Parallels Plesk Panel - 9.5 Quick Start Guide
Parallels® Plesk Panel
Parallels Plesk Panel 9.5 Quick Start
Guide
Revision 1.2
Copyright Notice
ISBN: N/A
Parallels
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© Copyright 1999-2010,
Parallels, Inc.
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Product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.
Contents
Preface 4
Typographical Conventions ........................................................................................................... 4
Feedback ....................................................................................................................................... 5
About This Guide 6
Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel 7
Setting Up the Server 13
Simplifying Setup of User Accounts 34
Simplifying Setup of Domains and Web Sites 43
Creating User Accounts 48
Adding Reseller Accounts for Hosting Resellers ......................................................................... 49
Adding Client Accounts for End Users of Hosting Services ........................................................ 54
Hosting Web Sites 59
Setting Up a Hosting Account for a Web Site ............................................................................. 60
Allowing a Site Owner to Log In to Control Panel ............................................................. 66
Creating and Publishing a Site .................................................................................................... 68
Creating and Publishing Web Sites Using Sitebuilder ...................................................... 68
Publishing Sites Through FTP .......................................................................................... 69
Publishing Sites Through Parallels Plesk Panel File Manager ......................................... 69
Publishing Sites Through SSH Connection ...................................................................... 70
Publishing Sites with Microsoft FrontPage ........................................................................ 70
Publishing Sites with Adobe Dreamweaver ...................................................................... 74
4 Preface
Preface
In this section:
Typographical Conventions ................................................................................. 4
Feedback ............................................................................................................. 5
Typographical Conventions
The following kinds of formatting in the text identify special information.
Formatting convention Type of Information Example
Special Bold
Italics
Monospace
Items you must select, such as
menu options, command
buttons, or items in a list.
Titles of chapters, sections,
and subsections.
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 names of style sheet
selectors, files and directories,
and CSS fragments.
Go to the QoS tab.
Read the Basic Administration
chapter.
The system supports the so
called wildcard character
search.
The license file is called
license.key.
Preface 5
d
Preformatted Bol
What you type, contrasted with
on-screen computer output.
Unix/Linux:
# cd /root/rpms/php
Windows:
>cd %myfolder%
Preformatted
On-screen computer output in
your command-line sessions;
source code in XML, C++, or
other programming languages.
Unix/Linux:
# ls –al /files
total 14470
Windows:
>ping localhost
Reply from 127.0.0.1:
bytes=32 time<1ms
TTL=128
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/
chapter and section titles, and the fragment of text in which you have found an error.
. Please include in your report the guide's title,
C HAPTER 1
About This Guide
This guide is intended to give administrators a practical introduction to Parallels Plesk
Panel™ by explaining how to perform basic administrative tasks and configure your
control panel for further use. It covers a straightforward Parallels Plesk Panel scenario
to help you start working with the control panel immediately after the installation.
For more information about Parallels Plesk Panel's functions, refer to Parallels Plesk
Panel Administrator's Guide at Parallels Web site available in HTML and printable PDF
formats: http://www.parallels.com/en/products/plesk/docs/
The Parallels Plesk Panel Administrator's Guide is also accessible from your control
panel as context-sensitive help: to open it, log in to control panel and click the Help
shortcut in the left navigation pane.
For information about installing Parallels Plesk Panel components, see the Parallels
Plesk Panel Installation Guide at Parallels Web site available in HTML and printable
PDF formats: http://www.parallels.com/en/products/plesk/docs/
For frequently asked questions related to Parallels Plesk Panel and other Parallels
products, visit the Parallels online knowledge base at http://kb.parallels.com
.
.
C HAPTER 2
Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel
Parallels Plesk Panel is a hosting automation solution that gives you full control over
the managed Web hosting servers and simplifies setup and management of user
accounts, Web sites, and e-mail accounts.
Parallels Plesk Panel effectively lowers the threshold for non-technical users to log in
and self administer their virtual host account on your Web server.
User accounts hierarchy of Parallels Plesk Panel is limited to five user levels:
Server administrator account.
Reseller accounts. These accounts are created for the customers who need to
resell hosting services and host their own Web sites.
