Parallels Administrator's Guide Plesk Panel 11.5 Ag En

User Manual: parallels Plesk Panel - 11.5 - Administrator's Guide Free User Guide for Parallels Plesk Software, Manual

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Parallels Panel

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Contents
After Upgrading to Panel 11.5

Upgrade from Earlier Panel Versions .......................................................................................... 11
Upgrade from Small Business Panel........................................................................................... 14
Differences between SBP and Panel 11 ........................................................................... 14

About Parallels Plesk Panel

About Panel Users....................................................................................................................... 19
The Panel GUI ............................................................................................................................. 20
Interface Views .................................................................................................................. 24
Customizing Power User View .......................................................................................... 25

Web Servers

Apache Web Server (Linux) ........................................................................................................ 28
Apache with nginx ............................................................................................................. 30
Adjusting Apache Settings for Virtual Hosts ..................................................................... 34
Adjusting nginx Settings for Virtual Hosts ......................................................................... 35
Optimizing Apache Web Server ........................................................................................ 38
IIS Web Server (Windows) .......................................................................................................... 41
Adjusting IIS Settings for Websites ................................................................................... 42
IIS Application Pool ........................................................................................................... 42

Web Hosting

Website Directory Structure ........................................................................................................ 44
Defining a Custom Virtual Host Template ......................................................................... 45
Virtual Host Structure (Linux) ............................................................................................ 45
Virtual Host Structure (Windows) ...................................................................................... 47
Website Preview .......................................................................................................................... 50
PHP Configuration ....................................................................................................................... 50
PHP Handlers.................................................................................................................... 52
Custom PHP Configuration ............................................................................................... 54
Multiple PHP Versions ................................................................................................................. 58
Configuring ASP.NET (Windows) ................................................................................................ 60

DNS

63
Server-Wide DNS Template ........................................................................................................ 64
Adjusting DNS Template ................................................................................................... 65
Applying DNS Template Changes (Linux) ........................................................................ 68
DNS Zones for Subdomains ........................................................................................................ 69
Configuring the Recursive DNS .................................................................................................. 70
Restricting DNS Zones Transfer ................................................................................................. 71
Restricting Users' Access to Other Users' DNS Zones ............................................................... 71
Using BIND Instead of Microsoft DNS (Windows) ...................................................................... 72
Switching Off the DNS Service .................................................................................................... 72
Using External DNS Servers ....................................................................................................... 72
Panel Without a DNS Server ....................................................................................................... 74

After Upgrading to Panel 11.5

Mail

75
Configuring Server-Wide Mail Settings ....................................................................................... 77
Using Panel Without the Mail Server........................................................................................... 79
Removing Mail Functionality from the Control Panel .................................................................. 81
Using Other Mail Server Software ............................................................................................... 82
Antispam Tools ............................................................................................................................ 83
SpamAssassin Spam Filter ............................................................................................... 85
DomainKeys Protection ..................................................................................................... 88
DNS Blackhole Lists .......................................................................................................... 90
Server-wide Black and White Lists.................................................................................... 90
Sender Policy Framework System (Linux) ........................................................................ 92
Greylisting (Linux) ............................................................................................................. 93
Outbound Spam Protection ......................................................................................................... 94
Installing Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam ............................................................. 95
Configuring Protection ....................................................................................................... 96
Antivirus Software...................................................................................................................... 100
Webmail Software ..................................................................................................................... 102
Mailing Lists (Linux) ................................................................................................................... 103
Preventing Mass Email Sending (Linux) ................................................................................... 104
Mail Queue (Linux) .................................................................................................................... 104
Mass Email Notifications ........................................................................................................... 105
Creating, Editing and Removing Message Templates .................................................... 106
Sending E-mail Notices ................................................................................................... 108
Configuring Email Notifications ................................................................................................. 109

Database Servers

112

Adding and Removing Database Servers ................................................................................. 114
Configuring Backup Settings for Remote SQL Servers ............................................................ 116
Changing Database Administrator's Credentials....................................................................... 117
Database Hosting Preferences ................................................................................................. 118
Database Management Tools ................................................................................................... 119
Connecting to External Databases (Windows) .......................................................................... 120

Server Administration

121

IP Pool ....................................................................................................................................... 122
Scheduling Tasks ...................................................................................................................... 126
Scheduling Tasks on Linux-based Servers ..................................................................... 127
Scheduling Tasks on Windows-based Servers............................................................... 129
Server Settings .......................................................................................................................... 131
System Services ........................................................................................................................ 132
System Date and Time .............................................................................................................. 134
Firewall ...................................................................................................................................... 135
The Panel Firewall (Linux) .............................................................................................. 135
The Panel Firewall (Windows) ........................................................................................ 136

Panel Administration

138

Panel Licensing ......................................................................................................................... 139
Installing a Panel License Key ........................................................................................ 140
Installing Additional License Keys for Panel Add-ons ..................................................... 141
Upgrading Your License Key .......................................................................................... 142
Rolling Back to Your Previously Used License Key ........................................................ 142
Securing Panel .......................................................................................................................... 142
Restricting Administrative Access ................................................................................... 143

After Upgrading to Panel 11.5

Restricting Remote Access via API RPC ........................................................................ 144
Setting Up the Minimum Password Strength .................................................................. 144
Turning On the Enhanced Security Mode ....................................................................... 145
Using Secure FTP ........................................................................................................... 146
SSL Protection ................................................................................................................ 146
Panel and Network Environments ............................................................................................. 151
Ports Used by Panel ....................................................................................................... 152
Running Panel Behind a Router with NAT ...................................................................... 153
Configuring Port Range for Passive FTP Mode (Windows) ............................................ 154
Setting Up Help Desk ................................................................................................................ 155
Trial (Try and Buy) Mode for Presence Builder ......................................................................... 157
Configuring the Try and Buy for Existing Customers ...................................................... 160
Configuring the Try and Buy for Potential Customers .................................................... 161
Customizing Trial Mode Notifications .............................................................................. 162
Offering the Try and Buy with Alternative Billing Solutions ............................................. 165
Changing Your Password and Contact Information .................................................................. 168
If Your Panel Works with Parallels Customer and Business Manager ........................... 169
Appearance and Branding ......................................................................................................... 170
Appearance ..................................................................................................................... 170
Branding and Themes ..................................................................................................... 176
Panel Components .................................................................................................................... 176
Web Applications ....................................................................................................................... 177
How Apps Become Available to Your Customers ........................................................... 181
Application Vault ............................................................................................................. 183
Session Preferences ................................................................................................................. 187
Managing Panel from Mobile Devices ....................................................................................... 188
Panel Inside Parallels Virtuozzo Containers ............................................................................. 192
Remote Access (Windows) ....................................................................................................... 194
Additional Administrator Accounts............................................................................................. 195
Creating Additional Administrator Accounts .................................................................... 196
Modifying Additional Administrator Accounts .................................................................. 196
Suspending and Activating Additional Administrator Accounts ...................................... 197
Removing Additional Administrator Accounts ................................................................. 197
Event Tracking........................................................................................................................... 198
Adding Event Handlers (Linux) ....................................................................................... 199
Adding Event Handlers (Windows) ................................................................................. 200
Removing Event Handlers .............................................................................................. 201
Migration from Other Hosting Platforms .................................................................................... 202
Data Transfer from Another Panel ............................................................................................ 202
Panel Extensions (Linux) ........................................................................................................... 203
Counter-Strike Game Server Extension .......................................................................... 204
File Server Extension ...................................................................................................... 215
Firewall Extension ........................................................................................................... 223
Watchdog (System Monitoring) Extension ...................................................................... 230
VPN Extension ................................................................................................................ 242

Panel Updates and Upgrades

248

Panel Updates ........................................................................................................................... 249
Panel Upgrades ......................................................................................................................... 251
Changing the Updates/Upgrades Source ................................................................................. 253
Reporting Upgrade Problems .................................................................................................... 254

Statistics and Monitoring

255

Action Logs ................................................................................................................................ 256
Setting Up Action Logging............................................................................................... 257
Downloading the Action Log ........................................................................................... 257
Clearing the Action Log ................................................................................................... 258

After Upgrading to Panel 11.5

Viewing Statistics....................................................................................................................... 259
Automating Report Generation and Delivery by E-mail .................................................. 260
Viewing Virus and Spam Protection Statistics (Windows) .............................................. 261
About Disk Space Usage Calculation ............................................................................. 262
Server Health Monitor ............................................................................................................... 266
Installing Health Monitor .................................................................................................. 266
Tracking Server Health ................................................................................................... 266
Accuracy of Health Monitor Values ................................................................................. 268
Configuring Alarms, Trends, and E-mail Notifications .................................................... 268
Updating Health Parameters After Hardware Change .................................................... 268
Monitoring Connections to Panel .............................................................................................. 269
Monitoring User Sessions ............................................................................................... 269
Monitoring FTP Users Sessions...................................................................................... 270
Monitoring Terminal Connections (Windows) ................................................................. 271

Backup and Restoration

272

Configuring Global Backup Settings.......................................................................................... 274
Configuring Panel for Using FTP Repository ............................................................................ 275
Backing Up the Entire Server .................................................................................................... 276
Backing Up Individual Accounts and Sites ................................................................................ 276
Scheduling Backups .................................................................................................................. 277
Restoring Data from Backup Archives ...................................................................................... 279
Downloading Backup Files from Server .................................................................................... 281
Uploading Backup Files to Server ............................................................................................. 281
Removing Backup Files from Server ......................................................................................... 282
Backup Logs .............................................................................................................................. 282

Shared Files and Folders

283

File Sharing Settings ................................................................................................................. 284
Sharing and Protecting Files ..................................................................................................... 285
Sharing Files with Other Users Within the Organization ................................................. 286
Publishing Files for Partners ........................................................................................... 287
Publishing Files for Your Customers ............................................................................... 289
Uploading Your Files to a Private Directory on the Server ............................................. 290
Transferring Large Files that Cannot Be Sent by E-mail ................................................ 291
Accessing and Working with Files................................................................................... 292

Customers and Resellers

303

Hosting Plans and Subscriptions ............................................................................................... 305
Relationship Between Plans and Subscriptions .............................................................. 306
Setting Up Hosting Plans ................................................................................................ 308
Setting Up Add-on Plans ................................................................................................. 311
Subscribing Customers to Plans ..................................................................................... 312
Managing Customers ...................................................................................................... 314
Managing Subscriptions .................................................................................................. 317
Serving Non-Technical Customers ................................................................................. 321
Reseller Plans ........................................................................................................................... 322
Setting Up Reseller Plans ............................................................................................... 323
Subscribing Resellers to Plans ....................................................................................... 323

Website Management

324

Quick Start with Parallels Panel ................................................................................................ 326
Set Up Your First Website ............................................................................................... 327
Set Up Mail Accounts ...................................................................................................... 331

After Upgrading to Panel 11.5

View Site Visit Statistics .................................................................................................. 350
Customer Account Administration ............................................................................................. 350
Changing Your Password and Contact Information ........................................................ 354
Viewing Subscription Summary ...................................................................................... 355
Managing Account Balance and Invoices ....................................................................... 362
Ordering More Resources ............................................................................................... 366
Viewing Statistics ............................................................................................................ 368
(Advanced) Managing Auxiliary User Accounts .............................................................. 370
Websites and Domains ............................................................................................................. 377
Domains and DNS .......................................................................................................... 378
Hosting Settings .............................................................................................................. 395
Website Content .............................................................................................................. 413
(Advanced) Restricting Access to Content ..................................................................... 418
Previewing Websites ....................................................................................................... 420
Web Applications ............................................................................................................ 421
(Advanced) Website Security .......................................................................................... 429
(Advanced) Extended Website Management ................................................................. 435
Creating Sites with Presence Builder ........................................................................................ 467
Getting Familiar With Presence Builder .......................................................................... 470
Creating a Website .......................................................................................................... 472
Importing Sites from SiteBuilder 4.5................................................................................ 473
Editing Websites ............................................................................................................. 474
Saving and Loading Copies of a Website ....................................................................... 513
Publishing a Website to the Internet ............................................................................... 515
Publishing a Website Copy to Facebook ........................................................................ 516
Viewing Site Visits Statistics, Comments, and New Orders on the Dashboard .............. 518
Deleting Websites ........................................................................................................... 520
FTP Access to Your Websites ................................................................................................... 521
Changing FTP Access Credentials ................................................................................. 521
Adding FTP Accounts ..................................................................................................... 522
Setting Up Anonymous FTP Access ............................................................................... 524
Mail Accounts ............................................................................................................................ 526
Adding Mail Accounts ...................................................................................................... 527
Configuring Mail Account ................................................................................................ 528
(Advanced) Configuring Global Mail Settings ................................................................. 535
Using Mailing Lists .......................................................................................................... 536
Scheduling Tasks ...................................................................................................................... 537
Scheduling Tasks (Linux) ................................................................................................ 538
Scheduling Tasks (Windows) .......................................................................................... 540
Website Databases ................................................................................................................... 542
Creating Databases ........................................................................................................ 543
Accessing Databases ...................................................................................................... 543
Copying Databases ......................................................................................................... 544
Exporting and Importing Databases ................................................................................ 544
Managing Database User Accounts ............................................................................... 545
Accessing Databases with ODBC (Windows) ................................................................. 546
Backing Up and Recovering Websites ...................................................................................... 547
Backing Up Data ............................................................................................................. 548
Managing Backup Files ................................................................................................... 554
Restoring Data ................................................................................................................ 556

Appendix A: Properties of Hosting Plans and Subscriptions

558

Visibility of Hosting Features in the Control Panel .................................................................... 560
Resources ................................................................................................................................. 561
Permissions ............................................................................................................................... 564
Hosting Parameters ................................................................................................................... 568
PHP Settings ................................................................................................................... 571
Web Server (Apache) ................................................................................................................ 571
Mail ............................................................................................................................................ 572

After Upgrading to Panel 11.5

DNS ........................................................................................................................................... 573
Performance .............................................................................................................................. 573
Logs & Statistics ........................................................................................................................ 574
Applications ............................................................................................................................... 574
Additional Services .................................................................................................................... 574

Appendix B: Properties of Reseller Plans and Subscriptions

575

Resources ................................................................................................................................. 576
Permissions ............................................................................................................................... 577
IP Addresses ............................................................................................................................. 577
Applications ............................................................................................................................... 578

Appendix C: Event Parameters Passed by Event Handlers

579

Administrator information updated ............................................................................................ 581
Service stopped ......................................................................................................................... 581
Service started........................................................................................................................... 581
Service restarted ....................................................................................................................... 581
IP address created .................................................................................................................... 581
IP address updated ................................................................................................................... 581
IP address deleted..................................................................................................................... 581
Session settings updated .......................................................................................................... 582
Customer account created ........................................................................................................ 582
Customer account updated ....................................................................................................... 582
Customer account deleted ........................................................................................................ 582
Customer account status updated ............................................................................................. 583
Customer's interface preferences updated ............................................................................... 583
Customer GUID updated ........................................................................................................... 583
Reseller account created ........................................................................................................... 583
Reseller account updated .......................................................................................................... 584
Reseller account deleted ........................................................................................................... 584
Reseller account status updated ............................................................................................... 584
Reseller's interface preferences updated .................................................................................. 584
Reseller's IP pool updated......................................................................................................... 584
Disk space limit for reseller account reached ............................................................................ 584
Traffic limit for reseller account reached ................................................................................... 584
Disk space limit for subscription reached .................................................................................. 585
Traffic limit for subscription reached .......................................................................................... 585
Default domain (the first domain added to a subscription/webspace) created ......................... 585
Default domain (the first domain added to a subscription/webspace) updated ........................ 586
Default domain (the first domain added to a subscription/webspace) deleted ......................... 586
Subscription owner changed ..................................................................................................... 586
Default domain, status updated ................................................................................................. 586
Default domain, DNS zone updated .......................................................................................... 586
Default domain, GUID updated ................................................................................................. 586
Subdomain of a default domain created ................................................................................... 586
Subdomain of a default domain updated .................................................................................. 587
Subdomain of a default domain deleted .................................................................................... 587
Default domain, alias created .................................................................................................... 587
Default domain, alias updated ................................................................................................... 588
Default domain, alias deleted .................................................................................................... 588
Default domain, alias DNS zone updated ................................................................................. 589
Reseller account limits updated ................................................................................................ 589
Subscription limits updated ....................................................................................................... 589
Panel user logged in .................................................................................................................. 589
Panel user logged out ............................................................................................................... 589
Panel user failed to log in .......................................................................................................... 589

After Upgrading to Panel 11.5

Panel user failed to log in through API

589

Mail account created ................................................................................................................. 590
Mail account updated ................................................................................................................ 590
Mail account deleted.................................................................................................................. 590
Mailing list created ..................................................................................................................... 590
Mailing list deleted ..................................................................................................................... 591
Hosting settings created ............................................................................................................ 591
Standard or frame forwarding hosting created .......................................................................... 592
Hosting settings updated ........................................................................................................... 593
Hosting settings deleted ............................................................................................................ 593
Standard or frame forwarding hosting updated ......................................................................... 593
Standard or frame forwarding hosting deleted .......................................................................... 593
Web user account created ........................................................................................................ 593
Web user account updated ....................................................................................................... 594
Web user account deleted ......................................................................................................... 594
Web application installed ........................................................................................................... 594
Web application reconfigured .................................................................................................... 595
Web application uninstalled ....................................................................................................... 595
Web application upgraded ......................................................................................................... 595
License key updated ................................................................................................................. 595
License key expired ................................................................................................................... 595
Database server created ........................................................................................................... 596
Database server updated .......................................................................................................... 596
Database server deleted ........................................................................................................... 596
Database created ...................................................................................................................... 596
Database deleted ...................................................................................................................... 596
Database user account created ................................................................................................ 597
Database user account updated ............................................................................................... 597
Database user account deleted ................................................................................................. 597
Parallels Plesk Panel component updated or added ................................................................ 598
Reseller plan created ................................................................................................................ 598
Reseller plan updated ............................................................................................................... 598
Reseller plan deleted ................................................................................................................. 598
Service plan of reseller created ................................................................................................. 598
Service plan of reseller updated ................................................................................................ 598
Service plan of reseller deleted ................................................................................................. 599
Service plan of administrator created ........................................................................................ 599
Service plan of administrator updated ....................................................................................... 599
Service plan of administrator deleted ........................................................................................ 599

Additional FTP account created

600

Additional FTP account updated

600

Additional FTP account deleted

600

Server health status changed .................................................................................................... 601
Update available ........................................................................................................................ 601
Update installed ......................................................................................................................... 601

CHAPTER 1

After Upgrading to Panel 11.5
This chapter is intended to the users who switched to Panel 11.5 either from Plesk
Panel 9 and earlier or from Parallels Small Business Panel. The chapter describes the
main changes in the business model of Panel 11.5 comparing to these products.

In this chapter:
Upgrade from Earlier Panel Versions ................................................................ 11
Upgrade from Small Business Panel ................................................................. 14

After Upgrading to Panel 11.5

Upgrade from Earlier Panel Versions
Compared to the previous versions of Plesk software (Plesk 9 and earlier), Parallels
Plesk Panel 10 introduces the following changes:


User accounts. In Panel 11, there are no client accounts and domain administrator
accounts. For users who need to resell hosting services and host their own
websites, you will set up reseller accounts. For users who do not need to resell
hosting services, but only host their own websites, you will set up customer
accounts.
Customers can create user accounts in the Panel if they want to allow other users
to access the Panel for managing websites, installed applications, or use e-mail
services. In 11, customers can create any number of users for access to their
Panel, and set up multiple additional FTP accounts for access to the webspace.



Service plans. In Panel 11, there are no reseller, client, or domain templates.
Instead, there are service plans that you create according to your service offerings:
Reseller plans for signing up resellers, and hosting plans, for signing up customers
who do not need to resell services. After plans are created, you create reseller or
customer accounts and subscribe them to the plans - and the users are provisioned
with the necessary resources and authorized to perform operations in the Panel.
The most important change brought in by service plans is that, unlike old Plesk
templates, they are not applied only once, during the initial resources provisioning,
but remain connected to them, so that modifications of a plan change the
provisioned resources and privileges.
In addition to hosting plans, there are also add-on plans. You can use them to
allocate more resources and services to customers.



Subscriptions. Multi-domain hosting subscriptions replace domains. Instead of
creating domains for your customers, you subscribe them to a hosting plan, or, in
other words, you create a subscription for the customer. Actually, not only
customers can be subscribed to hosting services and host their websites and mail,
the Panel administrator and resellers can have their own subscriptions as well,
which they may use for their own purposes.
Subscriptions can be created based on service plans or configured manually.
When subscribing a new customer to your services in Panel 11, you specify a
domain name at the first step. A customer's subscription is always linked to a
domain, which is identified by such attributes as domain name, IP address and
system user account. All subscriptions are named after the domains to which they
are linked. This link is permanent and cannot be broken in any way, so moving a
domain from one subscription to another is impossible. However, you can still
rename domains.
You can host a number of websites under a single subscription, and you can create
several subscriptions for a single customer account.



