Plesk 8 Client's Guide

SWsoft, Inc.

Plesk 8 Client's Guide
Plesk for UNIX

(c) 1999-2006

ISBN: N/A
SWsoft, Inc.
13755 Sunrise Valley Drive
Suite 325
Herndon
VA 20171 USA
Phone: +1 (703) 815 5670
Fax: +1 (703) 815 5675

Copyright © 1999-2006 by SWsoft, Inc. All rights reserved
Distribution of this work or derivative of this work in any form is prohibited unless prior written permission is
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All other trademarks and copyrights referred to are the property of their respective owners.

3

Contents

Preface 7
Who Should Read This Guide ......................................................................................................................8
What's New in This Version of Your Plesk Control Panel ...........................................................................8
Documentation Conventions.........................................................................................................................8
Typographical Conventions...............................................................................................................8
Shell Prompts in Command Examples ..............................................................................................9
General Conventions .......................................................................................................................10
Feedback.....................................................................................................................................................10

Plesk Basics 11
Logging In to Plesk.....................................................................................................................................12
If You Forgot Your Password .........................................................................................................13
Changing Your Contact Information and Password ...................................................................................13
Becoming Familiar with Plesk's Interface ..................................................................................................13
Items in the Standard View .............................................................................................................14
Items in the Desktop View ..............................................................................................................16
Customizing Your Control Panel In Standard View...................................................................................17
Customizing Your Control Panel in the Desktop View ..............................................................................19

Viewing Resource Allotments and Hosting Features Included in Your Hosting Package 21

Implementing Hosting Plans 24

Predefining Content for New Web Sites 29

Hosting Web Sites 30
Obtaining a Domain Name .........................................................................................................................30
Setting Up Hosting Account for a Web Site ...............................................................................................32
Publishing a Site .........................................................................................................................................37
Uploading Files Through FTP.........................................................................................................38
Uploading Files Through Plesk File Manager.................................................................................39
Uploading Files Through SSH Connection .....................................................................................40
Publishing from Microsoft FrontPage .............................................................................................41
Previewing a Site ........................................................................................................................................43
Deploying Databases ..................................................................................................................................44
Installing Applications................................................................................................................................47
Installing Java Web Applications ....................................................................................................48
Securing E-commerce Transactions with Secure Sockets Layer Encryption .............................................49
Restricting Access to Web Server's Resources with Password Protection .................................................54
Organizing Site Structure with Subdomains...............................................................................................56
Setting Up Additional Domain Names for a Site (Domain Aliases)...........................................................58
Hosting Personal Web Pages on Your Web Server ....................................................................................60
Setting Up Anonymous FTP Access to the Server .....................................................................................62
Customizing Web Server Error Messages ..................................................................................................63

Contents 4

Customizing DNS Zones ............................................................................................................................64

Serving Domain Names for Sites Hosted on Other Servers (Domain Forwarding) 67

Serving Sites with External Domain Name Servers 68

Managing Hosting Accounts 70
Changing FTP Password.............................................................................................................................70
Upgrading Hosting Accounts......................................................................................................................71
Renewing Hosting Accounts ...........................................................................................................73
Suspending and Unsuspending Hosting Accounts......................................................................................74
Changing Hosting Type From Virtual (Physical) to Forwarding ...............................................................75
Introducing Similar Changes to Numerous Hosting Accounts ...................................................................75
Deleting Hosting Accounts.........................................................................................................................77

Viewing Statistics 78
Adjusting Preferences for Web Statistics Presentation...............................................................................80
Automating Report Generation and Delivery by E-mail ............................................................................83
Viewing Raw Log Files ..............................................................................................................................85

Backing Up And Restoring Your Data 86
Backing Up Your Account with Your Domains .........................................................................................86
Backing Up Individual Domains (Web Sites).............................................................................................87
Scheduling Backups....................................................................................................................................87
Restoring Data From Backup Archives ......................................................................................................89
Maintaining Your Backup Files Repository ...............................................................................................90

Using E-mail Services 91
Creating Mailboxes.....................................................................................................................................91
Setting Up Your E-mail Program for Retrieving Mail from Your Mailbox ...............................................92
Accessing Your Mail From a Web Browser...............................................................................................94
Protecting Mailboxes From Spam ..............................................................................................................95
Setting Up Additional Disposable E-mail Addresses (Mail Aliases) ..............................................95
Setting Up Spam Filter ....................................................................................................................96
Protecting Mailboxes From Viruses .........................................................................................................100
Suspending and Unsuspending Mailboxes ...............................................................................................101
Removing Mailboxes................................................................................................................................102
Switching off the Mailbox Service When You Have Decided to Turn Your Account into a Mail
Forwarder..................................................................................................................................................102
Setting Up Mail Forwarders .....................................................................................................................103
Setting Up Mail Forwarding to Multiple E-mail Addresses ..........................................................105
Setting Up Automatic Reply.....................................................................................................................108
Setting Up Site-wide Preferences for Handling Mail to Nonexistent Users (Mail Bounce).....................110
Introducing Similar Changes to a Number of Mail Accounts at Once .....................................................111
Maintaining Mailing Lists ........................................................................................................................111
Setting Up a Mailing List ..............................................................................................................112
Configuring a Mailing List ............................................................................................................112
Subscribing and Unsubscribing Users ...........................................................................................113
Posting to Your Mailing List .........................................................................................................114
Removing Mailing Lists ................................................................................................................114

Contents 5

Scheduling Tasks 115

Monitoring Connections to Control Panel and FTP Services 117

Using Help Desk for Resolving Your Customers' Issues and Requesting Assistance from
Provider 119

Index 121

6

Table of Figures
Figure 1: Desktop interface. ......................................................................................................14

7

CHAPTER 1

Preface

In This Chapter
Who Should Read This Guide............................................................................................... 8
What's New in This Version of Your Plesk Control Panel ................................................... 8
Documentation Conventions................................................................................................. 8
Feedback ............................................................................................................................... 10

Preface 8

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.

What's New in This Version of Your Plesk
Control Panel
Plesk 8 offers you the following new features and enhancements:

Brand-new Desktop interface option - Plesk 8 boasts quick and efficient task-oriented
desktop, while retaining the ability to use old, traditional interface.

Enhancement in Backup and Restore Utilities - backup files are no more digitally signed,
which allows you to migrate your domains from one server to another. Applications installed on
your site are now migrated too.

Domain Aliases support - you can now set up alternative domain names, which act as aliases
for websites, and modify their DNS zone records.

SSL support for subdomains - you can now secure subdomains with Secure Sockets Layer
protection.

Protection of cgi-bin directory - you can now password protect your cgi-bin directory - the
directory where your CGI scripts are stored.

SOA DNS records management - in this version you can manage Start of Authority (SOA)
DNS records through Plesk Control Panel.

Brand new context help files and user's guides - we have prepared brand new documentation
set to help you satisfy your Web hosting management needs faster and easier. If you cannot find
any information you need, or would like us to add more details on specific operations or give
explanations of how something works, please let us know by dropping a letter to
userdocs@swsoft.com: We want to help you and will try to add the information you need as
soon as possible.

Documentation Conventions
Before you start using this guide, it is important to understand the documentation conventions
used in it. For information on specialized terms used in the documentation, see the Glossary at
the end of this document.

Typographical Conventions

Preface 9

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

Formatting convention Type of Information Example

Special Bold Items you must select, such as Go to the QoS tab.
menu options, command
buttons, or items in a list.
Titles of chapters, sections, and Read the Basic Administration
subsections. chapter.
Italics Used to emphasize the The system supports the so called
importance of a point, to wildcard character search.
introduce a term or to designate
a command line placeholder,
which is to be replaced with a
real name or value.
Monospace The names of commands, files The license file is located in the
and directories, and the httpdocs/common/licens
commands you type. e directory.
Preformatted On-screen computer output in # ls –al /files
your command-line sessions; total 14470
source code in XML, C++, or
other programming languages.
CAPITALS Names of keys on the keyboard. SHIFT, CTRL, ALT
KEY+KEY Key combinations for which the CTRL+P, ALT+F4
user must press and hold down
one key and then press another.

Shell Prompts in Command Examples
Command line examples throughout this guide presume that you are using the Bourne-again
shell (bash). Whenever a command can be run as a regular user, we will display it with a dollar
sign prompt. When a command is meant to be run as root, we will display it with a hash mark
prompt:
Bourne-again shell prompt $
Bourne-again shell root prompt #

Preface 10

General Conventions
Chapters in this guide are divided into sections, which, in turn, are subdivided into
subsections. For example, Documentation Conventions is a section, and General Conventions
is a subsection.
When following steps or using examples, be sure to type double-quotes ("), left single-
quotes (`), and right single-quotes (') exactly as shown.

Feedback
If you spot a typo in this guide, or if you have thought of a way to make this guide better, we
would love to hear from you!

If you have a suggestion for improving the documentation (or any other relevant comments), try
to be as specific as possible when formulating it. If you have found an error, please include the
chapter/section/subsection name and some of the surrounding text so that we could find it
easily.

Please submit a report by e-mail to userdocs@swsoft.com.

11

CHAPTER 2

Plesk Basics
Plesk is the control panel software that you use for reselling shared hosting services 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's Guide.

In This Chapter
Logging In to Plesk ............................................................................................................... 12
Changing Your Contact Information and Password ............................................................. 13
Becoming Familiar with Plesk's Interface............................................................................. 13
Customizing Your Control Panel In Standard View............................................................. 17
Customizing Your Control Panel in the Desktop View ........................................................ 19

Plesk Basics 12

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 provider gave you into the Login and
Password boxes, respectively.
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.