Client accounts. These accounts are created for the customers who do not need to
resell hosting services, but need to host Web sites.
Domain administrator accounts. These accounts can be created to allow access to
the Parallels Plesk Panel for site administrators. One domain administrator account
per one site.
E-mail user accounts. These accounts can be created to allow access to the
Parallels Plesk Panel for e-mail users.
Parallels Plesk Panel also allows site owners to host personal Web pages or small
sites called Web users' personal pages. However, these accounts are considered sub
accounts and are not given access to the control panel.
¾ Now let's log in to the control panel and perform initial configuration
steps:
1. Log in to the Parallels Plesk Panel as administrator.
Open your Web browser, and in the address bar, type your server's IP address.
Parallels Plesk Panel requires that you access the control panel using a secure
SSL connection, so you need to use the https prefix and specify the port 8443 to
access the user interface. For example, https://192.168.10.10:8443, where
192.168.10.10 is your server's IP address.
Note: After you set up a host name for your server, you will be able to access your
Parallels Plesk Panel by host name instead of IP address.
Click through the SSL warning and type the user name "admin" and the default
password "setup" into the Username and Password boxes, respectively. If this is your
first login to the control panel, use the default password "setup". Click Log In.
8 Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel
2. Accept the license agreement. Note that if y ou run Parallels Plesk
Panel inside a Virtuozzo container, and the Offline management mode
is switched off in the Virtuozzo Power Panel, then this license
agreement is not shown.
Read the terms of the License Agreement and, if you agree to all the terms, select
the I agree to the terms of this license agreement and Do not show it again check boxes.
Click Accept.
3. Specify the following:
a Under Preferences, specify the full host name for your server. This is a three-part
name without WWW prefix, for example, host.example.com.
b Under Default IP Address, select the primary IP address that you would like to use
on your server.
c Under Shared IP Addresses, specify which of the available IP addresses should be
used for hosting Web sites. Select an IP address and click Shared >>.
You can skip this step and define the type of IP addresses later (Home > IP
Addresses).
d Under Administrator's Preferences, enter the new password and confirm it in the
New password and Confirm password boxes. The password can have up to 14
symbols. Note that the password is case sensitive.
4. Click OK.
5. Fill in administrator’s contact information.
6. Click OK.
The control panel opens and you see the administrator's Home page. It provides
shortcuts to the most frequently performed operations.
Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel 9
The top banner area provides access to the following functions:
My account. This is where you can select a language and theme for your control
panel and change your contact information.
Switch user. This is where you can switch between user accounts. This shortcut is
shown only when single sign-on technology is enabled on the server.
Log out. This is where you close your session when you have finished working with
control panel.
The navigation pane on the left provides access to the following sets of functions:
Search area. Use it when you need to find user accounts and domains hosted on
your server.
Home. This is where you start working with the control panel. Most of the operations
you might need to perform are accessible from this area.
Resellers. This is where you perform operations on reseller accounts. Resellers can
use hosting services and resell the services to end users. Resellers cannot create
reseller accounts for other users. You can accomplish the following tasks from this
area of the control panel:
Create, modify, remove user accounts for resellers and their customers (referred
to as clients).
Create, modify, remove reseller account templates.
View traffic usage reports.
Clients. This is where you perform operations on user accounts. Clients are end
users of hosting services; they cannot resell hosting services. You can accomplish
the following tasks from this area of the control panel:
Create, modify, remove user accounts.
Create, modify, remove user account templates (referred to as client account
templates).
View traffic usage reports.
Domains. This is where you perform operations on Web sites. You can accomplish
the following tasks from this area of the control panel:
Add Web sites (set up DNS zones, configure Web hosting settings and resource
usage limits), modify Web hosting settings, remove Web sites.
Create, modify, remove Web site hosting templates (referred to as domain
templates).
Applications. This is where you select which applications will be available for
installation on users' sites.
Settings. This is where you configure and manage the server and program
components used by Parallels Plesk Panel.
Modules. This is where you manage the additional modules that extend Parallels
Plesk Panel capabilities, such as Firewall, Game Server, VPN, and others.
