Parallels Plesk Panel - 8.6 - Unix User Guide

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Parallels® Plesk Panel

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Parallels

660 SW 39th Street

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Renton, Washington 98057

USA

Phone: +1 (425) 282 6400

Fax: +1 (425) 282 6444

Parallels, Inc.

Distribution of this work or derivative of this work in any form is prohibited unless prior written

permission is obtained from the copyright holder.

Patented technology protected by U.S.Patents 7,328,225; 7,325,017; 7,293,033; 7,099,948;

7,076,633.

Patents pending in the U.S.

Product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.

Contents

Preface 7

Who Should Read This Guide ....................................................................................................... 7

Typographical Conventions ........................................................................................................... 7

Feedback ....................................................................................................................................... 8

Getting Started 9

Logging In to Plesk ...................................................................................................................... 10

If You Forgot Your Password ............................................................................................ 10

Becoming Familiar with Plesk's Interface .................................................................................... 11

Items in the Desktop View ................................................................................................. 13

Items in the Standard View ............................................................................................... 13

Changing Your Contact Information and Password .................................................................... 14

Customizing Your Control Panel 15

Setting Up Global Account .......................................................................................................... 16

Creating A Global Account ................................................................................................ 18

Connecting Local Accounts To Your Global Account ....................................................... 18

Switching Between Accounts ............................................................................................ 19

Changing Global Account Password ................................................................................ 19

Disconnecting Local Accounts From Global Account ....................................................... 20

Customizing Your Control Panel in the Standard View ............................................................... 20

Setting Interface Language and Skin for Your Control Panel ........................................... 20

Setting a Custom Logo ...................................................................................................... 21

Adding a Hyperlink Button to Your Control Panel ............................................................. 21

Removing a Hyperlink Button from Your Control Panel .................................................... 22

Customizing Your Control Panel in the Desktop View ................................................................ 22

Viewing Resource Allotments and Hosting Features Included in Your Hosting Package 25

Viewing IP addresses Included in Your Hosting Package .......................................................... 25

Viewing Resource Allotments for Your Account .......................................................................... 26

Viewing the List of Operations You Can Perform within Your Control Panel .............................. 28

Implementing Hosting Plans Using Domain Templates 30

Creating Templates ..................................................................................................................... 31

Modifying Templates ................................................................................................................... 35

Removing Templates................................................................................................................... 35

Hosting Web Sites 36

Predefining Content for New Web Sites ...................................................................................... 37

Obtaining Domain Names ........................................................................................................... 38

Setting Up Hosting Account for a Web Site ................................................................................ 39

Limiting the Amount of Resources a Site Can Consume .................................................. 42

Allowing the Site Owner to Log in to Control Panel .......................................................... 45

Creating and Publishing a Site .................................................................................................... 47

Preface 4

Creating and Publishing Web Sites Using Sitebuilder ...................................................... 47

Publishing Sites Through FTP .......................................................................................... 48

Publishing Sites Through Plesk File Manager .................................................................. 48

Publishing Sites Through SSH Connection ...................................................................... 50

Publishing Sites with Microsoft FrontPage ........................................................................ 50

Publishing Sites with Adobe Dreamweaver ...................................................................... 52

Previewing a Site ......................................................................................................................... 53

Deploying Databases .................................................................................................................. 54

Creating or Importing a Database ..................................................................................... 55

Creating Database User Accounts .................................................................................... 56

Changing Database User Passwords ............................................................................... 56

Removing Database User Accounts ................................................................................. 57

Removing Databases ........................................................................................................ 57

Installing Applications .................................................................................................................. 58

Installing Java Web Applications....................................................................................... 60

Installing Ruby Web Applications ...................................................................................... 61

Securing E-commerce Transactions with Secure Sockets Layer Encryption ............................. 62

Obtaining and Installing SSL Certificates from Comodo, GeoTrust, Inc. or GoDaddy ..... 63

Obtaining and Installing SSL Certificates from Other Certification Authorities ................. 64

Creating and Installing Free Self-signed SSL Certificate .................................................. 65

Uninstalling a Certificate from Your Site ........................................................................... 66

Restricting Access to Web Server's Resources with Password Protection ................................ 67

Protecting a Resource ....................................................................................................... 67

Specifying Authorized Users ............................................................................................. 68

Unprotecting a Resource .................................................................................................. 69

Organizing Site Structure with Subdomains ................................................................................ 70

Setting up Subdomains ..................................................................................................... 70

Removing Subdomains ..................................................................................................... 71

Setting Up Additional Domain Names for a Site (Domain Aliases) ............................................. 72

Setting Up a Domain Alias ................................................................................................ 72

Modifying Properties of a Domain Alias ............................................................................ 73

Removing a Domain Alias ................................................................................................. 74

Hosting Personal Web Pages on Your Web Server .................................................................... 75

Changing FTP Password for a Web Page Owner ............................................................ 76

Allocating More Disk Space to the Web Page Owner ...................................................... 76

Removing Web Page Owner's Account ............................................................................ 76

Setting Up Anonymous FTP Access to the Server ..................................................................... 77

Customizing Web Server Error Messages .................................................................................. 78

Customizing DNS Zone Configuration for Domains .................................................................... 80

Viewing Resource Records ............................................................................................... 80

Adding Resource Records ................................................................................................ 81

Modifying Resource Records ............................................................................................ 82

Removing Resource Records ........................................................................................... 83

Restoring the Original Zone Configuration ........................................................................ 84

Serving Sites with External Domain Name Servers .................................................................... 85

Serving Domain Names for Sites Hosted on Other Servers (Domain Forwarding) .................... 87

Suspending and Unsuspending Domains ................................................................................... 88

Removing Domains ..................................................................................................................... 88

Managing Hosting Accounts 89

Upgrading Hosting Accounts ....................................................................................................... 90

Renewing Hosting Accounts ............................................................................................. 93

Changing Web Hosting Type From Physical to Forwarding ....................................................... 93

Introducing Similar Changes to Numerous Hosting Accounts .................................................... 94

Suspending and Unsuspending Hosting Accounts ..................................................................... 95

Removing Hosting Accounts ....................................................................................................... 95

Preface 5

Viewing Statistics 96

Adjusting Preferences for Web Statistics Presentation by Webalizer ......................................... 98

Hiding and Unhiding Internal References from Your and Other Sites .............................. 98

Grouping and Ungrouping References from Other Sites .................................................. 99

Hiding and Unhiding Direct Requests ............................................................................. 100

Automating Report Generation and Delivery by E-mail ............................................................ 100

Viewing Log Files and Configuring Recycling of Log Files ....................................................... 103

Backing Up And Restoring Your Data 104

Configuring Control Panel for Using FTP Repository ................................................................ 105

Backing Up Your Account with Your Domains .......................................................................... 105

Backing Up Individual Domains (Web Sites) ............................................................................. 106

Scheduling Backups .................................................................................................................. 107

Restoring Data From Backup Archives ..................................................................................... 108

Maintaining Your Backup Files Repository ............................................................................... 109

Uploading Backup Files to Server ................................................................................... 109

Downloading Backup Files from Server .......................................................................... 110

Removing Backup Files from Server .............................................................................. 110

Using E-mail Services 111

Creating Mailboxes .................................................................................................................... 112

Setting Up Your E-mail Program for Retrieving Mail from Your Mailbox .................................. 113

Accessing Your Mail From a Web Browser ............................................................................... 114

Protecting Mailboxes From Spam ............................................................................................. 115

Setting Up Additional Disposable E-mail Addresses (Mail Aliases)................................ 116

Setting Up Spam Filter .................................................................................................... 117

Protecting Mailboxes From Viruses ........................................................................................... 121

Switching on Anti-virus Protection................................................................................... 121

Switching off Anti-virus Protection................................................................................... 122

Suspending and Unsuspending Mailboxes ............................................................................... 122

Removing Mailboxes ................................................................................................................. 123

Switching off the Mailbox Service When You Have Decided to Turn Your Account into a Mail

Forwarder .................................................................................................................................. 123

Setting Up Mail Forwarding to a Single E-mail Address ........................................................... 124

Suspending and Unsuspending Mail Forwarders ........................................................... 125

Setting Up Mail Forwarding to Multiple E-mail Addresses ........................................................ 126

Adding and Removing Recipient Addresses ................................................................... 127

Switching off Mail Forwarding to Multiple E-mail Addresses .......................................... 128

Removing Mail Forwarders ....................................................................................................... 128

Setting Up Automatic Reply ...................................................................................................... 129

Switching off Automatic Reply ................................................................................................... 130

Setting Up Site-wide Preferences for Handling Mail to Nonexistent Users (Mail Bounce) ....... 131

Introducing Similar Changes to a Number of Mail Accounts at Once ....................................... 133

Maintaining Mailing Lists ........................................................................................................... 133

Setting Up a Mailing List ................................................................................................. 134

Configuring a Mailing List ................................................................................................ 134

Subscribing and Unsubscribing Users ............................................................................ 135

Posting to Your Mailing List ............................................................................................. 136

Removing Mailing Lists ................................................................................................... 136

Scheduling Tasks 137

Scheduling a Task ..................................................................................................................... 137

Suspending and Resuming Execution of Tasks ........................................................................ 138

Preface 6

Unscheduling a Task ................................................................................................................. 138

Monitoring Connections to Control Panel and FTP Services 140

Monitoring Connections to FTP Service .................................................................................... 140

Monitoring Connections to Control Panel .................................................................................. 141

Using Help Desk for Resolving Your Customers' Issues and Requesting Assistance from Provider 142

Viewing Trouble Tickets in Your Help Desk .............................................................................. 142

Commenting and Closing Trouble Tickets ................................................................................ 143

Submitting a Problem Report to Your Service Provider ............................................................ 143

Preface 7

In this section:

Who Should Read This Guide ........................................................................... 7

Typographical Conventions ............................................................................... 7

Feedback .......................................................................................................... 8

Formatting convention

Type of Information

Example

Special Bold

Items you must select, such as menu options, command buttons, or items in a list.

Go to the System tab.

Titles of chapters, sections, and subsections.

Read the Basic Administration chapter.

Italics

Used to emphasize the importance of a point, to introduce a term or to designate a command line placeholder, which is to be replaced with a real name or value.

The system supports the so called wildcard character search.

Monospace

The names of commands, files, and directories.

The license file is located in the

http://docs/common/licen ses directory.

Preface

Who Should Read This Guide

This guide is intended for hosting resellers and owners of multiple domains, who were provided with access to Plesk control panel as part of their shared, dedicated or reseller hosting package.

Typographical Conventions

Before you start using this guide, it is important to understand the documentation conventions used in it.

The following kinds of formatting in the text identify special information.

8 Preface

Formatting convention

Type of Information

Example

Preformatted

On-screen computer output in your commandline sessions; source code in XML, C++, or other programming languages.

# ls –al /files

total 14470

Preformatted Bold

What you type, contrasted with on-screen computer output.

# cd /root/rpms/php

CAPITALS

Names of keys on the keyboard.

SHIFT, CTRL, ALT

KEY+KEY

Key combinations for which the user must press and hold down one key and then press another.

CTRL+P, ALT+F4

Feedback

If you have found an error in this guide, or if you have suggestions or ideas on how to improve this guide, please send your feedback using the online form at

http://www.parallels.com/en/support/usersdoc/. Please include in your report the guide's title,

chapter and section titles, and the fragment of text in which you have found an error.

Plesk is the control panel software that you use for reselling shared hosting services,

In this chapter:

Logging In to Plesk ............................................................................................ 10

Becoming Familiar with Plesk's Interface........................................................... 11

Changing Your Contact Information and Password ........................................... 14

C H A P T E R 1

Getting Started

and hosting your own domain names and web sites.

You can manage the hosted domain names and web sites on your own, or delegate permissions to manage individual domains to other users. Upon delegation, a separate Domain Administrator's control panel environment is automatically created, providing your customer with site and e-mail management capabilities in accordance with the permissions you define.

Using the Domain Administrator's control panel, a site owner can:

 Change passwords for access to control panel and Web space through FTP,

 Publish and preview a Web site,

 Install, manage and remove databases and Web applications,

 Order and install SSL certificates to secure online transactions (this is possible for

Web sites hosted on a dedicated IP address, which is not shared among other Web sites),

 Set up, manage and remove subdomains,

 Host personal Web pages for other users,

 Password protect areas of a Web site,

 Customize Web server error messages,

 Backup and restore a Web site with its databases and applications,

 Schedule automatic backups,

 Create, edit, remove mailboxes, and protect them against spam and viruses,

 Allow access to individual E-mail administration panel to mailbox owners (this is

convenient when running mail hosting business or creating mailboxes for other users),

 Create, edit, remove mail forwarders and automatic replies,

 Create, manage, remove mailing lists, subscribe and unsubscribe users.

You have access to all these features from your own control panel, therefore, you will not need to use neither the Domain Administrator's nor E-mail Administrator's control panels.

To learn more about using Domain Administrator's control panel, please refer to the Domain Administrator Guide.

10 Getting Started

In this section:

If You Forgot Your Password ............................................................................ 10

Logging In to Plesk

 To log in to your Plesk control panel:

1. Open your web browser, and in the address bar type the URL where your Plesk control panel is located.

For example, https://your-domain.com:8443, where your-domain.com is the domain name of your Web host.

2. Press ENTER. Plesk login screen will open.

3. Type the login name and password your provid er gave you into the

4. If you log in for the first time, select the language for your control panel from the Interface language drop-down box. If you had previously specified the interface language and saved it in your interface preferences, leave the User default value selected.

5. Click Login.

Note for hosting resellers: Your customers who were granted access to control panel

for managing their own web sites will need to specify their domain names in the Login box.

If You Forgot Your Password

 To restore your forgotten password:

1. In your web browser‘s address bar, type the URL where your Plesk

control panel is located (for example, https://your-domain.com:8443)

2. Press ENTER.

Plesk login screen will open.

3. Click the Forgot your password? link.

4. Type your login name into the Login box, and type your e-mail address

registered in the system into the E-mail box.

5. Click OK.

Your password will be sent to your e-mail address.

Getting Started 11

Becoming Familiar with Plesk's Interface

When you log in to control panel, it can open in either a standard view, a simplified desktop view, or a combination of both. The standard view is a customary view of the

control panel divided into two main areas: navigation pane on the left and the main screen where operations are performed on the right.

The desktop view can show site statistics and shortcuts to the operations you frequently perform—everything you may need can now be accessible from a single screen.

If your hosting plan includes the Web site creation and management service using Sitebuilder, the following shortcuts are also shown in your control panel's navigation pane:

 Desktop. This provides shortcuts to the task-oriented wizards. Here you can perform

any operations on your account and Web sites through the Sitebuilder system. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/using_des ktop_interface.htm.

 Users. Here you can add and manage user accounts and service plans for your

customers. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/signing_u p_customers.htm.

 Sites. Here you can add and manage sites. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/managing _sites.htm.

 Server. Here you can view and manage the following system settings:

12 Getting Started

 Trial Sites Settings. Here you can configure settings for trial sites created by your

In this section:

Items in the Desktop View ................................................................................. 13

Items in the Standard View ................................................................................ 13

prospective customers. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/setting _up_sitebuilder_wizard_for_anonymous_visits.htm

 Branding. Here you can configure the logo and title setting for your prospective

customers. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/setting _up_logo_and_title_bar_text.htm

 Notifications. Here you can configure settings for notifications sent by Sitebuilder

to your users. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/config uring_email_message_sent_at_trial_site_publishing_attempt.htm.

 Modules. Here you can view the list of available modules. For more information,

see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/viewin g_and_configuring_sitebuilder_wizard_presets_and_modules.htm.

 Page Sets. Here you can view the list of available page sets. For more

information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/viewin g_and_configuring_sitebuilder_wizard_presets_and_modules.htm.

 Site Families. Here you can view the list of available templates that combine

design templates and page sets. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/viewin g_and_configuring_sitebuilder_wizard_presets_and_modules.htm.

