Web Server Settings (on page 92) correspondingly.

Note that in the IIS web server settings you can configure basic website security settings, such as anonymous access, ssl usage, and directory browsing.

On Windows, you can also set up custom ASP.NET settings in Websites & Domains > select a domain > ASP.NET Settings. For details, see ASP.NET Settings (Windows) (on page 88).

78 Websites and Domains

General Settings

To view a website's general hosting settings, click Hosting Settings beside its name on the Websites & Domains tab. The general website hosting settings are divided into groups:

Basic Settings

 Domain name. The domain name that you register with a domain registrar and will

use for this website.

 Hosting type. The hosting type (Website hosting, Forwarding, and No hosting) defines

the website behavior. By default, all webistes belong to the Website hosting type as they are physically hosted on the server.

To change the hosting type, use the Change link. To learn more about hosting types, see Hosting Types (on page 79).

To suspend the website with all mailboxes and mailing lists hosted under the website's domain name use the Suspend option.

Note: Other basic settings depend on the selected hosting type. See Hosting Types (on page 79).

 Website status. The website status defines the site's accessibility in browsers and

available hosting services. Apart from working as usual, the site can be suspended so it will not open in browsers, and even more, the hosting features of the site (such as the mail service and DNS service) can be disabled. You should change the status if you want the site to be temporarily unavailable, for example, for maintenance purposes. See Website Status (on page 82).

 Document root. Displayed for domains with the Website hosting type. See Website

Hosting (on page 80).

 Preferred domain. Displayed for domains with the Website hosting type. See Website

Hosting (on page 80).

Security Settings

 Enable SSL support. Secure Sockets Layer encryption is generally used for

protecting transfer of sensitive data during online transactions on e-commerce websites that run on dedicated IP addresses. SSL certificates that participate in the encryption process are usually applied to a single domain name on a single IP address, therefore, each site that needs SSL protection must be hosted on a dedicated IP address. An exception to this is subdomains, which you can protect with a wildcard certificate. Installing an SSL certificate on a web server that hosts several websites with different domain names on a single IP address is technically possible, however, it is not recommended: the encryption will be provided, but users will get warning messages on attempt to connect to the secure site. To allow SSL encryption for the website, select the Enable SSL

support checkbox.

Websites and Domains 79

Web Scripting and Statistics

Next in this section:

Hosting Types ................................................................................................... 79

Website Status .................................................................................................. 82

Next in this section:

Website Hosting ................................................................................................ 80

Forwarding ........................................................................................................ 81

Domains Without Web Hosting .......................................................................... 81

 Scripting languages. Specify programming and scripting languages you want the

website to support. For PHP, you can also select the custom PHP version and handler type. More PHP settings are available on the PHP tab. To learn more about PHP handlers and PHP configuration, see PHP Settings (on page 84).

 Microsoft FrontPage settings. Microsoft FrontPage is a popular website authoring

tool. To enable content creation and publishing through Microsoft FrontPage, select the options Microsoft FrontPage support, Microsoft FrontPage over SSL support, and Remote FrontPage authoring allowed.

 Web statistics. Select the web statistics software that you want to use for viewing

graphical reports and charts on website visitors. Also, select the corresponding checkbox if you want to be able to access the statistical reports by visiting the password-protected directory http://your-website/plesk- stat/webstat.

 Custom error documents. When visitors coming to a site request pages that the

web server cannot find, the web server generates and displays a standard HTML page with an error message. If you want to create your own error pages and use them on the web server, select the Custom error documents checkbox.

 Additional write and modify permissions (available only for Windows hosting). This

option is required if web applications on the site will be using a file-based database (like Jet) located in the root of the httpdocs directory. Note that selecting this option will seriously compromise the website security.

Hosting Types

The hosting type defines the website's behavior. Panel supports three types of hosting:

Website hosting, Forwarding, and No hosting.

80 Websites and Domains

Website Hosting

The Website hosting means that a website is physically located on the server.

For the website hosting type you can specify:

 Document root. The location of the directory where all files and subdirectories of the

site will be kept. You can use the default directory httpdocs or specify another directory.

 Preferred domain. Typically, any website is available on two URLs: with the www

prefix (like in www.example.com) and without it (like in example.com). We recommend that you always redirect visitors to one of these URLs (typically to the non-www version). For example, after you set the Preferred domain to the non-www version (example.com), site visitors will be redirected to this URL even if they specify www.example.com in their browsers.