Master. This shortcut gives you access to centralized management of Parallels Plesk
Panel-enabled servers.
10 Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel
Global Account. This shortcut appears in your Parallels Plesk Panel when the single
sign-on capabilities are switched on 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. You can
use it to view and solve the problems reported to you by your customers.
Help. Provides context sensitive help with search function.
To see information about a tool or an item on the page, hover the cursor over an item,
without clicking it, and a small hover box appears with supplementary information
regarding the item being hovered over.
If you install the Sitebuilder component and configure it as described in the Parallels
Plesk Panel 9.5 Administrator's Guide, section Enabling Integration with Sitebuilder, the
following shortcuts are also shown in your control panel's navigation pane under the
Sitebuilder Administration group:
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/4.5.0/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/4.5.0/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/4.5.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/managing
_sites.htm.
Server. Here you can view and manage the following system settings:
Trial Sites Settings. Here you can configure settings for trial sites created by your
prospective customers. For more information, see
http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.5.0/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/4.5.0/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/4.5.0/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/4.5.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/viewin
g_and_configuring_sitebuilder_wizard_presets_and_modules.htm.
Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel 11
Page Sets. Here you can view the list of available page sets. For more
information, see
http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.5.0/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/4.5.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/viewin
g_and_configuring_sitebuilder_wizard_presets_and_modules.htm.
The main working area on the right provides access to the tools available for the
current section of the control panel selected in the navigation pane. Additional
operations are accessible from drop-down menus that open when you click group titles.
To navigate through Parallels Plesk Panel, you can use a path bar: a chain of links that
appears in the right part of the screen, below the banner area.
To the right of the path bar, there are Favorites and Visited Pages menus. The Visited
Pages menu keeps the shortcuts to the recently visited control panel screens. These
shortcuts are added automatically. The Favorites menu keeps the shortcuts to the
screens that you manually add to favorites. For information about working with
shortcuts in the Favorites menu, see the Parallels Plesk Panel 9.5 Administrator's
Guide, section Customizing Your Home Page.
To return to a previous screen, use the shortcuts in the path bar, or the Up Level icon in
the upper-right corner of the screen.
When changing settings for a user account, domain name, or e-mail account, you can
quickly select another user account, domain name, or e-mail account whose settings
you also want to change. To do this, click a small arrow icon located to the right of the
user name, domain name, or e-mail address.
This will open a list of user accounts, domain names or e-mail addresses that you can
select.
12 Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel
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.
Now proceed to the following chapter and set up your server.
C HAPTER 3
Setting Up the Server
¾ To set the global settings for a Linux-based hosting server:
1. On your Home page, open the Server group title menu, and select Server
Settings.
2. Specify the following:
Button label length. To prevent lengthy button captions in languages other than
English from overlapping in the control panel, you may want to specify a limit
here. Any button caption longer than the defined limit will be shortened and
ended with ellipsis (...).
Prevent users from working with the control panel until interface screens are completely
loaded. Leave this selected to avoid errors that might occur when users try to
interact with control panel before is it ready.
Administrator's interface language. Select the language for your control panel.
Administrator's interface skin. Select the skin (theme) for your control panel.
Home page preset. Once you customize the Home page and save the settings in a
template as described in Parallels Plesk Panel 9.5 Administrator's Guide,
section Customizing Your Home Page, you will be able to select your template
here. For now, leave the default value selected.
Allow multiple sessions under administrator's login. By default Parallels Plesk Panel
allows multiple simultaneous sessions for several users logged in to the control
panel using the same login and password combination. This can be useful when
delegating management functions to other users or in case if you accidentally
close your browser without logging out, thus becoming unable to log in again
until your session expires. You may want to switch off this capability if you do
not need it.
Full host name.
Apache restart interval. Any changes to hosting account settings made through
control panel take effect only when Web server is restarted. By default, Web
server is set to restart not more than once in every 15 minutes. This value is
optimal for most cases, and we recommend leaving this default setting. Note
that when there are no changes in hosting account settings, the Web server is
not forced to restart.
Web statistics and traffic usage statistics retention period. Specify how long the
statistics should be kept on the server.