Allocation of resources. In previous versions of Plesk, resources were allocated to
reseller accounts, client accounts, and domains. In Panel 11, resources are
allocated to resellers and hosting service subscriptions. Customer accounts in
Panel 11 do not get any resource allocations directly, so they cannot redistribute
them among subscriptions that they purchase. All resources allocated to a single
subscription are shared among all websites hosted in the webspace associated with
the subscription.

After Upgrading to Panel 11.5



Two separate panels: Server Administration Panel and Control Panel. System
administration, and customer and reseller account management tasks are
performed in Server Administration Panel. All operations related to managing
websites, hosting features, and mail accounts are performed in Control Panel.
Server Administration Panel provides links for access to Control Panel: You can
use them to log in to Control Panel and manage websites on behalf of your
resellers and customers.



Changes in organization of subdomain-related directories. Due to safety reasons, Panel
now stores content and configuration of hosted subdomains in separate directories:


//, the directory that contains HTTP/HTTPs
documents (unlike the earlier versions that separated HTTP and HTTPS
documents).



///, the service directory that
keeps subdomain configuration. We strongly recommend that you do not
change the content of this directory.

What Happens When You Upgrade or Migrate to Panel 11
When you upgrade or migrate to Panel 11, accounts, domains, users, and domain
templates are transformed according to the following schemes:


Reseller accounts are transferred without changes, and resources are allocated to
them by means of custom subscription, which are not bound to plans.



Client accounts become customer accounts, and after upgrade or migration is
finished, you need to perform either of the following operations to make sure that
the accounts fit in the new business model:


Redistribute former clients' resources among the subscriptions belonging to
them.



Convert customers to resellers and assign the existing subscriptions to them.
This can be done if the customer accounts did not belong to a reseller before
upgrade or migration.



Domains are converted to individual subscriptions. The subscriptions are assigned
to the administrator, resellers, or customers, depending on whom the former
domains belonged to.



Domain administrator accounts are converted to user accounts, which are assigned
to the customers who own the corresponding domains.



Domain templates belonging to the server administrator and resellers are converted
to hosting plans.



Reseller templates are converted to reseller plans.

The following table summarizes the conversion of business objects.
Objects in previous versions of Plesk

Objects in Panel 11

Reseller account

After Upgrading to Panel 11.5

Client account

Customer account

Domain

Subscription (Custom)

Domain administrator account

User account

Reseller template

Reseller plan

Domain template

Hosting plan

After Upgrading to Panel 11.5

Upgrade from Small Business Panel
This chapter is intended for users who have migrated from Parallels Small Business Panel
(SBP) to Parallels Plesk Panel and want to know about changes in management operations,
as well as about new product possibilities. If you want to learn more about the migration
procedure, refer to Installation, Upgrade, and Migration Guide, section Migrating from Parallels Small
Business Panel.
Migration to Panel is almost seamless as Panel allows you to perform the majority of tasks
you did in SBP. The main difference you may find is that some functions are now available in
new locations or have a slightly different effect. Moreover, Panel provides you with a number
of features unavailable in SBP, such as enhanced user role permissions, the Presence
Builder tool, or access to new web apps. Learn more about product differences in the section
Differences between SBP and Panel 11 (on page 14).
After the migration, you will use Panel in Power User view - a replacement of the SBP
interface. Power User view is almost identical to the SBP user interface. Panel in this view is,
in essence, Control Panel with server management capabilities. For more information on
Power User view, refer to the section The Panel GUI (on page 20).

Next in this section:
Differences between SBP and Panel 11 ............................................................ 14

Differences between SBP and Panel 11
User interfaces of SBP and Panel in Power User view are almost identical. Therefore, here
we will discuss only the most important changes to the way you work with Panel.

Next in this section:
Extended User Role Permissions ...................................................................... 15
Presence Builder Tool ....................................................................................... 16
SSL Protection .................................................................................................. 16
Web Apps.......................................................................................................... 17
Extended Mail Management .............................................................................. 17
Other Panel Features ........................................................................................ 17

After Upgrading to Panel 11.5

Extended User Role Permissions
Panel, comparing to SBP, allows more accurate adjustment of user role privileges due to a
larger number of available permissions. For example, Panel allows dividing users on those
who can manage mail accounts and those who can manage company mailing lists. As Panel
has the extended list of permissions, some of SBP permissions can migrate into a number of
related Panel permissions. For better understanding how permissions are migrated, refer to
the table below.
SBP permission

Panel permission

Migration result comments

Manage users

Manage users and roles

The permission is granted, if
one of the SBP permissions is
granted.

Manage roles
Manage websites and
domains

Create and manage sites
Configure log rotation
Configure anonymous FTP service
Create and manage scheduled tasks
Create and manage databases
Configure and perform data backup
and restoration
View statistics
Design sites in Presence Builder
Create and manage additional FTP
accounts
Manage DNS settings
Install and manage Java applications

Change server settings

Manage mail

Create and manage mail accounts

The permission is not migrated,
as Panel allows changing
server settings to users with the
Administrator role only.

Create and manage mailing lists
Update personal
information

The permission is not migrated,
as Panel allows changing
personal information to all
users.

Upload and manage files

By default, this permission is
denied after migration.

Configure spam filter

By default, this permission is
denied after migration.

Configure antivirus

By default, this permission is
denied after migration.

For more information on user role properties, refer to the section User Roles (on page 371).

After Upgrading to Panel 11.5

Presence Builder Tool
While using SBP, you could easily create your own websites with the Site Editor tool. For the
same purposes, Panel provides you with the much more powerful tool, Presence Builder.
Comparing to Site Editor, Presence Builder offers:


New intuitive interface that allows creating websites in less number of steps.



About 100 website templates filled with content that you can use as a basis for your sites.



Additional components that can be easily integrated with your site, such as the online
store or the embedded video.
Integration of your website with Facebook and much more.



For more information on Presence Builder, refer to the section Building Websites with Presence
Builder (on page 467).
Note that websites created in Site Editor are not compatible with Presence Builder.
Nevertheless, if Site Editor is installed in Panel, you can edit such websites with it. In that
case, websites in Websites & Domains list will contain the additional button Edit in SiteBuilder 4 or
Site Editor.

SSL Protection
Panel allows you to secure connections to your websites the same way as you did in SBP.
That means you can obtain SSL certificates in Server > Tools & Settings > SSL Certificates and
assign them to IP addresses in Server > Tools & Settings > IP Addresses. As in SBP, you can
assign only one certificate per IP address. Thus, if your hosting resources include one
shared IP address, you can secure only one website. Panel provides enhanced SSL
protection features that allow you to resolve this problem:


Separate SSL certificates for websites.
If you use Panel on a Linux operating system with the SNI technology support, it is
possible to use authentic SSL certificates for sites hosted on shared IP addresses. In
other words, Panel allows using separate SSL certificate for each website. Learn more
about separate SSL certificates in the section SSL and Shared IP Addresses (Linux) (on page
150).



Shared SSL certificate for a number of websites.
If you use Panel on a Windows operating system, it is possible to use one shared SSL
certificate to secure connections to all sites. In that case, certificate is assigned to a
domain that shares it with others. That domain is called master SSL domain. In other
words, all websites will use common SSL certificate, despite of the fact it is issued to only
one of your websites. Learn more about shared SSL certificates in the section SSL and
Shared IP Addresses (Windows) (on page 150).

The process of assigning an SSL certificate to a website is covered in the section Securing
Connections with SSL Certificates (on page 430).

After Upgrading to Panel 11.5

Web Apps
Comparing to SBP, the app management in Panel has little or no changes. As in SBP, the
list of available web apps is accessed through the Applications tab. For more information on
app management, refer to the section Using Website Applications (on page 421).
Note that the uploading of your own app packages is now performed by means of Application
Vault. Vault is the local Panel repository of web apps. Besides of extending the list of
available apps, it allows you to update apps, configure their server-wide settings, and carry
out some other operations. For more information on Application Vault, refer to the section
Web Applications (on page 177).

Extended Mail Management
Mail management in Panel slightly varies from those in SBP. General mail settings are now
available in Mail > Change Settings, while other settings are located in Server > Settings > Mail.
Comparing to SBP mail functionality, Panel provides a number of additional mail features:




Enhanced spam protection:


Server black and white lists.
Use these lists to always reject or always receive mail from selected servers. Learn
more on black and white mail lists in the section Server-wide Black and White Lists (on
page 90).



Extended SpamAssassin settings.
Panel allows you to configure SpamAssassin more accurately. For example, you have
access to such settings as spam filter sensitivity or SpamAssassin's black and white
lists. Moreover, you can configure spam filter individually for each mail account. Learn
more in the Protecting from Spam (on page 530) section.

Monitoring mail server message queue (on Linux platforms).
This can be helpful when your mail server is overloaded and cannot cope with the amount
of received messages. You can find out the reason that caused the overload using the
mail queue. Learn more about message queue in the section Mail Congestion and Message
Queue (Linux) (on page 104).

Other Panel Features
On top of main changes described above, Panel contains a number of features unavailable
in SBP at all. These are event management, server health monitoring, custom branding
themes and many more. The scope of this chapter does not allow to cover all of them. For
the detailed information on other server management operations, refer to certain sections of
this guide.

CHAPTER 2

About Parallels Plesk Panel
Parallels Plesk Panel is designed to help IT specialists manage web, DNS, mail and
other services through a comprehensive and user-friendly GUI. It is a hosting control
panel, an intermediary between system services and users. For example, when a user
creates a website through the Panel GUI, Panel propagates this request to a web
server, either Apache or IIS, and the latter adds a new virtual host to the system. This
method of administering all system services from a single web interface reduces
maintenance costs and gives administrators more flexibility and control.

How Can I Use Panel?
Panel is an essential instrument for hosting service providers (HSPs) - companies that
sell shared and dedicated hosting accounts. Being installed on a server, Panel enables
HSPs to organize server resources into packages and offer these packages to their
customers. The customers are companies and individuals who need web presence but
do not have the necessary IT infrastructure. Learn more about the Panel intended
audience in the section About Panel Users (on page 19).

Can I Customize Panel to Address My Needs?
Each Panel user group is provided with their own GUI that is customized to fully meet
their needs. Thus, HSPs get tools for offering hosting services, including an integrated
billing solution that automates their business. By contrast, companies that use Panel to
manage their own web infrastructure do not have hosting selling capabilities in their
GUI. Instead, they can perform server management operations (such as system
recovery, web server configuration, and so on). Learn more about the Panel interface
in the section The Panel GUI (on page 20).
Next in this chapter we explain how different user groups should use Panel to gain all
its benefits.

In this chapter:
About Panel Users ............................................................................................ 19
The Panel GUI .................................................................................................. 20

About Parallels Plesk Panel

About Panel Users
Panel is a web hosting panel that targets four user groups:


Power users.
These are companies that buy VPS hosting with preinstalled Panel or deploy it by
themselves on their IT infrastructure. Panel allows such customers not only to
manage various aspects of their web presence but also to have full control over
server management operations, such as server backup, configuration of PHP
settings, and so on. For example, web design studios use Panel as a platform for
web development. Panel allows them to test created websites and present the
results to clients.



Hosting service providers (HSPs).
HSPs use Panel for two main purposes. First, as an easy tool for services
configuration. Thus, providers do not need to separately configure web or FTP
server - everything is done in the Panel GUI. Once services are configured, HSPs
can combine them with server resources (like disk space or traffic) into hosting
packages (service plans). For example, one package can contain a website, mail
accounts, and a number of web applications. These packages are then sold to
HSPs' clients - hosting customers and resellers.



Resellers.
These are companies that resell hosting services provided by HSPs. They use
Panel to buy hosting resources in bulk, and then split the resources into smaller
packages, and sell them to their customers. All server management is performed by
HSPs, allowing resellers to reduce their costs and concentrate on offering services
to end-users.



Customers.
These are the end-users of Panel. By subscribing to one of the hosting plans
offered by an HSP or a reseller, they get access to Panel and manage the services
they have bought. They can create sites, fill them with content, add mail accounts,
and so on.

About Parallels Plesk Panel

The Panel GUI
For convenience, Panel tools for performing server and account management tasks are
divided between two web interfaces called panels: Server Administration Panel and Control
Panel. In earlier Panel versions, each panel had its own unique responsibilities:


The Control Panel focused on web hosting operations and had all means to create and
manage websites, mailboxes, and so on.



The Server Administration Panel was in charge of server maintenance and accounts
management.

If administrators needed to perform a web hosting management task, for example, add a
mailbox under a certain customer’s account, they located the account in the Server
Administration Panel and then opened the account in the Control Panel. As Panel evolved
over time, the border between the panels has become subtle. Now, the only significant
difference between the two panels is that tools for serving customers and resellers are
available only in the Server Administration Panel. As for the other functions, the panels are
quite similar: Both of them allow you to maintain a server and manage web hosting. If you do
not use Panel for selling hosting services, you can choose any of these two panels.
The brief description of each panel is provided below, but before we go into details, we would
like to acquaint you with Panel views because views and panels are tightly connected.

Panel Views
Each Panel user group has its own Panel usage scenarios. The GUI can be configured to
better meet the needs of a certain group by rearranging tools between different web
interfaces and hiding odd tools. For example, power users may prefer to use only the Control
Panel with tools for server management, whereas hosting service providers use both panels
with all available tools; shared hosting customers use the Control Panel without server
management facilities. Such a user-targeted combination of available panels and tools is
called view. Learn more about the views in the section Interface Views (on page 24).

Server Administration Panel

About Parallels Plesk Panel

The Server Administration Panel is the main instrument of hosting providers that allows them
to serve their customers and maintain a server. Here, for example, the administrator creates
new hosting plans and customer accounts, configures server-wide settings of system
services, and so on. In addition, the administrator can set up Panel to manage web hosting
right from the Server Administration Panel (create websites and mail accounts for their
customers, install web apps, and so on). Learn more in the section Interface Views (on page
24).

Control Panel

About Parallels Plesk Panel

The main task of the Control Panel is managing hosting services. Customers use this panel
to add domains and mailboxes, manage website content and so on. The administrator can
use this panel to create their own hosting accounts - webspaces or access customer
accounts. Learn more about webspaces and hosting management in the chapter Web Hosting
Management (on page 324).
Power users also use the Control Panel but in Power User view. In this view, the Control
Panel gets additional capabilities for server administration. Thus, power users can not only
maintain their websites but control various server parameters, for example, switch off unused
Apache modules or perform Panel update. Learn more about interface views in the section
Interface Views (on page 24).

Parallels Plesk Panel Suite Components
In addition to the standard Panel functionality, Parallels Plesk Panel suite offers two optional
components that significantly increase Panel capabilities: Customer & Business Manager
and Presence Builder. These components are tightly integrated with Panel and have their
own user interfaces.


Customer & Business Manager.

About Parallels Plesk Panel

Customer and Business Manager (hereafter referred to as Business Manager) is an
optional solution that automates all business operations, for example, charging customers
and generating invoices. Note that Customer and Business Manager is an optional
component and you may decide to use another solution or perform business operations
manually. Learn more about Business Manager in the Administrator's Guide to Parallels
Customer and Business Manager.


Presence Builder.

Presence Builder is a site building tool that helps customers create polished,
professional-looking web sites in record time based on more than 100 site templates.
Learn more about the tool in the section Building Websites with Presence Builder (on page
467).

Next in this section:
Interface Views .................................................................................................. 24
Customizing Power User View .......................................................................... 25

About Parallels Plesk Panel

Interface Views
As mentioned earlier, each Panel user group carries out their own set of tasks through Panel.
To better meet user needs, Panel offers two interface views: Service Provider and Power
User. These views define what panels you use, what tools are present in these panels, and
how the tools are organized.


Service Provider view.
This view is convenient for HSPs as it is intended for selling hosting services. It has all
the features required to create and manage customer accounts, subscriptions, and
service plans. This view includes the Server Administration Panel and the Control Panel.



Power User view.
This view is the best for power users - those who use Panel solely for personal needs,
such as for maintaining a company portal or a mail server. In this view, both server
administration and hosting services management take place in the Control Panel. As this
view does not assume a reselling service to others is needed, it does not provide facilities
for managing hosting plans, subscriptions, resellers, and customers. Also, as the server
administration functions are included in the Control Panel in this view, the Server
Administration Panel becomes unavailable.
This view can be tailored to needs of an administrator if you select Custom view in the
view selector. For details on how to do the customization, read Customizing Power User View
(see page 25).

You can change the Panel view any time from Tools & Settings > Interface Management.

Hosting Operations in Server Administration Panel
By default, when you want to perform an operation in a certain hosting account (for example,
create a mailbox), you open this account with the link on the Domains or Subscriptions pages.
The account is opened in a new window.
Since Panel 10.4, there has been no need to open hosting accounts in separate windows.
This may be convenient when you want to perform a series of hosting operations on a group
of accounts or you are just accustomed to carrying out all hosting tasks from a single GUI as
in previous Panel versions. You can set Panel to perform all hosting operations in the Server
Administration Panel on the Tools & Settings > Interface Management page. Once you activate
the option, Panel will open hosting accounts in the interface that is similar to the Control
Panel but shown on the current page of the Server Administration Panel.

About Parallels Plesk Panel

Customizing Power User View
Power User view has a subtype, Custom View (available in Tools & Settings > Interface
Management), which serves two main purposes:


To simplify the user experience of administrators who use managed hosting.
Some administrators carry out only basic administration tasks (monitoring system
services, administering user accounts, and so on) leaving more complex tasks, usually
server and services configuration, to the support service of a service provider. This user
group wants to have only tools they really need and hide the other tools.



Make Panel safer and more comfortable.
Administrators can voluntarily revoke some of their permissions to hide the tools they do
not need in everyday operations and return to the full-featured Power User view only if
they need some system tuning (for example, to turn on server backups).

If you go to the Tools & Settings > Custom View Settings page (the Administrative Tools tab), you
can select the tools the administrator will see in this view. The view settings may be
unavailable if the service provider who gave you access to Panel has decided to lock Custom
view.

Locking Custom View and Hiding Custom View Settings
To lock Custom view means to limit the selection of Panel features available to the
administrator and disallow any changes to the features list. Thus, when Custom view is
locked, it is impossible to switch to any other view from the GUI (or API RPC) or change the
Custom view settings. Generally, if you are a service provider, you can make some tools
unavailable to administrators, and, thus, separate Panel administration into two parts:


Day-by-day operations. These operations are performed by the Panel administrator, the
person who purchased the web hosting.



Complex configuration and maintenance. These operations are accomplished by your
support team. Such operations may include configuration of a network, DNS, web server
and so on.

If a Panel administrator needs a certain feature and is unable to find it, your support team
turns this feature on by unlocking Custom view, modifying the view settings, and locking the
view again.
Custom view is locked only through a command-line call of the poweruser utility:
poweruser --on -simple true -lock true
The lock is removed by calling poweruser --on -lock false.

About Parallels Plesk Panel

Custom View and Webspaces
The peculiarity of Custom view is that you can instantly adjust permissions, hosting
parameters, PHP settings, and other webspace parameters of all webspaces you have
created in this view. This is possible because each webspace you create in this view derives
from the artificial Custom service plan that is not visible in the plans list. The settings of this
plan are available in Tools & Settings > Custom View Settings. When you change the settings, the
changes (if possible) are automatically applied to all webspaces under the Custom plan.
Another point that deserves attention is that the Custom plan has a special permission,
Ability to create, remove, and switch among webspaces. If this permission is cleared in the
GUI, it is not possible to create webspaces in Custom view.
If you need to adjust custom view settings through the command-line, use the admin utility.
Learn more about the utility options in Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5 for Linux (Windows): Reference for
Command Line Utilities.

CHAPTER 3

Web Servers
In this chapter:
Apache Web Server (Linux) .............................................................................. 28
IIS Web Server (Windows) ................................................................................ 41

Web Servers

Apache Web Server (Linux)
Parallels Plesk Panel for Linux uses the Apache HTTP Server (http://httpd.apache.org/
http://httpd.apache.org/) for hosting websites. Apache itself does not operate with
websites; it manages virtual hosts - web resources identified either by an IP address or
a host name. When you create a site, Panel adds a new virtual host to Apache so that
the site becomes available through the web server.
By default, to achieve better performance when delivering web content, Apache is
supplemented with another web server - nginx. For the details about how Apache is
integrated with nginx in Panel and how to make Apache a standalone server, see
Apache with nginx (on page 30).

Default Web Server Configuration
The file /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf defines Apache configuration for all virtual
hosts in the system. The configuration files for virtual hosts are on the lowest level of
the configuration files hierarchy. They are included into the Apache configuration file
(last_httpd.conf) through several levels of inclusion using the include directive. The
nginx web server is configured similarly: the /etc/nginx/nginx.conf file includes
the configuration files of all virtual hosts through several levels of inclusion. To learn
about the hierarchy of configuration files, see Web Server Configuration Files in the
Advanced Administration Guide.
Each virtual host in the system has two files - last_httpd.conf and
last_nginx.conf - that define default Apache and nginx configuration for this virtual
host correspondingly. These files (located in
/var/www/vhosts/system//conf/) are generated automatically
based on so-called configuration templates. Therefore, if you want to change the
default web server configuration, you should adjust these template files. Learn how to
do this in the Changing Virtual Hosts Settings Using Configuration Templates in the Advanced
Administration Guide.