Also, on every domain management screen of your Plesk control panel, the Sitebuilder Wizard button is shown (Home > domain name > Sitebuilder Wizard). You should use it for accessing the Sitebuilder Web site creation and management wizard. For more information, refer to the section Creating and Publishing Web Sites Using Sitebuilder (on page 47).

Getting Started 13

Items in the Desktop View

The desktop view originally shows three sections:

 Tools. This group shows shortcuts to the operations that you can perform through

the control panel. You can freely add and remove these shortcuts.

 Statistics. This shows the number of domains you have under your account, disk

space and monthly bandwidth usage, and number of mailboxes on your hosted domains.

 Favorites. This group shows four types of shortcuts sorted by type and placed on the

respective tabs. The Domains tab shows shortcuts to your favorite domains. The Mail Accounts tab shows shortcuts to the favorite e-mail accounts. The Shortcuts tab shows all other types of shortcuts that do not relate to domains and e-mail user accounts. The Recent tab shows last ten control panel screens you have been on. The Favorites group also provides search tool for finding domains and e-mail accounts. To use the search tool, type the search criteria (this can be any

combination of symbols, search is case insensitive) and click Search.

To customize your control panel in the Desktop view, refer to the Customizing Your Control Panel in the Desktop View (on page 22) section.

Using Wizards

When you work with Plesk in the Desktop view, you accomplish the tasks you need through wizards. Each wizard is a series of consecutive screens. To accomplish a task using a wizard, follow the instructions displayed on the wizard screens. For information on individual options, refer to the respective sections of this guide.

Items in the Standard View

The navigation pane is located on the left. It gives you access to sets of administrative functions:

 Home. This is where you modify settings related to your account, manage Web sites

and e-mail services.

 Sessions. When site and mailbox owners log in to control panel, or connect to the

server via FTP protocol, they establish sessions that you can monitor and terminate.

 Global Account. This shortcut appears in your Plesk Control Panel when the single

sign-on capabilities are switched on the hosting server. Single sign-on technology allows you to log in to different Parallels products using a single global login name and password. This shortcut is used for changing the global login settings.

 Help Desk. This is the help desk system integrated with your control panel. If your

provider uses it, then you can use it to report your problems to provider‘s technical

support staff.

 Help. Provides context sensitive help.

 Log Out. When finished working with control panel, click this icon to close your

session.

14 Getting Started

Below the Help icon, there is a context help tip area. It provides a brief description of the current screen or available operations. When you place the mouse pointer over a system element or status icon, it displays additional information.

To navigate through Plesk, you can also use a path bar: a chain of links that appears in the right part of the screen, below the banner area. To return to a previous screen, use

the Up Level icon in the upper-right corner of the screen.

To find items in lengthy lists, use search boxes located above every list of items: type a search criterion into the input box, and click Search. A list will show the items matching the search criteria. To return back to viewing all items, click Show All.

To sort a list by a certain parameter in ascending or descending order, click on the parameter's title in the column heading. The order of sorting will be indicated by a small triangle displayed next to the parameter's title.

Changing Your Contact Information and Password

 If you need to update your contact information, or change password:

1. On your Home page, click Edit in the Tools group.

2. Update your information as required, or type a new password, and click

OK.

 If you forgot your password:

1. In your web browser‘s address bar, type the URL where your Plesk

control panel is located.

2. For example, https://your-domain.com:8443.

3. Press ENTER. Plesk login screen will open.

4. Click the Forgot your password? link.

5. Type your login name into the Login box, type your e-mail address

registered in the system into the E-mail box, and click OK.

Your password will be sent to your e-mail address.

In this chapter:

Setting Up Global Account ................................................................................ 16

Customizing Your Control Panel in the Standard View ...................................... 20

Customizing Your Control Panel in the Desktop View ....................................... 22

C H A P T E R 2

Customizing Your Control Panel

16 Customizing Your Control Panel

Setting Up Global Account

Global Account is a single sign-on (SSO) technology feature that allows you to log in to different Parallels products using a single global login and password. If you have several accounts in Plesk Control Panel, you can connect them all to a global account and switch between these accounts without entering a password every time. You can also connect all your accounts in other Parallels products to your global account and switch between them without providing credentials.

 To switch on support for single sign-on for your server, do the following:

In Plesk Control Panel for Linux/Unix

1. Find out the IP address of the SSO server that you will be using. It can be provided by your hosting company, or you can set up the SSO server on any machine that is accessible over the Internet, including your Plesk Control Panel server. For installation instructions, refer to the Plesk Control Panel Installation Guide.

2. Register your server with the single sign-on server: issue the command

<plesk_installation_directory>/admin/sbin/sso -server https://idp-master.example.com:11443.

3. Switch on single sign-on: issue the command

<plesk_installation_directory>/admin/sbin/sso -e.

In Plesk Control Panel for Windows

2. Register your server with the single sign-on server: issue the command <plesk_installation_directory>\sso.exe -server https://idpmaster.example.com:11443.

3. Switch on single sign-on: issue the command <plesk_installation_directory>\sso.exe -e.

Customizing Your Control Panel 17

In this section:

Creating A Global Account ................................................................................ 18

Connecting Local Accounts To Your Global Account ......................................... 18

Switching Between Accounts ............................................................................ 19

Changing Global Account Password ................................................................. 19

Disconnecting Local Accounts From Global Account ......................................... 20

18 Customizing Your Control Panel

Creating A Global Account

After you create a global account and connect local accounts to it, you will be able to choose from any account connected to your global account when logging in under your global account.

 To create a global account:

1. Log in to Plesk, go to Global Account and click Connect To Global Account.

2. Select Create new global account and provide the login and password for

your global account.

3. Click OK.

Your global account is active now, so you can proceed with connecting other accounts to it. Refer to Connecting Local Accounts to Your Global Account (on page 18) section for more information.

Connecting Local Accounts To Your Global Account

 To connect a local Plesk account to your global account:

1. Log in to Plesk under the local account you want to connect.

2. Go to Global Account and click Connect To Global Account.

3. Make sure that Use existing global account option is selected and provide

the login and password for the global account you want to connect to.

4. Click OK.

Repeat steps 1-4 for other local accounts as necessary.

 To connect an account in another product with SSO support to your

global account:

1. Log in to software product with SSO support under the account you want to connect.

2. Follow the instructions on connecting to a global account in respective software product documentation. Make sure that you provide the credentials for the existing global account when you are asked to.

Repeat steps 1-2 for other accounts or products as necessary.

Note. Different software products may use different names for the Global Account feature, such as Federated Identity or Global Login. Refer to respective software product documentation for more information.

Customizing Your Control Panel 19

After you have connected all required accounts to your global account, you can log in under your global account all the time in any product where you have a local account connected to your global account. You will be shown the list of local accounts connected to your global account every time you log in under it, so you can choose which account you would like to use now. You can switch to another account any time you want. Refer to Switching Between Accounts (on page 19) section for more information.

Switching Between Accounts

 To switch to another account:

1. Click Switch User in the upper right corner.

2. Select the account you want to switch to:

 Choose the required local account from the list of accounts connected to your

global account

 Select Specify credentials for another account and provide login and password for a

local account not connected to your global account or to another global account. You can also specify the language for your control panel from the Interface language menu. If you had previously specified the interface language for that account and saved it in its interface preferences, leave the Default value selected.

3. Click OK.

Changing Global Account Password

 To change password of your global account:

1. Log in to Plesk under your global account or any local account connected to it.

2. Go to Global Account and click Change Password.

3. Enter your old and new passwords, and click OK.

20 Customizing Your Control Panel

Disconnecting Local Accounts From Global Account

In this section:

Setting Interface Language and Skin for Your Control Panel ............................. 20

Setting a Custom Logo ...................................................................................... 21

Adding a Hyperlink Button to Your Control Panel .............................................. 21

Removing a Hyperlink Button from Your Control Panel ..................................... 22

 To disconnect a local account from your global account:

1. Log in to Plesk under the local account you want to disconnect.

2. Go to Global Account and click Disconnect From Global Account.

3. Confirm the disconnection and click OK.

Repeat steps 1-3 for other local accounts as necessary.

Customizing Your Control Panel in the Standard View

Setting Interface Language and Skin for Your Control Panel

To select an interface language and theme (skin) for your control panel:

1. On your Home page, click the Preferences icon in the Tools group.

2. Select the desired interface language and skin from the respective

drop-down boxes.

Plesk‘s interface has been translated to a number of languages, so if you do not

see your own language in the list, ask your provider to install the respective language pack.

3. Click OK.

Customizing Your Control Panel 21

Setting a Custom Logo

 To set up a custom logo image that will be visible to your customers when

they log in to Plesk control panel:

1. On your Home page, click Branding.

2. Click Browse... to navigate to the desired image file that you have on

your local computer.

We recommend that you use an image that is 50 pixels in height, in GIF, JPEG or PNG format, and preferably not larger than 100 kilobytes to minimize the download time.

3. If you wish to attach a hyperlink to the logo image, type the URL into the Enter new URL for logo box.

4. Click OK to submit.

 To restore the original Plesk logo image:

1. On your Home page, click Branding.

2. Click Default Logo.

Adding a Hyperlink Button to Your Control Panel

 To add a custom hyperlink button to your Plesk control panel and specify

whether your customers will see it in their control panels:

1. On your Home page, go to Custom Buttons and click Add New Button.

2. Specify properties of the button:

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

 Choose the location for your button. To place it in the right frame of your Home

page, select the Client home page value from the Location drop-down box. To place it on each domain's administration screen (Home > domain name), select the Domain Administration page value. To place it in the left frame (navigation pane) of your control panel, select the Navigation pane value.

 Specify the priority of the button. Plesk will arrange your custom buttons on the

control panel in accordance with the priority you define: the lower the number – the higher is 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.

22 Customizing Your Control Panel

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

 Using the checkboxes, specify whether to include the information, such as

domain name, FTP login, FTP password and other data to be transferred within the URL. These data can be used for processing by external web applications.

 In the Context help tip contents input field, type in the help tip that will be displayed

when you hover the mouse pointer over the button.

 Select the Open URL in the Control Panel checkbox if you wish the destination URL

to be opened in the control panel's right frame, otherwise leave this check box unchecked to open the URL in a separate browser window.

 If you wish to make this button visible to the mailbox users with access to control

panel, select the Visible to all sub-logins checkbox.

3. Click OK to complete creation.

Removing a Hyperlink Button from Your Control Panel

 To remove a hyperlink button from your Plesk control panel:

1. On your Home page, click Custom Buttons in the Tools group.

2. Select a check box corresponding to the button that you wish to remove

and click Remove Selected.

Customizing Your Control Panel in the Desktop View

 To add or remove items from the desktop:

1. Go to Desktop > Customize Desktop.

2. In the Tools group, specify what tasks you would like to accomplish

through the control panel. The appropriate shortcuts will be placed to the desktop. The Selected tasks list shows the tasks for which shortcuts are already placed on the desktop. The Available tasks list shows the tasks for which you do not yet have shortcuts on your desktop.

 To add a shortcut to the desktop, select the required tasks in the Available tasks

list and click Add >>.

 To remove a shortcut from the desktop, select the task that you do not need in

the Selected tasks list and click << Remove.

Customizing Your Control Panel 23

3. To show your custom buttons on the desktop, select the Custom buttons check box.

4. To show the shortcut for creating new custom hyperlink buttons at the bottom of the desktop, select the Create a new domain custom button check box.

5. Specify whether to show the Statistics and Favorites groups and what items to show there. Clearing check boxes will remove the respective items from the desktop. The Favorites group shows the links to items or control panel screens that you added to desktop by navigating to the respective control panel screens and clicking the Create shortcut or Add to favorites icons.

6. Click OK.

 To add a domain to the Favorites group of the desktop:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you want to add to favorites.

2. Click the Add to favorites icon at the upper right corner of the screen.

3. Specify the desktop shortcut label and the description.

4. Click OK.

 To add a mail account to the Favorites group of the desktop:

1. On your Home page, click the required domain name.

2. Click the Mail icon in the Services group.

3. Click the e-mail address you want to add to favorites.

4. Click the Add to favorites icon at the upper right corner of the screen.

5. Specify the desktop shortcut label and the description.

6. Click OK.

 To add items to the Favorites group of the desktop:

1. Navigate to the control panel screen you need.

2. Click the Create Shortcut icon at the upper right corner of the screen.

3. Specify the desktop shortcut label and the description.

4. Click OK.

 To remove items from the Favorites group of the desktop:

1. On the desktop, click the shortcut that you wish to remove.

24 Customizing Your Control Panel

2. Click the Edit Favorites icon in the upper right corner of the screen.

3. Click Remove.

1. On the desktop, click the icon corresponding to the shortcut that you wish to remove.

2. Click Remove.

In this chapter:

Viewing IP addresses Included in Your Hosting Package .................................. 25

Viewing Resource Allotments for Your Account ................................................. 26

Viewing the List of Operations You Can Perform within Your Control Panel ...... 28

C H A P T E R 3

Viewing Resource Allotments and Hosting Features Included in Your Hosting Package

Viewing IP addresses Included in Your Hosting Package

To view the IP addresses included in your hosting package, on your Home page, click IP Pool. Your IP addresses are listed and the following supplementary information is given:

 An icon in the S (Status) column shows if your IP address is properly configured

on the network interface. If your IP address was removed from the network interface by your provider, an icon will show .

 An icon in the T (Type) column shows if you were allotted a dedicated IP

address, and if the address is shared among other customers of your service provider. A dedicated IP address is not used by other users, so you can use it to host either:

A single e-commerce Web site secured with Secure Sockets Layer encryption, or

 A number of web sites that do not need Secure Sockets Layer encryption.

Note: Shared IP addresses should be used for hosting only non e-commerce Web sites.

 The Certificate column shows which SSL certificate (for what domain name) is tied to

an IP address. See the section "Securing e-commerce transactions with Secure Sockets Layer encryption" for details.

 The FTP over SSL column shows whether it is possible to use secure FTP

connection (FTP over SSL) on one of the domains hosted on this IP. To switch on FTP over SSL for an exclusive IP address, select the check box corresponding to the required IP address under the FTP over SSL column.

 The Hosting column shows a number of web sites hosted on an IP address. To view

the domain names of these web sites, click the number in the Hosting column.

26 Viewing Resource Allotments and Hosting Features Included in Your Hosting Package

Viewing Resource Allotments for Your Account

To view the resource allotments for your account, on your Home page, click the Limits icon. The resource allotments are shown as follows:

 Maximum number of domains. The total number of domain names/web sites you can

host on the server. This includes web sites that you host on this server, and domain forwarders that point to web sites hosted on other servers. Domain aliases (additional domain names for a site hosted on this server) are not limited by this resource type.

 Maximum number of subdomains. The total number of subdomains that can be hosted

for your sites.

 Maximum number of domain aliases. The total number of additional alternative domain

names that you can use for your sites.

 Disk space. The total amount of disk space in megabytes that can be occupied by

your web sites and sites of your customers. It includes disk space occupied by all files related to all domains/web sites: web site contents, databases, applications, mailboxes, log files and backup files. This is the so-called soft quota: when it is exceeded, domain names and web sites are not suspended automatically, only the appropriate notices are sent to your and your provider's e-mail addresses and the

resource overage is indicated by the icon shown in the control panel to the left of your name (see the top of the right frame on your Home page).

 Maximum amount of traffic. The amount of data in megabytes that can be transferred

from your web sites during a month. Once the limit is reached, the appropriate notices are sent to your and your provider's e-mail addresses and the resource

overage is indicated by the icon shown in the control panel to the left of your name (see the top of the right frame on your Home page).

 Maximum number of web users. The total number of personal web pages that you or

your customers can host for other users. This service is mostly used in educational institutions that host non-commercial personal pages of their students and staff. These pages usually have web addresses like http://your-domain.com/~username. Refer to the Hosting Personal Web Pages on Your Web Server section for details.

 Maximum number of databases. The total number of databases that can be hosted on

the server.