Plesk Basics 13

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.

Changing Your Contact Information and
Password
If you need to update your contact information, or change password:

1 On your Home page, click the Edit icon 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.

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.

Plesk Basics 14

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.

Figure 1: Desktop interface.

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.
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.
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.

Plesk Basics 15

The main work area is located on the right. It provides shortcuts for access to the major
functions available for your account. The set of controls you can use depends on your provider's
policy. Below you will find the entire list of controls that could ever appear on your Home page.

The following functions are accessible from the Tools group:

Edit. Edit your personal information and change the password for control panel
access. Refer to the Changing Your Contact Information and Password (on page 13) section
for more information .

Report. View your account status report. Refer to Chapter Viewing Statistics (on page
78) for more information.

Preferences. Set the interface skin, language and other interface-specific options.
Refer to the Customizing Your Control Panel (on page 17) section for more information.

Permissions. View the permissions to manage certain features within your account.
Refer to chapter Viewing Resource Allotments and Hosting Features Included in Your
Hosting Package (on page 21) for more information.

Limits. View the resource allotments defined for your account. Refer to chapter
Viewing Resource Allotments and Hosting Features Included in Your Hosting Package (on
page 21) for more information.

IP Pool. View available IP addresses in your IP pool and their properties. Refer to
chapter Viewing Resource Allotments and Hosting Features Included in Your Hosting
Package (on page 21) for more information.

Skeleton. Predefine content for new web sites with virtual host skeleton. Refer to the
Predefining Content for New Web Sites (on page 29) section for more information.

Logo Setup. Customize the logo displayed at the top of the Plesk interface. Refer to
the Customizing Your Control Panel (on page 17) section for more information.

Custom Buttons. Set up and manage multiple additional buttons that will be displayed
in the control panel. Refer to the Customizing Your Control Panel (on page 17) section for
more information.

Backup. Backup and restore your account and web sites. Refer to chapter Backing Up
And Restoring Your Data (on page 86) for more information.

Add New Domain. Allows you to create and host new web sites. Refer to the Setting
Up Hosting Account for a Web Site (on page 32) section for more information.

Domain Templates. Implement your hosting plans using domain templates. Refer to
chapter Implementing Hosting Plans (on page 24) for more information.

Register. Register your domain name through MyPlesk.Com online store.

Plesk Basics 16

Manage. Manage the domain names you have registered with MyPlesk.Com.

Extras. Purchase SSL certificates and Web applications from MyPlesk.Com online
store.

Traffic. View bandwidth usage statistics for hosted domains. Refer to chapter Viewing
Statistics (on page 78) for more information.
Custom Buttons group displays the button you placed to your Home page. For more
information on custom buttons, refer to the Customizing Your Control Panel (on page 17)
section.
Info group displays a short resource usage report for your account. This includes the
information on the total amount of domains, amount of active domains, and disk space and
bandwidth used. For more information about resources and limits, refer to chapter Viewing
Resource Allotments and Hosting Features Included in Your Hosting Package (on page 21).
Domains group displays the list of all domains/web sites you are currently hosting. You can see
the basic domain statistics there.
To manage a domain/web site, click its name.
Refer to chapter Hosting Web Sites (on page 30) for more information.
To see a detailed report on a domain/web site, click the icon corresponding to the domain
name, located in the P column.
Refer to chapter Viewing Statistics (on page 78) for more information.
To configure hosting for a site, click the icon corresponding to the domain name, located in
the H column.
Refer to the Setting Up Hosting Account for a Web Site (on page 32) section for more
information.
To make similar changes to several domains/web sites at once, select the check boxes
corresponding to the domain names and click Group Operations. Refer to the Performing
Group Operations on Domains (on page 75) section for more information.

To customize your control panel in the Standard view, refer to the Customizing Your Control
Panel in the Standard View (on page 17) section.

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.

Plesk Basics 17

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 Mailnames
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 19) 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.

Customizing Your Control Panel In Standard
View
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.
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 the Logo Setup icon.
2 Click the Browse... button 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 the Logo Setup icon.

Plesk Basics 18

2 Click the Default Logo button.

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, click the Custom Buttons icon in the Tools group.

2 Click Add New Button.
3 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.
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.
4 Click OK to complete creation.
To remove a hyperlink button from your Plesk control panel:

1 On your Home page, click the Custom Buttons icon in the Tools group.
2 Select a check box corresponding to the button that you wish to remove and
click Remove Selected.

Plesk Basics 19

Customizing Your Control Panel in the
Desktop View
To add or remove items from the desktop:
1 Click the Desktop icon in the navigation pane.
2 Click the Customize my desktop icon.
3 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.
4 To show your custom buttons on the desktop, select the Custom buttons check
box.
5 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.
6 Specify whether to show the Statistics and Favorites group 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.
7 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.

Plesk Basics 20

3 Click the mail name you want to add to favorites.
4 Click the Add to favorites icon at the upper right corner of the screen.
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.
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.
2 Click the Edit Favorites icon in the upper right corner of the screen.
3 Click Remove.
OR

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


Viewing Resource Allotments and
Hosting Features Included in Your
Hosting Package

To view the IP addresses included in your hosting package, on your Home page, click the
IP Pool icon. 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 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.

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.


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 (on page 60) 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.
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.
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.

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.


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.
Crontab management. Shows whether you can schedule tasks with the Crontab task
scheduler. 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.
Dr.Web antivirus management. Shows whether you can use server-side antivirus protection
for filtering incoming and outgoing mail. The Dr.Web antivirus solution can filter 15
mailboxes for free. The customers who need antivirus protection for a larger number of
mailboxes, can purchase a license at www.drweb.com.
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. You may want to use the XML interface for developing
custom applications integrated with your web site, which you could use, for instance, for
automating setup of hosting accounts and provisioning of services for customers purchasing
hosting services from your site. The remote XML interface operations are limited to setting
up and removing domain names/web spaces on the server, modifying domain and web site
related preferences and hosting services, retrieving information on domains. To learn more
about using Plesk control panel's XML interface (also referred to as Plesk API RPC), please
visit http://download1.swsoft.com/Plesk/Plesk7.5/Doc/plesk-7.5r-sdk-
html/docs/plesk_agent/ch01.html.


Implementing Hosting Plans
If you are going to resell hosting services or planning to host numerous domains and 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.

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:
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. WebMail. Specify whether the users of mailboxes in this domain should be able to read
their mail through a browser based WebMail application.
4. Maximum number of subdomains. Specify the number of subdomains that can be hosted
under this domain.


5. 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 it is up to
you to decide what to do with the domain:
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 (on page 74)"),
or
upgrade the hosting plan for your customer (see the instructions on upgrading hosting
plans further in this section).
6. 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).
7. 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 (on page 60) section for details.
8. Maximum number of databases. Specify the number of databases that can be hosted in a
domain.
9. Maximum number of mailboxes. Specify the number of mailboxes that can be hosted in a
domain.
10. Mailbox quota. Specify the amount of disk space in kilobytes that is allocated to each
mailbox in a domain.
11. Maximum number of mail forwarders. Specify the number of mail forwarders that can be
used in a domain.
12. Maximum number of mail autoresponders. Specify the number of automatic responses
that can be set up in a domain.
13. 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.
14. Maximum number of Java applications. Specify the maximum number of Java
applications or applets that the domain owner can install in a domain.


15. 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).
16. 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 Enable log rotation check box,
specify when to recycle log files,
specify how many instances of each log file to store on the server,
specify whether they should be compressed,
specify whether they should be sent to an e-mail address after processing.
17. Traffic statistics retention. Specify the number of months during which the bandwidth
usage statistics should be kept on the server.
18. 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.
19. 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.


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 enabled.
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,
and ColdFusion.
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/ 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.

To upgrade a hosting plan (or 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 settings as required, and click OK.
3 To add hosting features, such as support for programming languages and

scripts, click the Setup icon in the Hosting group, adjust the settings as
required and click OK.


To upgrade a hosting plan (or modify settings) for a number of domains or Web sites:
1 On your Home page, select the check boxes corresponding to the domain
names you need.
2 Click the Group Operations icon located above the list of domains.
3 Modify the settings as required and click OK.

To reflect the changes in your hosting package offerings that will apply to the newly
created accounts:

2 Click the template name corresponding to the hosting plan you wish to
update.
Note that modifying templates does not affect the existing domains and web sites.

To remove a template that you no longer need:

2 Select a check box corresponding to the template you no longer need.
3 Click Remove Selected. Confirm removal and click OK.

Predefining Content for New Web Sites 29

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.


Hosting Web Sites

Obtaining a Domain Name
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).

By default, your control panel provides the means for purchasing and managing domain names

through MyPlesk.Com online store: you will find the Register and Manage icons on
your Home page, if your provider did not remove them.


To register a domain name through Plesk, click the Register icon 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 change name server records for your domains or buy SSL certificates, click the
Manage icon on your Home page. You will be taken to MyPlesk.com website.


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.
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 (on
page 24)"), select the required template from the Select template box.
3 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.
4 Make sure that there is a check mark in the Proceed to hosting setup check box
and click OK.
5 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) (on page 67)" for details.
6 Specify the properties of a hosting account:


on attempt to connect to the secure site. To allow SSL encryption for Web sites, select
the SSL support check box.
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.
recommend that you do not allow shell access. Leave the Forbidden option selected.
FrontPage support and FrontPage over SSL support check boxes, set the FrontPage
authoring option to enabled, and specify the FrontPage Administrator's login and
password.
and ColdFusion.
access Web statistics at the URL: https://your-domain.com/plesk-stat/ using his or her
FTP account login and password.