Custom Web Server Configuration
Website owners may need custom web server capabilities that are not provided by the
default configuration. For example, unusual types of index files or the restricted access
to the site by IP address. This can be done by overriding the default configuration for
specific customers.
The default web server configuration can be overridden on the following levels:


Service plan
The configuration defined on the service plan level overrides the default
configuration. You can set any Apache and nginx directives for a particular service
plan. These settings are stored in Panel database and will be applied to all
customers’ (plan subscribers’) websites by default. See Web Server (Apache) (on
page 571).

Web Servers



Website (virtual host)
The custom virtual host (website) configuration overrides the configuration defined
in its service plan. When you set Apache and nginx directives for a particular
website, your directives are saved in the vhost.conf, vhost_ssl.conf and
vhost_nginx.conf files (located in
/var/www/vhosts/system//conf/).
You can configure web server settings for a website (virtual host) in two ways:


By specifying your settings in the Control Panel. When you save your changes,
Panel creates corresponding directives in the virtual host configuration files. For
details, see Adjusting Apache Settings for Virtual Hosts (on page 34) and Adjusting
nginx Settings for Virtual Hosts (on page 35).



By editing configuration files manually. For details, refer to the Advanced
Administration Guide, Virtual Host Configuration Files.
Note: Only the Linux user root can add or modify custom Apache and nginx
configuration files manually.

Note that website settings work only for the selected website and are used instead
of the default settings and the service plan level settings.
See the hierarchy of web server settings on the diagram below.

Next in this section:
Apache with nginx ............................................................................................. 30
Adjusting Apache Settings for Virtual Hosts....................................................... 34
Adjusting nginx Settings for Virtual Hosts .......................................................... 35
Optimizing Apache Web Server......................................................................... 38

Web Servers

Apache with nginx
You can improve the work of the web server which hosts customer websites by
installing nginx, a supplementary high-performance web server which is typically used
as a reverse proxy server. This web server was specifically designed for delivering
large amounts of static content (such as images, video, css, xml, and so on). As
opposed to Apache, nginx is much more efficient when it comes to handling a large
number of concurrent connections. Another advantage of this web server compared
with Apache is that nginx has a significantly smaller memory footprint per client
connection.
To leverage all the benefits of nginx, Panel configures it as a reverse proxy server that
stands between the Internet and Apache (see the diagram below). This means that
nginx becomes a frontend web server that processes all incoming requests from site
visitors. The requests are sent to Apache which, in turn, distinguishes requests for
static and dynamic content. If a request is for a static file (such as jpg, css, html, and so
on), Apache passes the request through all registered handlers (applies .htaccess
directory-level configuration, rewrites a URL, and so on) and returns to nginx a
response which contains only the location of the requested file on the file system. nginx
locates the file and sends it to the client. If the request is for a dynamic file (such as a
PHP script), Apache executes the file and sends the response to nginx, which delivers
it to the client.

Web Servers

Such a combination of nginx and Apache gives the following advantages:


The maximum number of concurrent connections to a website increases.



The consumption of server CPU and memory resources decreases.
The maximum effect will be achieved for websites with a large amount of static
content (such as photo galleries, video streaming sites, and so on).



The efficiency of serving visitors who have a slow connection speed (GPRS,
EDGE, 3G, and so on) improves.
For example, a client with a 10 KB/s connection requests a PHP script, which
generates a 100 KB response. If there is no nginx on the server, the response is
delivered by Apache. During the 10 seconds required to deliver the response,
Apache and PHP continue to consume full system resources for this open
connection. If nginx is installed, Apache forwards the response to nginx (the nginxto-Apache connection is very fast as both of them are located on the same server)
and releases system resources. As nginx has a smaller memory footprint, the
overall load on the system decreases. If you have a large number of such slow
connections, use of nginx will significantly improve website performance.

The technical details on how Panel processes HTTP requests with the help of nginx
are provided next in this section. For information on how to turn on the support for
nginx in Panel, refer to the section Installing nginx (on page 34). If you do not want to
use nginx, make Apache your frontend web server following the instructions in the
section Turning off nginx (on page 34).

How Panel with nginx Processes HTTP Requests
To seamlessly integrate nginx with Apache, Panel uses two additional Apache
modules:


mod_aclr2.
This module sets up a handler which runs after handlers of all other Apache
modules (mod_rewrite, .htaccess related modules, mod_php, and so on).
Therefore, if the request is for dynamic content, mod_aclr2 will never get it as the
request will be served by upper-level handlers of certain Apache modules
(mod_php, mod_perl, mod_cgi, and so on). The only exceptions are SSI requests:
once they reach mod_aclr2, it redirects them to proper handlers. If the request is for
a static file, mod_aclr2 searches for the exact file location on the file system and
sends the location to nginx.



mod_rpaf.
From the point of view of Apache, all of its clients have the same IP address - the
address of the nginx server (see the diagram above). This causes problems for
websites and web apps that use client IP addresses for authentication, statistic
purposes, and so on. mod_rpaf solves the problem by replacing the IP address of
the nginx server in all requests with client IP addresses. In more detail, the module
uses the special X-Forwarded-For header in which nginx puts the IP address of a
client.

Let us take a closer look at how Panel processes requests for static and dynamic
content with the help of these modules.

The sequence of processing an HTTP request for a static file is as follows (see the
diagram):

Web Servers

1. A client sends a request to a web server.
2. nginx adds the X-Accel-Internal (used by mod_aclr2) and X-Forwarded-For (which
contains the IP address of the client) headers to the request and sends the request
to Apache.
3. Apache receives the request and starts to process it by registered handlers (applies
.htaccess configuration, rewrites URL, and so on). In this step, mod_rpaf
replaces the IP address of the nginx server in the REMOTE_ADDR Apache
variable with the client's address from the X-Forwarded-For header.
4. After the request is processed by all registered handlers, it reaches mod_aclr2. The
handler checks for the X-Accel-Internal header presence. If the header is present,
the module sends to nginx a response with zero content length and the X-AccelRedirect header. This header contains the exact location of the file as determined
by mod_aclr2.
5. Once nginx receives the response, it locates the file and delivers it to the client.
The diagram below is an example of how Panel handles a request for a 2 KB GIF file.

Web Servers

In the case of processing requests for dynamic content, the steps from 1 to 3 are the
same. Then the request passes to the handler of the appropriate Apache module
(mod_php, mod_perl, mod_cgi, and so on). The request never reaches mod_aclr2
(except for SSI requests). The handler generates a response and sends it to nginx,
which, in turn, delivers the response to the client. The diagram below illustrates how
Panel processes a request for a PHP file.

Next in this section:
Installing nginx .................................................................................................. 34
Turning off nginx ............................................................................................... 34

Web Servers

Installing nginx
If you perform a clean installation of Panel 11, nginx will be turned on by default. If you
upgrade from earlier versions, you can add the nginx component at any time after the
upgrade in Tools & Settings > Updates & Upgrades > Add Components. Once the component
is added, you should run the Reverse Proxy Server (nginx) service in Tools & Settings >
Services Management.
You can view the version of the installed nginx server in Tools & Settings > Server
Components.

Turning off nginx
To return to the configuration with a single Apache web server, stop the Reverse Proxy
Server (nginx) service in Tools & Settings > Services Management.
To make nginx the frontend web server again, start the Reverse Proxy Server (nginx)
service.
Note: The start and stop operations for the Reverse Proxy Server (nginx) service do not
only start and stop nginx, they actually switch the web server configuration (nginx and
Apache combination or just Apache as a frontend web server). The restart operation
works in the same way as for all other services: the nginx service is restarted.

Adjusting Apache Settings for Virtual Hosts
You can customize Apache configuration for a particular website in the Control Panel
on the Websites & Domains > > Web Server Settings page.

Adjusting Common Apache Settings
The section Common Apache settings contains the settings that website owners typically
want to adjust. For example, to add custom index files or restrict access to the site by
IP address. For each parameter, you can either type a custom value, or use the default
Apache configuration (by selecting the Default value).
Note: As opposed to other web server settings, the Deny access to the site parameter
does not override but supplements the list of IP addresses provided in the default
configuration. In case of a conflict (for example, when you allow the address that is
denied in the default configuration), your values will be used.

Web Servers

Adjusting Additional Apache Directives
To add Apache directives for a website that are not available in the Common Apache
settings, use the Additional directives for HTTP and Additional directives for HTTPS fields.
When editing the fields, use the syntax as in httpd.conf. For example, if you want to
set a custom error page, add the line:
ErrorDocument 401 /my_error_page.html

Important: Your customers cannot view and edit these fields.

Adjusting nginx Settings for Virtual Hosts
By default, the Apache web server is working in conjunction with nginx. The benefits
are that web pages load faster and server resources are saved. To learn how Apache
and nginx collaborate by default, see Apache with nginx (on page 30).
For any website, you can change the default way of Apache and nginx collaboration.
More exactly, you can specify which web content (static or dynamic) should be
processed by each of the servers. This can help optimize the performance of highly
loaded web applications that have a lot of dynamic content (PHP files) or a lot of static
content. The corresponding settings are available in the Control Panel on the Websites &
Domains > > Web Server Settings page.
Note: nginx-related settings are available only if nginx is turned on.
The diagrams below show all the possible configurations and provide comments on
pros and cons of each configuration.

Processing Static Content
The following table shows how Panel will handle the request for a 2KB GIF image file
depending on the ngienx configuration.

Web Servers

Smart static files
processing is turned on

I
t
r

T
w
T
b

Smart static files
processing is turned off

n
r
w
t
i

T
A
t
r
e
f
The GIF file extension
is included into Serve
static files directly by
nginx

Processing Dynamic Content
The following table shows how Panel will handle the request for a PHP file depending
on the nginx configuration.

T
p
f

N
r
t
m
r
w

Web Servers

Process PHP by nginx is
turned off

I
t
r

T
w
r

D
s
f
C
c
v
Process PHP by nginx is
turned on

n
u
T
e
w
o
w

N
r
t
m
n
.
r
a

Important: To make the option Process PHP by nginx available, you should install PHPFPM support for nginx. For details on installing PHP-FPM support, refer to the section
PHP Handlers (on page 52).

Setting Up Additional nginx Directives
To add custom nginx directives for a website, use the Additional nginx directives field.
When editing the field, use the syntax as in nginx.conf. For example, if you want to
pack all the proxied requests with gzip, add the line:
gzip_proxied any;

Note that your customers cannot view and edit the Additional nginx directives field.

Web Servers

Optimizing Apache Web Server
To increase the performance of your Apache web server, you can employ the following
practices:


Switching on and off Apache modules allows decreasing the server resource
consumption by using only Apache modules that you really need for proper
functioning of websites on your server.



Running Apache with piped logs increases the website density on the server.



Setting up the Apache restart interval allows you to decrease the number of Apache
restarts.

Next in this section:
Switching On and Off Apache Modules ..............................................................39
Running Apache with Piped Logs ......................................................................40
Setting Up the Apache Restart Interval ..............................................................41

Web Servers

Switching On and Off Apache Modules
You can switch off the Apache web server modules that are not critical to hosting
services in Tools & Settings > Apache Web Server. This will allow you to reduce server
resources consumption (for example, get the smaller RAM footprint that is critical to
VPS) and, as a result, provide for more hosting customers on a server.
Note that some modules are interdependent and can be switched off (on) only when
the modules they depend on are off (on). For example, the cache module depends on
disk_cache, file_cache, and mem_cache modules. This means that you cannot switch
off the cache until its three dependent modules are off.
Caution: This feature is for advanced users only. Toggle modules only if you
completely understand the consequences of your actions. Note that some
modifications may reduce Apache performance or even lead to it becoming inoperable.
In addition, these changes may affect certain Panel functions. For example, if you turn
off mod_perl or mod_php, the Perl and PHP scripts (including webmail) will stop
working on websites. This may cause a situation in which you offer a feature that does
not work in a service plan.
Depending on your operating system, the following Apache modules are always
enabled:
Debian or Ubuntu:


env



auth_digest



authn_file




authz_host
authz_user



actions



alias



dav



dav_fs



mime



ssl

Redhat or CentOS:


env



auth_digest



authn_file




authz_host
authz_user



actions



alias



autoindex

Web Servers



dav




dir
log_config



mime



negotiation




setenvif
ssl

SUSE:


env



auth_digest



authn_file



authz_host



authz_user




actions
alias



dav



dir



log_config

Running Apache with Piped Logs
If you are going to host more than 300 domains or web sites on your server, we
recommend that you switch on the support for piped logs in the Apache web server. By
default, Apache restarts when it needs to process log files, for example, rotate them.
When the number of websites on your server is about 300 or more, this will slow down
the server because of frequent Apache restarts. If you switch on the support for piped
logs, Apache will write error and access logs through a pipe to another process instead
of direct writing to log files. This lets Apache work without restarting every time it
processes the logs.
You can switch on the support for piped logs using the Tools & Settings > Apache Web
Server > Piped Logs option.
Note: If the number of websites you plan to host on your server exceeds 900, you
should recompile Apache with more file descriptors as described in the section
Recompiling Apache with More File Descriptors of the Advanced Administration Guide.

Web Servers

Setting Up the Apache Restart Interval
When users perform operations with domains and subdomains (such as creating,
removing, or changing their configurations), the changes take effect only after the
restart of Apache.
If you want to avoid too many Apache restarts, you can set a fixed interval of time in
which Panel should restart Apache. Note that if the interval is 0 seconds, Apache
restarts immediately after each change. It is recommended to always set this interval to
more than 0 seconds, especially if users perform a lot of operations with domains and
subdomains through Panel.
If during the specified interval of time no changes were made with domains, Apache
will not restart.

IIS Web Server (Windows)
Parallels Plesk Panel for Windows uses the IIS HTTP Server (http://www.iis.net/) for
hosting and managing websites.
IIS manages websites - web resources identified either by an IP address or a host
name. When you create a site, Panel adds a new virtual host to IIS so that the site
becomes available for browsers through the web server.

Default Web Server Configuration
The default IIS configuration is defined by the hosting provider using IIS tools such as
IIS Manager. The default configuration is applied to all websites on the server.
However, a number of configuration parameters can be changed for individual websites
right in the Panel UI.

Custom Web Server Configuration
Website owners may need custom web server capabilities that are not provided by the
default configuration. For example, unusual types of index files or the restricted access
to the site by IP address.
You or site owners can configure web server settings for a website by specifying IIS
settings in the Control Panel. The custom website configuration overrides the default
configuration. For details about custom IIS configuration, see Adjusting IIS Settings for
Websites (on page 42).

Next in this section:
Adjusting IIS Settings for Websites .................................................................... 42
IIS Application Pool ........................................................................................... 42

Web Servers

Adjusting IIS Settings for Websites
You or site owners can customize IIS configuration for a particular website in the
Control Panel in Websites & Domains > select a domain > Web Server Settings. All the
settings are divided into three groups:


Common Settings
The section Common settings contains the settings that website owners typically
want to adjust. For example, to add custom index files or allow directory browsing.
For each parameter, you can either type a custom value, or use the default IIS
configuration (by selecting the Default value).



Directory Security Settings
The settings in the section Directory security settings allow you to enforce HTTPS
connections and to prohibit anonymous access to the site.



Access Restriction Settings
The settings in the section Access restriction settings allow you to control access to
the website by IP addresses.
Note: As opposed to other web server settings, the Deny access to the site parameter
does not override but supplements the list of IP addresses provided in the default
configuration. In case of a conflict (for example, when you allow the address that is
denied in the default configuration), your values will be used.

IIS Application Pool
IIS application pool serves websites and web applications hosted on your server.
Dedicated IIS application pool allows your customers to have a level of isolation
between websites. Since each dedicated application pool runs independently, errors in
one application pool belonging to one user will not affect the applications running in
other application pools dedicated to other users.
By default, Parallels Plesk Panel offers a shared application pool for all users.
However, users can use dedicated application pools if this option is provided by the
hosting package.
IIS application pool can work in the following two modes:


Shared pool - one pool is used for all users and websites by default.



Dedicated pool - separate pool for every customer is provided. It is also possible to
allocate per-package pools within the customer's pool, that will isolate running
websites hosted under a particular package from other customer's websites.

 To change the IIS application pool working mode:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > IIS Application Pool.
2. Select the Global Settings tab.
3. Select the required mode and click OK.

Web Servers

 To limit the amount of CPU resources that the IIS application pool can
use:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > IIS Application Pool.
2. Select the Switch on CPU monitoring checkbox and provide a number (in
percents) in the Maximum CPU use (%) field.
3. Click OK.

 To stop all applications running in the server application pool:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > IIS Application Pool.
2. Click Stop.

 To start all applications in the application pool:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > IIS Application Pool.
2. Click Start.

 To restart all applications running in the application pool:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > IIS Application Pool.
2. Click Recycle. This can be handy if some applications are known to have
memory leaks or become unstable after working for a long time.

CHAPTER 4

Web Hosting
Web hosting configuration implies adjustment of a number of web server settings and
settings of other related services. Thus, on Panel for Linux, you can switch off unused
Apache modules; for IIS server, you can configure its application pool.

In this chapter:
Website Directory Structure ............................................................................... 44
Website Preview ............................................................................................... 50
PHP Configuration............................................................................................. 50
Multiple PHP Versions ....................................................................................... 58
Configuring ASP.NET (Windows) ...................................................................... 60

Website Directory Structure
When someone creates a website, Panel not only adds a new virtual host to the web
server but also creates the site’s directory structure and fills the directories with certain
initial content. These directories are located in the corresponding virtual host
directories:


On Linux: /var/www/vhosts/



On Windows: C:\inetpub\vhosts\

here is the website's domain name. The directory structure is defined by
the default virtual host template (see the sections Virtual Host Structure (Linux) (on page
45) and Virtual Host Structure (Windows) (on page 47) for details).
If you want to change the files and directories included in new sites, for example, you
want to add scripts or change the error pages, you can define a custom virtual host
template. Resellers can also customize virtual host templates for their customers.
Note: Subdomains have the same status as domains and employ the same directory
structure. Thus, they have a separate directory in /var/www/vhosts and their own
configuration files, such as php.ini or vhost.conf.

Next in this section:
Defining a Custom Virtual Host Template .......................................................... 45
Virtual Host Structure (Linux) ............................................................................ 45
Virtual Host Structure (Windows)....................................................................... 47

Web Hosting

Defining a Custom Virtual Host Template
 To define a custom virtual host template:
1. On your local file system, create the following directories:


cgi-bin if you want to include custom scripts in the template.



httpdocs if you want to include custom documents such as web pages or
images.



error_docs if you want to include custom error messages.

2. Place the files you need in the corresponding directories.
You can use the default files stored in the /var/www/vhosts/.skel/0 on Linux
or C:\inetpub\vhosts\.skel\0 on Windows.

3. Pack the directories into an archive 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. If you include other directories or files in the root of the archive, Panel
will not add them to the template.

4. Upload the archive to Panel on the Tools & Settings > Virtual Host Template
page.
To switch back to the default virtual host template, go to Tools & Settings > Virtual Host
Template and click the Default button.

Virtual Host Structure (Linux)
The table below shows the list of directories that Panel creates for each virtual host.
Note that Panel does not add all the directories by default. It creates some of the
directories only when the website owner needs them. Such directories are marked as
created On demand. For example, after a customer adds a website, it does not have the
/web_users directory. Panel will create it only after the customer adds his first web
user.
The following table lists subdirectories of a virtual host directory
/var/www/vhosts/:
Directories Tree

Description

Created

User

Group

Permissions

user

root

755

/anon_ftp

user

psaserv

750

Anonymous FTP files On demand

/error_docs

root

psaserv

755

Error message files

Always

user

psaserv

755

user

psaserv

750

HTTP documents

Always

.html
/httpdocs

Always

Web Hosting

/cgi-bin

user

psacln

755

CGI scripts

Always

root

777

Link to
../system/
/logs

Always

/logs
/bin

root

755

Chroot environment
directories

On demand

/dev

root

755

/etc

root

755

/lib

root

755

/tmp

root

755

/usr

root

755

/var

root

755

/web_users

root

755

Web users' directory

On demand

/ user

psaserv

750

Web user directory

On demand

user

psaserv

750

HTTP and HTTPs
documents of a
subdomain

On demand

user

psaserv

750

HTTP and HTTPs
documents of an
additional domain

On demand

The following table lists directories created for a virtual host in the
/var/www/vhosts/system/:
Directories Tree

User

Group

Permissions

root

psaserv

744

/conf

root

psaserv

750

/etc

root

755

/logs

psaadm psacln

/pd

root

Description

Created
Always

Configuration files.

Always

Configuration files

Always

750

Virtual host logs

Always

psaserv

750

Passwords to
Always
protected directories

d..@ root

psaserv

310

Always

root

psaserv

550

Statistics directory

Always

/anon_ftpstat

root

755

Anonymous FTP
statistics.

Always

/ftpstat

root

755

FTP user statistics

Always

/logs

root

777

Link to /logs

Always

/webstat

root

755

HTTP user statistics Always

/statistics

Web Hosting
/webstat-ssl

root

HTTPS user
statistics

755

Always

Differences from Previous Versions
The structure described above was introduced in Panel 11.5. It has the following
differences compared to the structure of earlier Panel versions:


Some directories are created on demand. Previously, all the directories were
created by default.