 Maximum number of mailboxes. The total number of mailboxes that can be hosted on

the server.

 Mailbox quota. The limit on amount of disk space in kilobytes that can be allocated to

each mailbox for storing e-mail messages and autoresponder attachment files.

 Maximum number of mail forwarders. The total number of mail forwarders that can be

set up on the server.

 Maximum number of mail autoresponders. The total number of automatic responses that

can be set up on the server.

Viewing Resource Allotments and Hosting Features Included in Your Hosting Package 27

 Maximum number of mailing lists. The total number of mailing lists that can be hosted

on the server. The mailing lists are served by the GNU Mailman software, which may or may not be installed on the server. If it is not installed and you or your customers would like to use it, ask your provider to install it.

 Maximum number of Java applications. The total number of Java applications or applets

that can be hosted on the server.

 Validity period. The term of your hosting or reseller account. At the end of the term,

your domains/web sites will be suspended, their Web, FTP and mail services will no longer be accessible to the Internet users, and domain owners will not be able to log in to their control panels.

28 Viewing Resource Allotments and Hosting Features Included in Your Hosting Package

Viewing the List of Operations You Can Perform within Your Control Panel

To view the list of operations you can perform within your control panel, on your Home page, click the Permissions icon. The permissions for operations are listed as follows:

 Domain creation. Shows whether you can host new domain names/web sites on the

server.

 Physical hosting management. Shows whether you can fully control hosting accounts

for your web sites. If it says No, then you can only change FTP password for accessing your web spaces.

 Hosting performance settings management. Shows whether you can limit connections

and bandwidth usage for your sites.

 PHP safe mode management. Shows whether you can switch the PHP safe mode off

for your sites. By default, PHP is configured to operate in safe mode with functional restrictions. To learn more about PHP safe mode, refer to

http://php.net/features.safe-mode. Some web applications may not work properly

with safe mode enabled: If an application on a site fails due to safe mode, switch the safe mode off (or ask your provider to do this) by clearing the PHP 'safe_mode' on check box in the hosting account properties (Home > domain name > Setup icon in the Hosting group).

 Management of shell access to the server. Shows whether you can access the server

shell and allow other users to do so.

 Hard disk quota assignment. Shows whether you can set up the hard quotas on disk

space allocated to your sites.

 Subdomains management. Shows whether you can set up, modify and remove

subdomains.

 Domain aliases management. Shows whether you can set up additional alternative

domain names for your web sites.

 Log rotation management. Shows whether you can adjust the cleanup and recycling of

processed log files for your site.

 Anonymous FTP management. Shows whether you can have an FTP directory where

all users could download and upload files without the need to enter login and password. A web site should reside on a dedicated IP address in order to use anonymous FTP service.

 Task scheduling. Shows whether you can schedule tasks in the system. Scheduled

tasks can be used for running scripts or utilities on schedule.

 DNS zone management. Shows whether you can manage the DNS zones of your

domains.

 Java applications management. Shows whether you can install Java applications and

applets on the web site through the control panel.

 Mailing lists management. Shows whether you can use mailing lists provided by the

GNU Mailman software.

 Spam filter management. Shows whether you can use spam filter provided by the

SpamAssassin software.

Viewing Resource Allotments and Hosting Features Included in Your Hosting Package 29

 Antivirus management. Shows whether you can use server-side antivirus protection

for filtering incoming and outgoing mail.

 Backup and restore functions. Shows whether you can use the control panel's facilities

to backup and restore your sites. Scheduled and on-demand backups are supported.

 User interface. Shows what type of Plesk control panel interface you can use -

standard, desktop, or both.

 Desktop management. Shows whether you can customize and manage your desktop

interface.

 Ability to use remote XML interface. Shows whether you can remotely manage Web

sites through custom applications. The XML interface can be used for developing custom applications integrated with Web sites, which could be used, for instance, for automating setup of hosting accounts and provisioning of services for customers purchasing hosting services from your site. To learn more about using Plesk control panel's XML interface (also referred to as Plesk API RPC), please visit

http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/Plesk8.1/Doc/plesk-8.1-api-rpc/index.htm.

 Ability to select a database server. Shows whether you can select a database server of

each type for creating your databases, not only use the default database server.

If you are going to resell hosting services or planning to host numerous domains and

In this chapter:

Creating Templates ........................................................................................... 31

Modifying Templates ......................................................................................... 35

Removing Templates ........................................................................................ 35

C H A P T E R 4

Implementing Hosting Plans Using Domain Templates

web sites, you may want to create hosting configuration presets, referred to as domain templates, that will simplify setting up hosting accounts for new domains and web sites. The templates cover all resource usage allotments, permissions and limits that you can define for a hosting account, plus mail bounce and Web statistics retention settings.

Implementing Hosting Plans Using Domain Templates 31

Creating Templates

To implement a hosting plan (or simplify setup of multiple domains), create a domain template, and define hosting services and resource allotments in accordance with your hosting plan:

1. On your Home page, click the Domain Templates icon in the Tools group.

2. Click Add Domain Template.

3. Specify the template properties:

a Template name. Specify a name for this template. During setup of a new hosting

account, you will be prompted to select the required template by its name. Therefore, we recommend that you choose a meaningful name that corresponds to one of your hosting plans or describes the amount of allotted resources. For example, Mail hosting, 1GB disk space, 500 mailboxes.

b Mail to nonexistent users. Specify the domain-wide mail bounce options: When

somebody sends an e-mail message to an e-mail address that does not exist under your domain, the mail server on your domain accepts mails, processes it, and when it finds out that there is no such a recipient under your domain, it

returns the mail back to sender with the ―this address no longer accepts mail‖

notice. You can choose to:

 change the default notice if you do not like it (leave the Bounce with message

option selected and type another message into the input box),

 forward undelivered mail to another e-mail address (select the Forward to

address option and specify the e-mail address you need), or

 reject mail without accepting it (select the Reject option). This setting can

decrease mail server load caused by a large amount of spam, which is often directed at randomly generated user names. However, for spammers this can somewhat speed up scanning your mail server for valid e-mail addresses.

c WebMail. Specify whether the users of mailboxes in this domain should be able

to read their mail through a browser based WebMail application.

d Maximum number of subdomains. Specify the number of subdomains that can be

hosted under this domain.

e Maximum number of domain aliases. Specify the total number of additional

alternative domain names that the site owner will be able to use for his or her web site.

f Disk space. Specify the total amount of disk space allocated to a hosting account

associated with the domain. This amount is measured in megabytes. It includes disk space occupied by all files related to this domain/web site: web site contents, databases, applications, mailboxes, log files and backup files. This is the so-called soft quota: when it is exceeded, domain names and web sites are not suspended automatically, only the appropriate notices are sent to your and your provider's e-mail addresses and the resource overage is indicated by the

icon shown in the control panel to the left of the domain name (see the list of domain names on your Home page). And then you can do the following:

32 Implementing Hosting Plans Using Domain Templates

 you can notify the domain owner and suspend the domain/web site after a

grace period until you receive the payment (not so good for your business, but if you are going to follow that way, see the chapter "Suspending and Unsuspending Domains and Web Sites"),

 upgrade the hosting plan for your customer (see the instructions on

upgrading hosting plans further in this section).

g Maximum amount of traffic. Specify the amount of data in megabytes that can be

transferred from the web site during a month. Once the limit is reached, the appropriate notices are sent to your and your provider's e-mail addresses and the resource overage is indicated by a corresponding icon shown in the control panel to the left of the domain name (see the list of domain names on your Home page). When a web site starts attracting more visitors and requires more bandwidth, consider upgrading a hosting plan (see the instructions on upgrading hosting plan below).

h Maximum number of web users. Specify the number of personal web pages that the

domain owner can host for other users under his or her domain. This service is mostly used in educational institutions that host non-commercial personal pages of their students and staff. These pages usually have web addresses like http://your-domain.com/~username. If you wish to allow execution of scripts embedded in personal web pages, select also the Allow the web users scripting check box. See the Hosting Personal Web Pages on Your Web Server section for details.

i Maximum number of databases. Specify the number of databases that can be

hosted in a domain.

j Maximum number of mailboxes. Specify the number of mailboxes that can be

hosted in a domain.

k Mailbox quota. Specify the amount of disk space in kilobytes that is allocated for

storing e-mail messages and autoresponder attachment files to each mailbox in a domain.

l Maximum number of mail forwarders. Specify the number of mail forwarders that

can be used in a domain.

m Maximum number of mail autoresponders. Specify the number of automatic

responses that can be set up in a domain.

n Maximum number of mailing lists. Specify the number of mailing lists that the

domain owner can run in a domain. The mailing lists are served by the GNU Mailman software, which may or may not be installed on the server. If it is not installed and you or your customers would like to use it, ask your provider to install it. To allow the use of mailing lists, you should also put a check mark into the Mailing lists check box under the Preferences group.

o Maximum number of Java applications. Specify the maximum number of Java

applications or applets that the domain owner can install in a domain.

Implementing Hosting Plans Using Domain Templates 33

p Validity period. Specify the term for a hosting account. At the end of the term, the

domain/web site will be suspended, its Web, FTP and mail services will no longer be accessible to the Internet users, and domain owner will not be able to log in to the control panel. Hosting accounts cannot be automatically renewed, therefore, in order to bring the hosted domain name/web site back to operation, you will need to manually renew the hosting account: on your Home page, click the domain name your need, click the Limits icon, specify another term in the

Validity period box, click OK, then click the Enable icon in the Domain group (Home > domain name).

q Log rotation. 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 statistical utilities running on the server, which then present graphical reports on demand. If you need to view the contents of these raw log files for debugging purposes, on your Home page, click the domain name you need, click Log Manager, and then click the log file name you need. To prevent these log files from growing too large, you should enable automatic cleanup and recycling of log files:

 select the Switch on log rotation check box,

 specify when to recycle log files,

 specify how many instances of each log file processed by Plesk's statistical

utilities to store on the server,

 specify whether they should be compressed,

 specify whether they should be sent to an e-mail address after processing.

r Web and traffic statistics retention. Specify the number of months during which the

Web and bandwidth usage statistics should be kept on the server.

s DNS. Specify whether the DNS server on your Web host should act as a master

(primary) or slave (secondary) name server for the domain name zone. A primary name server stores locally the zone file it serves, while a secondary server only retrieves a copy of this file from the primary. You would normally leave the Master option selected.

t Physical hosting account. If you are going to host not only domain names, but also

web sites, select the Physical hosting check box and specify the hosting features:

 Hard disk quota. In addition to the soft quota, you can specify the so-called

hard quota that will not allow writing more files to the web space when the limit is reached. At attempt to write files, users will get "Out of disk space" error.

 SSL support. Secure Sockets Layer encryption is generally used for protecting

transfer of sensitive data during online transactions on e-commerce Web sites 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 web sites with different domain names on a single IP address (shared or name-based hosting) 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 Web sites, select the SSL support check box.

34 Implementing Hosting Plans Using Domain Templates

 Create and publish site using Sitebuilder. This will enable the domain

administrator to create and manage a Web site using Sitebuilder.

 Use a single directory for housing SSL and non-SSL content. By default, when

users publish their sites through their FTP accounts, they need to upload the web content that should be accessible via secure connections to the httpsdocs directory, and the content that should be accessible via plain HTTP, to the httpdocs directory. For the convenience of publishing all content through a single location – httpdocs directory, select the Use a single directory for housing SSL and non-SSL content check box.

 FrontPage support. Microsoft FrontPage is a popular web site authoring tool.

To enable users to publish and modify their sites through Microsoft FrontPage, select the FrontPage support and FrontPage over SSL support check boxes and set the FrontPage authoring option to allowed.

 Support for programming and scripting languages widely used in development of

dynamic Web sites and server-side Web applications. Specify which of the

following programming and scripting languages should be interpreted, executed or otherwise processed by the web server: Active Server Pages (ASP), Server Side Includes (SSI), PHP hypertext preprocessor (PHP), Common Gateway Interface (CGI), Fast Common Gateway Interface (FastCGI), Perl, Python, ColdFusion, and Miva scripting required for running Miva e-commerce solutions.

 Web statistics. To allow domain/web site owner to view the information on the

number of people visited his or her site and the pages of the site they viewed, select the statistical package you need from the Web statistics menu (AWStats is recommended), and select the accessible via password protected directory /plesk-stat/ check box. This will install the statistical software of your choice, which will generate reports and place them into the passwordprotected directory. The domain/web site owner will then be able to access Web statistics at the URL: https://your-domain.com/plesk-stat/webstat using their FTP account login and password.

 Custom error documents. When visitors coming to your 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 wish to create your own error pages and use them on your web server or allow your customers to do that, select the Custom error documents check box.

 Shell access to server with FTP user's credentials. This allows a site owner to

upload securely web content to the server through a Secure Socket Shell connection, however, allowing shell access also poses a potential threat to the server security, so we recommend that you do not allow shell access. Leave the Forbidden option selected.

4. Click OK to complete creation of a template.

During setup of a hosting account for a new domain/web site, you will select the required template and the hosting account will be created and allocated the resources and hosting services you defined.

Implementing Hosting Plans Using Domain Templates 35

Modifying Templates

 To reflect the changes in your hosting package offerings that will apply to

the newly created accounts:

1. On your Home page, click Domain Templates in the Tools group.

2. Click the template name corresponding to the hosting plan you wish to

update.

3. Modify the settings as required and click OK.

Note that modifying templates does not affect the existing domains and web sites.

Removing Templates

 To remove a template that you no longer need:

1. On your Home page, click Domain Templates in the Tools group.

2. Select a check box corresponding to the template you no longer need.

3. Click Remove Selected. Confirm removal and click OK.

In this chapter:

Predefining Content for New Web Sites ............................................................ 37

Obtaining Domain Names ................................................................................. 38

Setting Up Hosting Account for a Web Site ....................................................... 39

Creating and Publishing a Site .......................................................................... 47

Previewing a Site .............................................................................................. 53

Deploying Databases ........................................................................................ 54

Installing Applications ........................................................................................ 58

Securing E-commerce Transactions with Secure Sockets Layer Encryption ..... 61

Restricting Access to Web Server's Resources with Password Protection ........ 67

Organizing Site Structure with Subdomains ...................................................... 70

Setting Up Additional Domain Names for a Site (Domain Aliases) ..................... 72

Hosting Personal Web Pages on Your Web Server ........................................... 75

Setting Up Anonymous FTP Access to the Server............................................. 77

Customizing Web Server Error Messages ......................................................... 78

Customizing DNS Zone Configuration for Domains ........................................... 80

Serving Sites with External Domain Name Servers ........................................... 85

Serving Domain Names for Sites Hosted on Other Servers (Domain Forwarding) 87

Suspending and Unsuspending Domains .......................................................... 88

Removing Domains ........................................................................................... 88

C H A P T E R 5

Hosting Web Sites

Hosting Web Sites 37

Predefining Content for New Web Sites

You can set your control panel to automatically include specific files and directories into Web spaces created for newly hosted Web sites. This can be a set of useful scripts, custom error messages, a placeholder index.html page, or any other files of your choice. These files can then be replaced, edited or removed on a per-site basis.

To set up the control panel so as to automatically include your web content into web spaces:

1. On your local file system, create the required directories: httpdocs, httpsdocs, cgi-bin, anon_ftp, error_docs.

2. Place the files you need into the directories you have created: Place web pages into httpdocs and httpsdocs directories, scripts to cgi- bin directory, and custom error messages to error_docs directory.

3. Pack the directories and files into an archive file in tgz, tar, tar.gz, or zip format.

Make sure that the directories are in the root of the archive file and not in a subdirectory.

4. Log in to your Plesk control panel.

5. On your Home page, click the Skeleton icon in the Tools group.

6. Click the Browse button to locate the archive file on your local computer,

select the file, and click the Send File button.

To revert back to the original structure of web server directories and files:

1. On your Home page, click the Skeleton icon.

2. Click the Default button.

38 Hosting Web Sites

Obtaining Domain Names

Before you publish a site on the Internet, you must register your unique domain name with a domain name registration authority. A domain name is an easy-to-remember web site address.