Items that statistical utilities should count when calculating disk space and bandwidth
usage.
14 Setting Up the Server
The option to forbid users from creating DNS subzones in other users' DNS superzones.
We recommend that you select this option, otherwise, users will be able to
create subdomains under domains belonging to other users, and set up Web
sites and e-mail accounts which could be used for spamming or even phishing
or identity theft.
3. Click OK.
¾ To set the global settings for a Windows-based hosting server:
1. On your Home page, open the Server group title menu, and select Server
Settings.
2. Specify the following:
Full host name.
Web statistics and traffic usage statistics retention period. Specify how long the
statistics should be kept on the server.
Items that statistical utilities should count when calculating disk space and bandwidth
usage.
The option to forbid users from creating DNS subzones in other users' DNS superzones.
We recommend that you select this option, otherwise, users will be able to
create subdomains under domains belonging to other users, and set up Web
sites and e-mail accounts which could be used for spamming or even phishing
or identity theft.
3. Click OK.
Now, let's set up the DNS service for serving your own domains. Setup of DNS zones
for newly added domains is automated: When you add a new domain name to control
panel, a zone file is automatically generated for it in accordance with the server-wide
DNS zone template and your server is instructed to act as a primary (master) DNS
server for the zone. If the DNS service on your Parallels Plesk Panel server will be
authoritative for Web sites that you host for your customers, and you do not want to set
up your own domain at this moment, skip this procedure and move on to the next
procedure for configuring the mail service. However, if you are going to set up in
Parallels Plesk Panel a domain name for hosting a Web site for your own organization
(let's call this domain "example.com"), follow these steps:
1. Register your domain name example.com with a domain name registrar
(domain name registration authority) of your choice. Provide the
registrar with the following information: nameservers ns1.example.com
and ns2 example.com, and two IP addresses assigned to your server
by your provider.
2. Log in to Parallels Plesk Panel, and click the Domains shortcut in the
navigation pane.
3. Click Create Domain.
Setting Up the Server 15
4. In the Domain name field, leave the WWW box selected, and type your
domain name example.com. Having the www alias preceding a domain
name will allow users to get to the site no matter what they type in their
browsers: www.example.com and example.com will both point to the
same site.
5. From the Assign IP address menu, select the required IP address. You
should select a dedicated IP address (not shared among other sites),
or, in terms of Parallels Plesk Panel, exclusive IP address to be able to
install an authentic digital SSL certificate for securing customers'
communications to your hosting server.
6. In the Use domain template settings menu, leave the default domain value
selected. To facilitate setup of new Web sites, the control panel uses
settings inherited from domain templates. After your Web site is set up,
you can replace the default settings with other settings that suit your
needs better.
7. Under Switch on service, leave the Mail and DNS check boxes selected if
e-mail accounts and DNS zones will be served by the mail and DNS
services running on this server.
8. Under Hosting type, select the Web site hosting option to host the Web
site on this machine.
9. Specify the username and password that will be used for uploading site
content over FTP.
10. Click Next >>.
11. Specify the following settings:
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
this Web site, select the SSL support check box.
Use a single directory for housing SSL and non-SSL content (available only for Linux
hosting). By default, when you publish a site through your FTP account, you
need to upload the Web content that should be accessible through 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 on your
FTP account, select the Use a single directory for housing SSL and non-SSL content
check box.
16 Setting Up the Server
FTP login and FTP password. Specify the username 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 (available only for Linux hosting). Specify the amount of disk
space in megabytes allocated to the Web space for this site. This is the socalled hard quota that will not allow writing more files to the Web space when
the limit is reached. At attempt to write files, an error message will show. 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 on your server, log in to the server shell
and run the quotaon -a command to enable the hard quotas.
Access to server over SSH (available only for Linux hosting) or Access to server over
Remote Desktop (available only for Windows hosting). This allows you to upload
securely Web content to the server through a Secure Socket Shell or Remote
Desktop connection, however, allowing access to the server also poses a
potential threat to the server security, so we recommend that you leave the
Forbidden option selected.