Panel uses the search engine friendly HTTP 301 code for such a redirection. This allows preserving search engine rankings of your site (preferred domain). If you turn off the redirection by choosing None, search engines will treat both URL versions (www and non-www) as URLs of different sites. As a result, rankings will be split between these URLs.

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Forwarding

You can make one or more registered domain names to point to the same physical website, by using the domain name forwarding. This allows automatic redirection of visitors from the URL they specify in a browser to a site with a different URL. For example, visitors of the site www.example.com can be redirected to

www.somedomain.tld. There are two types of forwarding in Panel: the standard and

frame forwarding.

Standard Forwarding

With the Standard forwarding, users who have been redirected to another URL can see the destination URL in the browser address bar.

Depending on how long you intend to use the redirection, you can select the type of redirection – Moved permanently (code 301) or Moved temporarily (code 302). These are HTTP response codes which Panel sends to browsers to perform the redirection.

From visitors’ point of view, the response code does not matter: in both cases they will

be simply redirected to the destination URL. For search engines, the code defines how they should treat the redirected site and affects search engine rankings.

 Moved permanently (code 301).

Use this redirection type if you want to keep search engine rankings of your site after moving it permanently to another address. For example, if example1.com has been moved permanently to the domain

example2.com, the rankings will not be split between example1.com and example2.com – search engine crawlers will treat them as a single website.

 Moved temporarily (code 302).

Use this redirection type when the destination domain is used temporarily, for example, when you are testing a new version of your site with real visitors while keeping the old version intact. If you set this redirection for a newly created destination domain, this domain will not be indexed by search engines.

Frame Forwarding

With the Frame forwarding, when visitors are redirected to another site, the address bar of their browsers continues to show the source URL. Thus, visitors remain unaware of the redirection. This is called frame forwarding as the index page of the source site contains a frame with the destination site.

Domains Without Web Hosting

You can switch off web service and use only email services under that domain (Websites & Domains tab > domain name > the Change link > the No web hosting option).

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Website Status

The website status defines whether a website is available over the Internet and what hosting services are provided for it. The hosting provider may need to change the status of a site if the client does not pay for the services. Site owners can change the status of their sites if they want the sites to be temporarily unavailable.

Panel supports three website statuses: Suspended, Disabled, and Active.

Suspended Sites

If you want to shut down a site for maintenance and let your visitors know that it is temporarily unavailable, you can suspend the website so that it will not open in browsers (Websites & Domains > domain name > the Suspend link). Visitors will be redirected with the search engine friendly 503 HTTP code (Service Unavailable) to the "503 Service Unavailable" error page. The site's search engine rankings will not be affected, and the hosting services such as mail will still be available and manageable by means of Panel.

You can customize the error page using the link Edit maintenance error page in Control Panel > Websites & Domains > domain name.

Note: The link Edit maintenance error page is displayed only if your hosting plan provides the option to customize web server error documents (the Custom error documents is On in the domain settings in Websites & Domains > domain name > Edit).

Disabled Sites

If you stop supporting a website, you can disable it using Websites & Domains > domain name > the Disable link. Visitors will see the web server's default page set by the hosting provider, and the site's search engine rankings will drop.

Disabled websites stop being hosted on the server: They are excluded from the web server configuration. However, the physical directories and files of disabled sites can be accessed by FTP clients and File Manager. The hosting services such as mail will be unavailable.

Note: In Panel versions earlier than 11.5 this status was called Suspended.

Active sites

To bring the website back online, use Websites & Domains > domain name > the Activate link. The website will start working as usual.

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Web Scripting Settings

Next in this section:

PHP Settings ..................................................................................................... 84

ASP.NET Settings (Windows) ........................................................................... 88

For each website in your subscription you can specify which of the following programming and scripting languages should be supported by the web server: Active Server Pages (ASP), Microsoft ASP.NET, Server Side Includes (SSI), PHP hypertext preprocessor (PHP), Common Gateway Interface (CGI), Fast Common Gateway Interface (FastCGI), Perl and Python. Since Panel 10.4, you are able to configure PHP settings individually for each website (or subdomain) in your subscription. This is possible only if your subscription has the corresponding permissions. To get the details about custom PHP configuration, refer to the section PHP Settings.