When you want to visit a web site, you enter a domain name (e.g. your-domain.com) or a Uniform Resource Locator (e.g. http://www.your-domain.com) into your browser's address bar. In order to show you the requested site, your browser first needs to find out the IP address corresponding to the requested domain name because machines address each other by IP addresses—domain names were devised for humans. So, the browser queries the name servers in the distributed Domain Name System, which translates the requested domain name to IP address and returns the IP address to the browser. Finally, the browser connects to the web server at the specified IP address and retrieves the web pages from there. Thus, to allow other users to find your site by its domain name, you must register your domain name with the Domain Name System.

When choosing a domain name for your site, consider a word or combination of words that is relevant to your business, brand name, or topic of interest. A domain name should be easy to remember. If your domain name will comprise several words, you may want to separate these words with hyphens: this will help search engines distinguish between words, therefore, the users will be able to find your site faster.

To increase the chances to find your site for your customers, you may also want to buy the non-hyphenated version of the same domain name, for example, yourdomain.com and redirect it to your original domain - your-domain.com. To protect your domain name, you may want to register it in different top level domains: your-domain.com, your-domain.net. For a domain name comprising a single word that users can misspell and type incorrectly, you may also want to purchase one or few misspelled versions of your domain name that you will point to your original site. To give you a real life example of how this can be: there is the Google search engine with a primary web site address www.google.com. Knowing that people sometimes swap two adjacent letters or type more letters than required, the three additional domain names pointing to the original site were set up: www.gogle.com, www.goolge.com, and www.gooogle.com.

Once you have decided on the right domain name, you can register it with a domain name registration authority, or ask your service provider to do that for you. Registration cost varies between registrars (usually from 4 to 10 US dollars per year).

It is possible to register and manage domain names through Plesk, if your service provider enabled this option.

 To register a domain name through Plesk, click Register on your Home page. You

will be taken to MyPlesk.com website, where a simple step-by-step wizard will guide you through the registration procedure.

 To manage domain names through Plesk, click Manage on your Home page. You

will be taken to MyPlesk.com website, where you can log in and manage your domain names.

Hosting Web Sites 39

Setting Up Hosting Account for a Web Site

To host a web site on the server:

1. On your Home page, click Add New Domain.

2. Specify the domain name just as you have registered it. Leave the www

check box selected if you wish to allow users to access your site by a common and habitual URL like www.your-domain.com.

Having the www alias preceding your domain name will not cost you anything, but it will allow users to get to your site no matter what they type in their browsers: www.your-domain.com and your-domain.com will both point to your site.

3. If you have previously created a domain template and predefined all hosting features and resource usage allotments (as described in the chapter "Implementing Hosting Plans"), select the required template from the Select template box.

4. If you have a number of IP addresses to choose from, select the required address from the Select an IP address drop-down box.

Bear in mind that e-commerce sites need a dedicated IP address (not shared among other sites) to implement Secure Sockets Layer data encryption.

5. Make sure that there is a check mark in the Proceed to hosting setup check box and click OK.

6. Select the Physical hosting option to host the Web site on this machine.

Upon completion of this procedure, your control panel will set up the domain name server on this machine to serve the new domain name and prepare the web server to serve the new Web site: a new zone file with appropriate resource records will be added to the Domain Name Server's configuration files, a web space will be created inside the Web server's directory, and necessary user accounts will be created on the server.

Note: If your site is hosted on another machine, and you wish to set up your control panel's DNS server only to serve the DNS zone for that site, select either Frame forwarding or Standard forwarding option. With standard forwarding, a user is redirected to the site and the actual site's URL is shown in the user's browser, so the user always knows that he or she is redirected to another URL. With frame forwarding, a user is redirected to the site without knowing that the site actually resides at another location. For example: your customer has a free personal web site with his or her Internet Service Provider or a free Web host, and the Web site address is http://www.geocities.com/~myhomepage. The customer purchased a second level domain name www.myname.com and wants you to provide domain forwarding to his Web site. In this case you would normally choose the Frame forwarding service. See the chapter "Serving the Domain Names for Sites Hosted on Other Servers (Domain Forwarding)" for details.

40 Hosting Web Sites

7. Specify the properties of a hosting account:

 SSL support. Secure Sockets Layer encryption is generally used for protecting

 Use a single directory for housing SSL and non-SSL content. By default, when users

publish their sites through their FTP accounts, they need to upload the web content that should be accessible via secure connections to the httpsdocs directory, and the content that should be accessible via plain HTTP, to the httpdocs directory. For the convenience of publishing all content through a single location – httpdocs directory, select the Use a single directory for housing SSL and non-SSL content check box.

 FTP login and FTP password. Specify the user name and password that will be

used for publishing the site to the server through FTP. Retype the password into the Confirm Password box.

 Hard disk quota. Specify the amount of disk space in megabytes allocated to the

web space for this site. This is the so-called hard quota that will not allow writing more files to the web space when the limit is reached. At attempt to write files, users will get the "Out of disk space" error. Hard quotas should be enabled in the server's operating system, so if you see the "Hard disk quota is not supported" notice to the right of the Hard disk quota field, but would like to use the hard quotas, contact your provider or the server administrator and ask to enable the hard quotas.

 Create and publish Web site using Sitebuilder. This allows a site owner to create and

manage his or her Web site using the Sitebuilder program installed on your server.

 Shell access to server with FTP user's credentials. This allows a site owner to upload

securely web content to the server through a Secure Socket Shell connection, however, allowing shell access also poses a potential threat to the server security, so we recommend that you do not allow shell access. Leave the Forbidden option selected.

 FrontPage support. Microsoft FrontPage is a popular web site authoring tool. To

enable users to publish and modify their sites through Microsoft FrontPage, select the FrontPage support and FrontPage over SSL support check boxes, set the FrontPage authoring option to allowed, and specify the FrontPage Administrator's login and password.

Hosting Web Sites 41

 Support for programming and scripting languages widely used in development of dynamic

Web sites and server-side Web applications. Specify which of the following

programming and scripting languages should be interpreted, executed or otherwise processed by the web server: Active Server Pages (ASP), Server Side Includes (SSI), PHP hypertext preprocessor (PHP), Common Gateway Interface (CGI), Fast Common Gateway Interface (FastCGI), Perl, Python, ColdFusion, and Miva scripting languages. By default, PHP is configured to operate in safe mode with functional restrictions. To learn more about PHP safe mode, refer to http://php.net/features.safe-mode. Some web applications may not work properly with safe mode enabled: If an application on a site fails due to safe mode, switch the safe mode off (or ask your provider to do this) by clearing the PHP 'safe_mode' on check box in the hosting account properties (Home > domain name > Setup icon in the Hosting group).

 Web statistics. To allow domain/web site owner to view the information on the

number of people visited his or her site and the pages of the site they viewed, select the statistics program you need from the Web statistics menu (AWStats is recommended), and select the accessible via password protected directory /plesk-stat/ check box. This will install the statistics program of your choice, which will generate reports and place them into the password protected directory. The domain/web site owner will then be able to access Web statistics at the URL: https://your-domain.com/plesk-stat/webstat using his or her FTP account login and password.

Note: When you switch from one statistics program to another, all reports

created by the previously used statistics program are deleted and new reports are created in accordance with the information read from log files kept on the server. This means that if you configured the system (at Home > domain name > Log Manager > Log Rotation) so as to keep log files only for the last month, then Web statistics will be available only for the last month.

 Custom error documents. When visitors coming to your 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 wish to create your own error pages and use them on your web server or allow your customers to do that, select the Custom error documents check box.

8. Click OK.

Now the server is ready to accommodate the new web site, and the site owner can publish the site to the server. For instructions on publishing a Web site, refer to the Publishing a Site (on page 47) section of this guide.

Note: If you transferred this domain name from another Web host, you will need to update the host DNS address with the domain name registrar so as to point to your name servers: log in to your registrar's web site, locate the forms used to manage the domain host pointers, and replace the current DNS host settings with your name servers' hostnames. The information on new name servers will spread across the DNS system within 48 hours.

If you have registered several domain names that you would like to point to a site hosted on this server, you should set up domain aliases. Refer to the Setting Up Additional Domain Names for a Site (Domain Aliases) section for details.

42 Hosting Web Sites

If you need to host on your account several domains, which will point to a site hosted

In this section:

Limiting the Amount of Resources a Site Can Consume ................................... 42

Allowing the Site Owner to Log in to Control Panel............................................ 45

on another server, you should set up domain forwarding. Refer to the Serving Domain Names for Sites Hosted on Other Servers (Domain Forwarding) chapter for details.

Limiting the Amount of Resources a Site Can Consume

By default, new web sites that you set up without the help of domain templates, are allowed to consume unlimited amounts of bandwidth (data transfer) and disk space.

To limit the amount of resources a site can consume:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the Limits icon.

3. Adjust the resource usage allotments as required:

a Maximum number of subdomains. Specify the number of subdomains that can be

hosted under this domain.

b Maximum number of domain aliases. Specify the number of additional alternative

domain names that the site owner will be able to use for his or her web site.

c Disk space. Specify the total amount of disk space allocated to a hosting account

corresponding icon shown in the control panel to the left of the domain name (see the list of domain names on your Home page). And then it is up to you to decide what to do with the web site:

 you can notify the domain owner and suspend the domain/web site after a

grace period until you receive the payment (not so good for your business, but if you are going to follow that way, see the Suspending and Unsuspending Hosting Accounts section),

 upgrade the hosting plan for your customer (see the instructions on

upgrading hosting plans in the chapter Implementing Hosting Plans).

Hosting Web Sites 43

d Maximum amount of traffic. Specify the amount of data in megabytes that can be

transferred from the web site during a month. Once the limit is reached, the appropriate notices are sent to your and your provider's e-mail addresses and

the resource overage is indicated by a corresponding icon shown in the control panel to the left of the domain name (see the list of domain names on your Home page). When a web site starts attracting more visitors and requires more bandwidth, consider upgrading a hosting plan (see the instructions on upgrading hosting plan in the chapter Implementing Hosting Plans).

e Maximum number of web users. Specify the number of personal web pages that the

domain owner can host for other users under his or her domain. This service is mostly used in educational institutions that host non-commercial personal pages of their students and staff. These pages usually have web addresses like http://your-domain.com/~username. If you wish to allow execution of scripts embedded in personal web pages, select the Allow the web users scripting check box. See the Hosting Personal Web Pages on Your Web Server section for details.

f Maximum number of databases. Specify the number of databases that can be

hosted in a domain.

g Maximum number of mailboxes. Specify the number of mailboxes that can be

hosted in a domain.

h Mailbox quota. Specify the amount of disk space in kilobytes that is allocated for

storing e-mail messages and autoresponder attachment files to each mailbox in a domain.

i Maximum number of mail forwarders. Specify the number of mail forwarders that

can be used in a domain.

j Maximum number of mail autoresponders. Specify the number of automatic

responses that can be set up in a domain.

k Maximum number of mailing lists. Specify the number of mailing lists that the

l Maximum number of Java applications. Specify the maximum number of Java

applications or applets that the domain owner can install in a domain.

m Validity period. Specify the term for a hosting account. At the end of the term, the

Validity period box, click OK, then click the Enable icon in the Domain group (Home > domain name).

4. Click OK.

44 Hosting Web Sites

 To protect your site from DoS attacks and to ensure that your site

responds promptly when there are many visitors, you can limit the number of simultaneous connections to the site and limit the amount of bandwidth that visitors to the site can consume:

1. Click the Domains shortcut in the navigation pane.

2. Click the domain name you need.

3. Click Performance.

4. Select the Switch on bandwidth limiting check box, and in the Maximum

network use (KB/S) box, type the maximum speed in kilobytes per second that a site can share among all its connections. For example: 128.

5. Select the Switch on connections limiting check box, and in the Connections limited to box, type the maximum number of simultaneous connections.

For example: 100.

6. Click OK.

Hosting Web Sites 45

Allowing the Site Owner to Log in to Control Panel

To allow the site owner to log in to control panel for managing his or her web site:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the Domain Administrator icon in the Domain group.

3. Select the Allow domain administrator's access check box.

4. Type the password for access to the site owner's control panel.

For security reasons, the password should be more than 8 symbols, and it should comprise a combination of letters, numbers, and punctuation; dictionary words and proper names should be avoided.

5. Specify the settings related to the appearance of user's control panel, if desired: interface language, theme (skin), the limit on number of characters that can appear on custom buttons placed into the control panel by the site owner.

6. Leave the Allow multiple sessions check box selected to allow the site owner to have several simultaneous sessions in the control panel.

7. Leave the Prevent users from working with the control panel until interface screens are completely loaded check box selected.

This will forbid users from submitting data or performing operations until the control panel is ready to accept them.

8. Specify the operations that the site owner will be able to perform in his or her control panel:

 Physical hosting management. Allow or disallow full control of the hosting account

and Web space.

 FTP password management. Allow or disallow the user to change his or her FTP

account password.

 Management of shell access to the server. It is recommended that you leave the

Client cannot allow or disallow shell access option selected.

 Hard disk quota assignment. Allow or disallow the site owner to adjust the hard

quota on disk space allocated to his or her web space.

 Subdomains management. Allow or disallow the site owner to set up, modify and

remove subdomains.

 Domain aliases management. Allow or disallow the site owner to set up additional

alternative domain names for his or her web site.

 Log rotation management. Allow or disallow the site owner to adjust the cleanup

and recycling of processed log files.

 Anonymous FTP management. Allow or disallow the site owner to have an FTP

directory where all users could upload and download files without the need to enter login and password. A web site should reside on a dedicated IP address in order to use anonymous FTP.

46 Hosting Web Sites

 Task scheduling. Allow or disallow the site owner to schedule tasks in the system.

Scheduled tasks can be used for running scripts or utilities on schedule.

 DNS zone management. Allow or disallow the site owner to manage the DNS zone

of his or her domain. This is recommended only for experienced users.

 Java applications management. Allow or disallow the site owner to install Java

applications and applets on the web site.

 Mailing lists management. Allow or disallow the site owner to use mailing lists

provided by the GNU Mailman software.

 Spam filter management. Allow or disallow the site owner to use spam filter

provided by the SpamAssassin software.

 Antivirus management. Allow or disallow the site owner to use server-side antivirus

protection for filtering incoming and outgoing mail.

 Backup and restore functions. Allow or disallow the site owner to use the control

panel's facilities to backup and restore his or her site. Scheduled and ondemand backups are supported.

 User interface. Choose what type of Plesk control panel interface site owner can

use - standard, desktop, or both.

 Desktop management. Allow or disallow the site owner to customize and manage

their desktop interface.

 Ability to select a database server. Specify whether the site owner will be able to

select a database server of each type for creating his or her databases, not only use the default database server.

9. Specify the site owner's contact information.

10. Click OK.

Now you can tell your customer the control panel's URL, login and password. The URL is https://<user's_domain_name>:8443, where <user's_domain_name> is the domain name without the www alias. The login name that the site owner should specify in order to log in to the control panel is his or her domain name, for example, your-domain.com.

Hosting Web Sites 47

Creating and Publishing a Site

In this section:

Creating and Publishing Web Sites Using Sitebuilder ........................................ 47

Publishing Sites Through FTP ........................................................................... 48

Publishing Sites Through Plesk File Manager ................................................... 48

Publishing Sites Through SSH Connection ....................................................... 49

Publishing Sites with Microsoft FrontPage ......................................................... 50

Publishing Sites with Adobe Dreamweaver ....................................................... 52

If your hosting plan includes the Web site creation and management service using Sitebuilder, you can create and publish Web sites using Sitebuilder. Or you can create your site content (Web pages, scripts and graphic files that compose your site) on your home or office computer and then publish it to the server in any of the following ways:

 Through FTP connection (most common and easiest way)

 Through Plesk File Manager

 Through Secure Shell connection (only for users of Linux and FreeBSD operating

systems)

 Through Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage software (only for users of

Microsoft Windows operating systems)

Creating and Publishing Web Sites Using Sitebuilder

 To start creating a Web site using Sitebuilder:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need and then click

Sitebuilder Wizard. The Sitebuilder wizard opens.