Support for hosting services and scripting languages. Specify which of the following
programming and scripting languages should be supported by the Web server:
Active Server Pages (ASP), ASP.NET (on Windows-based hosting), 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. 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
web applications may not work properly with safe mode enabled: If an
application on your site fails due to safe mode, switch the safe mode off by
clearing the PHP 'safe_mode' on check box in the hosting account properties
(Domains > domain name > Web Hosting Settings).
. Some
Web statistics. To allow the 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 from the Web statistics menu, and select the
accessible via password protected directory /plesk-stat/webst at check box. This will
install the statistics software 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://yourdomain.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 Domains
> 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 the 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, select the Custom error documents check box.
Setting Up the Server 17
Additional write/modify permissions (available only for Windows hosting). This
option is required if Web applications under a domain will be using a file-based
database (like Jet) located in the root of httpdocs or httpsdocs folders.
Please note that selecting this option might seriously compromise the Web site
security.
Use dedicated IIS application pool (available only for Windows hosting). This option
enables the use of dedicated IIS application pool for Web applications on a
domain. Using dedicated IIS application pool dramatically improves the stability
of domain Web applications due to worker process isolation mode. This mode
gives each Web site hosted on the server the possibility to allocate a separate
process pool for execution of its Web applications. This way, malfunction in one
application will not cause stopping of all the others. This is especially useful
when you are using shared hosting package.
12. Click Next >>.
13. Specify the following settings:
Overuse policy. Specify what should be done to the site when disk space and
traffic limits are exceeded: To block the site, select the Overuse is not allowed
option. To allow the site to operate, select the Overuse is allowed option. Leave
the check box Notify the domain owner about reaching the resource limit selected if
you want the control panel to notify you when the resource usage limit is
reached.
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 the domain/Web site: Web site
contents, databases, applications, mailboxes, log files and backup files.
Traffic. Specify the amount of data in megabytes that can be transferred from the
Web site during a month.
Subdomains. Specify the number of subdomains that can be hosted under this
domain.
Domain aliases. Specify the total number of additional alternative domain names
that can be used for this site.
Web users. Specify the number of personal Web pages that can be hosted 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://yourdomain.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. For
more information, refer to Parallels Plesk Panel 9.5 Administrator's Guide,
section Hosting Personal Web Pages.
Microsoft FrontPage accounts (only for Windows hosting). Specify the maximum
number of additional Microsoft FrontPage accounts that can be created under
the domain.
FTP accounts (available only for Windows hosting). Specify the maximum number
of additional FTP accounts that can be created under the domain.
Mailboxes. Specify the number of mailboxes that can be hosted under this
domain.
18 Setting Up the Server
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
under this domain.
Mail redirects. Specify the number of mail forwarders that can be used in a
domain.
Mail groups. Specify the number of simple mailing lists that can be set up in a
domain.
Autoresponders. Specify the number of automatic responses that can be set up in
a domain.
Mailing lists. Specify the number of mailing lists that can run in a domain.
Databases. Specify the number of databases that can be hosted under this
domain.
Databases quota (only for Windows hosting). Specify the maximum disk space
amount in megabytes that MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server databases
respectively can occupy under the domain.
ODBC connections (available only for Windows hosting). Specify the total number
of ODBC connections that can be used under the domain.
ColdFusion DSN connections (available only for Windows hosting). Specify the total
number of ColdFusion DSN connections that can be used under the domain.
Java applications. Specify the maximum number of Java applications or applets
that the domain owner can install under a domain.
Shared SSL links (available only for Windows hosting). Specify the total number of
shared SSL links that can be used under the domain.
Expiration date. Specify the term for the Web site 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
(and Web site) back to operation, you will need to manually renew the hosting
account: click the Domains shortcut in the navigation pane, click the domain
name your need, click the Resource Usage icon, specify another expiration date,
click OK, then click the Unsuspend icon (Domains > domain name > Unsuspend).