84 Websites and Domains

PHP Settings

Run PHP as

Performance

Memory Usage

Security Websites and Domains 85

PHP is one of the most popular scripting languages for creating dynamic web pages. The majority of today's websites and web applications are based on PHP scripts. This is why site administrators should clearly understand how they can control the execution of PHP scripts.

How PHP scripts are executed for a certain website is fully defined by two aspects: PHP handler and PHP settings for the site. You can set up these parameters for a certain website in the Control Panel as described below.

PHP Handler

When a visitor accesses a site based on PHP scripts, a web server interprets site scripts to generate a page that will be shown to the visitor. PHP handler calls PHP libraries needed for this interpretation. You can choose from a number of PHP handlers: ISAPI (Windows), Apache module (Linux), FastCGI, CGI, or PHP-FPM (Linux). The decision on what PHP handler to choose should depend on a number of factors like security considerations, script execution speed, and memory consumption.

 To choose a PHP handler for your website:

1. Go to Websites & Domains.

2. Click Hosting Settings near the domain name of a website for which you

want to choose the PHP handler.

3. Choose one of the following PHP handlers as the value of the Run PHP as parameter (beside the PHP support option):

Apache module (Linux

only)

High.

Runs as a part of the Apache web server.

Low

This handler (also known as mod_php) is the least secure option as all PHP scripts are executed on behalf of the apache user. This means that all files created by PHP scripts of any plan subscriber have the same owner (apache) and the same permission set. Thus, a user has a theoretical possibility to affect files of another user or some important system files.

Note: You can evade some security issues by turning the PHP safe_mode option on. It disables a number of PHP functions that bring potential security risk. Note that this may lead to inoperability of some web apps. The safe_mode option is considered to be obsolete and is deprecated in PHP 5.3.

ISAPI extension

(Windows only, not

supported since PHP

5.3)

High.

Runs as a part of the IIS web server.

Low

The ISAPI extension can provide site isolation in case a dedicated IIS application pool is switched on for subscriptions. Site isolation means that sites of different customers run their scripts independently. Thus, an error in one PHP script does not affect the work of other scripts. In addition, PHP scripts run on behalf of a system user associated with a hosting account.

Note: The ISAPI extension handler is not supported since PHP 5.3.

CGI application

Low. Creates a new process for each request and closes it once the request is processed.

Low

The CGI handler provides PHP script execution on behalf of a system user associated with a hosting account. On Linux, this behavior is possible only when the suEXEC module of the Apache web server is on (default option). Otherwise, all PHP scripts are executed on behalf of the apache user.

We recommend that you use the CGI handler only as a fall-back.

FastCGI application

High (close to Apache module and ISAPI extension).

Keeps the processes running to handle further incoming requests.

High

The FastCGI handler runs PHP scripts on behalf of a system user associated with a hosting account.

86 Websites and Domains

PHP-FPM application

(Linux only)

High

Low

The PHP-FPM is an advanced version of FastCGI which offers significant benefits for highly loaded web applications.

The PHP-FPM handler is available only if it was installed by hosting provider and if the option Process PHP by nginx in the website’s settings is turned on (Websites & Domains > select a domain > Web Server tab).

Note: Switching PHP from Apache module to FastCGI application may break functionality of existing PHP scripts. Switching to PHP-FPM by selecting Process PHP by nginx in the website’s web server settings may do the same.

PHP Version

Panel supports different versions of PHP. For each handler, one or more PHP versions can be available. The list of available versions is defined by your hosting provider and available to you in the same location where you select the PHP handler: Websites & Domains tab > <domain_name> > Edit.

Note: Always use PHP 5.x except the cases when you need PHP 4.x to host some old PHP apps.

PHP Settings

PHP behavior is defined by a number of configuration settings. These settings specify various script execution aspects, like performance (for example, the amount of memory a script can use), security (for example, access to file system and services), and so on. You may adjust these settings for a number of reasons:

 Preventing a memory leak or server hang-up by poorly written scripts.

 Protecting data from malicious scripts.

 Meeting the requirements of a certain web app.

 Testing own scripts and other.

PHP settings are located in the Control Panel, Websites & Domains > select a website > PHP Settings. For convenience, all PHP settings are divided into two groups:

 Performance settings.