2. Select the Create your site option and click Next at the bottom of the screen.

For further instructions on creating or editing your site, refer to the online Sitebuilder Wizard user's guide at

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/user/en_US/html/index.htm.

48 Hosting Web Sites

Publishing Sites Through FTP

1. Connect to the server with an FTP client program, using FTP account credentials that you specified during setup of host ing account or obtained from your provider.

Enable the passive mode if you are behind a firewall.

2. Upload files and directories that should be accessible through HTTP protocol to the httpdocs directory, and files/directories that should be transferred securely over SSL protocol to the httpsdocs directory.

3. Place your CGI scripts into the cgi-bin directory.

4. Close your FTP session.

Changing FTP Password

 To change FTP password for a Web site owner:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click Setup in the Hosting group.

3. Specify new password.

4. Click OK.

Publishing Sites Through Plesk File Manager

 To upload files through Plesk File Manager:

1. Log in to Plesk control panel.

2. Click the domain name you need.

3. Click the File Manager icon in the Hosting group.

4. Create and upload files and directories.

Place the files and directories that should be accessible via HTTP protocol to the httpdocs directory, and files/directories that should be transferred securely over SSL protocol to the httpsdocs directory. Place your CGI scripts into the cgi-bin directory.

 To create a new directory within your current location, click the Add New

Directory button.

Hosting Web Sites 49

 To create new files in the required directory, click Add New File, in the File

creation section specify the file name, select the Use html template check box, if

you want file manager to insert some basic html tags to the new file, and click OK. A page will open allowing you to enter the content or html-formatted source of a new file. After you are done, click OK.

 To upload a file from the local machine, click Add New File, specify the path to

its location in the File source box (or use the Browse button to locate the file), and click OK.

When you upload web content through File Manager or FTP, your control panel automatically sets the appropriate access permissions for files and directories. The permissions 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, i.e. 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.

To modify permissions for a file or directory, in the Permissions column, click the respective hyperlink representing the set of permissions. Modify the permissions as desired and click OK.

To edit the source code of a file, click .

To edit the Web page in the built-in visual editor (available only to users of Microsoft Internet Explorer), click . When editing an HTML file, Plesk opens internal

WYSIWYG editor by default. If you want to edit the source code of the HTML file, click HTML. To return back to WYSIWYG mode, click Design.

To view the file, click .

To rename a file or directory, click . Type in a new name and click OK.

To copy or move a file or directory to another location, select the required file or directory using the appropriate check box, and click Copy/Move. Specify the

destination for the file or directory to be copied or renamed to, then click Copy to copy, or Move to move it.

To update the file or directory creation date, click Touch. The time stamp will be updated with the current local time.

To remove a file or directory, select the corresponding check box, and click Remove

Selected. Confirm removal and click OK.

50 Hosting Web Sites

Publishing Sites Through SSH Connection

In this section:

Publishing from Microsoft FrontPage through FTP ............................................ 51

Publishing from Microsoft FrontPage through HTTP .......................................... 51

If your are using a Linux or FreeBSD operating system on your local computer and

have access to server shell, use the ‗scp‘ command to copy files and directories to the

server: scp your_file_name login@remoteserver.com:path to copy files, and scp –r your_directory_name login@remoteserver.com:path to copy entire directories.

After publishing, you will be able to work with files and directories on your account using SSH terminal web application integrated in your Plesk control panel (domain name

> SSH Terminal).

Publishing Sites with Microsoft FrontPage

Microsoft FrontPage deals with two kinds of Web sites: disk-based and server-based. In short, a disk-based site is a FrontPage Web site you create on your local hard disk and then later publish to a Web server. A server-based site is one you create and work with directly on a Web server, without the extra step of publishing. This section provides you with instructions on publishing only disk-based web sites.

You can publish disk-based web sites either through FTP or HTTP. If your server is running FrontPage Server Extensions, you would publish your site to an HTTP location. For example: http://your-domain.com/MyWebSite. If your server supports FTP, you would publish to an FTP location. For example: ftp://ftp.your-domain.com/myFolder.

After publishing, you can manage your site through FrontPage Server Extensions.

To access FrontPage Server Extensions management interface:

1. Log in to Plesk.

2. Click the domain name you need.

3. To manage a site, which is not protected by SSL, click FP Webadmin. To

manage an SSL-enabled site, click FP-SSL Webadmin.

4. Type your FrontPage administrator‘s login name and password, and

click OK.

For instructions on using FrontPage server extensions, see online help (FP Webadmin >

Help) or visit Microsoft web site.

Hosting Web Sites 51

Publishing from Microsoft FrontPage through FTP

 To publish files through FTP:

1. Open your FrontPage program.

2. Open a FrontPage Web site: open File menu and select the Open Site

item.

3. Go to Remote Web site view: click the Web Site tab, and then the Remote Web Site button at the bottom of the window.

4. Set up your Remote Web Site Properties:

 Click the Remote Web Site Properties button in the upper-right corner of the

window.

 Select FTP as the remote Web server.

 In the Remote Web site location box, type your host name (e.g., ftp://ftp.your-

domain.com)

 In the FTP directory box, type your FTP directory if your hosting company

provided one. Leave it blank if they did not specify one.

 Select the Use Passive FTP check box if your computer or network is protected by

a firewall.

5. Click OK to connect to the remote site.

The Remote Web site view will show files that you have in your local and remote sites.

6. Click the Publish Web site button in the lower-right corner of the window.

Publishing from Microsoft FrontPage through HTTP

 To publish files through HTTP on a server that supports FrontPage Server

Extensions:

1. Open your FrontPage program.

2. Open a FrontPage Web site: open File menu and select the Open Site

item.

3. Go to Remote Web site view: click the Web Site tab, and then the Remote Web Site button at the bottom of the window.

4. Click the Remote Web Site Properties button in the upper-right corner of the window.

5. On the Remote Web Site tab, under Remote Web server type, click FrontPage or SharePoint Services.

52 Hosting Web Sites

6. In the Remote Web site location box, type the Internet address, including the protocol, of the remote Web site that you want to publish folders and files to — for example, http://www.your-domain.com — or click Browse to locate the site.

7. Do any of the following:

 To use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) for establishing a secure communications

channel to prevent the interception of critical information, click Encryption connection required (SSL). To use SSL connections on your Web server, the server must be configured with a security certificate from a recognized certificate authority. If the server does not support SSL, clear this check box. Otherwise, you will not be able to publish folders and files to the remote Web site.

 To remove specific types of code from Web pages as they are being published,

on the Optimize HTML tab, select the options you want.

 To change the default options for publishing, on the Publishing tab, select the

options you want.

8. Click OK to connect to the remote site.

The Remote Web site view will show files that you have in your local and remote sites.

9. Click the Publish Web site button in the lower-right corner of the window.

Publishing Sites with Adobe Dreamweaver

Before publishing a site from Dreamweaver, you need to define the site properties, that is, you need to tell Dreamweaver where your site files are located on your computer, and to specify the server to which you want to publish the site.

 To define a site in Dreamweaver:

1. From the Site menu, choose New Site. The Site Definition screen opens.

2. Click the Advanced tab.

3. In the Local Info category, specify the following:

 Site name. This will show in Web browser‘s title bar.

 Local root folder. This is the folder on your computer where all of your site files

are stored. For example c:\My Site

 Default images folder. Specify the folder where your site‘s graphic files are stored.

For example c:\My Site\images

4. From the Category menu, select the Remote Info item.

 HTTP address. Specify your domain name. For example, http://your-

domain.com

Hosting Web Sites 53

5. From the Access menu, select the FTP option. Most likely, your server supports publishing through FTP (File Transfer Protocol, commonly used for transferring files over the Internet).

6. Specify the following settings:

 FTP host. Type your FTP host name without the ftp:// prefix. For example,

your-domain.com.

 Host directory. Specify the directory on the server where your site will reside. In

most cases, this is httpdocs.

 Login and password. Specify the login name and password for access to the FTP

account.

 Use passive FTP. Select this option only if your computer is behind a firewall.

7. To ensure that you specified the correct login and password, and that Dreamweaver can connect to the server, click the Test button.

8. To save the settings, click OK.

 To publish your site:

1. Open your site in Dreamweaver.

2. From the Site menu, select the Put option (or press Ctrl+Shift+U

simultaneously).

Previewing a Site

Once you published a site on the server, you may want to make sure that it functions properly in the actual hosting environment. You can preview the site through your favorite Web browser, even if the information on the domain name has not yet propagated in the Domain Name System. Note that Adobe Flash and CGI scripts will not work during preview. Also, site preview does not work for Web sites and Web pages that include absolute paths to other files (like <a href="http://domain.tld/image.gif">).

 To preview a site:

1. On your Home page click the domain name you need.

2. Click Site Preview in the Hosting group.

54 Hosting Web Sites

Deploying Databases

In this section:

Creating or Importing a Database ...................................................................... 55

Creating Database User Accounts .................................................................... 56

Changing Database User Passwords ................................................................ 56

Removing Database User Accounts .................................................................. 57

Removing Databases ........................................................................................ 57

If your web server incorporates data processing applications or is designed to generate web pages dynamically, you will likely need a database for storing and retrieving data. You can either create a new database for your site or import the data from your previously backed up MySQL or PostgreSQL database.

Hosting Web Sites 55

Creating or Importing a Database

To create a new database on your hosting account:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click Databases.

3. Click Add New Database.

4. Enter a name for the database.

We recommend that you choose a name that starts with a Latin alphabet symbol and comprises only alphanumeric and underscore symbols (up to 64 symbols).

5. Select the database type that you are going to use: MySQL or PostgreSQL.

6. Select the database server of the selected type from the list. Click OK.

7. To set up database administrator‘s credentials, click Add New Database

User.

8. Type a user name and a password that will be used for accessing the contents of the database.

9. Click OK.

To import an existing database:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click Databases.

3. Click Add New Database.

4. Enter a name for the database. We recommend that you choose a

name that starts with a Latin alphabet symbol and comprises only alphanumeric and underscore symbols (up to 64 s ymbols).

5. Select the database type that you are going to use: MySQL or PostgreSQL.

6. Select the database server of the selected type from the list. Click OK.

7. To set up database administrator‘s credentials, click Add New Database

User.

8. Type a user name and a password that will be used for accessing the contents of the database. Click OK.

9. Click the DB WebAdmin icon in the Tools group. An interface to phpMyAdmin (or phpPgAdmin) database management tool will open in a separate browser window.

56 Hosting Web Sites

10. Click on the Query window icon in the left frame.

11. Click the Import files tab.

12. Select the text file that contains the data and click Go.

13. Click the Insert data from a text file link.

To manage your databases and their contents, use your favorite MySQL or PostgreSQL client or the web based database management tool accessible from Plesk control panel (Home > domain name > Databases > Database name > DB WebAdmin).

Creating Database User Accounts

If you collaborate with other people on managing a web site and wish to give them access to the database, you should create separate user accounts for them.

 To create a database user account:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click Databases in the Services group.

3. Click the required database name. A list of database users will open.

4. Click Add New Database User.

5. Type a user name and a password that will be used for accessing the

contents of the database. Click OK.

Changing Database User Passwords

 To change password for a database user:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click Databases in the Services group.

3. Click the required database name. A list of database users will open.

4. Click the database user‘s name.

5. Type a new password and click OK.

Hosting Web Sites 57

Removing Database User Accounts

 To remove a database user account:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click Databases in the Services group.

3. Click the required database name. A list of database users will open.

4. Select a check box corresponding to the user account that you wish to

remove.

5. Click Remove Selected. Next, confirm removing and click OK.

Removing Databases

 To remove a database with its contents:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click Databases in the Services group.

3. Select a check box corresponding to the database that you wish to

remove.

If the required check box appears grayed out, this means that this database is used by a site application and you can remove it only by uninstalling the respective application.

4. Click Remove Selected.

5. Confirm removal and click OK.

58 Hosting Web Sites

Installing Applications

To enhance your web site with valuable features, such as guest books, forums, hit counters, photo galleries, and e-commerce solutions, you can install the respective applications from the control panel's script library (Home > domain name > Web Applications). The number and variety of available applications depend on your provider‘s policy and your hosting plan.

To install an application on your site:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click Web Applications in the Hosting group. A list of applications installed

on your site will be displayed.

3. Click Add New Application icon in the Tools group.

4. In the left menu, select a category to which the application you need

belongs.

5. Select the required application in the list, and then click Install.

6. Some applications will display a license agreement. Read the license

agreement carefully, and if you agree with it, select the I agree check box and click Next >>.

7. Specify whether you wish to create a hyperlink to the application and place it in the control panel.

8. Specify the installation preferences and other information that may be required by the application (the requirements may vary among applications). Click Install.

9. If you have chosen to create a hyperlink button inside your control panel, specify its properties:

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

 Choose the location for your button. To place it on the domain administration

screen (Home > domain name), select the Domain Administration page value as the location. To place it in the left frame (navigation pane) of your control panel, select the Navigation pane value.

 Specify the priority of the button. The buttons you create will be arranged on the

control panel in accordance with the priority you define: the lower the number – the higher is 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

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

Hosting Web Sites 59

 Using the checkboxes, specify whether to include the data, such as domain id

In this section:

Installing Java Web Applications ....................................................................... 60

Installing Ruby Web Applications ...................................................................... 61

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

 In the Context help tip contents input field, type in the help tip that will be displayed

when you hover the mouse pointer over the button.

 Select the Open URL in the Control Panel checkbox if you wish the destination URL

to be opened in the control panel's right frame, otherwise leave this checkbox unchecked to open the URL in a separate browser window.

 If you wish to make this button visible to the domain owners and e-mail users

who you granted access to control panel, select the Visible to all sub-logins checkbox.

10. Click OK to complete creation.

Now the application is installed and you can insert a link to this application into the web pages of your site, for example, on your home page. Otherwise, you and your users will have to access this application by typing its URL, which can be too long to remember.

To access the web interface of an application, do any of the following:

 Type the URL in your browser. For example: http://your-domain.com/forum/.

 Go to Home > domain name > Web Applications, and click an icon , corresponding to

the application you need.

 If you chose to add a hyperlink button to your Plesk control panel during installation

of an application, then click the respective button on the domain administration screen (Home > domain name) or navigation pane.

To reconfigure an application, change the application administrator‘s password, or to install a license key for a commercial application, go to Home > domain name > Web

Applications, and click an icon , corresponding to the application.

To upgrade an application to a newer version (if it is available on the server), go to Home > domain name > Web Applications, and click a corresponding shortcut in the U column.

To uninstall an application, go to Home > domain name > Web Applications, and select a check box corresponding to the application that you no longer need. Then click

Remove Selected. The application will be uninstalled and its databases removed from the server.

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Installing Java Web Applications

You can install Java Web application packages in the Web archive format (WAR). These Java applications are not distributed with Plesk, therefore you should obtain them separately.

 To install a Java Web application:

1. From your Home page, go to domain name > Web Applications > Java Applications tab and click Switch On.

This will start the Tomcat service, which provides an environment for Java code to run in cooperation with a web server.

2. Click Install New Application.

3. Specify the path to an application package you wish to install (this can

be an application package in WAR format saved on your computer‘s hard drive), or click Browse to navigate to it, then click OK.

Now the application is installed and the respective entry is added to the list of installed Java applications (domain name > Web Applications > Java Applications).

 To access the web interface of a Java Web application, do any of the

following:

 From your Home page, go to domain name > Web Applications > Java Applications tab,

and click a respective hyperlink in the Path column.

 Type the URL in your browser. For example: http://your-

domain.com:9080/storefront/.

 To stop, start or restart a Java Web application:

1. From your Home page, go to domain name > Web Applications > Java Applications tab. A list of installed applications will open.

2. Locate an application on the list, and use the icons in the right part of the list to perform the required operations:

 To start an application, click the icon .