7 Click OK.
Now your 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 37) 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.

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 this site can consume:

2 Click the Limits icon.
3 Adjust the resource usage allotments as required:
1. Maximum number of subdomains. Specify the number of subdomains that can be hosted
under this domain.
2. Disk space. Specify the total amount of disk space allocated to a hosting account
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). 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 (on page 74)
section),
or
upgrade the hosting plan for your customer (see the instructions on upgrading hosting plans
in the chapter "Implementing Hosting Plans (on page 24)").
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 Plan (on page 24)s").


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 (on
page 60) section for details.
3. Maximum number of databases. Specify the number of databases that can be hosted in a
domain.
4. Maximum number of mailboxes. Specify the number of mailboxes that can be hosted in a
domain.
5. Mailbox quota. Specify the amount of disk space in kilobytes that is allocated to each
6. Maximum number of mail forwarders. Specify the number of mail forwarders that can be
used in a domain.
7. Maximum number of mail autoresponders. Specify the number of automatic responses
8. Maximum number of mailing lists. Specify the number of mailing lists that the domain
customers would like to use it, ask your provider to install it.
9. Maximum number of Java applications. Specify the maximum number of Java
10. Validity period. Specify the term for a hosting account. At the end of the term, 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).
4 Click OK.
To allow the site owner to log in to control panel for managing his or her web site:

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
webspace.
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. 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.
Crontab management. Allow or disallow the site owner to schedule tasks with the
Crontab task scheduler. 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.
Dr.Web antivirus management. Allow or disallow the site owner to use server-side
antivirus protection for filtering incoming and outgoing mail. The Dr.Web antivirus
solution can filter 15 mailboxes for free. The customers who need antivirus protection
for a larger number of mailboxes, can purchase a license at www.drweb.com.


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 on-demand 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.
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.

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) (on page 58) section for details.

If you need to host several domains on your machine that will point to a site hosted on another
server, you should set up domain forwarding. Refer to the Serving Domain Names for Sites
Hosted on Other Servers (Domain Forwarding) (on page 67) chapter for details.

Publishing a Site
Publishing your site means uploading web pages, scripts and graphic files that compose your
site to your web space in any of the following ways:
Through FTP connection
Through Plesk File Manager
Through Secure Shell connection (only for users of Linux and FreeBSD operating systems)
Through Microsoft FrontPage software (only for users of Microsoft Windows operating
systems)
FTP is one of the most common and easiest ways to upload files.


Uploading Files Through FTP
1 Connect to the server with an FTP client program, using FTP account
credentials that you specified during setup of hosting 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.


Uploading 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.
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 .

To preview a Web page, click .

To preview an image 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.

Uploading Files Through SSH Connection
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.


Publishing from 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.

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.
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.


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 Macromedia Flash and CGI scripts will not work during preview.

To preview a site:
1 On your Home page click the domain name you need.

2 Click the Site Preview icon in the Hosting group.


Deploying Databases
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.

To create a new database on your hosting account:

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.
Click OK.

6 To set up database administrator’s credentials, click Add New Database
User.
7 Type a user name and a password that will be used for accessing the
contents of the database.
8 Click OK.

To import an existing database:

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.
Click OK.

6 To set up database administrator’s credentials, click Add New Database
User.
contents of the database. Click OK.


8 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.
9 Click on the Query window icon in the left frame.
10 Click the Import files tab.
11 Select the text file that contains the data and click Go.
12 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).

To remove a database with its contents:

2 Click the Databases icon 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.

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:

3 Click on a database name. A list of database users will open.

4 Click Add New Database User.
contents of the database. Click OK.
To remove a database user account:

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.
To change password for a database user:

4 Click on the database user’s name.
5 Type a new password and click OK.


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 > Application Vault). The number and variety
of available applications depend on your provider’s policy and your hosting plan.

To install an application on your site:

2 Click the Application Vault icon 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. A list of site
applications available for installation will be displayed.
4 To specify the site where you want to install and deploy an application,
select it in the Target domain drop-down box in the upper-right corner of the
screen.
5 To specify which application you wish to install, select a radio button
corresponding to the application of your choice.
6 Click Install.
7 Specify whether you wish to create a hyperlink to the application’s interface
and place it on your Home page 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).
When finished, click OK.
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 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.
Type the hyperlink to be attached to the button into the URL box.


Using the checkboxes, specify whether to include the data, such as domain id 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 > Application Vault, 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 or change the application administrator’s password, go to Home >
domain name > Application Vault, and click an icon , corresponding to the application.

To uninstall an application, go to Home > domain name > Application Vault, 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.

Installing Java Web Applications
In addition to the applications from the Application Vault, 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 an application:

2 Click the Tomcat icon in the Services group.

3 Click the Enable icon in the Tools group.
This will start the Tomcat service, which provides an environment for Java code to run in
cooperation with a web server.

4 Click Add New Java Application.


5 Specify the path to an application package you wish to install, or click
Browse to navigate to it.
This can be an application package in WAR format saved on your computer’s hard drive.
6 Click OK.
Now the application is installed and the respective entry is added to the list of installed Java
applications (Home > domain name > Tomcat).

To access the web interface of an application, do any of the following:
Go to Home > domain name > Tomcat, 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 an application:
1 Go to Home > domain name > Tomcat. 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 an application, go to Home > domain name > Tomcat, 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.

Securing E-commerce Transactions with
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 being stolen, 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 GeoTrust, Inc.

To purchase an SSL certificate through MyPleskCom online store and secure your site:



2 Click the Certificates icon 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 the Buy Certificate button. 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, GeoTrust, Inc. will send you a
confirmation e-mail. After they receive the confirmation from you, they will
send the certificate to your e-mail.
12 When you receive your SSL certificate, save it on your local machine or
network.
13 Return to the SSL Certificates repository (Home > domain name > Certificates).
14 Click the Browse button 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.
15 Return to your domain's administration screen (Home > domain name) and

click the Setup icon 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.

To secure your site with an SSL certificate from other certificate authorities:


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 the Request button. Your private key and certificate signing request
will be generated and stored in the repository.
7 Download the certificate signing request (CSR) file and save it on your
machine. To do this, click the respective icon.
8 Once downloaded, open the file in a text editor, copy the text enclosed in
lines -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- and -----END
CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- to the clipboard.
9 Using your favorite mail client software, create a new e-mail message and
paste the text from the clipboard. Send this message to the Certification
Authority that 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 the Browse button 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.



14 Select the SSL certificate that you wish to install from the Certificate drop-
down box.
dedicated IP address from your provider.
If you do not feel like paying money for 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 self-signed 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:


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 the Self-Signed button. Your certificate will be generated and stored in
the repository.

7 Select the self-signed SSL certificate from the Certificate drop-down box.
dedicated IP address from your hosting provider.


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

the Setup icon. The Certificate drop-down box indicates which
SSL certificate is currently used.
2. 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.
2 Remove the certificate from repository.
1. To permanently remove the certificate from repository, on your

Home page, click the domain name you need and then click the
Certificates icon in the Services group.
2. Select a check box corresponding to the certificate that you no
longer need and click Remove Selected.
3. Confirm removal and click OK.
3 Disable SSL support if you no longer need it.
1. On your Home page, click the domain name you need and then click

the Setup icon.
2. Clear the SSL support check box and click OK.


Restricting Access to Web Server's
Resources with Password Protection
If you have directories in your site that only authorized users should see, restrict access to these
directories with password protection.

To password protect a directory in your site and to specify authorized users:

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.
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.

To add an authorized user of a protected directory:


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:

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.

To revoke a permission to access the protected directory from a user:

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.

To remove password protection and make the resource available to the public:

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.


Organizing Site Structure with Subdomains
Subdomains are additional domain names that enable you to:
Organize logically the structure of your site
Host additional Web sites or parts of your main 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.

To set up a subdomain:

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
checkbox. Then, the SSL certificate installed under the parent domain will
be used for encrypting transactions.
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 (on page 37) a Site section.

To preview the web content published under the subdomain, on your Home page, click the

domain name you need, click the Subdomains icon, and then click an icon
corresponding to the subdomain name.

To remove a subdomain with its web content:

2 Click the Subdomains icon.
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.


Setting Up Additional Domain Names for a
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 section "Serving Domain Names for Sites Hosted on
Other Servers (Domain Forwarding)" for instructions.

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 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.
6 Select the Web check box. Otherwise, the web server will not serve the web
content to users coming to your site by typing the domain alias in their
browsers.
7 Click OK.
To change the properties of an alias:

3 Click the alias name you need.

4 Click the Preferences icon in the Tools group.
To modify resource records in the DNS zone of a domain alias:



3 Click the alias name you need.

4 Click DNS.
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.
To learn more about DNS resource records modification and other DNS-related options, refer to
the Customizing DNS Zone Configuration for Domains (on page 64) and the Serving Sites with
External Domain Name Servers (on page 68) sections.

To remove an alias from a domain:

3 Select a check box corresponding to the domain alias that you want to
remove.


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, however, you
can set up personal web pages with alternative web addresses like http://username@your-
domain.com, if you like.