The following directories were moved from /var/www/vhosts/ to
/var/www/vhosts/system/:
Old Location

New Location

Comment

//conf

/system//conf

Configuration files

//pd

/system//pd

Passwords to protected directo

/system//statistics

Statistics directory

/system//logs

Virtual host logs

//statistics

//statistics/logs



The following directories are not included in Panel virtual hosts:


/httpsdocs



/subdomains



/private

Virtual Host Structure (Windows)
The table below shows the list of directories that Panel creates for each virtual host.
Note that Panel does not add all the directories by default. It creates some of the
directories only when the website owner needs them. Such directories are marked as
created On demand. For example, after a customer adds a website, it does not have the
/web_users directory. Panel will create it only after the customer adds their first web
user.
Directories Tree
\

User
Permissions

Description

Created

None
\.plesk

List contents
\statistics\\

List contents
\anon_ftpstat List contents

Always
Statistics
directory

Always

Anonymous Always
FTP statistics

Web Hosting

\ftpstat

List contents

FTP user
statistics

Always

\webstat

List contents

HTTP user
statistics

Always

Security
settings

Always

Anonymous
FTP files

On demand

\.security

Read

\.web..
security

Read

On demand

\anon_ftp

List contents

\cgi-bin

List contents CGI scripts

\error_docs

List contents
.html

On demand

Error
Always
message files

Read, write

\httpdocs

Full control

HTTP
documents

Always

\logs

List contents

Virtual host
logs

Always

\web_users

None

Web users'
directory

On demand

None

Full control

HTTP and
On demand
HTTPs
documents of
a subdomain

Full control

HTTP and
On demand
HTTPs
documents of
an additional
domain

Differences from Previous Versions
The structure described above was introduced in Panel 11.5. It has the following
differences compared to the structure of earlier Panel versions:


Some directories are created on demand. Previously, all the directories were
created by default.



The following directories have different locations:
Old Location

New Location

Comment

\statistics

\.plesk\statistics

Statistics directory

\logs

Virtual host logs

\.plesk\.security

Security settings

\statistics\logs
\.security

Web Hosting
\.plesk\.security
\.web..security



The following directories are not included in Panel virtual hosts:


\httpsdocs



\subdomains



\private

Web Hosting

Website Preview
Your customers can preview their websites during domain name propagation. The two
preview modes are available: Quick Preview and Limited Preview.


Quick Preview, the recommended option, presents customers' sites as subdomains
of one of your domains. For example, customer-site.tld will be available for preview
as customer-site.tld.192-0-2-12.your-domain.tld. Here 192-0-2-12 is the site's IP
where dots are replaced with dashes. Note that if you do not specify a preview
domain, the site preview function will be unavailable to your customers.



(Default) Limited Preview is used in earlier Panel versions; it presents customers'
sites as directories on the Panel server. For example, server-hostname:8443/sitepreview/http/your-domain.tld/. This mode has two major drawbacks:
Only authorized users can view such websites and some scripts and Flash
animation might not work well on them. We recommend to use this mode only
before the Quick Preview is configured.

Note that both these options do not work properly for password-protected directories.
The preview selector and the form to configure the preview domain name is located in
Tools & Settings > Website Preview Settings.
Note: Customers also could preview their sites prior to Panel 10.4, but the preview
feature had a number of limitations due to different implementation methods.The major
difference is that since 10.4 customers can share the preview link with anybody,
whereas previously they could only view the domain themselves. In addition, sites in
the earlier preview mode would not work with complex CGI scripts or Flash content.

PHP Configuration
PHP is one of the most popular scripting languages for creating dynamic web pages.
The majority of today's websites and web applications are based on PHP scripts. Thus,
site administrators should clearly understand how they can control the execution of
PHP scripts.
There are three main factors that define how PHP scripts will be executed for a certain
website:
1. PHP handler.
When a visitor accesses a site based on PHP scripts, a web server interprets site
scripts to generate a page that will be shown to the visitor. The PHP handler calls
PHP libraries needed for this interpretation.
You can select a PHP handler for a service plan or a website correspondingly in:


service plan settings (Hosting Parameters tab > Scripting > Run PHP as).



website settings (Control Panel > Websites & Domains > select a domain > General
tab > Web Scripting and Statistics > Run PHP as).

Web Hosting

You can choose from a number of PHP handlers: ISAPI (Windows), Apache
module (Linux), FastCGI, CGI, or PHP-FPM (Linux). What PHP handler to choose
depends on factors such as security considerations, script execution speed, and
memory consumption.
Learn about PHP handler features in the section PHP Handlers (on page 52).
2. PHP version.
Panel supports different versions of PHP. For each available handler, one or more
PHP versions can be selected. For details, see Multiple PHP Versions (on page 58).
3. PHP settings.
PHP behavior is defined by a number of configuration settings. These settings
specify various aspects of script execution, such as performance (for example, the
amount of memory a script can use), security (for example, access to the file
system and services), and so on. Administrators may adjust these settings for a
number of reasons: to prevent a memory leak caused by poorly written scripts, to
protect data from malicious scripts, to meet the requirements of a certain web app,
and so on.
Learn about the PHP settings hierarchy and about how to adjust the settings in the
section Custom PHP Configuration (on page 54).

Next in this section:
PHP Handlers ....................................................................................................52
Custom PHP Configuration ................................................................................54

Web Hosting

PHP Handlers
The list of PHP handlers available in the Panel UI depends on the operating system
and the web server that is processing PHP files. One of the handlers, PHP-FPM,
additionally needs to be installed with the Parallels Installer.
You can choose one of the following PHP handlers at Hosting Parameters > Scripting >
Run PHP as taking into consideration the resources consumption and security aspects of
each option:
Run PHP as

Performance

High.
Apache
module (Linux Runs as a part of
the Apache web
only)

Memory
Usage

Security

Low

This handler (also known as mod_php) is the least secure
option as all PHP scripts are executed on behalf of the
apache user. This means that all files created by PHP
scripts of any plan subscriber have the same owner
(apache) and the same permission set. Thus, it is
theoretically possible for a user to affect the files of another
user or some important system files.

server.

Note: You can avoid some security issues by turning
the PHP safe_mode option on. This disables a number
of PHP functions that have potential security risks.
Note that this may lead to inoperability of some web
apps. The safe_mode option is considered to be
obsolete and has been removed since PHP 5.3.
ISAPI
extension
(Windows
only, not
supported
since PHP
5.3)

High.

Low

Runs as a part of
the IIS web server.

The ISAPI extension can provide site isolation if a dedicated
IIS application pool is switched on for subscriptions. Site
isolation means that the sites of different customers run their
scripts independently. Thus, an error in one PHP script does
not affect the work of other scripts. In addition, PHP scripts
run on behalf of a system user associated with a hosting
account. Learn how to configure the IIS application pool in
the section Configuring IIS Application Pool (Windows) (on page
42).

Note: The ISAPI extension handler is not supported
starting from PHP 5.3.
CGI
application

Low.
Low
Creates a new
process for each
request and closes it
once the request is
processed.

The CGI handler provides PHP script execution on behalf of
a system user associated with a hosting account. On Linux,
this behavior is possible only when the suEXEC module of
the Apache web server is on (default option). In other cases,
all PHP scripts are executed on behalf of the apache user.
We recommend that you use the CGI handler only as a
fallback.

Web Hosting

FastCGI
application

High (close to
Apache module and
ISAPI extension).

High

The FastCGI handler runs PHP scripts on behalf of a
system user associated with a hosting account.

Low

The PHP-FPM is an advanced version of FastCGI which
offers significant benefits for highly loaded web applications.

Keeps the
processes running
to handle further
incoming requests.

PHP-FPM
application
(Linux only)

High

Unlike other handlers, PHP-FPM cannot be selected for all
websites at once in service plan settings; you can use this
handler only for individual websites.
To be able to use this handler, install the support for PHPFPM through Tools & Settings > Updates and Upgrades >
Add/Remove components > Plesk hosting features > nginx web
server and reverse proxy support > PHP-FPM support for nginx.

Important: Depending on your operating system, you
may need to add third-party repositories to install PHPFPM. Parallels Installer shows information about
required repositories beside the component's name.
To use the PHP-FPM handler for a website:

1. Go to Subscriptions > > Manage
hosting or open the subscription in the
Control Panel.
2. Go to Websites & Domains > >
Web Server Settings page and turn on the
option Process PHP by nginx.
Note that other PHP handlers are not available for selection
if the option Process PHP by nginx is turned on.

Note: Switching PHP from Apache module to FastCGI application may impair the
functionality of existing PHP scripts. Switching to PHP-FPM by selecting Process PHP by
nginx in the website’s web server settings may do the same.

Adjusting the List of PHP Handlers Available to Customers
You can limit the list of PHP handlers available for customers using the
site_isolation_settings.ini file. This file is available on both Windows and
Linux Panel servers. For details, see Configuring Site Isolation Settings in the Advanced
Administration Guide.

Web Hosting

Custom PHP Configuration
Custom PHP Settings in Panel
Generally, PHP settings are defined by the server-wide configuration file. For Linux it
is, typically, /etc/php.ini and for Windows %plesk_dir%\Additional\PleskPHP5\php.ini. This file defines the PHP
configuration for all websites hosted on your server.
Note: In Panel for Linux, you can add custom PHP handlers that can have their own
php.ini located in some other directory.
Since Panel 10.4, PHP settings are visible in the Panel GUI and you can adjust them
individually for each hosting plan or subscription. Moreover, your customers (if allowed)
can adjust your PHP settings and preset them individually for each of their websites
and subdomains. See the PHP settings hierarchy on the diagram below.

Web Hosting

You can set the custom PHP configuration on the PHP Settings tab of a certain service
plan, add-on plan, or subscription. Custom PHP settings for a website or subdomain
can be set in the Control Panel, Websites & Domains > select a website or subdomain >
PHP Settings. PHP settings from a higher level act as a preset for a lower level, thus
each lower level overrides them. For example, you can purposely apply some PHP
limitations to a service plan and then offer your customers the add-on plan that
removes the limitations. PHP settings of the add-on plan will override the settings
defined in the main service plan.
If customers have the corresponding permissions, they can specify the PHP
configuration that is unique for each website (or subdomain) in their subscription.

Groups of PHP Settings
For convenience, all PHP settings in Panel are categorized into three groups:


Performance settings.
These settings define how scripts work with system resources. For example: Use
the memory_limit parameter to limit the amount of memory for a script and, as a
consequence, to prevent memory leaks; or set max_execution_time to limit the
maximum time a script is allowed to run, and thus prevent scripts from tying up the
server.
Note: The typical default limit for PHP scripts is 60 seconds. Increasing the
max_execution_time can affect limitations on the virtual host level. If you or your
customers set a custom max_execution_time of PHP scripts on a site, and this
value is greater than the web server's time limits on script execution (in Apache,
nginx, and FastCGI settings), then the web server's time limits for this site will be
set to the same value as PHP scripts' max_execution_time.



Common settings.
This group contains other commonly used PHP settings. Generally, these are:
Security settings (such as the PHP safe mode toggle or the permission to register
global variables), error reporting settings (such as the directive to log errors), and
so on.



Additional directives.
If you cannot find particular parameters among performance or common settings,
add them in the PHP Settings > Additional configuration directives field. All directives
from that field will be included in the final PHP configuration. For example, if you
want PHP to log errors to your own file, add the line:
error_log=/tmp/my_file.log. The entire list of PHP directives is available at
http://php.net/manual/en/ini.list.php. As additional directives, you can add directives
that have the PHP_INI_USER and PHP_INI_ALL modes.
Note that additional directives are available only to the Panel administrator. Your
customers do not have a corresponding field in Control Panel.

Important: If you use Panel for Windows or Panel for Linux where PHP does not run
as an Apache module, your customers can override some PHP settings regardless of
any permissions in force. They can use the ini_set() function in their scripts to
change the values of the following parameters: memory_limit,
max_execution_time, and those of your additional directives that PHP allows to set
anywhere (PHP_INI_ALL directives; learn more at http://php.net/manual/en/ini.list.php).

Web Hosting

The Default Values of PHP Parameters
You can set the value of each parameter in PHP Settings either by selecting a value from
a preset, typing a custom value, or leaving the Default value. In the latter case, Panel
takes the parameter value from the server-wide PHP configuration. The only
exceptions are add-on plans: the value set to Default on the add-on's PHP Settings tab
will keep the parameter's value from the main service plan.
It is possible to use three placeholders in parameter values:


{DOCROOT} for the document root directory of a domain that gets custom PHP
configuration.



{WEBSPACEROOT} for the root directory of a subscription (webspace).



{TMP} for the directory which stores temporary files.

Note: Default values of PHP settings in Panel differ from the ones suggested by the
official PHP documentation at http://php.net/manual/en/ini.list.php.

Allowing Customers to Change PHP Settings
You can allow your customers to override subscription PHP settings with their own perwebsite and per-subdomain PHP configuration. For this purpose, you should use the
following permissions on the Permissions tab of a certain service plan or subscription:


Hosting performance settings management.
Along with management of some other settings, this permission grants customers
access to PHP settings from the performance settings group.



Common PHP settings management.
If granted, allows customers to adjust PHP settings from the common settings
group.

Note that you can toggle these permissions for a plan (subscription) only if it has the
granted Hosting settings management permission.
Even if your customers do not have permissions to adjust PHP settings, you (as the
administrator) can always perform such per-website (subdomain) PHP configuration.
To do this, open a hosting account from the Server Administration Panel and apply
changes on the PHP Settings tab of the particular website (subdomain) you wish to
change. The Additional configuration directives field will also be available to you.

Web Hosting

Location of Website-Level PHP Settings in Panel for Windows
After you apply all the necessary modifications, you can view the modified php.ini for
a certain website. The paths to the ini files are kept in the Windows registry, under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PHP\Per Directory Values. For example:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PHP\Per Directory
Values\C\Inetpub\vhosts\\httpdocs
where stands for a certain domain name.
Learn more about PHP settings in Windows registry at
http://php.net/manual/en/configuration.changes.php.

Web Hosting

Multiple PHP Versions
Most PHP versions are not backward-compatible. For example, 5 is not compatible
with 4, 5.2 with 5.1, and so on. Therefore, a web app that requires PHP 4 might not
work with PHP 5.3 supplied with Panel 11.5. To avoid this, you can install any PHP
version on the server in addition to the supplied one. After registering this version in
Panel, you can set it as default for certain service plans or any website in Panel.
Customers granted the Hosting settings management permission will be able to specify the
PHP version for a particular website.

Using Multiple PHP Versions in Panel on Linux
On Linux systems, you can install any PHP version you need and then make it
available in Panel by registering it with the php_handler command-line utility.

 To add the support for an arbitrary PHP version in Panel:
1. Install the desired PHP version on your server. For installation guidelines, refer to
the official PHP documentation available at http://php.net/manual/en/install.php. In
brief, the installation includes the following main steps.
Warning: These steps are provided for demonstration purposes only. Depending
on your operating system and the desired configuration, installation steps can differ
significantly. When you install an additional PHP version on your server, read the
official PHP documentation on installation.
1. Log in to your server as root.
2. Obtain the PHP source you need from the official website
(http://php.net/downloads.php) and unpack it:
gunzip php-NN.tar.gz
tar -xf php-NN.tar

3. Configure and build PHP. This is when you can customize PHP with various
options, such as specifying which extensions will be enabled. Run
./configure --help for a list of available options.
cd ../php-NN
./configure --prefix /usr/local/phpNN
make
make install

4. Set up your php.ini:
cp php.ini-development /usr/local/lib/php.ini
You may edit your .ini file to set PHP options. If you prefer having php.ini in
another location, run the configure utility with the option --with-configfile-path=/some/path in step 3.

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2. Register the new PHP version in Panel:
/usr/local/psa/bin/php_handler --add -displayname -path
-phpini -type -id
where


-displayname is the PHP version name that will be shown in the Panel
UI. We recommend that you include the version number in the displayname,
for example, you can name the version "5.3.3-custom".



-path i is the location of the PHP CGI binary file. You can find
this in the output of the command make install in the line Installing PHP CGI
binary. For example, if you see the line Installing PHP CGI binary: /usr/local/bin/,
the location you need to specify is /usr/local/bin/php-cgi. Learn more at
http://php.net/manual/en/install.unix.commandline.php.



-phpini is the location of the php.ini file, for example,
/some/path/php.ini .



-type is the type of the PHP handler associated with this version.
Learn more about PHP handlers in the section PHP Handlers (on page 52).
Important: You can set either the CGI or FastCGI PHP handler. mod_php is
not supported.



(Optional) -id is the identifier that you will use for referring to this
PHP version when adjusting or removing it.

After you register the PHP version in Panel, it will be available for selection in service
plan settings and in the hosting settings of a particular website. See the picture below.

Using Multiple PHP Versions in Panel on Windows
All up-to-date and commonly used versions of PHP are shipped with Panel and can be
installed through Tools & Settings > Updates and Upgrades > Add/Remove Components.
You can specify a certain PHP version for a service plan and for a website in their
hosting settings, in PHP support > PHP version:


Version 4.x is outdated, use it only if you need to host old PHP application versions.



Version 5.x is current and its use is recommended.

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Configuring ASP.NET (Windows)
ASP.NET is a flexible set of tools and web development technologies that allows you to
employ a number of applications based on ASP.NET framework. Parallels Plesk Panel
supports 1.1.x, 2.0.x and 4.0.x versions of the .NET framework and allows configuring
most of its settings. Most ASP.NET configuration settings that commonly need to be
customized in order for ASP.NET applications to function in a desirable way can be
edited through Parallels Plesk Panel.

 To configure the server-wide ASP.NET settings:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > ASP.NET Settings (in the Applications group). The
settings for ASP.NET 1.1.x, ASP.NET 2.0.x and ASP.NET 4.0.x are
located under the corresponding tabs.
2. Set up the strings that determine database connection data for
ASP.NET applications which use databases. This option is available
only for ASP.NET 2.0.x.
When you open the ASP.NET configuration page for the first time, sample
connection parameters with common constructions are displayed. You can
delete them and specify your own strings.


To add a string, enter the required data into the Name and Connection Parameters
input fields and click
next to them.



To remove a string, click

next to it.

3. Set up custom error messages that will be returned by ASP.NET
applications in the Custom Error Settings field:




To set the custom error messages mode, select an appropriate option from the
Custom error mode menu:


On - custom error messages are enabled.



Off - custom error messages are disabled and detailed errors are to be
shown.



RemoteOnly - custom error messages are displayed only to remote clients,
and ASP.NET errors are shown to the local host.

To add a new custom error message (which will be applied unless the Off mode
was selected), enter the values in the Status Code and Redirect URL fields, and
click .


Status Code defines the HTTP status code resulting in redirection to the error
page.



Redirect URL defines the web address of the error page presenting
information about the error to the client.

Due to possible conflicts, you cannot add a new custom error message with an
error code that already exists, but you can redefine the URL for the existing
code.

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

To remove a custom error message from the list, click

next to it.

4. Configure compilation settings in the Compilation and Debugging field:


To determine the programming language to be used as default in dynamic
compilation files, choose an entry from Page default language list.



To enable compiling retail binaries, leave the Enable debugging checkbox empty.



To enable compiling debug binaries, select the Enable debugging checkbox. In
this case, the source code fragments containing error will be shown in a
diagnostic page message.

Note: When running applications in debug mode, a memory and/or performance
overhead occurs. It is recommended to use debugging when testing an application
and to disable it before deploying the application into production scenario.

5. Configure encoding settings for ASP.NET applications in the Globalization
Settings section:


To set an adopted encoding of all incoming requests, enter an encoding value
into the Request encoding field (default is utf-8).



To set an adopted encoding of all responses, enter an encoding value into the
Response encoding field (default is utf-8).



To set an encoding which must be used by default for parsing of .aspx, .asmx,
and .asax files, enter an encoding value into the File encoding field (default is
Windows-1252).



To set a culture which must be used by default for processing incoming web
requests, select an appropriate item from the Culture list.



To set a culture which must be used by default when processing searches for a
locale-dependent resource, select an appropriate item from the UI Culture list.

6. Set a code access security trust level for ASP.NET applications in the
Code Access Security field.
CAS trust level is a set of restrictions applied to an app. For example, the Low level
restricts app’s network capabilities (like sending mail) while the Full trust level
removes any restrictions.


To allow changing the CAS trust level for websites, select the checkbox Allow
changing the CAS trust level for individual websites. If you do not select this
checkbox, websites will use the server-wide setting. Otherwise, each website
will be able to have its own CAS trust level specified in the website's hosting
settings.

Important: When an assembly is assigned a trust level that is too low, it does not
function correctly. For more information on the permissions levels see
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/enus/dnnetsec/html/THCMCh09.asp?frame=true#c09618429_010.

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7. Set client session parameters in the Session Settings field:


To set up the default authentication mode for applications, select an appropriate
item from the Authentication mode list. Windows authentication mode should be
selected if any form of IIS authentication is used.



To set up time that a session can remain idle before it is abandoned, enter the
appropriate number of minutes into the Session timeout field.

8. Click OK to apply all changes.
Note: Parallels Plesk Panel supports separate configurations for different versions of
the .NET framework (1.1.x, 2.0.x and 4.0.x).