 To stop an application, click the icon .

 To restart an application, click the icon .

 To uninstall a Java Web application:

1. From your Home page, go to domain name > Web Applications > Java Applications tab.

2. Select a check box corresponding to the application that you no longer need. Click Remove Selected, confirm the removal and click OK.

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The application will be uninstalled and its databases removed from the server.

Installing Ruby Web Applications

You can install on your site custom Web applications developed in the Ruby programming language.

 To install on your site an application written in Ruby:

1. On your Home page, select the domain name you need, then, under Hosting, click Setup.

2. Select the CGI and FastCGI check boxes, and click OK.

3. Connect to your FTP account, change to the /htdocs directory, and

create a subdirectory where the application files will reside. Let's call this directory your_application, for illustration purposes.

4. Upload the application files to the htdocs/your_application directory.

5. Create a file with name .htaccess in this directory, open it with a text editor of your choice and add the following lines into the file:

RewriteEngine On RewriteRule ^$ /public/index.html [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/your_application/public

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /public/$1 [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteRule ^(.*)$ public/dispatch.fcgi/$1 [QSA,L]

6. Save the file.

7. Remove the file your_application/public/.htaccess

8. Open the file your_application/public/dispatch.fcgi with a

text editor and put the following lines there: #!/usr/bin/ruby

9. Save the file.

Now the web application will be accessible at the following URL: http://yourdomain.com/your_application.

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Securing E-commerce Transactions with

In this section:

Obtaining and Installing SSL Certificates from Comodo, GeoTrust, Inc. or GoDaddy

.......................................................................................................................... 63

Obtaining and Installing SSL Certificates from Other Certification Authorities.... 64

Creating and Installing Free Self-signed SSL Certificate ................................... 65

Uninstalling a Certificate from Your Site ............................................................ 66

Secure Sockets Layer Encryption

If you are running an e-commerce business, you need to secure transactions between your customers and your site. To prevent the valuable data, such as credit card numbers and other personally identifiable information from stealing, you should use the Secure Sockets Layer protocol, which encrypts all data and transfers them securely over the SSL connection. And even if someone intercepts the data for malicious intent, they will not be able to decrypt and use them.

To implement the Secure Sockets Layer protocol on your web server, you should purchase an SSL certificate from a reputable certificate vendor (these vendors are called Certificate Authorities), and then install this certificate on your site. To enable SSL protection, you must host your site on a dedicated IP address, which is not shared among other web sites.

There are numerous certificate authorities to choose from. When considering one, pay attention to reputation and credibility of the CA. Knowing how long they have been in business and how many customers they have will help you make the right choice.

Your Plesk control panel provides facilities for purchasing SSL certificates from Comodo, GeoTrust, Inc and GoDaddy.

Hosting Web Sites 63

Obtaining and Installing SSL Certificates from Comodo, GeoTrust, Inc. or GoDaddy

 To purchase an SSL certificate through MyPleskCom online store and

secure your site:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click Certificates in the Services group. A list of SSL certificates that you

have in your repository will be displayed.

3. Click Add New Certificate.

4. Specify the certificate properties:

 Certificate name. This will help you identify this certificate in the repository.

 Encryption level. Choose the encryption level of your SSL certificate. We

recommend that you choose a value more than 1024 bit.

 Specify your location and organization name. The values you enter should not

exceed the length of 64 symbols.

 Specify the domain name for which you wish to purchase an SSL certificate.

This should be a fully qualified domain name. Example: www.your-domain.com.

 Enter the domain administrator's e-mail address.

5. Make sure that all the provided information is correct and accurate, as it will be used to generate your private key.

6. Click Buy Cert. Your private key and certificate signing request will be generated — do not delete them. MyPlesk.com login page will open in a new browser window.

7. Register or login to an existing MyPlesk.com account and you will be taken step by step through the certificate purchase procedure.

8. Choose the type of certificate that you wish to purchase.

9. Click Proceed to Buy and order the certificate. In the Approver E-Mail drop-

down box, please select the correct Approver e-mail.

10. The approver e-mail is an e-mail address that can confirm that certificate for specific domain name was requested by an authorized person.

11. Once your certificate request is processed, you will be sent a confirmation e-mail. After you confirm, the SSL certificate will be sent to your e-mail.

12. When you receive your SSL certificate, save it on your local machine or network.

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13. Return to the SSL Certificates repository (Home > domain name > Certificates).

14. Click Browse in the middle of the page and navigate to the location of the saved certificate. Select it, and then click Send File. This will upload and install the certificate against the corresponding pri vate key.

15. Return to your domain's administration screen ( Home > domain name) and click Setup in the Hosting group.

16. Select the SSL certificate that you wish to install from the Certificate drop-down box.

If there is no Certificate drop-down box on the screen, this means that you are on a shared hosting account; therefore, you need to upgrade your hosting package and purchase a dedicated IP address from your hosting provider.

17. Select the SSL support check box and click OK.

Obtaining and Installing SSL Certificates from Other Certification Authorities

 To secure your site with an SSL certificate from other certificate

authorities:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click Certificates in the Services group. A list of SSL certificates that you

have in your repository will be displayed.

3. Click Add New Certificate.

4. Specify the certificate properties:

 Certificate name. This will help you identify this certificate in the repository.

 Encryption level. Choose the encryption level of your SSL certificate. We

recommend that you choose a value more than 1024 bit.

 Specify your location and organization name. The values you enter should not

exceed the length of 64 symbols.

 Specify the domain name for which you wish to purchase an SSL certificate.

This should be a fully qualified domain name. Example: www.your-domain.com.

 Enter the domain administrator's e-mail address.

5. Make sure that all the provided information is correct and accurate, as it will be used to generate your private key.

6. Click Request. Your private key and certificate signing request will be generated and stored in the repository.

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7. In the list of certificates, click the name of the certificate you need. A page showing the certificate properties opens.

8. Locate the CSR section on the page, and copy the text that starts with the line -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- and ends with the line -----END CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- to the clipboard.

9. Visit the Web site of the certification authority from which you want to purchase an SSL certificate, and follow the links on their site to start a certificate ordering procedure. When you are prompted to specify CSR text, paste the data from the clipboard into the online form and click Continue. The certification authority will create an SSL certificate in accordance with the information you supplied.

10. When you receive your SSL certificate, save it on your local machine or network.

11. Return to the SSL Certificates repository ( Home > domain name > Certificates).

12. Click Browse in the middle of the page and navigate to the location of the saved certificate. Select it, and then click Send File. This will upload and install the certificate against the corresponding private key.

13. Return to your domain's administration screen ( Home > domain name) and click Setup in the Hosting group.

14. Select the SSL certificate that you wish to install from the Certificate drop-down box.

15. Select the SSL support check box and click OK.

Creating and Installing Free Self-signed SSL Certificate

If you do not want to purchase SSL certificates, but still need to secure your site, you can create a self-signed certificate and install it on your web server. This will provide

data encryption; however, your customers‘ browsers will show warning messages

telling that your certificate is not issued by a recognized authority. Thus, using selfsigned certificates is not recommended as it will not instill confidence in customers, and is likely to adversely affect your online sales.

 To secure your site with a self-signed SSL certificate:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click Certificates in the Services group. A list of SSL certificates that you

have in your repository will be displayed.

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3. Click Add New Certificate.

4. Specify the certificate properties:

 Certificate name. This will help you identify this certificate in the repository.

 Encryption level. Choose the encryption level of your SSL certificate. We

recommend that you choose a value more than 1024 bit.

 Specify your location and organization name. The values you enter should not

exceed the length of 64 symbols.

 Specify the domain name for which you wish to generate an SSL certificate. For

example: www.your-domain.com.

 Enter the domain owner's e-mail address.

5. Click Self-Signed. Your certificate will be generated and stored in the repository.

6. Return to your domain's administration screen (Home > domain name) and click Setup in the Hosting group.

7. Select the self-signed SSL certificate from the Certificate drop-down box.

8. Select the SSL support check box and click OK.

Uninstalling a Certificate from Your Site

 To uninstall a certificate from your site and disable SSL protection:

1. Make sure that the certificate you want to remove is not used at the moment.

2. On your Home page, click the domain name you need and then click Setup. The Certificate drop-down box indicates which SSL certificate is currently used.

3. If the certificate that you want to remove is currently in use, you should first release it: in the Certificate drop-down box, select another certificate and click OK.

4. Remove the certificate from repository.

5. To permanently remove the certificate from repository, on your Home

page, click the domain name you need and then click Certificates in the Services group.

6. Select a check box corresponding to the certificate that you no longer need and click Remove Selected.

Hosting Web Sites 67

7. Confirm removal and click OK.

In this section:

Protecting a Resource ....................................................................................... 67

Specifying Authorized Users ............................................................................. 68

Unprotecting a Resource ................................................................................... 69

8. Disable SSL support if you no longer need it.

9. On your Home page, click the domain name you need and then click

Setup.

10. Clear the SSL support check box and click OK.

Restricting Access to Web Server's Resources with Password Protection

If you have URLs on your site that only authorized users should see, restrict access to these URLs with password protection.

Protecting a Resource

To password protect a directory in your site and to specify authorized users:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the Directories icon in the Hosting group.

3. Click Add New Directory.

4. Specify the path to the directory that you wish to password protect.

This can be any directory existing in your 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 – Plesk will create it for you.

5. Specify in what location (also called document root) your password protected directory resides or will reside. For example:

 To protect the httpdocs/private directory, type '/private' in the Directory name

box and select the Non-SSL check box.

 To protect the httpsdocs/private directory, type '/private' in the Directory

name box and select the SSL check box.

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 To protect your CGI scripts stored in the cgi-bin directory, leave '/' in the

Directory name box and select the cgi-bin check box. Make sure there are no white spaces after the slash symbol; otherwise, a protected directory will be created with the name consisting of white spaces.

6. In the Header Text box, type a resource description or a welcoming message that your users will see when they visit your protected area.

7. Click OK. The directory you specified will be protected.

8. To add authorized users, click Add New User.

9. Specify the login name and password that will be used for accessing

the protected area. The password should be from 5 to 14 symbols in length. Click OK.

10. To add more authorized users for this protected resource, repeat the steps 7 and 8.

Specifying Authorized Users

To add an authorized user of a protected directory:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the Directories icon in the Hosting group.

3. Click on the name of the directory you need.

4. Click the Add New User icon.

5. Specify the login name and password that will be used for accessing

the protected area. The password should be from 5 to 14 symbols in length.

6. Click OK.

To change password for an authorized user of a protected directory:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the Directories icon in the Hosting group.

3. Click on the name of the directory you need. A list of authorized users

will open.

4. Click on the user‘s name.

5. Specify the new password and re-type it for confirmation.

6. Click OK.

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To revoke a permission to access the protected directory from a user:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the Directories icon in the Hosting group.

3. Click on the name of the directory you need. A list of authorized users

will open.

4. Select a check box corresponding to the user‘s name.

5. Click Remove Selected. Confirm the operation and click OK.

Unprotecting a Resource

To remove password protection and make the resource available to the public:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the Directories icon in the Hosting group. A list of password

protected directories will open.

3. Select a check box corresponding to the name of the directory, from which you want to remove protection.

4. Click Remove Selected. The protection will be removed and the contents of the directory will be accessible to the public without restrictions.

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Organizing Site Structure with

In this section:

Setting up Subdomains ..................................................................................... 70

Removing Subdomains ..................................................................................... 71

Subdomains

Subdomains are additional domain names that enable you to:

 Organize logically the structure of your site

 Host additional Web sites or parts of a Web site on the same server without the

need to pay for registration of additional domain names

An example of using subdomains:

You have a Web site your-product.com dedicated to promoting your software product.

For publishing user‘s guides, tutorials and list of frequently asked questions, you can

organize the subdomain 'userdocs' so that your users will be able to access online user documentation directly by visiting the domain name userdocs.your-product.com.

Setting up Subdomains

To set up a subdomain:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the Subdomains icon.

3. Click the Add New Subdomain icon.

4. Type the subdomain name as desired. This can be, for example, a topic

of your site, organization department, or any other combination of letters, numbers and hyphens (up to 63 characters in length).

The subdomain name must begin with an alphabet character. Subdomain names are case insensitive.

5. If this subdomain will hold a part of your own Web site that you manage on your own, leave the Use the FTP user account of the parent domain option selected. If this subdomain will hold a separate web site that will belong to or will be managed by another person, select the Create a separate user account for this subdomain option, and specify the login name and password that will be used for accessing the web space through FTP and publishing web site content.

6. If this subdomain will require secure transactions, select the SSL support check box. Then, the SSL certificate installed under the parent domain will be used for encrypting transactions.

Hosting Web Sites 71

By default, when you publish the site, you need to upload the web content that should be accessible via secure connections to the httpsdocs directory, and the content that should be accessible via plain HTTP, to the httpdocs directory. For your convenience, you can choose to publish all content through a single location –

httpdocs directory, to do this, select the option Use a single directory for housing SSL and non-SSL content.

7. Specify the programming languages in which your web site is developed. Otherwise, your web site may not function properly.

For example, if your web site is written mainly in ASP and uses some applications written in PHP, such as those from the Application Vault (Home > domain name> Application Vault), select the ASP support and PHP support check boxes.

8. If you wish to limit the amount of disk space that can be occupied by web content under this subdomain, type the desired value in megabytes into the Hard disk quota box.

When the specified limit is exceeded, you will not be able to add files to the web space, and editing existing files may corrupt them.

9. To complete the setup, click OK. It may take up to 48 hours for the information on new subdomain to spread in the Domain Name System and become available to the Internet users.

To publish web content to the subdomain‘s web space, follow the instruction presented

in the Publishing a Site (on page 47) section.

Removing Subdomains

 To remove a subdomain with its web content:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click Subdomains.

3. Select a check box corresponding to the subdomain name that you wish

to remove, and click Remove Selected.

4. Confirm removal and click OK. The subdomain configuration and its web content will be removed from the server.

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Setting Up Additional Domain Names for a

In this section:

Setting Up a Domain Alias ................................................................................. 72

Modifying Properties of a Domain Alias ............................................................. 73

Removing a Domain Alias ................................................................................. 74

Site (Domain Aliases)

If you have registered with a domain name registrar several domain names that you would like to point to the same web site that you host on this server, you should set up domain aliases.

If you need to serve several domain names that point to a web site hosted on another server, you should set up domain forwarding: see the Serving Domain Names for Sites Hosted on Other Servers (Domain Forwarding) (on page 87) section for instructions.

Setting Up a Domain Alias

 To set up a domain alias:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name for which you wish to set up additional domain names.

2. Click the Domain Aliases icon.

3. Click the Add Domain Alias icon.

4. Type the desired domain alias name, for example alias.com.

Domain aliases can comprise letters, digits and hyphens. Each part of the domain alias between dots should not be longer than 63 symbols.

5. Select the Synchronize DNS zone with the primary domain check box if you want the domain alias to use the same DNS zone resource records as in primary domain. With this setting, any subsequent changes in resource records of the primary domain's zone will be applied to the DNS zone of this domain alias.

6. Select the Mail check box, if you want e-mail directed at the e-mail addresses under the domain alias to be redirected to the e-mail addresses under your original domain name.

Example: You have an e-mail address mail@yourdomain.com. You have set up an alias for your domain name, for example, alias.com. If you want to receive mail to your mailbox mail@yourdomain.com when it is sent to mail@alias.com, select the

Mail check box.

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7. Select the Web check box. Otherwise, the web server wil l not serve the web content to users coming to your site by typing the domain alias in their browsers.

8. Select the Java Web applications check box if you have Java applications installed on your site and you want them to be accessible through the domain alias.

9. Click OK.

Modifying Properties of a Domain Alias

 To change the properties of an alias:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click Domain Aliases.

3. Click the alias name you need.

4. Click Preferences in the Tools group.

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

1. On you Home page, click the domain name you need

2. Click Domain Aliases.

3. Click the alias name you need.

4. Click DNS Settings.

5. Add, edit or remove the resource records as required:

 To add a resource record to the zone, click Add New Record. Specify the required

values and click OK to write the values to the zone.