To accommodate a personal web page on your server, allocate a separate web space and
set up an FTP account for publishing:

2 Click the Web Users icon.

3 Click Preferences.
4 By default, personal web pages have addresses like http://your-
domain.com/~username. If you wish to allow access to personal web pages
by alternative web addresses like http://username@your-domain.com, select
the Enable webuser@example.com access format check box.
5 If you wish to allow execution of scripts embedded in personal web pages,
select the Allow the web users scripting check box.
6 Click OK.
The settings you have defined at the steps 3 and 4 are common for all personal web pages
you might host on your web server. Therefore, you will not need to perform steps 3 and 4
next time you set up a web space for a personal web page.

7 Click Add New Web User.
8 Specify a user name and password that will be used for accessing the 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.
9 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.
10 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.
11 Click OK.
Now you can tell your user the FTP account credentials, so that he or she can publish their web
page.

To change FTP password for a web page owner:

3 Click the user name you need.
4 Type the new password into the New password and Confirm password boxes.
5 Click OK.
To allocate more disk space to the web page owner:

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.
To remove a web page owner’s account together with their web page:

3 Select a check box to the right of the user name you wish to remove and


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.your-domain.com with
the "anonymous" login name and any password.

To allow anonymous FTP access:

2 Click the Anonymous FTP icon.

3 To activate anonymous FTP service, click the Enable 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.
To modify settings for anonymous FTP server or switch it off:

2 Click the Anonymous FTP icon.


3 Adjust the settings as required and click OK. To switch off the anonymous

FTP service, click the Disable 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 (e.g.,
uppercase letter should be lower-case 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.
500 Internal Server Error. Could not retrieve the HTML document because of server-
configuration problems.
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 If you access Plesk remotely, connect to your FTP account on the Plesk
server, and go to the error_docs directory. If you access Plesk locally, go
to the directory /vhosts/your-domain.com/error_docs/.
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
500 Internal Server Error - internal_server_error.html
4 Wait for a few hours till your web server is restarted. After that, the web
server will start using your error documents.


Customizing DNS Zones
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 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 58) section.

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

2 Click the DNS icon in the Services group. A screen will show all
resource records for a given domain.
To add a new resource record to the zone:

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.

To remove a resource record from the zone:

3 Select a check box corresponding to the record you wish to remove.

To restore the original zone configuration in accordance with the configuration preset
defined by your provider:

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

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 one day.
5 Click OK.

67

CHAPTER 3

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.
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 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.

68

CHAPTER 4

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:


3 Click the Switch icon 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:


3 Click the Switch icon 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:


3 Click the Disable icon 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.

Serving Sites with External Domain Name Servers 69

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.

If you wish to validate the configuration of a zone maintained on authoritative name
servers:

3 Add to the list the entries pointing to the appropriate name servers that are
authoritative for the zone: click 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.

70

CHAPTER 5

Managing Hosting Accounts

In This Chapter
Changing FTP Password ....................................................................................................... 70
Upgrading Hosting Accounts................................................................................................ 71
Suspending and Unsuspending Hosting Accounts................................................................ 74
Changing Hosting Type From Virtual (Physical) to Forwarding.......................................... 75
Introducing Similar Changes to Numerous Hosting Accounts ............................................. 75
Deleting Hosting Accounts ................................................................................................... 77

Changing FTP Password
To change FTP password for a Web site owner:

2 Click the Setup icon in the Hosting group.
3 Specify new password.
4 Click OK.


Upgrading Hosting Accounts
To modify settings for a single domain or Web site:

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
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).
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).
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.
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 to each
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
Maximum number of mailing lists. Specify the number of mailing lists that the domain
customers would like to use it, ask your provider to install it.
Maximum number of Java applications. Specify the maximum number of Java


Validity period. Specify the term for a hosting account. At the end of the term, 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 e-commerce sites need a
dedicated IP address (not shared among other sites) to implement Secure Sockets Layer
data encryption.
on attempt to connect to the secure site. To allow SSL encryption for the Web site,
select the SSL support check box.
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.
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.
recommend that you do not allow shell access and leave the Forbidden option selected.


FrontPage support and FrontPage over SSL support check boxes, set the FrontPage
authoring option to enabled, and specify the FrontPage Administrator's login and
password.
and ColdFusion.
access Web statistics at the URL: https://your-domain.com/plesk-stat/ using his or her
FTP account login and password.
5 Click OK.

To modify settings for a number of domains or Web sites:
names you need.
2 Click the Group Operations icon located above the list of domains.

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 the Limits icon.
3 Specify another term in the Validity period box and click OK.

4 Click the Enable icon in the Domain group.


Suspending and Unsuspending Hosting
Accounts
To suspend a domain/web site:
1 On your Home page, click the domain you need.

2 Click the Disable 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 you need.

2 Click the Enable icon.

75

CHAPTER 6

Changing Hosting Type from Virtual
(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:

2 Click the Delete icon in the Hosting group. Confirm removal and click
OK. All directories and files related to the site will be removed.

3 Click the Setup icon.
Note: Refer to the Hosting a Web Site (on page 32) section of this guide for detailed
instructions on setting up hosting accounts.

Introducing Similar Changes to Numerous
Hosting Accounts
To change hosting options for a number of hosting accounts at once:
names whose settings you wish to modify.
2 Click Group Operations.
3 Adjust the settings as required:
Select Enable to enable the respective option for the selected hosting accounts.
Select Disable to disable the respective option for the selected hosting accounts.
Leave Do not change selected for the options that you do not want to change.
Select Unlimited to remove the respective limit.
Select Value and type the numeric value to set the respective 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 percent).


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 percent).
4 Click OK.

77

CHAPTER 7

Deleting Hosting Accounts
To delete 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 delete a subdomain with its Web content:

2 Click the Subdomains icon 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.


Viewing Statistics
To find out the amount of bandwidth and disk space used by a site, in the list of domain 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:

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: To customize the graphical reports shown by the Webalizer Web statistics utility,
refer to the Adjusting Preferences for Web Statistics Presentation (on page 80) section.

Alternately, you can view the Web statistics for a site by visiting the following URL:
https://your-domain.com/plesk-stat. 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.
To adjust the amount of information presented in a report, click the Customize 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.


Adjusting Preferences for Web Statistics
Presentation
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.
To hide the internal references or references from other sites:


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.
To unhide references:


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
5 Confirm the operation and click OK.
To group references from a specific site:



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:


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.
To hide direct requests:



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:


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.


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 the Report icon.

2 Click the Report Delivery icon.

3 Click Add Delivery Schedule.
4 To receive the report to your e-mail address registered with the system,
select the the client value from the Deliver to drop-down menu. To receive the
report to another e-mail address, select the the e-mail address I specify option
and type the e-mail address.
5 Select the delivery interval from the Delivery frequency drop-down menu.
You can have the report delivered each day, each week, or each month.
6 Click OK.
To change the delivery schedule for an account status report:


3 Under the Frequency column, click a hyperlink corresponding to the delivery
schedule you would like to change.
4 Adjust the settings as required and click OK.
To stop receiving the account status reports:


3 Select a check box corresponding to the delivery schedule and click
Remove Selected. Confirm removal and click OK.
To receive detailed reports on a specific domain/web site on a regular basis:


3 Click Report Delivery.


4 Click Add Delivery Schedule.
5 To receive the report to your e-mail address registered with the system,
select the client value from the Deliver to drop-down menu. To receive the
report to another e-mail address, select the e-mail address I specify option and
type the e-mail address. If this domain name/web site belongs to another
user, you may want to send the report to that user: select the domain
administrator option.
6 To receive a report on a given domain/web site, leave this domain option
selected. To receive detailed reports on each domain you have on your
account, select the all domains of this client option.
7 Select the delivery interval from the Delivery frequency drop-down menu. You
can have the report delivered each day, each week, or each month.
8 Click OK.
To change the delivery schedule for a detailed domain/web site report:


4 Under the Frequency column, click a hyperlink corresponding to the delivery
schedule you would like to change.
5 Adjust the settings as required and click OK.
To stop receiving the account status reports:


4 Select a check box corresponding to the delivery schedule and click
Remove Selected. Confirm removal and click OK.


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

To prevent these log files from growing too large, you should enable automatic cleanup
and recycling of log files:

2 Click the Log Manager icon in the Hosting group.

3 Click the Log Rotation icon in the Tools group.

4 Click the Enable icon in the Tools group. If you see only the Disable
icon there, this means that log recycling is already switched on.
5 Specify when to recycle log files and how many instances of each log file to
store on the server. Also specify whether they should be compressed and
sent to an e-mail address after processing.
6 Click OK.
To view the contents of a log file or download it to your computer:

2 Click the Log Manager icon in the Hosting group. A list of log files will
show.
To specify the number of lines from the end of the log file that you would like to view,
type a number into the input box under the Preferences group.
To view the contents of a log file, click its filename.
To download a file to your computer, click an icon corresponding to the file you
need.
To remove a processed log file from the server, select a corresponding check box and
click Remove Selected. Confirm removal and click OK.

Backing Up and Restoring Your Data 86

Backing Up and Restoring Your Data
With the current version of backup and restore utilities installed with your control panel, you
can:

Back up your account with domains. The backup archive will include all control panel
configurations and data related to your account and your domains (Web sites), except for
information on resource allotments and permissions to perform operations within the control
panel.

Back up individual domains (Web sites). The backup archive will include all data related to
domain administrator's account (except for resource allotments and permissions to perform
operations within the control panel), domain (web site) and mail services, including the contents
of mailboxes, Horde Turba address book contact lists, anti-spam and anti-virus settings.

Schedule backups. Scheduling backup can be done both for your account and your domains.

Restore your data from backup archives.

Your customers granted with the permission to use the backup and restore facilities can back up
and restore their own account settings and Web sites through the control panel. Your customers
will find shortcuts to their backup repositories on their Home pages (Home > Backup).