CHAPTER 5

DNS
Your Parallels Plesk Panel works in cooperation with a DNS server which enables you
to run the DNS service on the same machine where you host websites. Particularly,
this server is BIND on Linux and Microsoft DNS or BIND on Windows. For instructions
on switching between these two DNS servers on Windows, see Using BIND Instead of
Microsoft DNS (Windows) (on page 72).

How Panel Creates DNS Zones
Setup of DNS zones for newly added domains is automated: When you add a new
domain name to the Control Panel, a zone file is automatically generated for it and
registered in the name server's database, and name server is instructed to act as a
primary (master) DNS server for the zone. Subscribers can manage DNS zones of their
domains through the Control Panel if their subscriptions provide the corresponding
permissions. Additionally, subscribers can choose whether they want to use Panel
DNS server as a master or a slave DNS server, or switch off the DNS service for their
domains. To learn how to manage DNS zones of domains within a subscription, refer to
the section (Advanced) Configuring DNS for a Domain (on page 386).
Panel creates DNS zones for domains in accordance with the server-wide DNS
template. The template defines the structure of DNS zones for all domains in Panel. To
learn how to edit the DNS template and apply its changes to existing zones, refer to the
section Server-Wide DNS Template (on page 64).

Switching Off the DNS Service for Hosted Domains
Panel allows you to switch off the DNS service for all or certain domains hosted on
your server. To learn how to do this, see the section Switching Off the DNS Service (on
page 72).

External DNS Servers
If you do not want to run the DNS service on your Panel server, you can use an
external DNS for domains hosted on your server. Learn more in the section Using
External DNS Servers (on page 72).

DNS

Using Panel Without a DNS Server
You can exclude the DNS server component from your Panel installation. If you do this,
Panel does not provide the DNS service for websites hosted on it until you install a
DNS server or connect an external DNS service. To learn what happens when the DNS
service is not configured in your Panel, see the section Panel Without a DNS Server (on
page 74).
Next in this chapter, we will provide details on how to configure various aspects of the
DNS service for domains hosted on your server.

In this chapter:
Server-Wide DNS Template .............................................................................. 64
DNS Zones for Subdomains .............................................................................. 69
Configuring the Recursive DNS ......................................................................... 70
Restricting DNS Zones Transfer ........................................................................ 71
Restricting Users' Access to Other Users' DNS Zones ...................................... 71
Using BIND Instead of Microsoft DNS (Windows) ............................................. 72
Switching Off the DNS Service .......................................................................... 72
Using External DNS Servers ............................................................................. 72
Panel Without a DNS Server ............................................................................. 74

Server-Wide DNS Template
In Panel, DNS zones are built from the server-wide DNS template that is available in
Tools & Settings > DNS Template. The DNS template defines which records Panel will
create in DNS zones of hosted domains. For example, the . A
record in the template may transform into something like example.com. A
10.52.0.1 in the DNS zone file.
To learn how to define the DNS template, see the section Adjusting DNS Template (on
page 65).
One of the main benefits the DNS template gives you is adjusting all DNS zones at
once. In other words, it allows adding, modifying, or removing DNS records from all or
a large amount of zones. To learn how Panel applies the server-wide DNS template
changes to DNS zones, refer to the section Applying DNS Template Changes (on page 68).

Next in this section:
Adjusting DNS Template ................................................................................... 65
Applying DNS Template Changes (Linux) ......................................................... 68

DNS

Adjusting DNS Template
Viewing the Default Records in the Server-Wide DNS Template
 To view the default records in the server-wide DNS template:
Go to Tools & Settings > DNS Template. All resource record templates will be displayed.
The and templates are automatically replaced in the generated zone
with real IP addresses and domain names.

Adding Resource Records to the Server-Wide DNS Template
 To add a new resource record to the server-wide DNS template:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > DNS Template.
2. Click Add DNS Record.
3. Select the resource record type and specify the record properties as
desired.
Note that you can use and templates that will be replaced in the
generated zone with real IP addresses and domain names. You can use a wildcard
symbol (*) to specify any part of the domain name, and you can specify the exact
values you need.

4. Click OK.

Removing Resource Records from the Server-Wide DNS Template
 To remove a resource record from the server-wide DNS template:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > DNS Template.
2. Select a checkbox corresponding to the record template you wish to
remove, and click Remove.
3. Confirm removal and click OK.

DNS

Restoring the Default Configuration of the Server-Wide DNS Template
Panel provides you with the option to return the DNS template to the state in which it
was right after Panel installation.

 To restore the original configuration of server-wide DNS template:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > DNS Template.
2. Click Restore Defaults.

Editing the Start of Authority (SOA) Record
The Panel updates automatically the zone name, host name, administrator’s e-mail
address, and serial number, and writes the default values for the rest of Start of
Authority record parameters to the zone files it maintains. If you are not satisfied with
the default values, you can change them through the control panel.

 To change the Start of Authority (SOA) record settings in the server-wide
DNS template:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > DNS Template.
2. Click SOA Records Template.
3. Specify the desired values:


TTL. This is the amount of time that other DNS servers should store the record in
a cache. The Panel sets the default value of one day.



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.
The Panel 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. The Panel 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.
The Panel sets the default value of one week.



Minimum. This is the time a secondary server should cache a negative response.
The Panel sets the default value of three hours.

4. Click OK. The new SOA record parameters will be set for the newly
created domains.
Usage of serial number format recommended by IETF and RIPE is mandatory for many
domains registered in some high-level DNS zones, mostly European ones. If your
domain is registered in one of these zones and your registrar refuses your SOA serial
number, using serial number format recommended by IETF and RIPE should resolve
this issue.

DNS

Parallels Plesk Panel servers use UNIX timestamp syntax for configuring DNS zones.
UNIX timestamp is the number of seconds since January 1, 1970 (Unix Epoch). The
32-bit timestamp will overflow by July 8, 2038.
RIPE recommends using YYYYMMDDNN format, where YYYY is year (four digits), MM
is month (two digits), DD is day of month (two digits) and NN is version per day (two
digits). The YYYYMMDDNN format will not overflow until the year 4294.

 To change the Start of Authority (SOA) serial number format to
YYYYMMDDNN for the server-wide DNS template:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > DNS Template.
2. Click SOA Records Template.
3. Select the Use serial number format recommended by IETF and RIPE checkbox.
Note: See the sample of SOA serial number generated with the selected format. If
the resulting number is less, than the current zone number, the modification may
cause temporary malfunction of DNS for this domain. Zone updates may be
invisible to Internet users for some time.

4. Click OK.

 To restore the default Start of Authority (SOA) serial number format (UNIX
timestamp) for the server-wide DNS template:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > DNS Template.
2. Click SOA Records Template.
3. Clear the Use serial number format recommended by IETF and RIPE checkbox.
Note: See the sample of SOA serial number generated with the selected format. If
the resulting number is less, than the current zone number, the modification may
cause temporary malfunction of DNS for this domain. Zone updates may be
invisible to Internet users for some time.

4. Click OK.

DNS

Applying DNS Template Changes (Linux)
Once you change the structure of the server-wide DNS template, you can apply
changes to existing zones in Panel for Linux by clicking Apply DNS Template Changes.
The following options become available after clicking Apply DNS Template Changes:


Apply changes to unaltered zones.
Use this option if you desire to obtain more control and apply changes only to direct
template copies leaving user-modified zones for manual review and per-zone
application.



Apply changes to all zones.
Use this option to deliver changes to all zones at once.

To apply changes to a particular zone, open the related subscription in the Control
Panel, and go to Websites & Domains > > DNS Settings and select the
zone. You should see the corresponding button in the toolbar.
Note: If you apply changes to all zones, the zones become unaltered and will remain in
this status until somebody modifies them. The same goes for a user-modified zone if
you apply the changes directly to it.
In Panel for Windows, the changes in the server-wide DNS template are applied only to
newly created zones.
The template changes are applied using the following rules:


User-modified records always remain intact (are not modified or removed under any
circumstances).



Records added to the template are added to the zone.



Records removed from the template are removed from the zone (if they were not
changed by users before that).



Records modified in the template are modified in the zone (if they were not
changed by users before that).

Note: After restoration, migration, or upgrade, all zones are treated as user-modified by
default, so no changes will be applied if you update something in the DNS template
and forward the changes only to unaltered zones. If you wish to perform DNS zone
changes in bulk after upgrade, apply the changes to all zones at the first time.

DNS

DNS Zones for Subdomains
Panel allows each subdomain to have its own DNS zone. These subdomain zones are
useful if you wish to specify a custom name server for a particular subdomain or
shorten the number of domain DNS records by rearranging them to subordinate zones.
Generally speaking, subdomain DNS zones bring all domain DNS features to the
subdomain level.
By default, Panel does not create separate DNS zones for subdomains. However, if
you wish to try out this feature, use the following command-line call:
server_pref –u –subdomain-dns-zone own

To turn this feature off, use:
server_pref –u –subdomain-dns-zone parent

Learn more about running Panel utilities at


(Linux) http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/PP11/11.5/Doc/en-US/online/pleskunix-cli/37894.htm



(Windows) http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/PP11/11.5/Doc/enUS/online/plesk-win-cli/44076.htm

Note: The default behavior in 10.4 versions before MU#9 was to create subdomain
DNS zones. If you apply Update #9 to 10.4, the feature will remain active. Otherwise,
the default behavior will be not to create the separate zones.
When subdomain zones are off, customers modify the parent domain's DNS zone by
toggling Panel control over a particular subdomain zone. In fact, when they go to
Websites & Domains > > DNS Settings > Switch On/Off the DNS Service and
clicks Manage next to a subdomain name, the following situations are possible.
ON

Has no effect on the DNS zone of a parent domain.

OFF

A new DNS zone is created
for the subdomain, and all
DNS records corresponding
to this subdomain are
removed from the parent
domain's DNS zone.

Only A and AAAA records
corresponding to this
subdomain are added to the
parent domain's DNS zone.

DNS

Configuring the Recursive DNS
Panel allows you to configure its DNS server to provide the recursive service for
queries. With recursive service allowed, your DNS server, when queried, performs all
the lookup procedures required to find the destination IP address for the requester.
When recursive service is not allowed, your DNS server performs minimal number of
queries only to find a server that knows where the requested resource resides and to
redirect the requester to that server. Therefore, recursive service consumes more
server resources and makes your server susceptible to denial-of-service attacks,
especially when the server is set to serve recursive queries from clients outside your
network.
After your install Parallels Plesk Panel, the built-in DNS server serves recursive queries
only from your own server and from other servers located in your network. This is the
optimal setting. If you upgraded from earlier versions of Parallels Plesk Panel, your
DNS server may be configured to serve recursive queries from any host.

 If you want to change the settings for recursive domain name service:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > DNS Template > DNS Recursion.
2. Select the option you need:


To allow recursive queries from all hosts, select Any host.



To allow recursive queries from your own server and hosts from your network,
select Localnets.



To allow recursive queries only from your own server, select Localhost.

3. Click OK.

DNS

Restricting DNS Zones Transfer
By default, transfer of DNS zones is allowed only for name servers designated by NS
records contained within each zone. If your domain name registrar requires that you
allow transfer for all zones you serve, adjust the restrictions on DNS zones transfer as
described below.

 To define hosts to which DNS zone transfers are allowed:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > DNS Template.
2. Click Transfer Restrictions Template. A screen will show all hosts to which
DNS zone transfers for all zones are allowed.
3. Click Add New Address.
4. Specify the registrar's IP or network address and click OK.

Restricting Users' Access to Other Users'
DNS Zones
By default, users can create new subdomains and domain aliases in the DNS zones
belonging to other users. This means that they can set up websites and e-mail
accounts which could be used for spamming, phishing or identity theft.

 To prevent users from setting up domains and domain aliases in the DNS
zones belonging to other users:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Server Settings.
2. Select the Forbid users to create DNS subzones in other users' DNS superzones
checkbox.
3. Click OK.

DNS

Using BIND Instead of Microsoft DNS
(Windows)
On Windows, there are two DNS servers available as Panel components: Microsoft
DNS and BIND. The default Panel installation includes only Microsoft DNS. However,
you can install the BIND DNS server and switch to it at any time.

 To switch from Microsoft DNS to BIND:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Updates and Upgrades and install the BIND DNS
server using the Parallels Installer.
2. Go to Tools & Settings > Server Components and click DNS Server.
3. Select BIND DNS Server and click OK.
When you have both DNS servers installed on your server, you can switch between
them at any time on the page Tools & Settings > Server Components > DNS Server.

Switching Off the DNS Service
By default, Panel server acts as a primary name server for all hosted domains.
However, if you do not want to provide the DNS service, you can switch it off by
clicking Switch Off in the Tools & Settings > DNS Template. Note that this will switch off the
DNS only for domains created after you click the button. Additionally, subscribers of
service plans that include the permission DNS zone management will still be able to switch
on the DNS for their domains through the Control Panel.

Using External DNS Servers
Although Panel provides all the instruments to run DNS on your server, you also can
host the DNS zones on an external DNS server. This may be your own separate server
or a third-party DNS service such as Amazon Route 53
(http://aws.amazon.com/route53/) or DynECT (http://dyn.com/dns/dynect-manageddns/).
By default, Panel is unable to automatically manage DNS zones on external DNS
servers.To make this possible, you should write an integration script. The script should
communicate with the DNS server’s backend (like API) and apply all DNS zones
changes occurred in Panel. To learn how to prepare such a script, refer to the
document Developing Extensions for Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5, section Integration with ThirdParty DNS Services.

DNS

Note: If you perform clean Panel installation and plan to use an external DNS server,
you can exclude the DNS server component as described in the section 3. Choose Panel
Components of the Installation, Upgrade, Migration, and Transfer Guide. To learn how Panel
behaves when it is not connected to an external DNS service and does not have a local
DNS server, see the section Panel Without a DNS Server (on page 74).
With external DNS, all Panel features related to DNS are supported and work as usual,
namely:




DNS template, zones, and records management by means of the Panel UI,
command-line utilities, and API requests.
APS applications that use the DNS aspect.
Other services that use DNS, for example, DomainKeys spam protection and
Sender Policy Framework. To learn more, see the sections Antispam Tools (on page
83).

Integration with Amazon Route 53
An example of the script that integrates Panel with Amazon Route 53 is available in the
/examples/route53-dns.zip file from the plesk-extensions-sdk.zip archive
available at http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/Doc/en-US/zip/plesk-extensionssdk.zip.

 To integrate your Panel with Amazon Route 53:
1. Download the file http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/Doc/enUS/zip/plesk-extensions-sdk.zip.
2. Copy the file route53.php from the archive /examples/route53dns.zip file to any location on your Panel server.
3. Specify your Amazon security credentials in the script (lines 23 and 24):
'client' => array(
'key' => '',
'secret' => '',
),

4. Make the script route53.php readable by the user psaadm. Run:
chown psaadm /usr/share/route53.php
chmod 400 /usr/share/route53.php

5. Download the library for working with Amazon Web Services in PHP aws.phar from http://aws.amazon.com/sdkforphp/ and place it in the
same directory with the script.
6. Run the following command line utility:
plesk bin server_dns --enable-custom-backend '/usr/bin/php
//route53.php

DNS

Subscription Transferring Issue
If you transfer subscriptions from Panel with a local DNS service to Panel with an
external DNS service, the DNS zones of the domains are not transferred to the external
nameservers automatically. You should create the zones on the nameservers
manually.

Panel Without a DNS Server
If you exclude a DNS server from your Panel installation (as described in the section 3.
Choose Panel Components of the Installation, Upgrade, Migration, and Transfer Guide) and do
not connect an external DNS service, Panel does not provide the DNS service for
websites hosted on it. Additionally, the following changes in Panel behavior take place:


The DNS Template link is not displayed on the Tools & Settings page of the Server
Administration Panel.



In the Control Panel, the link DNS Settings in Websites & Domains > is
replaced with the link Whois Information that opens a page with the information about
the domain name registration.



Panel users are unable to install web applications that require DNS zone
management permission (or DNS aspect).



Panel returns errors on attempts to manage its DNS server or DNS zones by
means of the command line utility dns or API RPC requests with nodes.

Important: If you already have domains on your Panel server and then install a DNS
server or connect an external DNS service, you should configure DNS zones of these
domains manually. DNS zones for domains created after you configure DNS service in
your Panel will be created automatically in accordance with the server-wide DNS
template.

CHAPTER 6

Mail
By default, your Parallels Plesk Panel works in cooperation with a mail server, which
enables you to run the mail services on the same machine where you host websites.
The mail server settings are available in Tools & Settings > the Mail group. For details,
see Configuring Server-Wide Mail Settings (on page 77).

Mail Server Software
By default, the Postfix mail server is installed on Parallels Plesk Panel for Linux, and
MailEnable on Parallels Plesk Panel for Windows.
Other supported software is Qmail on Linux (shipped with Panel), and IceWarp or
SmarterMail on Windows (need to be installed separately). For details, see Using Other
Mail Server Software (on page 82).

Using Panel Without the Mail Server
Using the mail server in Panel is optional. Parallels Plesk Panel for Linux allows you to
switch off or not install the mail service for all domains hosted on your server. On
Windows, you cannot uninstall the default mail server, but you can change the server's
configuration to prohibit outgoing mail.
Learn the aspects of using Panel without the mail server in Using Panel Without the Mail
Server (on page 79).

Removing Mail Functionality from the Control Panel
You may want to prohibit your users from operating mail services, without uninstalling
the mail server. In this case, you can hide some mail-related UI elements. For details,
see Removing Mail Functionality from the Contro (on page 81)l Panel.
Next in this chapter, we will provide details on how to configure various aspects of the
mail service for domains hosted on your server.

In this chapter:
Configuring Server-Wide Mail Settings .............................................................. 77
Using Panel Without the Mail Server ................................................................. 79
Removing Mail Functionality from the Control Panel ......................................... 81
Using Other Mail Server Software ..................................................................... 82
Antispam Tools ................................................................................................. 83
Outbound Spam Protection ............................................................................... 94

Mail

Antivirus Software ............................................................................................. 100
Webmail Software ............................................................................................. 102
Mailing Lists (Linux)........................................................................................... 103
Preventing Mass Email Sending (Linux) ............................................................ 103
Mail Queue (Linux) ............................................................................................ 104
Mass Email Notifications ................................................................................... 105
Configuring Email Notifications .......................................................................... 109

Mail

Configuring Server-Wide Mail Settings
By default, Panel works in cooperation with mail server software, which provides email
services for mailboxes and mailing lists. After installation, the mail server is configured
automatically and is ready to serve. However, we recommend that you review the
default settings to make sure that they satisfy your needs.

 To view or configure the mail service settings:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Mail Server Settings (in the Mail group). The serverwide mail preferences screen will open on the Settings tab.
2. Leave the Enable mail management functions in Panel checkbox selected if
you want to allow your users to create mail accounts through Control
Panel and use the mail services provided by the Panel-managed mail
server. If you are using an external mail server, clear this checkbox.
3. If you want to limit the size of an email message that can be sent
through your server, type the desired value in kilobytes into the Maximum
message size box. Otherwise, leave this field blank.
4. To protect your server against unauthorized mail relaying or injection of
unsolicited bulk mail, select the Enable message submission checkbox to
allow your customers to send email messages through the port 587.
Also notify your customers that they need to specify in their email programs'
settings the port 587 for outgoing SMTP connections, and be sure to allow
connections to this port in your firewall settings.

5. Select the mail relay mode.
With closed relay the mail server will accept only mail addressed to the users who
have mailboxes on this server. Your customers will not be able to send any mail
through your outgoing SMTP server, therefore, we do not recommend closing mail
relay.
With relay after authorization, only your customers will be able to receive and send
email through your mail server. We recommend that you leave the authorization is
required option selected, and specify allowed authentication methods:


POP3 lock time. With POP3 authorization, once a user has successfully
authenticated to the POP server, he or she is permitted to receive and send
email through the mail server for the specified period of time.



SMTP. With SMTP authorization, your mail server requires authorization if the
email message must be sent to an external address.
Note for Windows hosting users: If you do not wish to use relay restrictions
for networks that you trust, specify the network IP and mask in the Use no
relay restrictions for the following networks: field (e.g., 123.123.123.123/16) and
click the
icon. To remove a network from the list, click the
icon
corresponding to the network you wish to remove.

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The relay hosts on the networks in the list are considered not to be potentially
operated by spammers, open relays, or open proxies. A trusted host could
conceivably relay spam, but will not originate it, and will not forge header
data. DNS blacklist checks will never query for hosts on these networks.
There is also an option to allow open relay without authorization, which, by default,
is hidden from the user interface. Opening mail relay without authorization is not
recommended because it allows spammers to send unsolicited mail through your
server. If you want to set the open relay, log in to the server's file system, locate the
file root.controls.lock in your Parallels Plesk Panel installation directory
(PRODUCT_ROOT_D/var/root.controls.lock on Unix and
PRODUCT_DATA_D/var/root.controls.lock on Windows platforms) and
remove the line /server/mail.php3:relay_open from this file. The open relay
option will show in your control panel.

6. Select the antivirus program that should be used on the server. For
details, see Antivirus Software (on page 100).
7. Select the spam protection options that should be used on the server.
Note: If you wish to set up spam protection systems, such as SpamAssassin spam
filter, or protection systems based on DomainKeys, DNS blackhole lists or Sender
Policy Framework (SPF), proceed to the section Antispam Tools (on page 83).