 To modify a resource record, under the Host column, click a hyperlink

corresponding to the record you need.

 To remove a record, select a check box corresponding to the record you wish to

remove and click Remove Selected.

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Removing a Domain Alias

 To remove an alias from a domain:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click Domain Aliases.

3. Select a check box corresponding to the domain alias that you want to

remove.

4. Click Remove Selected.

5. Confirm removal and click OK.

Hosting Web Sites 75

Hosting Personal Web Pages on Your Web Server

You can host on your Web server personal Web pages for 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.

These pages usually have Web addresses like http://your-domain.com/~username.

 To accommodate a personal Web page on your server, allocate a separate

Web space and set up an FTP account for publishing:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click Web Users in the Hosting group.

3. Click Preferences.

4. If you wish to allow execution of scripts embedded in personal web

pages, select the Allow the web users scripting check box.

5. Click OK.

The settings you have defined at the step 4 are common for all personal Web pages you might host on your Web server. Therefore, you will not need to perform steps 3 to 6 next time you set up a Web space for a personal Web page.

6. Click Add New Web User.

7. Specify a user name and password that will be used for accessing t he

web space through FTP and publishing the Web page.

You can use only lower-case alphanumeric, hyphen and underscore symbols in user name. The user name should begin with an alphabet character. It cannot contain white spaces. The password cannot contain quotation marks, white space, user's login name, and should be between 5 and 14 characters in length.

8. Specify the programming languages that should be supported for the Web page.

For example, if the web page is written in PHP, select the PHP support check box.

9. If you wish to limit the amount of disk space that can be occupied by the Web page content, type the desired value in megabytes into the Hard disk quota box.

When the specified limit is exceeded, the Web page owner will not be able to add files to his or her Web space.

10. Click OK.

Now you can tell your user the FTP account credentials, so that he or she can publish their Web page.

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In this section:

Changing FTP Password for a Web Page Owner .............................................. 76

Allocating More Disk Space to the Web Page Owner ........................................ 76

Removing Web Page Owner's Account ............................................................. 76

Changing FTP Password for a Web Page Owner

 To change FTP password for a web page owner:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click Web Users in the Hosting group.

3. Click the user name you need.

4. Type the new password into the New password and Confirm password

boxes.

5. Click OK.

Allocating More Disk Space to the Web Page Owner

 To allocate more disk space to the web page owner:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click Web Users in the Hosting group.

3. Click the user name you need.

4. Type the amount of disk space in megabytes into the Hard disk quota box.

5. Click OK.

Removing Web Page Owner's Account

 To remove a web page owner’s account together with their web page:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click Web Users in the Hosting group.

3. Select a check box to the right of the user name you wish to remove

and click Remove Selected. Confirm removal and click OK.

Hosting Web Sites 77

Setting Up Anonymous FTP Access to the Server

If you host a site on a dedicated IP address, you can set up a directory within the site, where other users will be able to anonymously download or upload files through FTP. Once anonymous FTP is enabled, the users will be able to log in to the ftp://ftp.yourdomain.com with the "anonymous" login name and any password.

To allow anonymous FTP access:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the Anonymous FTP icon.

3. To activate anonymous FTP service, click the Switch On icon.

4. To set up a welcoming message to be displayed when users log in to

FTP site, select the Display login message check box and type the message text in the input field as desired.

Note that not all FTP clients display welcoming messages.

5. To allow visitors to upload files to the /incoming directory, select the Allow uploading to incoming directory check box.

6. To allow users to create subdirectories in the /incoming directory, select the Allow creation of directories in the incoming directory check box.

7. To allow downloading files from the /incoming directory, select the Allow downloading from the incoming directory checkbox.

8. To limit the amount of disk space that can be occupied by uploaded files, clear the Unlimited check box corresponding to the Limit disk space in the incoming directory option, and specify the amount in kilobytes.

This is the hard quota: the users will not be able to add more files to the directory when the limit is reached.

9. To limit the number of simultaneous connections to the anonymous FTP server, clear the Unlimited check box corresponding to the Limit number of simultaneous connections option and specify the number of allowed connections.

10. To limit the bandwidth for anonymous FTP connections, clear the

Unlimited check box corresponding to the Limit download bandwidth for this virtual FTP domain option and enter the maximum bandwidth in kilobytes

per second.

11. Click OK.

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To modify settings for anonymous FTP server or switch it off:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the Anonymous FTP icon.

3. Adjust the settings as required and click OK. To switch off the

anonymous FTP service, click the Switch Off icon in the Tools group.

Customizing Web Server Error Messages

When visitors coming to your site request pages that the web server cannot find, the web server generates and displays a standard HTML page with an error message. The standard error messages may inform of problems, but they do not usually say how to resolve them or how to get the lost visitor on his way, and they also look dull.

You may want to create your own error pages and use them on your web server. With Plesk you can customize the following error messages:

 400 Bad File Request. Usually means the syntax used in the URL is incorrect (for

example, uppercase letter should be lowercase letter; wrong punctuation marks).

 401 Unauthorized. Server is looking for some encryption key from the client and is not

getting it. Also, wrong password may have been entered.

 403 Forbidden/Access denied. Similar to 401; a special permission is needed to access

the site - a password and/or username if it is a registration issue.

 404 Not Found. Server cannot find the requested file. File has either been moved or

deleted, or the wrong URL or document name was entered. This is the most common error.

 405 Method Not Allowed. The method specified in the Request-Line is not allowed for

the resource identified by the Request-URI.

 406 Not Acceptable. The resource identified by the request is only capable of

generating response entities which have content characteristics not acceptable according to the accept headers sent in the request.

 407 Proxy Authentication Required. This code is similar to 401 (Unauthorized), but

indicates that the client must first authenticate itself with the proxy.

 412 Precondition Failed. The precondition given in one or more of the request-header

fields evaluated to false when it was tested on the server. This response code allows the client to place preconditions on the current resource metainformation (header field data) and thus prevent the requested method from being applied to a resource other than the one intended.

Hosting Web Sites 79

 414 Request-URI Too Long. The server is refusing to service the request because the

Request-URI is longer than the server is willing to interpret. This rare condition is only likely to occur when a client has improperly converted a POST request to a GET request with long query information, when the client has descended into a URI "black hole" of redirection (e.g., a redirected URI prefix that points to a suffix of itself), or when the server is under attack by a client attempting to exploit security holes present in some servers using fixed-length buffers for reading or manipulating the Request-URI.

 415 Unsupported Media Type. The server is refusing to service the request because

the entity of the request is in a format not supported by the requested resource for the requested method.

 500 Internal Server Error. Could not retrieve the HTML document because of server-

configuration problems.

 501 Not Implemented. The server does not support the functionality required to fulfill

the request. This is the appropriate response when the server does not recognize the request method and is not capable of supporting it for any resource.

 502 Bad Gateway. The server, while acting as a gateway or proxy, received an invalid

response from the upstream server it accessed in attempting to fulfill the request.

To configure Plesk‘s web server to show your custom error pages:

1. Switch on support for custom error documents through Plesk. On your Home page, click the domain name you need, and then click Setup. Select the Custom Error Documents check box. Click OK.

2. Connect to your FTP account on the Plesk server, and go to the error_docs directory.

3. Edit or replace the respective files. Be sure to preserve the correct file names:

 400 Bad File Request - bad_request.html

 401 Unauthorized - unauthorized.html

 403 Forbidden/Access denied - forbidden.html

 404 Not Found - not_found.html

 405 Method Not Allowed - method_not_allowed.html

 406 Not Acceptable - not_acceptable.html

 407 Proxy Authentication Required -

proxy_authentication_required.html

 412 Precondition Failed - precondition_failed.html

 414 Request-URI Too Long - request-uri_too_long.html

 415 Unsupported Media Type - unsupported_media_type.html

 500 Internal Server Error - internal_server_error.html

 501 Not Implemented - not_implemented.html

 502 Bad Gateway - bad_gateway.html

80 Hosting Web Sites

4. Wait for a few hours till your Web server is restarted. After that, the

In this section:

Viewing Resource Records ............................................................................... 80

Adding Resource Records ................................................................................. 81

Modifying Resource Records ............................................................................ 82

Removing Resource Records ............................................................................ 83

Restoring the Original Zone Configuration ......................................................... 84

Web server will start using your error documents.

Customizing DNS Zone Configuration for Domains

For each new domain name, your control panel automatically creates DNS zone in accordance with the configuration preset defined by your 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 control panel.

To view the resource records in a DNS zone of a domain, click the required domain name on your home page and click DNS Settings in the Services group. A screen will show all resource records for the selected domain.

Note: Here you can update the DNS zone with multiple changes in DNS records at once, and then confirm the changes by clicking the Apply button. Unconfirmed changes will not be saved.

To learn about modifying resource records in the DNS zone of a domain alias, refer to the Setting Up Additional Domain Names for a Site (Domain Aliases) (on page 72) section.

Viewing Resource Records

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

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the DNS icon in the Services group. A screen will show all resource

records for a given domain.

Hosting Web Sites 81

Adding Resource Records

To add a new resource record to the zone:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the DNS icon in the Services group.

3. Click the Add New Record icon in the Tools group.

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

 For an A record you will need to enter the domain name for which you wish to

create an A record. If you are simply defining an A record for your main domain, then you should leave the available field empty. If you are defining an A record for a name server then you will need to input the appropriate entry for the given name server (ie. ns1). Then, you need to enter the appropriate IP address to which to associate the domain name.

 For a NS record, you will need to enter the domain name for which you wish to

create the NS record. If you are defining an NS record for your main domain, then you will leave the available field blank. Then enter the appropriate name server name in the field provided. You will need to enter the complete name (i.e. ns1.mynameserver.com).

 For a MX record, you will need to enter the domain for which you are creating

the MX record. For the main domain, you would simply leave the available field blank. You will then need to enter your mail exchanger, this is the name of the mail server. If you are running a remote mail server named 'mail.myhostname.com' then you would simply enter 'mail.myhostname.com' into the field provided. You will then need to set the priority for the mail exchanger. Select the priority using the drop-down box: 0 is the highest and 50 is the lowest. Keep in mind you would also need to add the appropriate A record, and/or CNAME if applicable for the remote mail exchange server.

 For a CNAME record, you will need to first enter the alias domain name for

which you wish to create the CNAME record. You then need to enter the domain name within which you want the alias to reside. Any domain name can be entered. It does not need to reside on the same server.

 For a PTR record you will first enter the IP address/mask for which you wish to

define the pointer. Then enter the appropriate domain name for this IP to be translated to.

 For a TXT record, you will be able to enter an arbitrary text string, which could

be a description or an SPF record.

5. Click OK to submit the data.

Note: When you are finished with modifying DNS records of the DNS zone, confirm the

changes by clicking the Apply button on the DNS zone screen (DNS). Unconfirmed changes will not be saved.

82 Hosting Web Sites

Modifying Resource Records

To modify the properties of a resource record:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the DNS icon in the Services group.

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

record you want to modify.

4. Modify the record as required and click OK.

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

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the DNS icon.

3. Click SOA Preferences.

4. Specify the desired values:

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

a cache. Plesk sets the default value of one day.

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

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

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

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

 Expire. 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. Plesk sets the default value of one week.

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

Plesk sets the default value of three hours.

5. Click OK.

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.

Plesk 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.

Hosting Web Sites 83

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 won't overflow until the year 4294.

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

YYYYMMDDNN for a domain:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the DNS icon.

3. Click SOA Preferences.

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

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 Internet users for some time.

5. Click OK.

Removing Resource Records

 To remove a resource record from the zone:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click DNS Settings in the Services group.

3. Select a check box corresponding to the record you wish to remove.

4. Click Remove Selected.

5. Confirm removal and click OK.

Note: When you are finished with modifying DNS records of the DNS zone, confirm the

changes by clicking the Apply button on the DNS zone screen (DNS Settings). Unconfirmed changes will not be saved.

84 Hosting Web Sites

Restoring the Original Zone Configuration

To restore the original zone configuration in accordance with the configuration preset defined by your provider:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the DNS icon in the Services group.

3. In the IP address drop-down box, select the IP address to be used for

restoring the zone, specify whether a www alias is required for the domain, and click the Default button. The zone configuration will be recreated.

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

timestamp) for a domain:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the DNS icon.

3. Click SOA Preferences.

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

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 Internet users for some time.

5. Click OK.

Hosting Web Sites 85

Serving Sites with External Domain Name Servers

If you host web sites on this server and have a standalone DNS server acting as a primary (master) name server for your sites, you may want to set up your control panel's DNS server to function as a secondary (slave) name server:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click DNS Settings.

3. Click Switch in the Tools group.

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

5. Click Add.

6. Repeat steps from 1 to 5 for each web site that needs to have a

secondary name server on this machine.

 To make the control panel’s DNS server act as a primary for a zone:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click DNS Settings.

3. Click Switch in the Tools group. The original resource records for the

zone will be restored.

If you host web sites on this server and rely entirely on other machines to perform the Domain Name Service for your sites (there are two external name servers - a primary

and a secondary), switch off the control panel‘s DNS service for each site served by

external name servers:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click DNS Settings.

3. Click Switch Off in the Tools group. Turning the DNS service off for the

zone will refresh the screen, so that only a list of name servers remains.

Note: 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. Repeat the steps from 1 to 3 to switch off the local domain name service for each site served by external name servers.

86 Hosting Web Sites

 If you wish to validate the configuration of a zone maintained on

authoritative name servers:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click DNS Settings.

3. Add to the list the entries pointing to the appropriate name servers that

are authoritative for the zone: c lick Add, specify a name server, and click OK. Repeat this for each name server you would like to test.

The records will appear in the list.

4. Click on the records that you have just created. Plesk will retrieve the zone file from a remote name server and check the resource records to make sure that domain‘s resources are properly resolved.

The results will be interpreted and displayed on the screen.

Hosting Web Sites 87

Serving Domain Names for Sites Hosted on Other Servers (Domain Forwarding)

If you need to serve a domain name or several domain names that point to a web site hosted on another server:

1. On your Home page, click Add New Domain.

2. Specify the domain name.

Leave the www check box selected if you wish to allow users to access the site by a common and habitual URL like www.your-domain.com. Having the www alias preceding the domain name will allow users to get to the site no matter what they type in their browsers: www.your-domain.com and your-domain.com will both point to the site.

3. Leave the Create domain without template option selected in the Select template menu.

4. If you have a number of IP addresses to choose from, select the required address from the Select an IP address drop-down box.

Notice that e-commerce sites need a dedicated IP address (not shared among other sites) to implement Secure Sockets Layer data encryption.

5. Make sure that there is a check mark in the Proceed to hosting setup check box and click OK.

6. Choose the forwarding type: select either Frame forwarding or Standard forwarding option.

With standard forwarding, a user is redirected to the site and the actual site's URL is shown in the user's browser, so the user always knows that he or she is redirected to another URL. With frame forwarding, a user is redirected to the site without knowing that the site actually resides at another location, therefore, Frame forwarding should be preferred.

7. Click OK.

8. Specify the destination URL: the current web site address that you

would like this domain to point to.

9. Click OK.

10. Repeat the steps from 1 to 9 to add as many domain forwarders as

required.

88 Hosting Web Sites

Suspending and Unsuspending Domains

 To suspend a domain/web site:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the Switch Off icon.

The domain/web site will be suspended, its Web, FTP and mail services will no longer be accessible to the Internet users, and domain owner will not be able to log in to the control panel.

 To unsuspend a domain/web site:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the Switch On icon.

Removing Domains

 To delete a domain with its Web content:

1. On your Home page, select a check box corresponding to the domain name you wish to remove.

2. Click Remove Selected, confirm removal and click OK.

 To delete a subdomain with its Web content:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the Subdomains icon in the Hosting group.

3. Select the check box corresponding to the subdomain yo u wish to

remove.