These settings define how scripts work with system resources. For example: Use the memory_limit parameter to limit the amount of memory for a script to prevent a memory leak. In addition, you can prevent scripts from tying up the server by limiting the maximum time scripts are allowed to run using max_execution_time.

 Common settings.

This group contains other commonly used PHP settings. Generally, these are: Security settings (for example, the PHP safe mode toggle or the permission to register global variables), error reporting settings (for example, the directive to log errors), and others.

Websites and Domains 87

You can set the value of each parameter in PHP Settings either by selecting a value from a preset, typing a custom value, or leaving the Default value. In the latter case, Panel uses the values defined by the server-wide php.ini file. For information about certain PHP settings, refer to the respective documentation. For example,

http://php.net/manual/en/ini.list.php.

It is possible to use three placeholders in parameter values:

 {DOCROOT} for the document root directory of a domain that gets custom PHP

configuration.

 {WEBSPACEROOT} for the root directory of a subscription (webspace).

 {TMP} for the directory which stores temporary files.

Note: Default values of PHP settings in Panel differ from the ones suggested by the official PHP documentation at http://php.net/manual/en/ini.list.php.

Note: Custom PHP configuration of a website acts as a preset for all subdomains of this site. You can perform further per-subdomain PHP configuration in the same way as for the websites.

88 Websites and Domains

ASP.NET Settings (Windows)

 To configure ASP.NET Settings for a site:

2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click your website's domain name.

3. Click ASP.NET Settings.

4. Set up the strings that determine database connection data for

ASP.NET applications that use databases. This option is available only for ASP.NET 2.0.x.

When you open the ASP.NET configuration screen for the first time, sample connection parameters with common constructions are displayed. You can delete them and specify your own strings.

 To add a string, enter the required data into the Name and Connection Parameters

input fields and click next to them.

 To remove a string, click next to it.

5. Set up custom error messages that will be returned by ASP.NET applications in the Custom Error Settings field:

 To set the custom error messages mode, select an appropriate option from the

Custom error mode menu:

 On - custom error messages are enabled.

 Off - custom error messages are disabled and detailed errors are to be

shown.

 RemoteOnly - custom error messages are displayed only to remote clients,

and ASP.NET errors are shown to the local host users.

 To add a new custom error message (which will be applied unless the Off mode

was selected), enter the values in the Status Code and Redirect URL fields, and click .

 Status Code defines the HTTP status code resulting in redirection to the error

page.

 Redirect URL defines the web address of the error page presenting

information about the error to the client.

Due to possible conflicts, you cannot add a new custom error message with an error code that already exists, but you can redefine the URL for the existing code.

 To remove a custom error message from the list, click next to it.

Websites and Domains 89

6. Configure compilation settings in the Compilation and Debugging field:

 To determine the programming language to be used as default in dynamic

compilation files, choose an entry from Default web page language list.

 To enable compiling retail binaries, leave the Switch on debugging checkbox

empty.

 To enable compiling debug binaries, select the Switch on debugging checkbox. In

this case, the source code fragments containing error will be shown in a diagnostic page message.

Note. When running applications in debug mode, a memory and/or performance overhead occurs. It is recommended to use debugging when testing an application and to disable it before deploying the application into production scenario.

7. Configure encoding settings for ASP.NET applications in the Globalization Settings section:

 To set an adopted encoding of all incoming requests, enter an encoding value

into the Request encoding field (default is utf-8).

 To set an adopted encoding of all responses, enter an encoding value into the

Response encoding field (default is utf-8).

 To set an encoding which must be used by default for parsing of .aspx, .asmx,

and .asax files, enter an encoding value into the File encoding field (default is Windows-1252).

 To set a culture which must be used by default for processing incoming web

requests, select an appropriate item from the Culture list.

 To set a culture which must be used by default when processing searches for a

locale-dependent resource, select an appropriate item from the UI Culture list.

8. Set a code access security trust level for ASP.NET applications in the Code Access Security field.

CAS trust level is a security zone to which applications execution is assigned, defining what server resources the applications will have access to.

Important: When an assembly is assigned a trust level that is too low, it does not function correctly. For more information on the permissions levels see

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/enus/dnnetsec/html/THCMCh09.asp?frame=true#c09618429_010.

9. Enable the usage of the auxiliary scripts in the Script Library Settings field. Specifying the script library settings is necessary if the validation web controls are used on your web site. This option is available only for ASP.NET 1.1.x.