8. If you are using Qmail mail server, you can also select the mail account
format.
Selecting the Use of short and full names is allowed option will allow users to log in to
their mail accounts by specifying only the left part of e-mail address before the @
sign (for example, username), or by specifying the full email address (for example,
username@your-domain.com).
To avoid possible authorization problems for email users who reside in different
domains but have identical user names and passwords, we highly recommend that
you choose the Only use of full mail account names is allowed option.
Once you have set your mail server to support only full mail account names, you
will not be able to switch back to supporting short account names until you make
sure there are no encrypted passwords for mailboxes and user accounts with
coinciding user names and passwords residing in different domains.

9. Click OK to submit the changes.

Mail

Using Panel Without the Mail Server
Using the mail server in Panel is optional. Parallels Plesk Panel for Linux allows you to
switch off (uninstall) the mail service for all domains hosted on your server. On the
Windows hosting, you cannot switch off the default mail server, but you can change its
configuration to prohibit outgoing mail. Also, you can exclude the mail server from the
installed components during Panel installation.
However, when the mail server is not installed or prohibited from sending outgoing
mail, you face the problem: Panel still needs to send notifications, and customers'
scripts may need to send emails. To solve this problem, Panel can send outgoing mail
through an arbitrary external SMTP server.

Using an External SMTP Server for Outgoing Mail (Linux)
When the Panel-managed mail server is not installed, Panel uses the built-in SMTP
client to send mail through the specified external SMTP server. By default, the client is
not installed, and the link External SMTP Server is not available in Tools & Settings > the
Mail group. Panel allows you to install the client only instead of the Panel-managed mail
server.
To use the external SMTP server:
1. Uninstall the Panel mail server and install the SMTP client: In Tools & Settings >
Updates and Upgrades > Add/Remove Components > Mail hosting features select MSMTP
relay only mail server (SMTP client) instead of the selected mail server.
After you have uninstalled the Panel mail server, customers cannot use mail
services. For details, see Control Panel Functionality Without the Mail Server below on
this page.
2. Set the SMTP server in Tools & Settings > External SMTP Server (in the Mail group) and
select at least one of the options:


Allow Panel to send email notifications through this SMTP server

Allow users' scripts to send mail through this SMTP server Other ways to set up the
external SMTP server settings:


By the command line utility mailserver (the --update-smtp-settings
command)



By API RPC requests with the server operator (set.prefs operation)

3. If the SMTP server requires authentication, you need to notify site owners about the
credentials (Username and Password) that they should use in their scripts to enable
the scripts to send mail.
Panel will send notifications and mail generated by scripts through the specified
external SMTP server. Note that if you do not specify the external SMTP server
settings, no mail services will be available.
After you install the client, only one link - External SMTP Server - will be found in Tools &
Settings > the Mail group.

Mail

Note: If you exclude the mail server from the list of components during Panel
installation, the SMTP client is automatically installed instead of mail server software. In
this case, you will be prompted to provide the SMTP client settings during Panel
installation.

Using an External SMTP Server for Outgoing Mail (Windows)
Panel has a built-in SMTP client that sends outgoing mail to the SMTP server specified
in Tools & Settings > External SMTP Server (in the Mail group). By default, the Panel mail
server is specified there, so that Panel sends all outgoing mail (including notification
and mail generated by scripts) through the Panel mail server.
When you prohibit any outgoing mail from Panel mail server, you should specify
another SMTP server in Tools & Settings > External SMTP Server (in the Mail group) and
select at least one of the options:


Allow Panel to send email notifications through this SMTP server



Allow users' scripts to send mail through this SMTP server.

If the SMTP server requires authentication, you need to notify site owners about the
credentials (Username and Password) that they should use in their scripts to enable the
scripts to send mail.
Panel will send notifications and mail generated by scripts through the specified
external SMTP server.
If you do not set the external SMTP server, no outgoing mail services will be available.

Control Panel Functionality Without the Mail Server
With the mail server uninstalled, Panel does not provide mail-related functionality for
your subscribers. The Mail tab and UI elements related to mailboxes are not available.
In addition, other changes take place when no mail server is installed:



Webmail is not available.
Users cannot install APS applications that require mail service.

Note thatall the files and folders containing mail data of your subscribers remain on
Panel server.
Important: When you perform transfer of domains from Panel with a mail service to
Panel without the mail service, all the data that concerns domains’ mailboxes is not
transferred.

Mail

Removing Mail Functionality from the
Control Panel
If you want to use a mail server running on a separate machine, or want to prohibit your
users from operating mail services, you can remove controls related to managing email
services and adding new mail accounts from the Panel UI. To do this, turn off the
Enable mail management functions in Panel option. This option does not actually switch off
the Panel-managed mail server, but only removes some UI elements from the Control
Panel. These elements will be hidden from hosting service customers and their users.
The following items are removed:


The Mail tab.



Users tab > user name > Change Settings > Create an e-mail address under your account
option.

 To hide the user interface elements related to mail services from the
Control Panel:
1. In the Server Administration Panel, go to Tools & Settings > Mail Server
Settings (in the Mail group).
2. Turn off the Enable mail management functions in Panel option and click OK.

Alternatively, you can hide mail-related functionality and corresponding permissions
using the /usr/local/psa/admin/conf/panel.ini file. To do so, add the
following line:
services.withoutMailService = true

Mail

Using Other Mail Server Software
Using Other Mail Server Software (Linux)
Panel for Linux is shipped with the Postfix and Qmail mail servers. You can switch
between the two servers in Tools & Settings > Updates and Upgrades > Add/Remove
Components > Mail hosting features.
Panel will start using the new mail server without any need for server restart. You can
select another mail server at any time later.

Using Other Mail Server Software (Windows)
Apart from the default mail server (MailEnable), Panel for Windows supports IceWarp
(Merak) and SmarterMail, which are not shipped with Panel but should be installed
separately. To use IceWarp or SmarterMail, do the following:

1. Download and install the mail server software according to the
instructions provided by the mail server manufacturer.
2. Log in to Panel and go to Tools & Settings > Server Components > the Mail
Server link.
The mail server you have installed should now be displayed in the list of available
mail servers.

3. Select the mail server you need and click OK.
Panel will start using the new mail server without any need for server restart. You can
select another mail server at any time later.

Mail

Antispam Tools
To protect your users from spam, you can use the following tools with your Panel:


SpamAssassin spam filter. It is a powerful spam filter that uses a wide variety of local
and network tests to identify spam signatures.
You can configure the spam filter so as to either delete suspicious messages when
they come to your mail server, or change the subject line and add "X-Spam-Flag:
YES" and "X-Spam-Status: Yes" headers to the messages. The latter can be useful
for users who prefer to filter mail with mail filtering programs installed on their own
computers.
To learn more about SpamAssassin, visit http://spamassassin.apache.org.
To configure and switch on the SpamAssassin filter, proceed to the section
SpamAssassin Spam Filter (on page 85).



DomainKeys. DomainKeys is a spam protection system based on sender
authentication. When an e-mail claims to originate from a certain domain,
DomainKeys provides a mechanism by which the recipient system can credibly
determine that the e-mail did in fact originate from a person or system authorized to
send e-mail for that domain. If the sender verification fails, the recipient system
discards such e-mail messages. To configure the DomainKeys system on your
server, refer to the section DomainKeys Protection (on page 88).



DNS blackhole lists. This spam prevention system is based on DNS queries made by
your mail server to a database, which contains known and documented sources of
spam, as well as an extensive listing of dynamic IP addresses. Any positive
response from this database should result in your mail server returning a '550' error,
or rejection of the requested connection.
To configure your mail server for working with DNSBL databases, proceed to the
section DNS Blackhole Lists (on page 90).



Sender Policy Framework (available only for Linux hosting). This spam prevention
system is also DNS query-based. It is designed to reduce the amount of spam sent
from forged e-mail addresses. With SPF, an Internet domain owner can specify the
addresses of machines that are authorized to send e-mail for users of his or her
domain. Receivers that implement SPF then treat as suspect any e-mail that claims
to come from that domain but fails to come from locations that domain authorizes.
To learn more about SPF, visit http://www.openspf.org/howworks.html.
To enable filtering based on SPF, proceed to the section Sender Policy Framework
System (Linux) (on page 92).



Server-wide black and white lists. Black and white lists are standard mail server
facilities. You can use black and white lists to block or receive mail from specific
servers. Your mail server retrieves domain names and IP addresses of servers
which attempt to establish connection with it. If a domain name is matched against
black list entries, your server refuses the connection. Thus, the potential spam
message will be never received. If an IP address is matched against white list
entries, your server receives a message from the sender without using the spam
protection systems such as sender authentication, greylisting, or DNSBL.
To set up server-wide black and white lists, proceed to the section Server-wide Black
and White Lists (on page 90).

Mail



Greylisting (available only for Linux hosting). Greylisting is a spam protection system
which works as follows: For every e-mail message that comes to the server,
sender's and receiver's e-mail addresses are recorded in a database. When a
message comes for the first time, its sender and receiver addresses are not listed in
the database yet, and the server temporarily rejects the message with an SMTP
error code. If the mail is legitimate and the sending server is properly configured, it
will try sending e-mail again and the message will be accepted. If the message is
sent by a spammer, then mail sending will not be retried: spammers usually send
mail in bulk to thousands of recipients and do not bother with resending.
The greylisting protection system also takes into account the server-wide and peruser black and white lists of e-mail senders: e-mail from the white-listed senders is
accepted without passing through the greylisting check, and mail from the blacklisted senders is always rejected.
When the greylisting support components are installed on the server, then
greylisting is automatically switched on for all domains. You can switch off and on
greylisting protection for all domains at once (at Tools & Settings > Spam Filter
Settings), or for individual subscriptions (in Control Panel > Mail tab > Change Settings).

Next in this section:
SpamAssassin Spam Filter ................................................................................85
DomainKeys Protection .....................................................................................88
DNS Blackhole Lists ..........................................................................................90
Server-wide Black and White Lists .....................................................................90
Sender Policy Framework System (Linux) .........................................................92
Greylisting (Linux) ..............................................................................................93

Mail

SpamAssassin Spam Filter
The SpamAssassin spam filter identifies spam messages among emails sent to
mailboxes hosted on your Panel server. To achieve the desired level of spam
protection, Panel lets you configure a number of SpamAssassin settings, namely:


Spam filter sensitivity
To identify spam messages, 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 your
users still receive spam messages with the default sensitivity, increase it by setting
a lesser value, for example, 6. If SpamAssassin marks valid messages as spam,
decrease the sensitivity by setting a higher value.



Spam marks
At the server level, you cannot set the server-wide spam filter to automatically
delete spam: you can do it only on a per-mailbox basis. So, for the server-wide
policy, you can choose only marking messages as spam: X-Spam-Flag: YES and
X-Spam-Status: Yes headers are added to the message source by default. If
you want, the spam filter will additionally include a specific text string to the
beginning of the messages' subject line (by default, this string is
*****SPAM*****).
Though you cannot configure SpamAssassin to delete all spam messages, you can
let each mailbox owner configure their own spam protection settings. This includes,
for example, setting their spam filters to automatically delete messages marked by
SpamAssassin, or setting up their personal black and white lists. For details on
adjusting spam filtering settings for a specific mailbox, refer to the section Protecting
from Spam (on page 530).



Maximum size of messages to check
Analyzing a huge number of emails can heavily increase the load on your server.
To avoid this, you can set the maximum size of the message that the spam filter will
test.



Number of SpamAssassin processes
Another way to limit the server loading by SpamAssassin is defining the maximum
number of SpamAssassin processes (on Linux) or threads (on WIndows) running
simultaneously on the server.



Trusted languages and locales (only on WIndows)
You can define the language characteristics of mail that should always pass the
filter by specifying trusted languages and locales. Letters written in the specified
languages and with the defined character sets will not be marked as spam.



Black and white lists
SpamAssassin lets you include certain senders into its black and white lists:


If you do not want your users to receive e-mail from specific domains or
individual senders, add the respective entries to the spam filter’s black list.



If you want to be sure that you and your users will not miss e-mail from specific
senders, add e-mail addresses or entire domains to the spam filter’s white list.

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These settings are available to you on the Tools & Settings > Spam Filter Settings page.
Note: Panel exposes only basic SpamAssassin functionality. If you want to create
complex antispam rules, edit SpamAssassin configuration files. For more information
on advanced SpamAssassin configuration, refer to the Advanced Administration Guide,
Spam Protection for both Linux and Windows and other respective documentation at
http://spamassassin.apache.org/doc/Mail_SpamAssassin_Conf.html.

Next in this section:
Switching on SpamAssassin ............................................................................. 86
Defining the Maximum Mail Size for SpamAssassin (Linux) .............................. 87
Configuring Black and White Lists ..................................................................... 87

Switching on SpamAssassin
 To switch on SpamAssassin:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Spam Filter Settings (in the Mail group).
2. Select the option Switch on server-wide SpamAssassin spam filtering.
3. To let your users set their own spam filtering preferences on a permailbox basis, select the option Apply individual settings to spam filtering.
4. Specify the maximum number of SpamAssassin processes in the field
Maximum number of worker spamd processes to run (1-5). We recommend that
you use the default value.
5. Adjust the spam filter's sensitivity by typing the desired value in the field
The number of points a message must score to qualify as spam.
6. On Windows, define the maximum size of messages that
SpamAssassin will process by selecting the option Do not filter if mail size
exceeds specified size and providing the desired value. On Linux, this
parameter is unavailable in Panel. For details on editing the maximum
mail size on Linux, see Defining the Maximum Mail Size for SpamAssassin (Linux)
(on page 87).
7. Specify how to mark messages recognized as spam in the field Add the
following text to the beginning of subject of each message recognized as spam. If
you do not want the spam filter to modify message subject, leave this
box blank. If you want to include into the subject line the number of
points that messages score, type _SCORE_ in this box.
8. On Windows, specify trusted languages and locales using the lists
Trusted languages and Trusted locales.
9. Click OK.

Mail

Defining the Maximum Mail Size for SpamAssassin (Linux)
To decrease the load on your server caused by SpamAssassin, you can limit the
maximum size of emails that SpamAssassin should analyze. All messages exceeding
this size will be delivered to their recipients without checking.

 To define the maximum size of messages that SpamAssassin will
process:
1. Open for editing the configuration file /etc/psa/psa.conf
2. Specify the desired value in bytes for the parameter
SA_MAX_MAIL_SIZE.
By default, the maximum email size is 256000 bytes. We recommend that you limit
the maximum mail size to 150 - 250 Kbytes, which is usual for mail messages in
HTML format with images. The size of the mail is considered critical for filter and
server overload if it exceeds 500 Kbytes, which is usual for mail messages
containing attachments.

Configuring Black and White Lists
 To add entries to the black or white list:
1. Go to the corresponding tab of the Tools & Settings > Spam Filter Settings
page.
2. Click Add Addresses.
3. Provide the list of entries you want to add to the list.
Separate addresses with a coma, a colon, or a white space. You can use an
asterisk (*) as a substitute for a number of letters, and question mark (?) as a
substitute for a single letter. For example: address@spammers.net,
user?@spammers.net, *@spammers.net. Specifying *@spammers.net will block
the entire mail domain spammers.net. If you use a Windows-based server, also
specify what to do with messages coming from the specified addresses.

4. Click OK.

 To remove entries from the black or white list:
Select the entries on the corresponding tab and click Remove.

Mail

Prohibiting Relaying Spam Through Panel Server on Windows
In Panel for Windows, the white list contains localhost (127.0.0.1) by default. This
means that SpamAssassin does not check incoming messages sent from addresses
hosted on your server. Spam senders may use this for relaying spam messages
through your server.

 To prohibit relaying mail for unauthenticated SMTP connections:
Remove 127.0.0.1 from the white list.

DomainKeys Protection
 To switch on spam protection based on DomainKeys:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Mail Server Settings (in the Mail group).
2. Under the DomainKeys spam protection group, select the following options:


Allow signing outgoing mail. Selecting this option allows you and your customers to
switch on support for DomainKeys e-mail signing on a per-subscription basis
through the Control Panel (Control Panel > Mail tab > Change Settings). It does not
automatically switch on signing of outgoing e-mail messages.



Verify incoming mail. Selecting this option will configure the DomainKeys system
to check all e-mail messages coming to e-mail users under all domains hosted
on the server.

3. Click OK.
Now your mail server will check all incoming e-mail messages to ensure that they come
from the claimed senders. All messages, sent from the domains that use DomainKeys
to sign e-mail, which fail verification will receive the header DomainKey-Status: 'bad'.
All messages, sent from the domains that do not participate in the DomainKeys
program and do not sign e-mail, will be accepted without verifying.

 To switch on signing outgoing e-mail messages for all domains in a
subscription:
1. Go to Control Panel > Mail tab > Change Settings.
2. Select the Use DomainKeys spam protection system to sign outgoing e-mail
messages checkbox.
3. Click OK.

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Now, the following will happen for the selected domains:


Private keys are generated and placed in the server's database.



Public keys are generated and placed in the TXT resource records created in the
domains' DNS zones.



The sender's policy advertised in the DNS TXT resource records is set to "all e-mail
messages sent from this domain must be cryptographically signed; if someone
receives an e-mail message claiming to originate from this domain, which is not
signed, then this e-mail must be discarded."



Outgoing e-mail messages are digitally signed: the "DomainKeys-Signature"
header containing a signature based on a private key is added to the message
headers.

Mail

DNS Blackhole Lists
You can use free and paid subscription blackhole lists with your server.

 To switch on spam protection based on DNSBL:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Mail Server Settings (in the Mail group).
2. Select the Switch on spam protection based on DNS blackhole lists checkbox.
3. In the DNS zones for DNSBL service input box, specify the host name that
your mail server should query, for example: sbl.spamhaus.org.
4. Click OK.
Now, e-mail messages from known spammers should be rejected with an error code
550 (connection refused).
Important: If you use the Qmail mail server and switch on DNSBL, senders with IP
addresses from the blackhole list will not be able to send email even if they pass SMTP
authentication. To avoid this problem, switch on the message submission as described
in the section Configuring Server-Wide Mail Settings (on page 77).

Server-wide Black and White Lists
 To reject connections from specific mail servers:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Mail Server Settings (in the Mail group).
2. Click the Black List tab.
3. Click Add Domain.
4. Specify the name of the domain from which you do not want to receive
e-mail. For example, 'evilspammers.net'.
5. Click OK.
6. Repeat steps from 3 to 5 to add as many domains as required.

 To assure mail reception from specific servers or networks:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Mail Server Settings (in the Mail group).
2. Click the White List tab.
3. Click Add Network.
4. Specify an IP address or range of IP addresses from which mail must
always be accepted.

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5. Click OK.
6. Repeat steps from 3 to 5 to add as many addresses as required.

Mail

Sender Policy Framework System (Linux)
 To set up support for Sender Policy Framework on your Linux-based
server:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Mail Server Settings (in the Mail group). The serverwide mail preferences screen will open on the Settings tab.
2. Select the Switch on SPF spam protection checkbox and specify how to deal
with e-mail:


To accept all incoming messages regardless of SPF check results, select the
Create only Received SPF-headers, never block option from the SPF checking mode
drop-down box. This option is recommended.



To accept all incoming messages regardless of SPF check results, even if SPF
check failed due to DNS lookup problems, select the In case of DNS lookup
problems, generate temporary errors option from the SPF checking mode drop-down
box.



To reject messages from senders who are not authorized to use the domain in
question, select the option Reject mail if SPF resolves to fail from the SPF checking
mode drop-down box.



To reject the messages that are most likely from senders who are not authorized
to use the domain in question, select the option Reject mail if SPF resolves to softfail
from the SPF checking mode drop-down box.



To reject the messages from senders who cannot be identified by SPF system
as authorized or not authorized because the domain has no SPF records
published, select the option Reject mail if SPF resolves to neutral from the SPF
checking mode drop-down box.



To reject the messages that do not pass SPF check for any reason (for
example, when sender's domain does not implement SPF and SPF checking
returns the "unknown" status), select the option Reject mail if SPF does not resolve
to pass from the SPF checking mode drop-down box.

3. To specify additional rules that are applied by the spam filter before the
SPF check is actually done by the mail server, type the rules you need
in the SPF local rules box.
We recommend that you add a rule for checking messages against the open
database of trusted senders, for example, 'include:spf.trusted-forwarder.org'. For
more information on SPF rules, visit http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4408.

4. To specify the rules that are applied to domains that do not publish SPF
records, type the rules into the SPF guess rules box.
For example: v=spf1 +a/24 +mx/24 +ptr ?all

5. To specify an arbitrary error notice that is returned to the SMTP sender
when a message is rejected, type it into the SPF explanation text box.
If no value is specified, the default text will be used as a notification.

6. To complete the setup, click OK.

Mail

Greylisting (Linux)
When the greylisting support components are installed on the server, greylisting
protection is automatically switched on for all domains. Therefore, no additional actions
are required. If you do not want to use greylisting protection, you can switch it off.

 To switch off greylisting protection for all domains:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Spam Filter Settings (in the Mail group).
2. Clear the Switch on server-wide greylisting spam protection checkbox.
3. Click OK.