Backing Up Your Account with Your Domains
To back up your account with domains:

1 Click the Backup icon in the Tools group on your Home page.

2 Click the Backup Now icon in the Tools group.
3 Specify the backup file name and give a description to the backup file.
4 To save your account settings, select the Backup client information check box.
5 Select the domains to back up.
To back up individual domains, select the corresponding check boxes in the list of
domains.
To back up all your domains, select the check box in the upper right corner of the list of
domains.
6 Click Next >>.
7 The backup will start and the progress will be shown.

To update the information on the screen, click Refresh.


To cancel the backup, click Cancel and confirm the cancellation by clicking OK.
8 Upon completion of the backup process you will be shown a window
displaying the backup results, including errors, if they were encountered.
Click OK.
The backup file will be saved to the repository under your account, further accessible from the
location Home > Backup.

Backing Up Individual Domains (Web Sites)
To back up your domain (web site):
1 Click the domain name you need on your Home page.

2 Click the Backup icon in the Domain group.

3 Click the Backup Now icon in the Tools group.
4 Specify the backup file name and give a description to the backup file.
5 Click Next >>.
6 The backup will start and the progress will be shown.

To cancel the backup, click Cancel and confirm the cancellation by clicking OK.
7 Upon completion of the backup process you will be shown a window
displaying the backup results, including errors, if they were encountered.
Click OK.
The backup file will be saved to the repository under this web site hosting account, further
accessible from the location Home > domain name > Backup.

Scheduling Backups
To schedule backup of your account and all your domains:


2 Click the Schedule Backup icon in the Tools group.
3 Specify when and how often to perform backup.
4 To enable recycling of backup files, clear the Unlimited check box and type
the maximum allowed number of files in the repository.
When this limit is reached, the oldest backup files are removed.


5 Specify the combination of symbols that backup file names should begin
with.
This will help you distinguish between backup files.

7 Click OK.

To schedule backup of a single domain (web site):

2 Click the Backup icon in the Tools group.

3 Click the Schedule Backup icon in the Tools group.
4 Specify when and how often to perform backup.
5 To enable recycling of backup files, clear the Unlimited check box and type
the maximum allowed number of files in the repository.
When this limit is reached, the oldest backup files are removed.
6 Specify the combination of symbols that backup file names should begin
with.
This will help you distinguish between backup files.

8 Click OK.


Restoring Data from Backup Archives
To restore your account with domains:

2 Click the backup file name you need.
3 Select the Restore client's preferences and account details check box.
4 Select the domains that you would like to restore.
5 Click Next >>.
If your account or any of its domains were assigned other IP addresses or database servers
than specified in the backup file, you will be prompted to resolve the conflicts by selecting
the new IP address and database server to use. Click Next >>.
6 Restoring will start and its progress will be shown.

To cancel the restoring process, click Cancel and confirm the cancellation by clicking
OK.
7 Upon completion of the restoring process you will be shown a window
displaying the restoration results, including errors, if they were encountered.
Click OK.

To restore a domain (Web site):

3 Click the backup file name you need.
4 Click Restore Now.

To cancel the restoring process, click Cancel and confirm the cancellation by clicking
OK.
5 Upon completion of the restoring process you will be shown a window
displaying the restoration results, including errors, if they were encountered.
Click OK.


Maintaining Your Backup Files Repository
This section provides instructions on:
uploading backup files stored on another computer,
downloading backup files to another computer,
removing redundant backup files from the backup repository.
To upload a backup file to the backup repository:

3 Click Add New File.
4 Click Browse... and select the required backup file.
5 Click OK.
The backup file will be uploaded to the backup repository.

To download a backup file from the backup repository:

3 Click the icon corresponding to the backup file you wish to download.
4 Select the location where you wish to save the backup file and click Save.
The backup file will be downloaded from the backup repository.

To remove a backup file from the backup repository:

3 Select a checkbox corresponding to the backup file you wish to remove.


Using E-mail Services
You can use a number of different e-mail services with a single e-mail account. For example,
you can have an e-mail address that will accept mail as any standard mailbox, forward to a
number of recipients, and send an automatic response to the original message sender.

Creating Mailboxes
If you wish to have an e-mail address associated with a site, like yourname@domain.com, you
should create a mailbox. To do this:


3 Click Add New Mail Name.
4 Your domain name is shown to the right of @ sign, so you only need to
specify the desired name for the mailbox.
This can be, for example, your first name and last name separated by a dot, a department
name, or any other text in Latin symbols. The name should be short enough to remember. It
can comprise alphanumeric, dash, dot and underscore symbols.
5 Specify a password that you will use for accessing your mailbox.
6 Make sure that a check mark is present in the Mailbox check box.
7 To protect yourself from unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (also called
spam), select the Enable spam filtering check box.
8 Click OK.

Now your mailbox is created on the provider’s server, and you can set up your favorite e-mail
program so as to receive and send e-mail messages through your new mailbox.

To create mailboxes for other users:


4 Your domain name is shown to the right of @ sign, so you only need to
specify the desired name for the mailbox.


This can be, for example, user’s first name and last name separated by a dot, a department
name, or any other text in Latin symbols. The name should be short enough to remember. It
can comprise alphanumeric, dash dot and underscore symbols.
5 Specify a password that mailbox owner will use for accessing his or her
mailbox.
6 Make sure that a check mark is present in the Mailbox check box.
7 To protect the mailbox from unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (also called
spam), select the Enable spam filtering check box.
8 If required, limit the amount of disk space that this mailbox can use. To do
this, under Mailbox quota select the Enter size option and type the desired value
in kilobytes.
9 To allow the mailbox owner to manage his or her mailbox through a mailbox
administration panel, select the Control panel access check box and specify
the language for the user’s control panel.
10 Click OK.

Now, the mailbox is created, and a separate e-mail administration panel has been set up in
Plesk. To enter it, the mailbox owner should visit the URL https://your-domain.com:8443, type
his or her e-mail address into the Login box, type the password for the mailbox into the
Password box, and then click Login.

Setting Up Your E-mail Program for Retrieving
Mail from Your Mailbox
To set up Microsoft Outlook Express:
1 Open Microsoft Outlook Express.
2 Go to Tools > Accounts.
3 Click the Mail tab to open a list of your mail accounts.
4 Click the Add > button and select the Mail … item.
5 Enter your name as you want it to appear in any messages you send, and
click Next >.
6 Type your e-mail address that you created through Plesk (for example,
your.name@your-domain.com), and click Next >.
7 Select the protocol of your incoming mail server.
Although Plesk supports both POP3 and IMAP protocols, we recommend that you select
IMAP because this leaves your e-mail on the mail server so that it can later be accessed
from other locations and by other methods, for example, browser based Webmail.
8 Specify your domain name as the incoming and outgoing mail server (for
example: your-domain.com), and click Next >.


9 Type your e-mail address in the Account name box (for example:
your.name@your-domain.com).
10 Type your password. This should be the password that you specified during
creation of the mailbox through Plesk.
11 Leave the Remember password box checked, if you do not wish to be
prompted to enter password each time your e-mail program connects to the
mail server to check for new mail, and click Next >.
12 To complete setting up your e-mail program, click Finish.

To set up Mozilla Thunderbird:
1 Open Mozilla Thunderbird.
2 Go to Tools > Account Settings…
3 Click Add Account. The Account Wizard will open.
4 Leave the Email account option selected, and click Next >.
5 Enter your name as you want it to appear in any messages you send.
6 Type your e-mail address that you created through Plesk.
For example, your.name@your-domain.com. Click Next >.
7 Select the protocol of your incoming mail server.
Although Plesk supports both POP3 and IMAP protocols, we recommend that you select
IMAP because this leaves your e-mail on the mail server so that it can later be accessed
from other locations and by other methods, for example, browser based Webmail.
8 Specify your domain name as the incoming and outgoing mail server (for
example: your-domain.com), and click Next >.
9 In the Incoming User Name box, specify your full e-mail address (for
example, your.name@your-domain.com), and click Next >.
10 Enter the name by which you would like to refer to this account (for
example, Work Account) and click Next >.
11 Verify that the information you entered is correct, and click Finish.
12 Click OK to close the Account Settings wizard.


Accessing Your Mail from a Web Browser
You can read your mail and compose new messages even if you are far from your home or
office computer. To do this, you first need to allow access to the Horde Webmail interface that
is integrated with your control panel. Then you can work with your mail from any computer that
is connected to the Internet and has a Web browser program installed.

To allow access to the Webmail interface:

2 Click the Mail icon.

4 Select the WebMail checkbox.
5 Click OK.

Note: Activation and deactivation of Webmail for your domain involves modifications in DNS
zone, therefore, there is actually a certain delay present when activating and deactivating
Webmail due to the speed of DNS registration mechanisms.

To access your mailbox through Webmail:
1 Find a computer with Internet connection, for example, in an Internet café.
2 Do any of the following:
Open a web browser, and type the URL: http://webmail.your-domain.com, where your-
domain.com is the name of your domain. Press ENTER. A login screen will open. Type
the user name and password that you specified during creation of your mailbox and click
Log in.
Open a web browser and type the URL to access your Plesk control panel, for example:
https://your-domain.com:8443. Press ENTER. Log in to Plesk, click the domain name

you need, and click the Mail icon in the Services group. Then, click an icon to
the right of your e-mail address. A login screen will open and your user name will be
prefilled. Type the password that you specified during creation of your mailbox and
click Log in.