14. Click Finish. You are taken to the domain management screen.
15. Correct the information in the DNS zone of your domain:
a In the Web Site group, click DNS Settings.
b Locate the records example.com NS ns.example.com and ns.example.com A <IP
address>, select the respective check boxes and click Remove. Now the default
records are removed, and you can specify the name servers that you have
registered with your registrar.
c Click Add Record. In the Record type menu, select the NS value, leave the Enter
domain name box blank, and in the Enter nameserver box, type ns1.example.com,
then click OK.
d Click Add Record. In the Record type menu, select the NS value, leave the Enter
domain name box blank, and in the Enter nameserver box, type ns2.example.com,
then click OK.
Setting Up the Server 19
e Click Add Record. In the Record type menu, select the A value, in the Enter domain
name box, type the ns1 value, and in the Enter IP address box, type the first IP
address of your server that you registered with a registrar, then click OK.
f Click Add Record. In the Record type menu, select the A value, in the Enter domain
name box, type the ns1 value, and in the Enter IP address box, type the second IP
address of your server that you registered with a registrar, then click OK.
16. Specify the correct name servers in the server-wide DNS template:
a Click the Home shortcut in the navigation pane and then click DNS Settings. A list
of record templates opens.
b Locate the records <domain> NS ns.<domain> and ns.<domain> A <IP>, select the
respective check boxes and click Remove. Now the default records are removed,
and you can specify the name servers that you have registered with your
registrar.
c Click Add DNS Record. In the Record type menu, select the NS value, leave the
Enter domain name box blank, and in the Enter nameserver box, type
ns1.example.com, then click OK.
Click Add DNS Record. In the Record type menu, select the NS value, leave the
Enter domain name box blank, and in the Enter nameserver box, type
ns2.example.com, then click OK.
Now the server-wide DNS settings are set up properly, your domain example.com is
hosted on the server, and you can publish the site content. For instructions on
publishing a Web site, refer to the Publishing a Site section of this guide.
Now, let's set up the mail service. Your control panel works in cooperation with mail
server software, which provides mail services for your domains. After installation the
mail server is configured automatically and is ready to serve, however, we recommend
that you review the default settings to ensure that they satisfy your needs:
1. Click the Ho me shortcut in the navigation pane and then click Mail Server
Settings. The server-wide mail preferences screen will open on the
Preferences tab.
2. If you wish to limit the size of an e-mail message that can be sent
through your server, type the desired value in kilobytes into the
Maximum message size box, otherwise, leave this field blank.
3. If you wish to protect your users from dictionary attacks by not allowing
them to use simple passwords, select the Check the passwords for
mailboxes in the dictionary option.
A dictionary attack is when someone tries to find out a valid user name and
password by running a program that tries different combinations of dictionary words
in different languages. Dictionary attacks can be successful because many users
choose their passwords carelessly.
Note for Windows hosting users: To make this function work properly on
Windows platforms, make sure that the Password must meet complexity requirements
option is switched on in your server's Local Security Policy settings (the option is
located in Start > Administrative Tools > Local Security Policy > Account Policies >
Password policy).
20 Setting Up the Server
4. To protect your server against unauthorized mail relaying or injection of
unsolicited bulk mail, select the Enable message submission check box to
allow your customers to send e-mail messages through the port 587.
Also notify your customers that they need to specify in their e-mail programs'
settings the port 587 for outgoing SMTP connections, and be sure to allow
connections to this port in your firewall settings.
5. Select the mail relay mode.
With closed relay the mail server will accept only e-mail addressed to the users who
have mailboxes on this server. Your customers will not be able to send any mail
through your outgoing SMTP server, therefore, we do not recommend closing mail
relay.
With relay after authorization, only your customers will be able to receive and send
e-mail through your mail server. We recommend that you leave the authorization is
required option selected, and specify allowed authentication methods:
POP3 authorization. With POP3 authorization, once a user has successfully
authenticated to the POP server, he or she is permitted to receive and send email through the mail server for the next 20 minutes (default value). You can
adjust this interval by specifying another value in the lock time box.
SMTP authorization. With SMTP authorization, your mail server requires
authorization if the e-mail message must be sent to an external address.
Note for Windows hosting users: If you do not wish to use relay restrictions
for networks that you trust, specify the network IP and mask in the Use no
relay restrictions for the following networks: field (e.g., 123.123.123.123/16) and
click the
corresponding to the network you wish to remove.