 To switch on greylisting protection for all domains:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Spam Filter Settings (in the Mail group).
2. Select the Switch on server-wide greylisting spam protection checkbox.
3. Click OK.

 To switch off greylisting protection for all domains in a subscription:
1. Go to Control Panel > Mail tab > Change Settings.
2. Clear the Switch on greylisting spam protection for all mail accounts under this
domain checkbox.
3. Click OK.

 To switch on greylisting protection for all domains in a subscription:
1. Go to Control Panel > Mail tab > Change Settings.
2. Select the Switch on greylisting spam protection for all mail accounts under this
domain checkbox.
3. Click OK.

Mail

Outbound Spam Protection
If your hosting offerings include mail services, keep in mind that your mail server can
be used for malicious purposes. For example, spammers can use compromised
accounts for sending mass e-mails containing spam or viruses, compromised
computers (also called zombies) could relay spam through your server, and so on. This
may cause an increased load on the server, spam or malware complaints from
recipients, or your server’s IP addresses may be added to public black lists.
To prevent sending spam and other malicious messages from your server, we offer
Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam (hereafter referred to as Outbound Antispam).
This is an additional Panel component that analyzes all outgoing mail and blocks
sending of undesired messages. To learn how to install Outbound Antispam, see the
section Installing Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam. (on page 95)
To detect outgoing spam and virus messages, the component uses the external
Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam service that identifies outbreaks of spam and
email-borne malware over the Internet in real time. Every email outbreak can be
identified by one or more recurrent patterns, even if messages within the attack differ
from each other. The Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam service detects such
outbreaks using constantly updated global service repositories where all spam and
virus patterns are stored. When your mail server (qmail or Postfix) is requested to send
a message, the local Outbound Antispam component extracts the message patterns
and compares them to its local cache or sends to the service repository to identify
whether they were seen in global spam or virus attacks. All messages which patterns
were identified as malicious are blocked. An even more important benefit of using
Outbound Antispam is that it allows you to identify spammers who use your server
within the first few messages they send out, allowing you to prevent them from issuing
the attack. In addition, the component counts mail from each unique sender notifying
you when a sender exceeds a certain message threshold.
To learn how to turn on and configure protection from outbound spam on your server,
see the section Configuring Protection (on page 96).

Mail Classification
Outbound Antispam uses the following mail classification.
Type

Description

Confirmed spam

Spam messages that contain patterns seen in global
spam attacks. For example, these messages are sent
from compromised computers (zombies).

Bulk spam

Spam messages sent in bulk quantities from sources
that were not yet identified as spammers. The patterns
of such messages were seen in global spam attacks.

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Suspected spam

Messages that are sent in bulk quantities but not yet
confirmed as spam. This can be sending of legitimate
mass e-mails as well as spam messages in the first few
seconds of the attack.

Virus messages

Messages that either contain characteristics of
confirmed malware or with high likelihood pose a
malware threat.

Valid mail

Legitimate messages for which Outbound Antispam
does not have any incriminating information.

Non spam

Messages that are confirmed, without doubt, as coming
from trusted sources. This classification is very rarely
used.

Next in this section:
Installing Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam .............................................. 95
Configuring Protection ....................................................................................... 96

Installing Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam
To start using Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam, perform the following steps:
1. Install the component. This is done from the Tools & Settings > Updates & Upgrades.
After the installation is completed, you will find the component on the Tools &
Settings > Outbound Spam Filter page.
2. Activate the component. Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam requires a
separate license key. You can purchase such a key from your service provider or
directly from Parallels. Once you have obtained a key, install it to Panel using the
Tool & Settings > License Management > Additional License Keys page.

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Configuring Protection
Setting up outbound spam protection with Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam
includes configuration of the following aspects:
1. Connection settings (on page 97). To let the Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam
component installed on your Panel communicate with the external part of the
antispam system (the repositories), you should configure the component's
connection settings.
2. Sender identification policy (on page 98). To effectively fight sending of spam, the
outbound antispam solution includes a mechanism that allows you to identify the
actual e-mail senders even if they send spam from multiple e-mail addresses. You
should define how the system will identify senders.
3. Saving of message samples (on page 98). To track suspicious activities of senders
on your server, you can configure Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam to save
message samples in a specified directory to let you analyze them later.
4. Protection policy (on page 98). To define how the system will handle spam and
malware messages, configure the protection policy. For example, you can prohibit
sending of spam messages or limit the total number of messages from a single
sender. Additionally, if you are sure that a certain sender is not a spammer, you can
add them to the white list or bulk senders list. The system will send mail from these
senders bypassing some of the antispam checks.

Next in this section:
Connection Settings .......................................................................................... 97
Sender Identification Policy ............................................................................... 98
Saving Message Samples ................................................................................. 98
Protection Policy ................................................................................................ 98

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Connection Settings
To detect malicious messages, Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam uses the
external Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam service that checks patterns of
outgoing mail. As Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam requires a permanent
connection to the service, the default policy prohibits sending any messages when the
service is unavailable. This could happen, for example, if your Parallels Premium
Outbound Antispam license key has expired or due to network connection problems.
To let users send e-mails when the service is unavailable, select the checkbox Skip
scanning when the service is unavailable in Tools & Settings > Outbound Spam Protection >
Server Configuration tab.
Note: The Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam service address is specified in the
corresponding field on the Server Configuration tab of the Parallels Premium Outbound
Antispam page. Normally, you should not change the default value
resolver%d.plesk.ctmail.com. The only exception is when you experience
connectivity problems and want to troubleshoot them.

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Sender Identification Policy
An important aspect of outbound spam protection is identification of mail senders. The
sender identification allows you to know the problematic users or accounts on your
server and take actions to prevent them from sending more spam or doing other
actions related to mail sending.
To let you effectively recognize unique senders, Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam
offers you the following ways of identification:


SMTP authentication username. If your Panel server uses SMTP authentication,
Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam will identify users by usernames provided
during the SMTP authentication. To switch on the SMTP authentication in Panel, go
to Tools & Settings > Mail Server Settings > Relay options.



IP address from which a sender connects to your server.



SMTP authentication username if available; otherwise, IP address.



Custom mail header. This may be any string of text included in the message
header.

For example, if you choose IP address, the system will identify all users that connect to
your server from this IP address as a single sender even if they use different e-mail
addresses. To choose a way to identify unique senders, select the corresponding
option in the Tools & Settings > Outbound Spam Protection > Unique Sender Identifier tab.

Saving Message Samples
To keep track of suspicious activities of e-mail senders and identify potential
spammers, you can configure Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam to save samples
of outgoing messages to a specific directory. To do this, select the corresponding
checkbox in the Tools & Settings > Outbound Spam Protection > Unique Sender Identifier tab,
specify the directory, and enter the thresholds for different message types: spam,
suspected spam, and virus messages (see the classification in Protecting from Outbound
Spam (on page 94)). When a number of messages of a certain type from a sender
reaches the corresponding threshold, the system adds the last of these messages to
the specified directory to let you analyze the message's content later. Then the system
starts counting messages again from zero. For example, if you set the threshold for
suspected messages to 10, the system will save each tenth suspected message.
Note: The thresholds do not limit the number of messages that each sender can send.

Protection Policy
The protection policy settings located on the Tools & Settings > Outbound Spam Protection
> Protection Policy tab define what types of messages according to the Parallels
Premium Outbound Antispam classifications the system will block.

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As described in the section Protecting from Outbound Spam (on page 94), protection
works in the following way: When the Panel mail server receives a request to send a
message, the Outbound Antispam component extracts message patterns and sends
them to the external service. The latter, in its turn, identifies a message type (spam,
valid mail, and so on) and sends the result back to the component. If the message type
is selected in Block message sending, a server will refuse the SMTP transaction with the
5xx PERMFAIL reply code. For a sender, this means that a message could not be sent
under any circumstances. If the sender is another mail server, it is discouraged from
retrying to send the message. If the sender is a mail client (like Microsoft Outlook or
Mozilla Thunderbird), the message will bounce back to it.

Additional Protection Settings
Outbound Antispam allows you not only to reject messages of a certain type, but to
identify their senders by means of Thresholds for blocking senders that you can set for
each message type. The system keeps statistics (available at the Dashboard tab) on
unique senders who exceed these thresholds. Outbound Antispam counts all
messages of the selected type within the 5 minute window. If a counter value exceeds
a threshold, your mail server refuses the SMTP transactions for all messages until the
counter value does not become lower than the threshold again (this will mean that a
sender stopped trying to send messages of that type). You can specify how the server
should reject messages:


Delay sending. In this case, the system will refuse SMTP transactions with the 4xx
TEMPFAIL reply code. For the sending server this means that it could try to resend
this message. For the users of mail clients (like Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla
Thunderbird) this means that the message will stay unsent in their outbox.



Block sending. In this case, the system will refuse SMTP transactions with the 5xx
PERMFAIL reply code. As described above, this means that a message could not
be sent under any circumstances.

Let us take a look at how the blocking thresholds work. For example, we set the
threshold for blocking spam to 10 and some sender tries to send 3 spam messages per
minute through our server. See the timeline below. On the 4th minute, the counter
reaches 10 and Outbound Antispam starts to block all spam messages from the
sender. Note that the 5 minute counting window has a 1 minute shift, thus on the 6-th
minute, the counter's value will be equal to the sum of messages sent from 2-nd to 6-th
minute, and so on. On the 8-th minute, the sender stops trying to send spam, but the
counter's value still exceeds the threshold. Starting from the 10-th minute (when the
counter's value is equal to 9), Outbound Antispam will begin to accept messages from
the sender again.

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Such temporary blocking can help you to identify compromised accounts and
spammers who use them. If they are unable to send messages from a certain account,
they will probably stop trying to use this account.
Note that temporary blocking does not override the Block message sending settings but
supplements them. For example, if you choose to block spam in Block message sending
and then set the threshold for blocking spam, all spam messages will be always
blocked regardless of the message counter value. In this case, this threshold will just
help you to identify who is permanently trying to send spam through your server.
Another benefit of using thresholds is that you can limit the overall messages sending
rate (the Total messages parameter).

Allowing Certain Users to Send All Kinds of E-mail
If you are sure that a certain sender is not a spammer, you can make the system send
their mail without scanning. To do this, add the identifiers of these senders to the white
list or bulk senders list. These lists are located in Tools & Settings > Outbound Spam
Protection > White List and Tools & Settings > Outbound Spam Protection > Bulk Senders List
tabs respectively. The difference between the lists is in the following:


Users from the white list can send any number of messages including messages
considered as spam. Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam does not check
messages from the senders in the white list.



Users from the bulk senders list can send any number of suspected spam - mass emails that Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam does not consider spam. Spam
and virus messages sent by senders from this list will be blocked.

For example, if you know that your customer sends mass non-spam e-mails such as
newsletters, you should add their identifier to the bulk senders list to protect them from
blocking by the Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam. However, note that if the
system detects these newsletters as spam, it will block sending anyway.

Antivirus Software
To provide your e-mail users with anti-virus protection, you can use either the Parallels
Premium Antivirus or Kaspersky Antivirus solutions. Both solutions can scan server's
mail traffic in real time, however, only Kaspersky Antivirus allows fine tuning and
filtering of specific file types from attachments.
The both programs require an additional license key with annual renewal. Check the
current prices with your provider or visit Parallels site.

 To install Parallels Premium Antivirus or Kaspersky Antivirus:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Updates. Updater will open in a new window or tab.
2. Click Cancel updating.
3. Click Add Components.

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4. In the list of components, expand the Additional mail services group, and
select either Parallels Premium antivirus or Kaspersky antivirus extension.
5. Click Continue.
After the installation is completed, obtain and install a license key for the selected
antivirus program, as described in the following steps.

6. Go to Tools & Settings > License Management.
7. Click Order New Key. The Parallels online store page listing available addons opens in a new browser window.
8. On this page, select the checkbox next to Parallels Premium Antivirus or
Kaspersky Antivirus and click ADD TO MY BASKET.
9. Because Parallels Plesk Panel add-ons are added to the license keys
that already exist, you will need to specify the number of your license
key to which you add this feature and click Submit.
10. In the next steps, indicate the currency, number of keys, provide
contact details, billing address, and payment method, and submit the
form. You will be notified by e-mail when your order is processed.
11. When you receive the e-mail notice, return to the License Management
screen (Tools & Settings > License Management) and click
Retrieve Keys to
retrieve the ordered license key. The Panel's License Manager will
retrieve the upgraded license key from the Parallels licensing server
and install it to your control panel.
12. Go to Tools & Settings > Virus Protection Settings (in the Mail group).
Under Antivirus preferences, select the antivirus you need and click OK.
If you installed Parallels Premium Antivirus, you can switch on antivirus protection only
on a per-mailbox basis, and only after you have set up mailboxes. By default, virus
definitions are retrieved every 5 hours, and this setting is not changeable through the
control panel.

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Webmail Software
You can install on the server a number of webmail software packages and select which
of them should be available to your users. Alternately, you can redirect your users to an
external webmail service. To do this, register an external webmail service address with
the Panel by adding a corresponding record.
All installed webmail packages and registered external webmail services are listed in
the mail settings of hosting plans and subscriptions (on the Mail tab). There you can
select which webmail to provision to users.

Supported Webmail Software
By default, Horde and RoundCube webmails are installed on Parallels Plesk Panel for
Linux, and only Horde is installed on Parallels Plesk Panel for Windows. Additionally,
Panel for Linux supports Atmail, and Panel for Windows supports the following webmail
clients:


MailEnable Web Client



SmarterMail Web Client




IceWarp (Merak) Mail Server Web Client
Atmail Open

Important: If you offer RoundCube to your customers, keep in mind that Panel
backups do not include backups of the RoundCube database. This means that
RoundCube data such as customers' calendars and contacts is not restored upon
restoration of selected subscriptions or the entire server.

External Webmail Sevices
 To register an external webmail service:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Webmail (in the Mail group).
2. Click Register Webmail.
3. Specify the following:
a. Webmail service name.
b. Webmail service URL. Specify an address that begins with the
http:// or https:// prefix.
c. Leave the Available checkbox selected to make the registered
webmail service available for selection in hosting plan settings.
4. Click OK.

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 To change the properties of an external webmail record:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Webmail (in the Mail group).
2. Click the appropriate link in the Name column.
3. Make the required changes and click OK.

 To make a webmail service unavailable for inclusion into hosting plans:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Webmail (in the Mail group).
2. Do either of the following:


To make a service temporarily unavailable without actually removing it, select
the corresponding checkbox and click Disable.
This works for installed webmail software packages and for links to external
webmail services.



To permanently remove a service record, select the corresponding checkbox
and click Remove.
This way you can remove only links to external webmail services. Installed
software packages can be removed only by means of Parallels Products
Installer (Tools & Settings > Updates).

Mailing Lists (Linux)
To provide your customers with capabilities to run their own mailing lists or newsletters,
you should install the GNU Mailman package on your server (you could have done so
during installation of Parallels Plesk Panel), and set up the mailing list administrator's
account, otherwise, it will not work.

 To set up the mailing list administrator's account from your control panel:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Set Up Mailing Lists Server (in the Resources group).
2. Specify the username and password that you will use for administration
of mailing lists and their settings.
3. Click OK.
Once you have set up the Mailman administrator's account, you can configure the
mailing list software or change your administrative login and password by visiting the
URL: http://lists.yourservername.tld/mailman/admin/mailman
Note: After you have set up Mailman administrator's account, the Set Up Mailing Lists
Server icon will be no longer be accessible from the Panel.

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Preventing Mass Email Sending (Linux)
 To prevent your users from sending mass email, do the following:
1. Create a file named maxrcpt in the directory
$QMAIL_ROOT_D/qmail/control/
where $QMAIL_ROOT_D is the location defined in the file /etc/psa/psa.conf
file.

2. Type the number of allowed recipients in this file and save it.
Note that this number also affect sending of messages to mailing list or mail group
subscribers. That is, if you set the value to 100, then only 100 subscribers will receive
the message sent to a mailing list or a mail group.
When you no longer need to restrict the number of recipients, delete the maxrcpt file.

Mail Queue (Linux)
One of the possible reasons of problems with sending email is that the mail server is
overloaded and cannot cope with the amount of received messages. This can happen
when somebody is sending spam through your mail server, or the system process
responsible for sending mail is down.
To see your mail server message queue, go to the Tools & Settings > Mail Server Settings
> Mail Queue tab. Panel provides the following information about the queue:


Total number of undelivered messages. When messages come to your mail server,
they are first added to the main queue. Then, the mail server preprocesses them in
order to find out whether they should be delivered to a local e-mail account on the
same server or sent further to a remote recipient’s e-mail address. After
preprocessing, the messages directed at local mail recipients are put to a local
queue, and the messages directed at remote recipients are put to a remote queue.
Once delivered, the messages are removed from the queues.



Message properties: subject, sender, recipient, queue type (local, remote, not
preprocessed), date the message was sent from user’s computer, the time elapsed
since the moment when message was put to queue (age), and message size.

To return your mail server to an operable state, do any of the following:


Delete all messages from the mail queue using the Clear button.



Delete only specific messages. Find the messages with specific settings such as
subject, sender, or recipient using the filter that opens when you click
them, and click Remove,

, select

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Mass Email Notifications
When you need to inform your customers of scheduled server maintenance, or to introduce
new service offerings, you can use the mass email function (Tools & Settings > Mass Email
Messages) to send notices to all of your customers at once.
You may want to create message templates and use them when needed, or you can send
messages without using any templates.
Read this section to learn how to:


Create message templates for further use.



Send email to multiple customers.

Next in this section:
Creating, Editing and Removing Message Templates ....................................... 106
Sending E-mail Notices ..................................................................................... 108

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Creating, Editing and Removing Message Templates
 To create a new message template:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Mass E-mail Messages (in the Tools group), and click Add
Mass E-Mail Template.
2. Specify template name in the Template name field.
3. Specify sender's name and e-mail address in the From field.
You can specify name, e-mail address or both. To specify both name and e-mail address,
use the following format: Name . For example: John Doe
.

4. Select the recipients for your e-mail message:


If you want to send a message to resellers, select the Resellers checkbox and select
the required group of recipients: All to send message to all resellers, Selected only to
send message only to the resellers you select manually, All except selected to send
message to all resellers except the ones you select manually.



To select several resellers, click Select Addresses to the right of the Resellers checkbox
(note that this button is not available if All mode is selected), select the required
resellers in the Available resellers field and click Add >>. To remove resellers from the
list of selected resellers, select the required resellers in the Selected resellers field and
click << Remove.



If you want to send a message to customers, select the Customers checkbox and
select the required group of recipients: All to send message to all customers, Selected
only to send message only to the customers you select manually, All except selected to
send message to all customers except the ones you select manually.



To select several customers, click Select Addresses to the right of the Customers
checkbox (note that this button is not available if All mode is selected), select the
required customers in the Available customers field and click Add >>. To remove
customers from the list of selected customers, select them in the Selected customers
field and click << Remove.



You can see your choice of selected recipients at any time by clicking the respective
Show/Hide Selected button.



If you want a copy of the message to be sent to your mailbox, select the Parallels Panel
administrator checkbox.

5. Specify the subject of your message in the Subject field.
6. Enter your message in the Message text field in plain text format. If you want
the Panel to automatically insert the recipient names into your message, use
variable. The names will be taken from the information specified in
the Contact name field.
7. Click OK to save the template.

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 To edit a message template:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Mass E-mail Messages (in the Tools group), and click the
required template in the list.
2. Make the required changes and click OK.

 To remove a message template:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Mass E-mail Messages (in the Tools group).
2. Select the checkbox corresponding to the message template you want to
remove and click Remove.
3. Confirm the removal and click OK.

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Sending E-mail Notices
 To send an e-mail message to multiple customers at once:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Mass E-mail Messages (in the Tools group).
2. If you want to use a message template that you previously created (as
described in Creating, Editing and Removing Message Templates (on page
106)), click the corresponding icon in the Send column. If you want to send a
custom message, click Send Mass E-Mail.
3. To insert text from a template, select the template you need and click Insert.
4. Specify sender's name and e-mail address in the From field.
You can specify name, e-mail address or both. To specify both name and e-mail address,
use the following format: Name . For example: John Doe
.

5. Select the recipients for your e-mail message:




You can see your choice of selected recipients at any time by clicking the respective
Show/Hide Selected button.



If you want a copy of the message to be sent to your mailbox, select the Parallels Panel
administrator checkbox.

6. Specify the subject of your message in the Subject field.
7. Enter your message in the Message text field in plain text format. If you want
Parallels Plesk Panel to automatically insert the recipient names into your
message, use the variable. The names will be taken from the
information specified in the Contact name field.

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8. If you want to save this message (both the text itself and information about
its recipients) as a template for further use, select the checkbox to the left of
Save text to a new template named field and specify the template name in this
field.
9. Click OK to send the message. If you have chosen to save the message
contents as a template, a template will be created and placed in the list of
available templates.

Configuring Email Notifications
The Panel notifies you and your customers of disk space and bandwidth overage by sending
e-mail notifications. In addition to resource overage, the control panel can notify the users
when:


New user accounts are created.



New domains are added.



Hosting accounts are expired (expiration date is defined for user accounts and websites
separately).