Protecting Mailboxes from Spam
To protect your mailbox from undesirable correspondence, do not publish your e-mail address
on Internet forums and switch on the server-side spam filter provided by the SpamAssassin
software.

When you need to publish your e-mail address, create a disposable e-mail address - e-mail alias
- for your primary e-mail address, and publish it instead. All messages sent to the e-mail alias
will come into your mailbox. Once you start getting spam, remove that alias and create another
one. If you have a mailbox at another domain or mail server, you may want to set up a
disposable e-mail forwarder.

We would advise that you do not read spam e-mails when you receive them, just delete them at
once. Even if you have read them, do not respond to them and do not click those “click here to
unsubscribe” URLs: spammers will then know that your e-mail address is valid and you will get
even more spam.

Setting Up Additional Disposable E-mail Addresses (Mail Aliases)
To set up an e-mail alias for a mailbox:

3 Click the e-mail address you need.

4 Click Add New Mail Alias.
5 Type a desired name and click OK.
The messages addressed to your additional e-mail address (e-mail alias) will get to your
mailbox.

To remove an e-mail alias from a mailbox:

4 Select the check box corresponding to the alias that you wish to remove, and


Setting Up Spam Filter
If you receive undesirable correspondence to an e-mail address that you cannot or do not want
to remove, consider setting up spam filter for your mailbox. To do this,
Enable SpamAssassin spam filter on the Plesk server, if supported by your provider, and
Install spam filtering software of your choice to work with e-mail program on your home or
office computer.
To switch on spam filtering for a mailbox:

4 Make sure that SpamAssassin is enabled: see whether the SpamAssassin

status shows On in the Info group. If it shows Off, click the Mailbox icon
in the Tools group, then select the Enable spam filtering check box, and 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. These settings are fine if you prefer to filter mail with a filtering
program installed on your local computer – once mail has been retrieved from your mailbox.

If you rely entirely on the Plesk server’s spam filter, you may configure it so as to automatically
delete the suspicious messages as they come. To configure the spam filter, follow the
instructions below.

To configure the spam filter:


4 Click the Spam Filter icon in the Tools group. Configure the following
settings as desired:
Use server wide settings. Select this option if your provider or server administrator has
prepared black and/or white lists of e-mail addresses that you would like to use together
with your own restrictions. Black list, shown under Black list group, includes e-mail
addresses of spammers, and White list, shown under White list group, includes e-mail
addresses of trustworthy correspondents or entities. If the Use server wide settings check
box is grayed out, i.e. not selectable, this means that there are no pre-configured spam
filter settings on the server.


Hits required for spam. This setting adjusts spam filter sensitivity. 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.
If you receive lots of spam messages with the current setting, to make filter more
sensitive, try setting a lesser value in the Hits required for spam box; for example, 6.
If you are missing your e-mails because your spam filter thinks they are junk, try
reducing filter sensitivity by setting a higher value in the Hits required for spam box.
Note: To further improve spam filter accuracy, you may want to train your spam filter on e-
mail messages you receive (see the instructions on improving accuracy of spam detection
below).
What to do with spam mail. If you are sure that your spam filter is accurate, you may
want to set the filter to automatically delete all incoming messages recognized as spam.
To do this, select the Delete option. If you wish to filter mail with the software on your
local computer, select the Mark as spam and store in mailbox option, and then specify
how spam filter should mark the messages recognized 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 also include a specific text string to the beginning of
Subject line.
5 To save your changes, click Set.
6 If you do not want to receive e-mail from specific senders, add their e-mail
addresses to the spam filter’s black list.
To add an entry to the black list, under Black list group, type an e-mail address into the
E-mail pattern box. For example: address@spammers.net, *@spammers.net. An asterisk
(*) means any combination of symbols. Click Add.
To remove an entry from the black list, select it and click Remove.
7 If you want to be sure that you will not miss e-mail from specific senders,
add their e-mail addresses to the spam filter’s white list.
To add an entry to the white list, under White list group, type an e-mail address into the
E-mail pattern box. For example: address@mycompany.com, *@mycompany.com. An
asterisk (*) means any combination of symbols. Click Add.
To remove an entry from the black list, select it and click Remove.

You can improve accuracy of spam detection by training the spam filter on the e-mail messages
that you have in your mailbox.

To improve accuracy of spam detection:



4 Click the Spam Filter icon in the Tools group.

5 Click the Training icon in the Tools group.
All e-mail messages you have in your mailbox are presented on the screen. Each message is
accompanied by an icon in the left column, which tells if a message is recognized as spam -
, non-spam - , or not recognized at all - . If you have already trained your spam filter
on a message and the results were recorded in the spam filter’s database, an icon is
shown in the right column.
6 Train the spam filter.
In most cases, you can tell if a message is spam by looking at its subject line and sender’s
name. If they do not give you any clue, try looking inside the message using your e-mail
program or webmail interface.
To mark a message as spam, select the corresponding check box and click ‘It’s Spam!’.
To mark a message as not spam, select the corresponding check box and click ‘It’s Not
Spam’.
To remove any information on a given message from the spam filter database, select the
corresponding check box and click ‘Forget It’.
7 Once finished with training, you can remove spam e-mails from your
mailbox using your e-mail program or webmail interface.

If you have accidentally made your spam filter learn a great number of spam e-mails as non-
spam or vice versa, your spam filter will likely produce incorrect results. In this case, clear the
spam filter's database and then repeat training.

To clear spam filter’s database:


4 Click the Spam Filter icon in the Tools group.

5 Click the Training icon in the Tools group.
6 Click the Clear button.

To switch off spam filtering for a mailbox:



4 Click the Mailbox icon in the Tools group, then clear the Enable spam
filtering check box, and click OK.


Protecting Mailboxes from Viruses
A major problem that users often encounter is a variety of malicious software that spreads
through the Internet, such as viruses, worms, and Trojan horses. Viruses may infiltrate through
security holes in your web browser, but they most often come to your mailbox attached to e-
mail messages. The contents and subject lines of these e-mail messages can contain randomly
generated rows of text or word combinations, but they often attempt to arouse your curiosity and
entice you to open the attached files. As soon as you open an attached file, a virus infects your
computer, scans your address book, and then sends itself to everyone on your address book on
your behalf. Aside from distributing themselves, the viruses may steal your private information,
collect and report information on your browsing habits, exploit your machine for running a
heavy spamming campaign or a Denial of Service attack (DoS), create a backdoor for remote
management of your computer, and do lots of other nasty things that you would not like.

To defend your system from viruses, do not open suspicious e-mail attachments, enable anti-
virus protection on the server side, if this service is provided by your hosting company, and be
sure to have a firewall and anti-virus software installed on your personal computer. Also keep
your operating system up-to-date and timely install security hot fixes and patches.

To switch on anti-virus protection for a mailbox:


4 Click the Dr.Web icon in the Tools group.
5 Choose the desired mail scanning mode. You can switch on scanning for
incoming mail, outgoing mail, or both.
6 Click OK.
When an infected e-mail message arrives, the appropriate notice is sent to the mailbox owner
and the message is placed into a quarantine directory on the server. Only the server
administrator can view infected messages stored in the quarantine directory.

To switch off anti-virus protection for a mailbox:


4 Click the Dr.Web icon in the Tools group.
5 Choose the Disabled option.
6 Click OK.


Suspending and Unsuspending Mailboxes
To temporarily suspend e-mail services for a mailbox:

3 Click the e-mail address, whose e-mail services you wish to suspend.

4 Click the Mailbox icon in the Tools group.
5 Clear the Mailbox check box.
6 Click OK.

To resume e-mail services for a suspended mailbox:

3 Click the e-mail address, whose e-mail services you wish to resume.

5 Select the Mailbox check box.
6 Click OK.

To temporarily suspend e-mail services for all mailboxes in a domain:


3 Click the Disable icon in the Tools group.

To resume e-mail services for all mailboxes in a domain:




Removing Mailboxes
To remove a mailbox:

3 Select a check box corresponding to the mailbox that you wish to remove.
5 When prompted, confirm removal and click OK.

Switching off the Mailbox Service When You
Have Decided to Turn Your Account into a
Mail Forwarder
If you are going to use your existing e-mail account as a mail forwarder or mailing list, you are
recommended to switch off the mailbox service: a mailbox keeps all incoming messages and
messages are not removed automatically after being forwarded. Therefore, if you choose to have
the "mailbox + mail forwarder" configuration on your account, be sure to clean up the mailbox
from time to time.

To switch off the mailbox service for your account discarding all messages in your
mailbox:


4 Deselect the Mailbox check box.
5 Click OK.


Setting Up Mail Forwarders
To set up an e-mail address that will accept mail and forward it to another e-mail address:


4 Specify the desired name for the mail forwarder next to Mail name.
The domain name is shown to the right of @ sign, so you only need to type the name. This
can be, for example, your first name and last name separated by a dot, a department name,
or any other text in Latin symbols. The name should be short enough to remember. It can
comprise alphanumeric, dash dot and underscore symbols.
5 Clear the Mailbox, Control panel access and Enable spam filtering check boxes.
6 Click OK.

7 Click the Redirect icon in the Tools group.
8 Select the Redirect check box.
9 Type the destination e-mail address to which you would like to forward e-
mail.
10 Click OK.

To set up an e-mail address that will accept mail, pass it through the spam filter and then
forward it to another e-mail address:


4 Specify the desired name for the forwarder’s e-mail address next to Mail
Name.
5 Make sure that the Mailbox and Enable spam filtering check boxes are selected.
Without a mailbox, you will not be able to apply spam filtering.
6 Specify a password that will be used for accessing the mailbox: You will
likely need to clean the contents of mailbox from time to time.
7 Click OK.