 If you need to use auxiliary scripts (specifically, scripts implementing objects for

validating input data), provide the settings for .NET framework script library. To do so, enter the path beginning with the domain root directory preceded by the forward slash into the Path to Microsoft script library field, or click the folder icon next to the Path to Microsoft script library field and browse for the required location.

 To initiate the auto-installation of files containing the scripts to the specified

location, select the Install checkbox. If the files already exist there, they will be rewritten.

90 Websites and Domains

10. Set client session parameters in the Session Settings field:

Next in this section:

Apache Web Server Settings ............................................................................ 90

IIS Web Server Settings .................................................................................... 92

Next in this section:

Adjusting Apache Web Server Settings ............................................................. 91

 To set up the default authentication mode for applications, select an appropriate

item from the Authentication mode list. Windows authentication mode should be selected if any form of IIS authentication is used.

 To set up time that a session can remain idle, type the number of minutes into

the Session timeout box.

11. Click OK to apply all changes.

Web Server Settings

Web server type depends on Panel version: Apache (with nginx) is used on Panel for Linux, and IIS on Panel for Windows. Depending on your Panel version, refer to Apache

Web Server Settings (on page 90) or IIS Web Server Settings (on page 92).

Apache Web Server Settings

Panel uses the Apache web server (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_HTTP_Server) to deliver the pages of your website to clients (such as browsers through which visitors access your website). By default, to achieve better performance, Apache is supplemented with another web server - nginx. For details about how Apache is integrated with nginx in Panel, see Apache with nginx in the Administrator’s Guide.

Default web server settings are specified by the server administrator (hosting provider). For example, these settings can determine how web servers process different types of files, how they use SSL, where they store log files, and so on.

However, you (as a website owner) can set up custom web server settings for your website. For example, add a new type of the index file, restrict access to the site, and so on.

Note: You can adjust web server settings for your websites only if your hosting subscription provides the corresponding permission.

Websites and Domains 91

Adjusting Apache Web Server Settings

All customizable web server settings are located on the Websites & Domains > <domain_name> > Web Server Settings page. Custom settings work only for the selected website. The settings are divided into two groups:

 Common Apache settings.

These settings are typically changed by site owners, who may want to add a new type of index files (Index files), or a MIME type for files with a certain extension (MIME types), to restrict access to the site (Deny access to the site), or specify Apache handlers for a certain file type (Handlers).

 nginx settings.

These settings define how the processing of web requests is divided between the Apache and nginx web servers to achieve better performance for a specific site.

Important: nginx settings are for advanced users only. To learn more about nginx settings, see Adjusting nginx Settings for Virtual Hosts in the Administrator’s Guide.

 Smart static files processing.

Caution: Turn off this option only to troubleshoot nginx related issues.

Turning this option off will limit the role of nginx: It will only pass requests and responses without modification. Except for troubleshooting the nginx related issues, we recommend that you leave this option turned on.

 Serve static files directly by nginx.

For sites with a lot of static content (like image or video files) and high load, better performance can be achieved by delegating serving static files to nginx. Apache will not take any part in processing the requests for the files with the specified extensions.

For example, to exclude Apache from delivering jpg and gif files, you should turn on the option Serve static files directly by nginx and specify file extensions like this

gif jpg

gif|jpg

Caution: Because requests for static files never reach Apache, they do not

pass through Apache handlers. This means, for example, that rewrite rules or .htaccess directives will not be applied.

 Process PHP by nginx.

When the Process PHP by nginx option is on, Apache does not take any part in processing the requests for PHP files. All requests for PHP files are processed by nginx using the PHP-FPM handler. The handlers used by Apache are not available on nginx. The PHP-FPM is an advanced version of FastCGI which offers significant benefits for highly loaded web applications. To learn more about PHP-FPM, see http://php-fpm.org/about/.

Caution: Because requests for PHP files do not reach Apache they do not pass

through its handlers (CGI, FastCGI, or an Apache module), so some web apps may not work as expected.

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Note that subdomains have their own web server settings, therefore, when you change

Next in this section:

Adjusting IIS Web Server Settings ..................................................................... 93

web server settings for a site that has subdomains, the subdomains will not receive these changes.

If you do not find the necessary setting, contact your server administrator (hosting provider), who can set up more custom settings for websites.