4. Click Remove Selected, confirm removal and click OK.

This chapter explains how to manage hosting accounts.

In this chapter:

Upgrading Hosting Accounts ............................................................................. 90

Changing Web Hosting Type From Physical to Forwarding ............................... 93

Introducing Similar Changes to Numerous Hosting Accounts ............................ 94

Suspending and Unsuspending Hosting Accounts ............................................ 95

Removing Hosting Accounts ............................................................................. 95

C H A P T E R 6

Managing Hosting Accounts

90 Managing Hosting Accounts

Upgrading Hosting Accounts

To modify settings for a single domain or Web site:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. To allocate more disk space, bandwidth and other resources, click the

Limits icon in the Domain group, adjust the following settings as required:

 Maximum number of subdomains. Specify the number of subdomains that can be

hosted under this domain.

 Disk space. Specify the total amount of disk space allocated to a hosting account

icon shown in the control panel to the left of the domain name (see the list of domain names on your Home page).

 Maximum amount of traffic. Specify the amount of data in megabytes that can be

 Maximum number of web users. Specify the number of personal web pages that the

 Maximum number of databases. Specify the number of databases that can be

hosted in a domain.

 Maximum number of mailboxes. Specify the number of mailboxes that can be

hosted in a domain.

 Mailbox quota. Specify the amount of disk space in kilobytes that is allocated for

storing e-mail messages and autoresponder attachment files to each mailbox in a domain.

 Maximum number of mail forwarders. Specify the number of mail forwarders that

can be used in a domain.

 Maximum number of mail autoresponders. Specify the number of automatic

responses that can be set up in a domain.

Managing Hosting Accounts 91

 Maximum number of mailing lists. Specify the number of mailing lists that the

 Maximum number of Java applications. Specify the maximum number of Java

applications or applets that the domain owner can install in a domain.

 Validity period. Specify the term for a hosting account. At the end of the term, the

domain/web site will be suspended, its Web, FTP and mail services will no longer be accessible to the Internet users, and domain owner will not be able to log in to the control panel.

3. Click OK.

4. To add hosting features, such as support for programming languages

and scripts, click the Setup icon in the Hosting group, and adjust the following settings as required:

 IP address. If you have a number of IP addresses to choose from, select the

required address from the IP address drop-down box. Bear in mind that ecommerce sites need a dedicated IP address (not shared among other sites) to implement Secure Sockets Layer data encryption.

 SSL support. Secure Sockets Layer encryption is generally used for protecting

 Certificate. If you have a number of SSL certificates to choose from, select the

SSL certificate that must be used by Web server to encrypt online transactions to this web site.

 Use a single directory for housing SSL and non-SSL content. By default, when users

 FTP login and FTP password. Specify the user name and password that will be

used for publishing the site to the server through FTP. Retype the password into the Confirm Password box.

92 Managing Hosting Accounts

 Hard disk quota. Specify the amount of disk space in megabytes allocated to the

 Shell access to server with FTP user's credentials. This allows a site owner to upload

 FrontPage support. Microsoft FrontPage is a popular web site authoring tool. To

 Support for programming and scripting languages widely used in development of dynamic

Web sites and server-side Web applications. Specify which of the following

programming and scripting languages should be interpreted, executed or otherwise processed by the web server: Active Server Pages (ASP), Server Side Includes (SSI), PHP hypertext preprocessor (PHP), Common Gateway Interface (CGI), Perl, Python, ColdFusion, and Miva scripting language required for running Miva e-commerce solutions. By default, PHP is configured to operate in safe mode with functional restrictions. To learn more about PHP safe mode, refer to http://php.net/features.safe-mode. Some web applications may not work properly with safe mode enabled: If an application on a site fails due to safe mode, switch the safe mode off (or ask your provider to do this) by clearing the PHP 'safe_mode' on check box in the hosting account properties (Home > domain name > Setup icon in the Hosting group).

 Web statistics. To allow domain/web site owner to view the information on the

number of people visited his or her site and the pages of the site they viewed, select the Web statistics and accessible via password protected directory /plesk-stat/ check boxes. This will install the Webalizer statistical software, which will generate reports and place them into the password protected directory. The domain/web site owner will then be able to access Web statistics at the URL: https://your-domain.com/plesk-stat/webstat using his or her FTP account login and password.

 Custom error documents. When visitors coming to your site request pages that the

5. Click OK.

Managing Hosting Accounts 93

Renewing Hosting Accounts

Hosting accounts cannot be automatically renewed, therefore, in order to bring the hosted domain name/web site back to operation, you need to manually renew the hosting account:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name your need.

2. Click Limits.

3. Specify another term in the Validity period box and click OK.

4. Click Switch On in the Domain group.

Changing Web Hosting Type From Physical to Forwarding

If you hosted a site on the server with virtual (or physical) hosting account, and now you need only domain forwarding service for that site because it has been moved to another server, you should delete the hosting configuration and reconfigure the hosting account.

Before deleting hosting configuration for a site that was previously on a physical hosting account, make sure that the site owner has a local copy of his or her site because all files and directories related to a site are removed from the server when a hosting account is removed.

 To reconfigure a hosting account:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click Delete in the Hosting group. Confirm removal and click OK. All

directories and files related to the site will be removed.

3. Click Setup.

Note: Refer to the Hosting Web Sites (on page 36) chapter for detailed instructions

on setting up hosting accounts.

94 Managing Hosting Accounts

Introducing Similar Changes to Numerous Hosting Accounts

 To change hosting options for a number of hosting accounts at once:

1. Click the Domains shortcut in the navigation pane.

2. Select the check boxes corresponding to the domain names you wish to

perform group operations on.

3. Click Group Operations.

4. In the Limits section, you can see the list of all domain-specific limits. To

change a certain limit, select an appropriate menu on the left side of the list. Adjust the settings as required:

 Select Unlimited to remove the corresponding limit.

 Select Value and type the numeric value to set the corresponding limit to the

specified value.

 Select Increase (+), select the type of value (specific units or percentage) and

type the numeric value to increase the corresponding limit by the specified value (in specific units or percents).

 Select Decrease (-), select the type of value (specific units or percentage) and

type the numeric value to decrease the corresponding limit by the specified value (in specific units or percents).

 Leave the Do not change value selected, to leave it as is.

5. In the Hosting section, you can see the list of hosting parameters. To change a certain feature availability for the domains, select a n appropriate option button to Enable, Disable, or Do not change to leave it as is.

6. In the Preferences section, you can see the list of domain preferences. To set a certain preferences setting for the domains, select an appropriate option button to Enable, Disable, or Do not change to leave it as is.

7. In the Services section, you can define availability of various domain services. To do this, select an appropriate option button to Enable, Disable, or Do not change to leave it as is.

8. Click OK.

Managing Hosting Accounts 95

Suspending and Unsuspending Hosting Accounts

 To suspend a domain/web site:

1. On your Home page, click the domain you need.

2. Click Switch Off.

The domain/web site will be suspended, its Web, FTP and mail services will no longer be accessible to the Internet users, and domain owner will not be able to log in to the control panel.

 To unsuspend a domain/web site:

1. On your Home page, click the domain you need.

2. Click Switch On.

Removing Hosting Accounts

 To remove a domain/Web site with its Web content:

1. On your Home page, select a check box corresponding to the domain name you wish to remove.

2. Click Remove Selected, confirm removal and click OK.

 To remove a subdomain with its Web content:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click Subdomains in the Hosting group.

3. Select the check box corresponding to the subdomain you wish to

remove.

4. Click Remove Selected, confirm removal and click OK.

96 Viewing Statistics

To find out the amount of bandwidth and disk space used by a site, in the list of domain

Viewing Statistics

names at the bottom of your Home page, see the Disk Usage and Traffic columns.

To find out the detailed statistics regarding the amount of bandwidth used by a site, click Traffic on your Home page and select the required site by clicking its name in the Domain name column.

To find out how many people visited a site, from what countries, and what pages of the site they viewed:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the Report icon.

3. View the statistics for the web pages or files downloaded from or

uploaded to specific areas of your site:

 To view the statistics for web pages transferred from your site over hypertext

transfer protocol (HTTP), click Web Stats.

 To view the statistics for web pages transferred from your site over secure

hypertext transfer protocol (HTTPS), click Web Stats SSL.

 To view statistics for files transferred over file transfer protocol (FTP), click FTP

Stats.

 To view the bandwidth usage by months, click the Traffic History icon.

 To view the bandwidth usage by FTP, Web and mail services in this domain, click

the Traffic icon.

Note: If you use the Webalizer statistical package on your account, you can customize the graphical reports shown by Webalizer. For instructions, refer to the Adjusting Preferences for Web Statistics Presentation by Webalizer (see page 98) section.

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

To view a detailed report on server resources and hosting features used by a specific domain name/web site, on your Home page, click the domain name you need, and then click the Report icon. A report will open.

To view a consolidated report on all your web sites and your hosting account, on your Home page, click the Report icon. A report will open.

Common operations on reports:

 To get more details, select the Full Report option from the Report drop-down menu.

Viewing Statistics 97

 To adjust the amount of information presented in a report, click the Customize

In this section:

Adjusting Preferences for Web Statistics Presentation by Webalizer .................98

Automating Report Generation and Delivery by E-mail ......................................100

Viewing Log Files and Configuring Recycling of Log Files .................................103

icon, and then modify an existing report template (to do this, click a report template name) or create a new report template (to do this, click the Add New Layout icon). Next, specify how much information you want in each section of the report: select None if you do not want any information, select Summary if you want a concise overview, or select Full if you need a detailed report. Select the Use as default report check box and click OK. To delete a custom report layout, select the checkbox

corresponding to the report layout name and click Remove Selected.

 To print the report, click the Print icon. A report will open in a separate browser

window. Select the File > Print option from the browser's menu to print the report.

 To send the report by e-mail, type the recipient's e-mail address into the input box

located to the right of the Report group and click the Send by E-mail icon. If you are the recipient, then you do not need to specify an e-mail address: the system assumes by default that you are the report recipient and specifies your e-mail address registered with your control panel account.

 To have the reports automatically generated and delivered by e-mail on a daily,

weekly, or monthly basis, click the Report Delivery icon and follow the instructions supplied in the "Automating report generation and delivery by e-mail" section.

98 Viewing Statistics

Adjusting Preferences for Web Statistics

In this section:

Hiding and Unhiding Internal References from Your and Other Sites ................ 98

Grouping and Ungrouping References from Other Sites ................................... 99

Hiding and Unhiding Direct Requests ................................................................ 100

Presentation by Webalizer

By default, statistical utility counts and reports the requests for web pages and other files made from your site—by your own web pages. So, when a user‘s browser requests from your site a single web page that contains references to other files, such as scripts, cascading style sheets, media files, and the like, the statistical utility reports these references to files as if they were visits to your web page. Thus, with the default settings your usage statistics is inaccurate.

You may want to:

 Hide these internal references, and references from other sites.

 Group references from a number of sites, so as to show them as if they originated

from a single location.

 Hide direct requests. Direct requests are sent to your web server when users

access your site by typing the URL in their browsers.

Hiding and Unhiding Internal References from Your and Other Sites

To hide the internal references or references from other sites:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the Report icon.

3. Click the Web Statistics Preferences icon.

4. Click the Hide Entries icon.

5. In the Entry type drop-down box, leave the Referrer value selected.

6. In the Referrer field, type the domain name from which you do not want

the referrers shown in web statistics reports.

You can use the '*' wildcard character to specify a part of domain name.

7. Click OK.

Viewing Statistics 99

To unhide references:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the Report icon.

3. Click the Web Statistics Preferences icon. All hidden entries will be

presented in a list.

4. Select the check boxes corresponding to the entries you wish to unhide and click Remove Selected.

5. Confirm the operation and click OK.

Grouping and Ungrouping References from Other Sites

To group references from a specific site:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the Report icon.

3. Click the Web Statistics Preferences icon.

4. Click the Grouped referrers tab.

5. Click the Group Referrers icon.

6. Type the group name that you wish to be shown for all referrers on the

specific site.

7. In the Referrer input box, specify the site (domain name) from which all referrers should be grouped.

You can use the '*' wildcard character to specify a part of domain name.

8. Click OK.

To ungroup references from a specific site:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the Report icon.

3. Click the Web Statistics Preferences icon.

4. Click the Grouped referrers tab. All referrer group names will be presented

in a list.

5. Select the check box corresponding to the required group name and click Remove Selected.

6. Confirm the operation and click OK.

100 Viewing Statistics

Hiding and Unhiding Direct Requests

To hide direct requests:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the Report icon.

3. Click the Web Statistics Preferences icon.

4. Click the Hide Entries icon.

5. In the Entry type drop-down box, select the Direct request value.

6. Click OK.

To unhide direct requests:

1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need.

2. Click the Report icon.

3. Click the Web Statistics Preferences icon. All hidden entries will be

presented in a list.

4. Select the check box corresponding to the Direct request entry and click

Remove Selected.

5. Confirm the operation and click OK.

Automating Report Generation and Delivery by E-mail

 To receive consolidated reports on your account status on a regular

basis:

1. On your Home page, click Report.

2. Click Layouts.

3. Under the Name column, click the report type you need.

4. Click Report Delivery.

5. Click New Delivery Schedule.

Parallels Plesk Panel - 8.6 - Unix User Guide

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual

Preface

Who Should Read This Guide

Typographical Conventions

Feedback

Getting Started

Logging In to Plesk

If You Forgot Your Password

Becoming Familiar with Plesk's Interface

Items in the Desktop View

Using Wizards

Items in the Standard View

Changing Your Contact Information and Password

Customizing Your Control Panel

Setting Up Global Account

Creating A Global Account

Connecting Local Accounts To Your Global Account

Switching Between Accounts

Changing Global Account Password

Disconnecting Local Accounts From Global Account

Customizing Your Control Panel in the Standard View

Setting Interface Language and Skin for Your Control Panel

Setting a Custom Logo

Adding a Hyperlink Button to Your Control Panel

Removing a Hyperlink Button from Your Control Panel

Customizing Your Control Panel in the Desktop View

Viewing Resource Allotments and Hosting Features Included in Your Hosting Package

Viewing IP addresses Included in Your Hosting Package

Viewing Resource Allotments for Your Account

Viewing the List of Operations You Can Perform within Your Control Panel

Implementing Hosting Plans Using Domain Templates

Creating Templates

Modifying Templates

Removing Templates

Hosting Web Sites

Predefining Content for New Web Sites

Obtaining Domain Names

Setting Up Hosting Account for a Web Site

Limiting the Amount of Resources a Site Can Consume

Allowing the Site Owner to Log in to Control Panel

Creating and Publishing a Site

Creating and Publishing Web Sites Using Sitebuilder

Publishing Sites Through FTP

Changing FTP Password

Publishing Sites Through Plesk File Manager

Publishing Sites Through SSH Connection

Publishing Sites with Microsoft FrontPage

Publishing from Microsoft FrontPage through FTP

Publishing from Microsoft FrontPage through HTTP

Publishing Sites with Adobe Dreamweaver

Previewing a Site

Deploying Databases

Creating or Importing a Database

Creating Database User Accounts

Changing Database User Passwords

Removing Database User Accounts

Removing Databases

Installing Applications

Installing Java Web Applications

Installing Ruby Web Applications

Obtaining and Installing SSL Certificates from Comodo, GeoTrust, Inc. or GoDaddy

Obtaining and Installing SSL Certificates from Other Certification Authorities

Creating and Installing Free Self-signed SSL Certificate

Uninstalling a Certificate from Your Site

Restricting Access to Web Server's Resources with Password Protection

Protecting a Resource

Specifying Authorized Users

Unprotecting a Resource

Setting up Subdomains

Removing Subdomains

Setting Up a Domain Alias

Modifying Properties of a Domain Alias

Removing a Domain Alias

Hosting Personal Web Pages on Your Web Server

Changing FTP Password for a Web Page Owner

Allocating More Disk Space to the Web Page Owner

Removing Web Page Owner's Account