The relay hosts on the networks in the list are considered not to be potentially
operated by spammers, open relays, or open proxies. A trusted host could
conceivably relay spam, but will not originate it, and will not forge header
data. DNS blacklist checks will never query for hosts on these networks.
There is also an option to allow open relay without authorization, which, by default,
is hidden from the user interface. Opening mail relay without authorization is not
recommended because it allows spammers to send unsolicited mail through your
server. If you want to set the open relay, log in to the server's file system, locate the
file root.controls.lock in your Parallels Plesk Panel installation directory
(PRODUCT_ROOT_D/var/root.controls.lock on Unix and
PRODUCT_DATA_D/var/root.controls.lock on Windows platforms) and
remove the line /server/mail.php3:relay_open from this file. The open relay
option will show in your control panel.
icon. To remove a network from the list, click the icon
6. If you are setting up a Linux-based server, select antivirus and webmail
program components that should be available to the users. If you are
setting up a Windows-based server, you can select webmail and
antivirus later: click Settings in the navigation pane, and then click Select
Webmail and Select Antivirus.
7. Select the mail account name format (available only on Linux hosting).
Setting Up the Server 21
Selecting the Use of short and full names is allowed option will allow users to log in to
their mail accounts by specifying only the left part of e-mail address before the @
sign (for example, username), or by specifying the full e-mail address (for example,
username@your-domain.com).
To avoid possible authorization problems for e-mail users who reside in different
domains but have identical user names and passwords, we recommend that you
choose the Only use of full mail account names is allowed option.
Once you have set your mail server to support only full mail account names, you
will not be able to switch back to supporting short account names until you make
sure there are no encrypted passwords for mailboxes and user accounts with
coinciding user names and passwords residing in different domains.
8. Click OK to submit any changes.
Set up spam filters. Parallels Plesk Panel supports anti-spam systems, such as
SpamAssassin spam filter, and protection systems based on DomainKeys, DNS
blackhole lists, Sender Policy Framework (SPF), and greylisting. This guide covers the
setup of SpamAssassin spam filter. For instruction on using DomainKeys, DNS
blackhole lists, Sender Policy Framework, and greylisting, refer to Parallels Plesk Panel
9.5 Administrator's Guide, section Setting Up Spam Protection.
¾ To set up spam filtering with SpamAssassin:
1. On your Home page, open the Server group title menu, and select Spam
Filter Settings.
2. To allow server-wide filtering based on the settings you define, select
the Switch on server-wide SpamAssassin spam filtering check box.
3. To let your users set their own spam filtering pref erences on a per-
mailbox basis, select the Apply individual settings to spam filtering check
box.
4. If you wish to adjust the amount of system resources the spam filter
should use (available only for Linux hosting), type the desired value
from 1 to 5 into the Maximum number of worker spamd processes to run (1-5)
box (1 is the lowest load, and 5 is the highest). We recommend that you
use the default value.
5. If you wish to adjust the spam filter's sensitivity, type the desired value
in the The score that a message must receive to qualify as spam box.
6. SpamAssassin performs a number of different tests on contents and
subject line of each message. As a result, each message scores a
number of points. The higher the number, the more likely a message is
spam. For example, a message containing the text string “BUY VIAGRA
AT LOW PRICE!!!” in Subject line and message body scores 8.3 points.
By default, the filter sensitivity is set so that all messages that score 7
or more points are classified as spam.
When your users receive lots of spam messages with the current setting, to
make filter more sensitive, try setting a lesser value in the The score that a
message must receive to qualify as spam box; for example, 6.
22 Setting Up the Server
When your users are missing e-mails because your spam filter thinks they are
junk, try reducing filter sensitivity by setting a higher value in the The score that a
message must receive to qualify as spam box.
7. To reduce the load on your Windows server, you can select the Do not
filter if mail size exceeds specified size check box and specify the maximum
size of the message that the spam filter will test. Recommended mail
size limit is 150 - 250 Kbytes, which is usual for mail messages in
HTML format with images. The size of the mail is considered critical for
filter and server overload when it exceeds 500 Kbytes, which is usual
for mail messages containing attachments.