The Default Value of Server Settings

You can set the value of each parameter either by typing a custom value, or leaving the Default value. In the latter case, Panel uses the values from the default web server configuration defined by the server administrator (hosting provider).

Your values override the default ones. The only exception is the Deny access to the site setting - IP addresses from the default configuration, as well as the IP addresses specified by you, will all be applied to your website. In case of a conflict (for example, when you allow the IP address that is denied in the default configuration), Apache uses your settings.

IIS Web Server Settings

Panel uses the IIS web server (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Information_Services) to deliver the pages of your website to clients (such as browsers through which visitors access your website). The behavior of IIS is defined by variety of settings.

Default web server settings are specified by the server administrator (hosting provider). For example, these settings can determine how IIS process different types of files, how it uses SSL, and so on.

However, you (as a website owner) can set up custom web server settings for your website. For example, add a new type of the index file, restrict access to the site, and so on.

Note: You can adjust web server settings for your websites only if your hosting subscription provides the corresponding permission.

Websites and Domains 93

Adjusting IIS Web Server Settings

All customizable web server settings are located in Websites & Domains > select a website > Web Server Settings. Custom settings work only for the selected website. The settings are divided into groups:

Common Settings

These settings are typically changed by site owners, who may want to:

 Allow site visitors to view the listing of files and subdirectories of the site’s directory

in their browsers (Directory browsing). The directory listing will be displayed if there are no matches for default index pages in the site’s root directory.

 Add a new type of default index pages (Default documents).  Add a new MIME type for files with a certain extension (MIME types).

Directory Security Settings

These settings allow site owners to:

 Restrict access to the site by username and password – only system users will be

able to access the site (Anonymous access). Denying anonymous access may be useful if your site is not intended for any visitor, for example, it is a web application for internal use. Note that FTP users and additional FTP users created in Panel will have access to such a site if they were granted access to the site’s directory.

 Force all clients (such as browsers or FTP clients) to use the secure HTTPS

protocol to access their site (Require SSL). You need this option, for example, if the site contains and transmits personal information.

Access Restriction Settings

These settings allow site owners to restrict access to the site by IP address of the visitor (Deny access to the site) by denting and allowing access from certain IP addresses.

Note: Subdomains have their own web server settings, therefore, when you change web server settings for a site that has subdomains, the subdomains will not receive these changes.

If you do not find the necessary setting, contact your server administrator (hosting provider), who can set up more custom settings for websites.

94 Websites and Domains

The Default Value of Server Settings

Websites and Domains 95

Website Content

To create your website and fill it with the content you need (text, images, videos, and so on), use one of the methods provided by the Panel:

 Using website creation and management tools. If you do not have a website yet,

consider setting one up by yourself with a tool for creating, editing, and publishing websites. You can do this even if you do not possess the necessary web programming and design skills. The best tools of this sort are the following:

 Presence Builder - a website editor integrated with the Control Panel.

 Third-party Content Management Systems (CMS) - web applications for creating

and editing websites.

 Uploading existing websites to your hosting account using one the following

methods:

 FTP client program. You can obtain a free FTP client from the Internet, or, if you

are using Windows, use Windows Explorer. This enables you to access your directory on the hosting server and manage your files. If you collaborate with other people when managing your website (such as programmers or designers), you can provide them with access to your directory using FTP to let them edit the website by themselves.

 File Manager. A tool for uploading and managing website files and directories

through the Panel web interface.

Note: if you have a website created in Microsoft FrontPage editor, refer to the section Working with Microsoft Frontpage Websites (Windows) (on page 131) for details on

managing this site in Panel.

Below you will find detailed descriptions of the ways to manage your content.

Presence Builder

Presence Builder is a great tool that enables users with no knowledge of HTML markup or graphic design skills to create professional-looking sites. Just pick a suitable page design and content template, add your text to the pages, and publish the site.

You can create and publish websites using Presence Builder if your hosting subscription provides this option. If it does not, or if you have already created and published the allowed number of sites, you still can create a new website with Presence Builder and edit it. However, to publish this website, you will need to upgrade your hosting plan.

To start creating a website using Presence Builder or edit an existing Presence Builder site, go the Websites & Domains tab, click you domain name, and click Launch Presence Builder. Find more information on creating and editing websites in Presence Builder in the chapter Building Websites with Parallels Presence Builder.