10 Type the destination e-mail address to which you would like to forward e-
mail.
11 Click OK.

To suspend a mail forwarder:

3 Click the e-mail address, whose forwarding service you wish to suspend.

5 Clear the Redirect check box.
6 Click OK.

To unsuspend a mail forwarder:

3 Click the e-mail address, whose forwarding service you wish to resume.

6 Click OK.

To remove a mail forwarder:

3 Select a check box corresponding to the mail forwarder that you wish to
remove.
5 When prompted, confirm removal and click OK.


Setting Up Mail Forwarding to Multiple E-mail Addresses
To set up an e-mail address that will accept mail and forward it to multiple other e-mail
addresses:


4 Specify the desired name for the mail forwarder next to Mail name.
5 Clear the Mailbox, Control panel access and Enable spam filtering check boxes.
6 Click OK.

7 Click Mail Group.

8 Click Add New Member.
You should add at least one e-mail address before enabling mail forwarding to several e-
mail addresses.
9 Enter the desired external e-mail address into the E-mail input box and/or
select one or more of the local mail accounts listed on the screen.
10 Click OK.

11 Click Enable.

To switch off e-mail forwarding to multiple e-mail addresses:

3 Click the mail forwarder's e-mail address.

4 Click Mail Group.

5 Click Disable.

To add an external e-mail address to the list of mail accounts that receive forwarded e-mail
correspondence:




4 Click Mail Group.

6 Enter the desired external e-mail address into the E-mail input box.
7 Click OK.

To remove an external e-mail address from the list of mail accounts that receive forwarded
e-mail correspondence:


4 Click Mail Group.
5 Select the check box corresponding to the e-mail address that you wish to
unsubscribe.

To add an e-mail address registered on the server to the list of mail accounts that receive
forwarded e-mail correspondence:

3 Click the e-mail address that you wish to add to the list of recipients.

4 Click Groups.
5 Select the required multiple e-mail forwarder in the Available mail groups list.
6 Click Add >>.
7 Click OK.

To remove an e-mail address registered on your server from the list of mail accounts that
receive forwarded e-mail correspondence:


3 Click the e-mail address that you wish to unsubscribe.

4 Click Groups.
5 Select the required multiple e-mail forwarder in the Member of the following
mail groups list.
6 Click << Remove.
7 Click OK.


Setting Up Automatic Reply
If you are going on vacation and will not be able to check your mail for a while, you may want
to leave a vacation notice that will be automatically sent to your correspondents once they send
e-mail to your address. This is done with automatic reply facility, also referred to as
autoresponder. Aside from vacation notices, organizations can use automatic replies to notify
customers that their orders or technical support requests were received and will soon be
processed. Automatic replies can include pre-written messages in plain text or HTML format,
and they can contain attached files as well.

To set up automatic reply for a mailbox:

3 Click the e-mail address, for which you wish to set up an automatic reply.

4 Click the Autoresponders icon in the Tools group.
5 If you are not going to attach any files to the automatic reply, proceed to the
step 6. To attach a file to the automatic reply:

1. Click the Attachment Files icon in the Tools group.
2. Click Browse to locate the file, and once selected, click Send File.
The file will be added to the attachment files storage, and you will be able to attach this
file to a number of different automatic replies.
3. Once finished, click Up Level and proceed to the next step.

6 Click the Add New Autoresponder icon in the Tools group.
7 Configure the automatic reply:
1. Type a name for this automatic reply into the Autoresponder name
box.
For example, Vacation notice.
2. If you want your incoming mail to be forwarded to another e-mail
address while you are away, specify an e-mail address in the Upon
automatic response, forward the original message to the specified e-mail
box.
3. If you want this automatic reply to be sent in reply to any incoming
e-mail message, in the Conditions group, leave the always respond
option selected. If you wish to automatically reply only to e-mail
messages that contain specific words in the message text or subject
line, select the appropriate option, and type the word combination in
the input box.


4. By default, the subject line of incoming e-mail will be inserted into
the automated reply. To use a custom subject, type it into the Reply
subject input box.
5. As your correspondents may not figure out that the message they
received from you was an automatic response, they may want to
respond to your auto-reply. So, you should specify your e-mail
address as the Return address, otherwise, their messages will be
directed at the autoresponder’s address.
6. Specify the automatic reply message format (plain text or HTML) and
character encoding (UTF-8 is recommended). If you use HTML tags
in your auto-reply message, you should select the HTML option.
7. Type your message in the Reply with text field.
8. Attach your files, if needed. To do this, click the Add New Attachment
button, select the check box corresponding to the file that you
previously uploaded to the attachment storage, and click OK. To
remove an attached file from the automatic reply, select the
corresponding checkbox, and click Remove Selected.
9. To limit the number of automated responses per day to the same e-
mail address, enter the desired number in the respective input box
under Limits.
The default setting is to respond no more than ten times in one day to the same e-mail
address.
10. To reduce mail server load, you may want to limit the number of
unique addresses that the autoresponder will remember. To do this,
enter the desired number into the Store up to box.
8 Click OK.


To switch off an automatic reply for a mailbox:

3 Click the e-mail address, for which you wish to switch off the automatic
reply.




The automatic reply is now switched off. Its configuration is not deleted from the control panel,

so the next time you need to use this automatic reply, repeat the above procedure, clicking
Enable on the last step.

To delete an automatic reply configuration that you no longer need:


5 Select a check box corresponding to the configuration name, and click
Remove Selected.

Setting Up Site-wide Preferences for Handling
Mail to Nonexistent Users (Mail Bounce)
When somebody sends an e-mail message to an e-mail address that does not exist under your
domain, the mail server, by default accepts mail, processes it, and when it finds out that there is
no such a recipient under the 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,
Forward all such mail to the desired e-mail address,
Reject such mail without accepting it and without notifying senders.
This setting can decrease mail server load caused by a large amount of spam, which is often
sent to randomly generated user names. However, for spammers, this can somewhat speed
up scanning your mail server for valid e-mail addresses.

To configure the site-wide settings for handling mail to nonexistent users:


4 Choose a desired option and specify the information as required.
5 Click OK.


Introducing Similar Changes to a Number of
Mail Accounts at Once
To introduce similar changes to a number of mail accounts at once:

3 Select the check boxes corresponding to the mail accounts you wish to
modify.
4 Click Group Operations.
5 Adjust the settings as desired:
Select Enable to enable the respective option for all selected mail accounts.
Select Disable to disable the respective option for all mail accounts you selected.
Leave Do not change selected for the options you do not want to modify.
6 Click OK.

Maintaining Mailing Lists
If you wish to deliver offers and promotions to your customers, run a newsletter, or inform
visitors of your site of recent updates, you should set up a mailing list on your site and subscribe
your users to it or invite them to subscribe themselves.

Mailing list is a convenient way to reach a number of readers at once: it contains a list of
subscribers’ e-mail addresses, which are combined under a single e-mail address, to which you
post your information or a newsletter. Mailing lists are provided by the GNU Mailman software,
which may or may not be installed on your server.

To make sure that you can use mailing lists, contact your provider or look it up in the control

panel: go to Home > Mail, click the Mailing lists tab, and see if there is an Add New Mailing
list icon displayed in color.


Setting Up a Mailing List
To create a mailing list:

3 Click the Mailing lists tab.

4 Click the Enable icon in the Tools group to start up the Mailman
software on the server.

5 Click the Add New Mailing List icon in the Tools group.
6 Specify the desired name for the mailing list.
This can be, for example, a department name, a topic of the mailing list, or any other text in
Latin symbols. The name should be short enough to remember. It can comprise
alphanumeric, dash, dot and underscore symbols.
7 Specify the password that will be used for administering the mailing list.
8 Specify the mailing list administrator’s e-mail.
9 Leave the Notify administrator of the mailing list creation check box selected.
You will receive instructions on using and managing the mailing list at the administrator’s
e-mail you specified. Keep that message for your records.
10 Click OK.
To post a newsletter issue or other information to the mailing list, send it by e-mail to the
mailing list’s e-mail address. All subscribed users will receive it.

Configuring a Mailing List
Your mailing list is operable with the default settings. However, you may want to configure it,
for example, so as to enable moderation, filter content of the posts or to archive messages. To do
this from the control panel:

4 Click the icon next to the desired mailing list’s e-mail address.
A login screen opens.
5 Type the list administrator’s password and click Let me in ….

Alternately, you can access the mailing list configuration the following way:


1 In your web browser, enter the following URL: http://lists.<your-
domain.com>/mailman/admin/<listname> (where <your-domain.com> is
your domain name, and <listname> is the name of the mailing list (i.e. the
left part of the mailing list’s e-mail address before the @ sign).
A login screen opens.
2 Type the list administrator’s password and click Let me in ….

Subscribing and Unsubscribing Users
To subscribe users to mailing list:

4 Click the mailing list’s e-mail address.

6 Specify subscriber’s e-mail address.
7 Click OK.

To unsubscribe users from mailing list:

4 Click the mailing list’s e-mail address.
5 Select a check box to the right of the user’s e-mail address.


Posting to Your Mailing List
To post a newsletter issue or other information to the mailing list, send it by e-mail to the
mailing list’s e-mail address. All subscribed users will receive it.

Removing Mailing Lists
To remove a mailing list from site:

4 Select a check box to the right of the mailing list’s e-mail address.


Scheduling Tasks
If you need to run scripts on your site at specific time, use the task scheduler facility on the
server to make the system automatically run the scripts for you.