8. To make sure that the spam filter on your Windows server is not leaving
some e-mail messages unchecked (this can happen if the amount of
incoming mail is very large), limit the number of e-mail messages that
can be checked simultaneously in the Number of threads that spam filter
can create field.
9. Specify how to mark messages recognized as spam.
10. At the server level, you cannot set the server-wide spam filter to
automatically delete spam: you can do it only on a per-mailbox basis.
So, for the server-wide policy, you can choose only marking messages
as spam: “X-Spam-Flag: YES” and “X-Spam-Status: Yes” headers are
added to the message source by default, and if you want, the spam
filter will additionally include a specific text string to the beginning of
Subject line. To include a desired combination of symbols or words to
the message subject, type it into the Add the following text to the beginning
of subject of each message recognized as spam box. If you do not want the
spam filter to modify message subject, leave this box blank. If you want
to include into the subject line the number of points that messages
score, type _SCORE_ in this box.
11. If you use Parallels Plesk Panel for Windows, define the language
characteristics of mail that should always pass the filter by specifying
trusted languages and locales.
Select the required items from the boxes under Trusted languages and Trusted
locales and click Add >>.
Letters written in the specified languages and with the defined character sets
will not be marked as spam.
12. If you do not want your users to receive e-mail from specific domains or
individual senders, click the Black List tab, and then add the respective
entries to the spam filter’s black list:
Setting Up the Server 23
To add entries to the black list, click Add Addresses. If you have a list of entries
stored in a file, click Browse to specify it, and then click OK. Otherwise, select the
From List option, and type the e-mail addresses into the E-mail addresses box.
Place each address in one row, or separate addresses with a coma, a colon, or
a white space. You can use an asterisk (*) as a substitute for a number of
letters, and question mark (?) as a substitute for a single letter. For example:
address@spammers.net, user?@spammers.net, *@spammers.net. Specifying
*@spammers.net will block the entire mail domain spammers.net. To save the
entries you added, click OK, then confirm adding, and click OK again.
To remove entries from the black list, under the Black List tab, select the entries
and click Remove. Confirm removal and click OK.
13. If you want to be sure that you and your users will not miss e-mail from
specific senders, click the White List tab, and then add e-mail addresses
or entire domains to the spam filter’s white list:
To add entries to the white list, click Add Addresses. If you have a list of entries
stored in a file, click Browse to specify it, and then click OK. Otherwise, select the
From List option, and type the e-mail addresses into the E-mail addresses box.
Place each address in one row, or separate addresses with a coma, a colon, or
a white space. You can use an asterisk (*) as a substitute for a number of
letters, and question mark (?) as a substitute for a single letter. For example:
address@mycompany.com, user?@mycompany.com, *@mycompany.com.
Specifying *@mycompany.com will add to the white list all e-mail addresses that
are under the mycompany.com mail domain. To save the entries you added,
click OK, then confirm adding, and click OK again.
To remove entries from the white list, under the White List tab, select the entries
and click Remove. Confirm removal and click OK.
14. Once finished with setting up the spam filter, click OK.
Now all the incoming mail will be filtered on the server side. By default, spam filter does
not delete spam mail, it only adds the "X-Spam-Flag: YES" and "X-Spam-Status: Yes"
headers to the message, and "*****SPAM*****" text string to the beginning of Subject
line of each message recognized as spam.
If you have enabled the Apply individual settings to spam filtering option, then your users
will be able to set their spam filters so as to automatically delete junk mail. They will
also be able to set up their personal black and white lists of correspondents that will
override the server settings, and teach the spam filter on a per-mailbox basis.
Now let's set up antivirus for protecting your customers' mailboxes from viruses.
¾ To set up antivirus on a Windows-based hosting server:
1. Click the Settings shortcut in the navigation pane, and then click Select
Antivirus.
2. Select the antivirus program that you want to use and click OK.
3. Click Up Level, and then click Virus Protection Settings.
4. From the Server-wide settings menu, select the desired scanning mode.
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