96 Websites and Domains

Third-Party Content Management Systems

To create and maintain a website, you can use third-party Content Management Systems (CMS) - web applications that let you easily edit a website's structure and content with a graphical user interface. Examples of such systems are Drupal and Joomla.

CMS are usually server applications, so to start using one of them you should install it on your hosting account. Hence, if you plan to use a CMS, ensure that your hosting subscription allows such applications to be installed.

 To create a website using a CMS:

1. Go to the Applications tab.

2. Find the CMS you need in the list of available applications, and install it

as described in the section Employing Website Applications (on page 103).

3. Create and edit your website in the CMS. For information on how to create websites with your CMS, refer to the relevant documentation.

Uploading Using FTP

If you already have all your website files and directories, consider uploading them to your hosting account using FTP. This is the quickest way for simple uploading of files when you do not need to edit or manage them on the server.

 To upload files using FTP:

1. Connect to your site's domain name with an FTP client program using your FTP access credentials. Learn how to configure these credentials in the section Adding FTP Accounts (on page 209).

2. Copy the website files and directories to your directory on the server.

File Manager

Another way to publish a website created outside the Panel is File Manager - a tool that provides a set of file management functions through the web interface. File Manager is located on the Files tab of the Control Panel.

To upload a website from your computer to Panel server with File Manager, open the Files tab of the Control Panel and drag the website folder to the central area of this tab. If your website is compressed to a ZIP file, you can upload this file to the server and then extract it by clicking Extract Files in the More menu.

Websites and Domains 97

If you want to edit pages of your website, you can do it in File Manager. It provides an

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Setting File and Directory Access Permissions .................................................. 98

HTML editor that allows visual editing of HTML pages (without needing to manually type HTML tags). To edit a file in the HTML editor, place the mouse pointer over the

file, click the link to open the file's context menu, and select Edit in HTML Editor.

You can also edit files in File Manager's text editor if you like. To open a file in the text editor, open the file's context menu and select the Edit in Text Editor.

If you have files or web pages that you want to make inaccessible on the Internet, change these files' access permissions in File Manager. To edit access permissions for a file or a directory, click the corresponding link in the Permissions column. To learn how to review and edit the permissions, refer to the sections Setting File and Directory Access

Permissions (on page 98).

98 Websites and Domains

Setting File and Directory Access Permissions

 To review or change the permissions set for files and directories on Linux

systems:

1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to several webspaces associated with your account, select the required webspace in the Subscription menu at the top of the screen.

2. Go to the Files tab.

The permissions set for files and directories are shown in the Permissions column. They are represented as three sets of symbols, for example, 'rwx rwx r--'. The first set tells what the owner of the file or directory can do with it; the second tells what the user group, the file or directory belongs to, can do with the file or directory; the third set indicates what other users (the rest of the world, that is, Internet users visiting a site) can do with the file or directory. R means the permission to read the file or directory, W means the permission to write to the file or directory, and X means the permission to execute the file or look inside the directory.

3. Locate the file or directory for which you want to modify permissions and click a hyperlink in the Permissions column.

4. Modify the permissions as desired and click OK.

 To set access permissions for a file or directory on Windows systems:

2. Go to the Files tab.

3. Locate the file or directory for which you want to set access

permissions, and click the corresponding icon .

4. Do the following:

 To make the file or folder inherit permissions from a parent folder (if it does not),

select the checkbox Allow inheritable permissions from the parent to propagate to this object and all child objects. Include these with entries explicitly defined here.

 To make the files and folders, which are contained in this folder, inherit the

folder permissions you define, select the checkbox Replace permission entries on all child objects with entries shown here that apply to child objects.

 To change or remove permissions from a group or a user, click the required

name in the Group or user names list. If the group or user is not listed in the Group or user names list, select the required user or group name from the menu located

above the list and click : the user/group appears in the list. Select it.

Websites and Domains 99

To allow or deny permissions to a selected group/user, select the Allow or Deny checkboxes corresponding to permissions listed under Permissions for <user/group name>. If the checkboxes in the Allow or Deny columns are shown in grey, it means that the corresponding permissions are inherited from a parent folder.

 To deny the permissions, which are inherited from a parent object as allowed,

select the required checkboxes under Deny. This will override inherited permissions for this file/folder.