To schedule a task:

2 Click the Crontab icon in the Hosting group.

3 Click Add New Task.
4 Specify when to run your command.
Minute - enter the value from 0 to 59
Hour - enter the value from 0 to 23
Day of the Month - enter the value from 1 to 31
Month - enter the value from 1 to 12, or select the month from a drop-down box
Day of the Week - enter the value from 0 to 6 (0 for Sunday), or select the day of the
week from a drop-down box
You can schedule the time using the UNIX crontab entry format. In this format, you can
enter several values separated by commas. Two numbers separated by a hyphen mean an
inclusive range. For example, to run a task on the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 20th of a month,
type 4-6,20.
insert an asterisk to specify all values allowed for this field. For example, to run a task
daily, type * in the Day of the Month text box.
To schedule the task to run every Nth period, enter the combination */N, where N is the
legal value for this field (minute, hour, day, month). For example, */15 in the Minute field
schedules the task to start every 15 minutes.
You can type the contracted names of months and days of the week, which are the first three
letters: Aug, Jul, Mon, Sat, etc. However, the contracted names cannot be separated with
commas or used together with numbers.
5 Specify which command to run. Type it into the Command input box.
6 Click OK.

To temporarily suspend execution of scheduled task:

3 Choose a task that you wish to suspend and click on the command name.



To resume execution of scheduled task:

3 Choose a task whose execution you wish to resume and click on the
command name.

4 Click the Enable icon.

To unschedule a task:

3 Select a check box to the right of the task that you wish to unschedule.

117

CHAPTER 8

Monitoring Connections to Control Panel
and FTP Services

To find out who of your customers is logged in to the control panel at the moment:
1 Click Sessions in the navigation pane. All sessions including yours will be
presented and the following details will be displayed:
Type. A type of control panel user who established the session:
1. for client.
2. for domain or Web site owner.
3. for mailbox owner.
Login. The login name the user is logged in as.
IP address. The IP address from which the control panel is accessed.
Logon time. The date and time when the user logged in to the control panel.
Idle time. The time that user was not doing anything in the control panel while being
logged in.

2 To refresh the list of user sessions, click the Refresh icon.
3 To end a user session, select the respective check box and click Remove
Selected, then confirm removal and click OK.

To find out who is connected to your server via FTP, in what directories they currently are
and what files they are uploading to or downloading from the server:
1 Click Sessions in the navigation pane.
2 Click the FTP Sessions tab. All sessions including yours will be presented
and the following details will be displayed:
Type. The type of user who established the session:
1. for users not registered with the control panel.
2. for anonymous FTP users.
3. for domain or web site administrators.
4. for subdomain administrators.
5. for web users (owners of personal web pages without individual domain names).
Status. The current status of FTP connection.
FTP user login. The login name used for access to FTP account.

Monitoring Connections to Control Panel and FTP Services 118

Domain name. The domain the FTP user is currently connected to.
Current location. The directory the FTP user is currently at.
File name. The file name being operated on.
Speed. Transfer speed in kilobytes.
Progress, %. The file transfer operation progress in percentage.
IP address. The IP address from which the FTP account is accessed.
Logon time. The time lapsed since the moment user logged in.
Idle time. The time that user was not doing anything while being connected to the server
through FTP.

3 To refresh the list of FTP sessions, click Refresh.
4 To end a session, select the respective check box and click Remove
Selected.

119

CHAPTER 9

Using Help Desk for Resolving Your
Customers' Issues and Requesting
Assistance from Provider
If your hosting company provides a Help Desk solution integrated with the control panel, then
you can use it to
report your problems to your provider’s technical support staff, and
receive problem reports or requests for assistance from your own customers – Web site
owners.
To check for new tickets from your users, or to view the status of tickets you submitted:
1 Click the Help Desk shortcut in the navigation pane. All tickets submitted by
you and your customers will be listed and the following supplementary
information will be displayed:
Id: identification number assigned by the system upon submission,
Ticket Subject: a summary entered by the ticket reporter,
Ticket Status: new, reopened, closed,
Reporter Type: a type of control panel user account or an e-mail address the ticket came
from - a client, domain administrator, e-mail user with access to control panel, or user
submitted a ticket by e-mail,
Reporter Name: a name of person who submitted the ticket, domain names for tickets
submitted by domain owners, or e-mail addresses for tickets submitted by e-mail,
Modified: the date the ticket was modified - a comment appended, or status changed,
Category: the category to which the ticket is related.
2 To see what is inside a ticket, click a ticket id or ticket subject.

To close a ticket when the issue was resolved or to post your comment:
1 Click the Help Desk shortcut in the navigation pane.
2 Locate the ticket you need and click its subject or identification number.
3 To close, reopen or post a comment to the ticket, select the operation you
would like to perform from the Ticket Event drop-down box, and type a new
comment into the New Comment input field if required.
4 Click OK to submit.

To submit a new problem report to your service provider:

Using Help Desk for Resolving Your Customers' Issues and Requesting Assistance from Provider 120

1 Click the Help Desk shortcut in the navigation pane.

2 Click the Add New Ticket icon in the Tools group.
3 Type the ticket subject, select the category the issue is related to, and type
in the problem description.
4 Click OK.
The ticket is now submitted to the system and sent to your provider. You will be notified by
e-mail when the issue is resolved.

121

Index
Hosting Web Sites • 31
A
I
Accessing Your Mail From a Web Browser •
97 If You Forgot Your Password • 12
Adjusting Preferences for Web Statistics Implementing Hosting Plans • 25
Presentation • 80 Installing Applications • 47
Automating Report Generation and Delivery Installing Java Web Applications • 49
by E-mail • 83 Introducing Similar Changes to a Number of
Mail Accounts at Once • 114
B Introducing Similar Changes to Numerous
Backing Up And Restoring Your Data • 86 Hosting Accounts • 76
Backing Up Individual Domains (Web Sites) • Items in the Desktop View • 17
88 Items in the Standard View • 15
Backing Up Your Account with Your Domains
L
• 87
Becoming Familiar with Plesk's Interface • 14 Logging In to Plesk • 12
C M
Changing FTP Password • 70 Maintaining Mailing Lists • 114
Changing Hosting Type From Virtual Maintaining Your Backup Files Repository •
(Physical) to Forwarding • 75 91
Changing Your Contact Information and Managing Hosting Accounts • 70
Password • 13 Monitoring Connections to Control Panel and
Configuring a Mailing List • 116 FTP Services • 120
Creating Mailboxes • 93
Customizing DNS Zones • 64
O
Customizing Web Server Error Messages • 63 Obtaining a Domain Name • 31
Customizing Your Control Panel In Standard Organizing Site Structure with Subdomains •
View • 18 56
Customizing Your Control Panel in the
Desktop View • 20 P
Plesk Basics • 11
D
Posting to Your Mailing List • 117
Deleting Hosting Accounts • 77 Predefining Content for New Web Sites • 30
Deploying Databases • 44 Preface • 7
Documentation Conventions • 8 Previewing a Site • 43
Protecting Mailboxes From Spam • 98
F
Protecting Mailboxes From Viruses • 103
Feedback • 10 Publishing a Site • 38
Publishing from Microsoft FrontPage • 41
G Publishing from Microsoft FrontPage through
General Conventions • 9 FTP • 42
Publishing from Microsoft FrontPage through
H HTTP • 43
Hosting Personal Web Pages on Your Web
Server • 60

Index 122

Uploading Files Through Plesk File Manager •
R 40
Removing Mailboxes • 105 Uploading Files Through SSH Connection • 41
Removing Mailing Lists • 117 Using E-mail Services • 92
Renewing Hosting Accounts • 73 Using Help Desk for Resolving Your
Restoring Data From Backup Archives • 90 Customers' Issues and Requesting
Restricting Access to Web Server's Resources Assistance from Provider • 122
with Password Protection • 54 Using Wizards • 17
S V
Scheduling Backups • 89 Viewing Raw Log Files • 85
Scheduling Tasks • 118 Viewing Resource Allotments and Hosting
Securing E-commerce Transactions with Features Included in Your Hosting Package •
Secure Sockets Layer Encryption • 50 22
Serving Domain Names for Sites Hosted on Viewing Statistics • 78
Other Servers (Domain Forwarding) • 67
W
Serving Sites with External Domain Name
Servers • 68 What's New in This Version of Your Plesk
Setting Up a Mailing List • 115 Control Panel • 8
Setting Up Additional Disposable E-mail Who Should Read This Guide • 7
Addresses (Mail Aliases) • 98
Setting Up Additional Domain Names for a
Site (Domain Aliases) • 58
Setting Up Anonymous FTP Access to the
Server • 62
Setting Up Automatic Reply • 111
Setting Up Hosting Account for a Web Site •
33
Setting Up Mail Forwarders • 106
Setting Up Mail Forwarding to Multiple E-
mail Addresses • 108
Setting Up Site-wide Preferences for Handling
Mail to Nonexistent Users (Mail Bounce) •
113
Setting Up Spam Filter • 99
Setting Up Your E-mail Program for
Retrieving Mail from Your Mailbox • 95
Shell Prompts in Command Examples • 9
Subscribing and Unsubscribing Users • 117
Suspending and Unsuspending Hosting
Accounts • 74
Suspending and Unsuspending Mailboxes •
104
Switching off the Mailbox Service When You
Have Decided to Turn Your Account into a
Mail Forwarder • 105
T
Typographical Conventions • 8
U
Upgrading Hosting Accounts • 71
Uploading Files Through FTP • 39

Plesk 8 Client's Guide

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