 To allow the permissions, which are inherited from a parent object as denied,

clear the Allow inheritable permissions from the parent to propagate to this object and all child objects. Include these with entries explicitly defined here checkbox: this removes the inherited permissions. Then select the required checkboxes under Allow and Deny.

 To remove access permissions from a group or user, select the required name

in the Group or user names list and click the icon next to it.

5. If you need advanced fine-tuning of permissions, click the Advanced button, and do the following:

 To create a permission entry for a group or user, select the required name from

the Group or user names list and click .

 To set or change file/folder permissions for a group or user, select the required

name from the Group or user names list, select the required Allow and Deny checkboxes corresponding to permissions listed under Permissions for <user/group name>.

 To remove a permission entry for a group or user, select the required name from

the Group or user names list and click .

 To make child objects of a folder inherit its permissions defined under

Permissions for <user/group name>, select the Replace permission entries on all child objects with entries shown here that apply to child objects checkbox, and select

checkboxes in the Apply to list which correspond to the objects that must inherit the permissions.

6. Click OK.

100 Websites and Domains

(Advanced) Restricting Access to Content

If you have directories in a site that only authorized users should see, restrict access to these directories with password protection.

 To protect a directory in your site with a password and to specify

authorized users:

2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the site's domain name.

3. Click Password-protected Directories.

4. Click Add Protected Directory.

5. In the Directory name box, specify the path to the directory that you want

to protect with a password.

This can be any directory existing in the site, for example: /private. If the directory that you would like to protect has not yet been created, specify the path and the directory name – the Panel will create it for you.

6. If you are using a Linux-based account, you can also protect your CGI scripts stored in the cgi-bin directory. To do this, leave '/' in the Directory name box and select the cgi-bin checkbox.

7. In the Title of the protected area box, type a resource description or a welcoming message that your users will see when they visit the protected area.

8. Click OK. The directory you specified will be protected.

9. To add authorized users, click Add New User.

10. Specify the username and password that will be used for accessing the

protected area. The password should be from 5 to 14 symbols in length. Click OK.

 To add an authorized user of a protected directory:

2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the site's domain name.

3. Click Password-protected Directories.

4. Click on the name of the directory you need.

Parallels Plesk Panel - 11.5 Customer's Guide

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual

First Steps After Upgrading to Panel 11.5

The most important concepts you should know

Peculiarities of SiteBuilder upgrade

Changes in storing secure content

Quick Start with Parallels Panel

Advanced Hosting Features

Set Up Your First Website

1. Create Your Site

Presence Builder

Content Management Systems

Uploading Content

Uploading Content Using FTP

Uploading Content with File Manager

2. Preview Your Site

Set Up Mail Accounts

1. Create Mail Account

2. Access Your Mailbox

Access from Webmail

Access from Microsoft Office Outlook

Access from Microsoft Outlook Express

Access from Mozilla Thunderbird

Access from Apple Mail

View Site Visit Statistics

Customer Account Administration

Customer Account and Multiple Subscriptions

System Users

Adding Resources to a Subscription

Managing Customer Account

Allowing Other Users to Access Your Account

Changing Your Password and Contact Information

Viewing Subscription Summary

Allocated and Consumed Resources

Hosting Features Available for Your Websites

Managing Account Balance and Invoices

Calculating Usage Charges

Traffic

Other Resources

Calculating Usage with Add-ons

Earning Money by Promoting a Provider's Plans

Becoming an Affiliate

Tracking Your Earnings

Example

Participating in Multiple Programs

Ordering More Resources

Viewing Statistics

Log Files

Auxiliary Users and User Roles

Auxiliary Users and Multiple Subscriptions

User Roles

Auxiliary User Accounts

Custom Links

Websites and Domains

Domains and DNS

Adding Domains

Adding More Domains

Registering Domains

Removing Domains

Adding Subdomains

Wildcard Subdomains

Adding Domain Aliases

Adding Wildcard Subdomains (Linux)

How to Add Wildcard Subdomains

Limitations of Wildcard Subdomains

Adding a Domain Forwarder

(Advanced) Configuring DNS for a Domain

DNS Name Resolving

Panel as a Master DNS Server

Panel as a Slave DNS Server

Registrar's DNS Settings in Panel

Hosting Settings

General Settings

Basic Settings

Security Settings

Web Scripting and Statistics

Hosting Types

Website Hosting