 To view or modify the notification system settings:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Notifications (in the Logs & Notifications group).
2. By selecting the checkboxes in the Notifications table, specify the types of
control panel users or external e-mail users who should receive notices on
events.
3. To view or edit the default notice text, click the respective
column.

icon in the Text

In notices you can use tags that will be replaced with actual data (see the table below).

4. Specify when to send the user account and website expiration notices. By
default, such notices are sent 10 days in advance. Click OK.

Tags Used in Notification Messages
Event type

Tags that can be used in notices

The data that tags denote

Creation of a
reseller or
customer
account

user's first and last name

user name for authorization in the
Panel

user's password for authorization
in the Panel

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company name

user account creation date

phone number

fax number

country

state or province

city

postal or ZIP code

address

Addition of a
new website to
the server

unique identifier assigned by the
system

host name for access to the
Panel

domain name

user name for authorization in the
Panel

user's first and last name

Mail

Subscription
expiration
notices

unique identifier assigned by the
system

IP address the website is hosted
on

subscription name

user name for authorization in the
Panel

111

user's first and last name

unique identifier assigned by the
system

subscription expiration date

Resource

overuse notices

subscription name
user name for authorization in the
Panel
user's first and last name

information about disk space
usage

information about the amount of
disk space allocated to the
account

information about all resource
limits that were or will soon be
reached

information about bandwidth
usage

information about the bandwidth
amount allotted to the account

Note: If you upgraded to Parallels Plesk Panel from an earlier version, then all custom notice
templates you previously used remain in effect. Because of changes in user accounts
hierarchy and addition of resource overuse scheme, now any type of resource can be
overused. Therefore, to show information about all overused resources in notice templates,
we recommend using a single variable instead of the variables
, , , and .

CHAPTER 7

Database Servers
Parallels Plesk Panel needs database servers for storing its own databases, databases
used by its components (for example, databases for the webmail service), and
databases created by hosting customers' websites and APS applications (for example,
a Wordpress database).
Parallels Plesk Panel supports the most popular database engines and is shipped with
corresponding database management tools. Panel can work with database servers
located on the same server with Panel or on a remote machine.
By default, on Linux servers, database engines are installed on the same server with
Panel from the repository of your OS vendor (Linux) or your custom repository. On
Windows servers, database engines are packaged with Panel and installed on the
same server with Panel.

Database Server Software in Panel for Linux
Panel 11.5 for Linux supports MySQL and PostgreSQL database servers. Panel uses
MySQL and PostgreSQL packages from the repository of your operating system. The
exception is MySQL 5.5, which is packaged with Panel and supported on a limited
number of operating systems.
MySQL is installed during Panel installation. You can additionally install PostgreSQL
through Tools & Settings > Updates and Upgrades > Add/Remove Components > PostgreSQL
server support.
You can also register external MySQL and PostgreSQL database servers in Panel. For
details, see Adding and Removing Database Servers (on page 114). The list of supported
database server versions is provided in Release Notes.
On CentOS 5, RHEL 5, and CloudLinux Panel installations, you can use MySQL 5.5. It
is packaged with Panel and can be installed through Updates and Upgrades > Add/Remove
Components.

Database Server Software in Panel for Windows
Panel 11.5 for Windows supports Microsoft SQL Server Express 2008 and 2012, and
MySQL 5.1. By default, MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 are installed during
Panel installation. You can additionally install Microsoft SQL Server 2012 through Tools
& Settings > Updates and Upgrades > Add/Remove Components.
You can also register external Microsoft SQL Servers and MySQL servers in Panel. For
details, see Adding and Removing Database Servers (on page 114).

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113

To work with other database engines, Panel for Windows uses ODBC. For details, see
Connecting to External Databases (Windows) (on page 120).
The list of supported database server versions is provided in Release Notes.
Note: For instructions on managing databases in Panel, refer to Website Databases (on
page 542).

In this chapter:
Adding and Removing Database Servers .......................................................... 114
Configuring Backup Settings for Remote SQL Servers ...................................... 116
Changing Database Administrator's Credentials................................................ 117
Database Hosting Preferences .......................................................................... 118
Database Management Tools ........................................................................... 119
Connecting to External Databases (Windows)................................................... 120

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Database Servers

Adding and Removing Database Servers
Adding External Database Servers to Panel
 To use external database servers with your hosting server:
1. Set up an external database server:
a. Install MySQL, PostgreSQL, or Microsoft SQL software.
For the supported versions, see Release Notes for Panel for Linux and Release
Notes for Panel for Windows.

b. Set up the database administrator's account.
c. Enable network access to the database server.
2. Log in to Parallels Plesk Panel.
3. Go to Tools & Settings > Database Servers, and click Add Database Server.
4. Specify the properties of the database server:


Specify a database server engine in the Database server type box. The list
contains database engines supported by your licence key. You can check what
components are supported on the Tools & Settings > Licence Management page.
Note: To use Microsoft SQL Server with Panel, you need to obtain Parallels
Plesk Panel Power Pack.
Note that before using a database server engine you should install it in Tools &
Settings > Updates and Upgrades > Add/Remove Components, unless it was installed
with Panel.



Specify the hostname or IP address of the database server.



Specify the port number the database server is listening on. This option is
available only for MySQL. By default, MySQL servers listen on port 3306. You
can leave the Port number box blank, if your MySQL database server is listening
on the default port.
Note: Do not enter the value for MySQL server port equal to 8306, because it is
used by Parallels Plesk Panel for communication with its internal database.



Specify which database type is running on the database server.



To make this database server default for hosting customers’ databases, select
the Use this server as default for MySQL checkbox. If you have a MS SQL database
server, select the checkbox Use this server as default for MS SQL.



Specify the database server administrator's login name and password.

5. Click OK.

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If you have registered a SQL Server, you may want to provide its backup settings. For
configuring the backup settings of a remote SQL Server, refer to Configuring Backup
Settings for Remote SQL Servers (on page 116).

Removing Database Servers from Panel
You can remove a database server only if it is not the default server and there are no
databases on it.

 To unregister a database server from Panel:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Database Servers.
2. Select the checkbox to the right of the database server’s host name.
3. Click Remove.
4. Confirm the operation and click OK.

 To unregister a database server that has databases or is assigned as
default for hosting customers' databases:
1. Delete databases from the database server:
a. Go to Tools & Settings > Database Servers.
b. Click the host name of the database server that you wish to
unregister from Panel.
c. Select the checkbox in the upper left corner of the list to select
all databases.
d. Click Remove.
e. Confirm removal and click OK.
2. Make another database server default:
a. Click the Database servers shortcut in the path bar at the top of the
screen.
b. Click the host name of a database server that you wish to make
default. This should be of the same database server type
(MySQL or SQL Server) as the one you are going to delete.
c. Click Preferences and select the Use this server as default for MySQL
checkbox. If you have a SQL Server, select the Use this server as
default for MS SQL checkbox.
d. Click OK.
3. Return to the list of database servers (Tools & Settings > Database Servers).
4. Select a checkbox corresponding to the database server that you no
longer need.

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5. Click Remove.
6. Confirm the operation and click OK.
Important: You cannot remove databases used by web applications this way. To
remove them, you should first remove the respective web applications from the sites
that use them.

Configuring Backup Settings for Remote
SQL Servers
If you want to back up databases hosted on a remote Microsoft SQL Server that you
registered in Panel earlier, you need to configure the backup settings for that Microsoft
SQL Server.

 To configure backup settings for a remote Microsoft SQL Server:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Database Servers and click the required remote SQL
Server name.
2. Specify the temporary physical directory for the remote SQL Server in
the Temporary directory field. For example, C:\db_pleskbackup.
This temporary physical directory is required for backing up and restoring remote
SQL Server databases: SQL Server places temporary backup files in this directory
during backup, and Panel places temporary backup files in this directory during
restoration. You must create this directory on the remote server and make it
accessible by the MS SQL server to read and write.

3. Share the physical directory created in the previous step and specify
the network path to this directory in the Temporary network directory field.
For example, \\ServerName\db_pleskbackup.
Panel server will use this directory to download and upload the temporary backup
files. You must create the network directory on the remote server, mount it to a
temporary physical directory created in the previous step, and make it accessible
over network by the user created in the next step.

4. Create a user on the remote server (for example
ServerName\db_backup_user) and give this user read/write access
to the temporary network directory.
Panel server will use this user to access the temporary directory.

5. Specify the user name and password required for accessing the
temporary network directory.
6. Click OK.

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117

Changing Database Administrator's
Credentials
To change the credentials with which Panel accesses a database server, you should
first change these credentials on the database server and then update them in Panel.
You cannot change the credentials through Panel. The exception is Panel for Windows,
which allows you to change the database administrators' password.

Updating Database Administrator's Credentials in Panel
If you have changed the administrator's credentials on the database server, it is
necessary to change them in Panel as well
Important: Updating the credentials through Panel does not change them on the
database server.

 To update the database server administrator's credentials in Panel
(Linux):
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Database Servers.
2. Click the host name of a database server.
3. Provide the new username and password of the database server
administrator.

 To update the database server administrator's credentials in Panel
(Windows):
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Database Servers.
2. Click the host name of a database server and then Settings.
3. Provide the new username and password of the database server
administrator.

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Changing Database Administrator's Password (Windows)
You can change the password of the user that is currently used by Panel to access the
database server. When you change the password in the Panel UI, it will be changed on
the database server automatically and updated in the database server settings in
Panel.

 To change the database server administrator's password:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Database Servers.
2. Click the host name of a database server.
3. Click Change Password.
4. Enter the new password and click OK.

Database Hosting Preferences
These preferences include the naming of databases and database users.

 To set up naming preferences that will affect all databases created
through Parallels Plesk Panel:
In Tools & Settings > Database Hosting Preferences (in the Applications & Databases group)
select any of the following options:


Add username and underscore to the beginning of database names. Panel will add the
Panel user name to corresponding database names. All names of newly created
databases will look like _. This will make
it convenient to locate databases related to a particular Panel user.
Note: If you select this option, users will not be able to remove the
_ prefix from the names of databases on creation of new
databases. If you do not select this option, Panel will prompt users to add the
_ prefix to the database name, and users will be able to add
it or remove it.



Add username and underscore to the beginning of database user names. Panel will add the
Panel user name to corresponding database users' names. All names of newly
created database users will look like _. This will make it easier to locate database users related to a particular
Panel user. Existing database users will not be affected.

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Database Management Tools
Database management tools provide a web interface for the administration of
databases. The tools also allow running SQL queries from this user interface.
Panel is shipped with the following database management tools:


PHPMyAdmin is used for MySQL databases.



phpPgAdmin is used for PostgreSQL databases.



ASP.NET Enterprise Manager and myLittleAdmin are used for Microsoft SQL
Server - you can choose between them in Tools & Settings > Server Components >
Microsoft SQL Webadmin.

Note that you need to install these tools first in Tools & Settings > Updates and Upgrades >
Add/Remove Components.

 To open a database management tool for a selected database server:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Database Servers.
2. Click the
icon corresponding to the database server you need to
manage. One of the supported database management tools (depending
on the database engine) will open in a separate browser window.
Alternatively, clicking the Webadmin icon (in the settings of a particular database server)
opens the corresponding tool depending on the database engine.

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Connecting to External Databases
(Windows)
If you want your users to access the data from an external database management
system, you should use Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) drivers. For example,
you can install a Microsoft Access ODBC driver creating a connection to external
Microsoft Access database, and customize web applications to use this database for
storing their data.
Note that an external database does not necessarily need to be remote; ODBC can be
used to access local databases as well.

 To install a new ODBC driver, creating a connection to an external
database:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > ODBC Data Sources.
2. Click Add New ODBC DSN.
3. Specify the ODBC connection name and description in the
corresponding fields.
4. Select the required driver in the Driver field.
5. Click OK.
6. Choose the appropriate options on the driver configuration screen.
Typically, you should specify the path to the database, user credentials
and other connection options, depending on the selected driver.
7. Click Test to check whether the connection will function properly with
provided settings. Click Finish to complete the creation.

 To change settings of an existing ODBC connection:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > ODBC Data Sources.
2. Click the required connection name in the list.
3. Change the settings as needed.
4. Click Test to check whether the connection will function properly with
new settings. Click Finish to save changes.

 To remove a redundant ODBC connection:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > ODBC Data Sources.
2. Select a checkbox corresponding to the connection you want to remove.
3. Click Remove, confirm the removal and click OK.

CHAPTER 8

Server Administration
This section describes the tasks related to server configuration and administration: IP
pool, system time, firewall, and other. For the tasks related to Panel configuration and
administration, see Panel Administration (on page 138).

In this chapter:
IP Pool .............................................................................................................. 122
Scheduling Tasks .............................................................................................. 126
Server Settings.................................................................................................. 131
System Services ............................................................................................... 132
System Date and Time ...................................................................................... 134
Firewall.............................................................................................................. 135

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IP Pool
The IP pool is a set of available IP addresses that you can pass on to customers and
resellers, or utilize them for your own websites. IP addresses may be designated as
either dedicated, meaning that the target subscriber becomes the only owner of this
address, or shared, meaning that this address is shared among many subscribers.
Next in this section we will describe the concepts of IP addresses and how they are
allocated in Panel for web hosting purposes.

About IP Addresses
An IP address is a number that uniquely identifies each device, such as a computer, on
a network. The use of IP addresses makes it possible for computers to find other
computers on a network and communicate with them.
There are two formats of IP addresses:


IP version 4. These 32-bit network addresses look like 192.168.1.1. They are
currently used by most network devices. The number of IPv4 addresses is limited
and the last remaining portions of vacant IP addresses have already been allocated
to Internet service providers.



IP version 6. These 128-bit network addresses look like
2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334. IPv6 is the new standard that
was developed to address the exhaustion of IPv4 network addresses.

When Parallels Plesk Panel is deployed in IPv6-enabled networks, it can operate
simultaneously on IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. Providers can add IPv4 and IPv6
addresses to the server IP pool, allocate them to resellers, and create subscriptions
based on them.
Each hosting subscription can be allocated:


One IPv4 address.



One IPv6 address.



One IPv4 + one IPv6 address (dual-stack subscriptions).

Note: Each subscription that needs to host FTP shares accessible by Internet users
without password authorization (Anonymous FTP) must be assigned at least one
dedicated IPv4 address.

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Requirements for Operating on IPv6
The following requirements must be met to ensure the proper operation of Parallels
Plesk Panel in IPv6-enabled networks:


The Panel-managed server must be assigned at least one static IPv4 address. This
is required for connections to the Panel licensing servers and application catalogs.



When running in virtual environments, Parallels Virtuozzo Containers 4.6 or later
must be used.

To see the list of Linux operating systems that support this feature, refer to the release
notes to Panel, for Linux or for Windows.

Allocation to Resellers and Hosting Customers
The following is an overview of how IP addresses are allocated in Panel:
1. IP addresses are added to the server IP pool.
After installation, Panel reads all assigned IP addresses from the operating system
configuration and adds them to the server IP pool. When you obtain new IP
addresses that you would like to use on the server, you should add them through
Panel to that pool, as Panel might not recognize manual modifications you make to
the network configuration files.
Note: If you are running Panel in a Parallels Virtuozzo Container (PVC), you can
add IP addresses only on the PVC hardware node.
When adding addresses to the server IP pool (in Tools & Settings > IP Addresses >
Add IP Address), you select how they should be allocated - either as dedicated or
shared:


A dedicated IP address can be assigned to a single reseller. Dedicated IP
addresses are required for hosting e-commerce sites with SSL encryption and
sites that host FTP shares that are accessible without password authorization.
Note: The Server Name Indication (SNI) makes it possible to enable SSL
protection for sites on shared IP addresses; however, this might not work for
all hosting servers and users' browsers. For more information, see the
section SSL and Shared IP Addresses (on page 150). On Windows platforms, it
is also possible to protect a group of websites with one certificate. See the
section SSL and Shared IP Addresses (Windows) (on page 150) for more details.



A shared IP address can be literally shared among several reseller accounts
and sites. Sharing of addresses helps to use scarce IPv4 address resources
efficiently, but it should not be needed for IPv6 addresses.

2. When setting up reseller plans (in Service Plans > Reseller Plans > Add New Plan > IP
Addresses tab), you select IP addresses that should be allocated to resellers:


For shared IP addresses, you can manually select which addresses should be
allocated.



For dedicated IP addresses, you can only specify the number of addresses that
should be allocated: When you create a new reseller account, a vacant
dedicated IP address from the server pool is automatically selected by Panel
and allocated to the reseller.

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3. When signing up new customers (in Customers > Add New Customer) or creating
subscriptions for your own needs (in Subscriptions > Add New Subscription), you can
select IP addresses that should be allocated. All shared and dedicated addresses
available from the server IP pool are listed in a menu.

About Using Panel with Dynamic IP Pools
Panel examines its IP pool during the web server start and removes IP addresses that
do not exist in the system. This does not allow administrators to allocate non-existing
IP addresses to services or subscriptions.

Managing the Server IP Pool
 To view the IP addresses you have at your disposal:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > IP Addresses (in the Tools & Resources group).
Your IP addresses are listed and the following supplementary information is given:


The IP address, Subnet Mask and Interface columns show which IP addresses are
on which network interfaces.



The Resellers column shows the number of user accounts whom you assigned a
given IP address. To view the users by names, click the respective number in
the Resellers column.



The Sites column shows a number of websites hosted on an IP address. To view
the domain names of these websites, click the respective number in the Sites
column.

2. To update the list of IP addresses and their status, click Reread IP.
You might need to do this if you manually added IP addresses to the network
interface in the server operating system, or when operating in Parallels Virtuozzo
Containers.

 To add a new IP address to the server:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > IP Addresses (in the Tools & Resources group), and
click Add IP Address.
2. Select the network interface for the new IP from the Interface menu. All
network cards installed on your server are shown in this menu.
3. Enter the IP address and subnet mask in the corresponding box. For
example, 123.123.123.123/16 or 2002:7b7b:7b7b::1/64.
4. Select the type of the new IP address, shared or dedicated.

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125

5. From the drop-down box, select the default SSL certificate to use for
the new IP address. You can select the following certificates:


Default certificate - the certificate that comes with the Parallels Plesk Panel
distribution package. However, this certificate is not recognized by web
browsers as it is not signed by a Certificate Authority (a warning message
appears). The default certificate is used to provide access to the Panel via the
https protocol (https://server-name-or-IP-address:8443/).



Other certificates - the certificates (self-signed or signed by a Certificate Authority)
that you added to the repository of SSL certificates. About adding certificates,
see Customer's Guide, section Securing Connections with SSL Certificates.

6. If your server is running Windows operating system, select the FTP over
SSL checkbox if you want to enable the ability to use secure FTP
connection (FTP over SSL) for the domain on a dedicated IP address.
Note: To enable secure FTP connections, the FTP server installed on your
Parallels Plesk Panel server must support FTP over SSL. For example, Gene6,
Serv-U FTP, IIS FTP 7.x servers support FTP over SSL.

7. Click OK.

 To remove an IP address from the server:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > IP Addresses (in the Resources group).
2. Select the respective checkbox and click Remove, confirm removal and
click OK.

 To assign an IP address to a reseller:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > IP Addresses (in the Resources group), and click the
corresponding number in the Resellers column, then click Assign.
2. Select the account you need and click OK.

 To revoke an IP address from a reseller:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > IP Addresses (in the Resources group), and click the
corresponding number in the Resellers column.
2. Select the respective checkbox and click Remove.
3. Confirm removal and click OK.
Since users can refer to a web resource on your server by typing an IP address and
there can be several websites hosted on that address, Panel needs to know which of
the sites to show in such cases. Panel automatically assigns the first website created
on an IP address as the default website; however, you can select any other website
and make it default.

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 To assign a default website (default domain) for an IP address:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > IP Addresses (in the Resources group), and click the
IP address you need.
2. In the Default site menu, select the site you need and click OK.

 To change an IP address allocation type (shared, dedicated) or assign
another SSL certificate to an IP address:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > IP Addresses (in the Resources group), and click the
IP address you need.
2. Select the required IP address allocation type and SSL certificate, and
click OK.

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

Next in this section:
Scheduling Tasks on Linux-based Servers ........................................................ 127
Scheduling Tasks on Windows-based Servers .................................................. 129

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127

Scheduling Tasks on Linux-based Servers
If you need to run scripts on your server at specific time, use the task scheduling facility
on your server to make the system automatically run the scripts for you.
Important: To prohibit control panel users from scheduling tasks on behalf of user
"root", create on the server's file system an empty file with name
root.crontab.lock in the location
/parallels_panel_installation_directory/var/.
During installation of Parallels Plesk Panel, the following tasks are automatically
created:


autoreport.php - delivers daily, weekly and monthly reports on clients and domains
(three separate tasks)



backupmng - initiates scheduled backing up of domains once every 30 minutes



statistics - generates statistics on the limits imposed on domains, such as traffic,
disk usage, and so on



mysqldump.sh - creates a backup copy of three MySQL databases: psadump,
MySQL, and Horde databases

Because all these tasks are related to domain statistics, databases and reports, it is
strongly recommended that you neither change nor remove them.

 To schedule a task:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Scheduled Tasks.
2. Select the system user account on whose behalf the task will be
executed.
3. Click Schedule 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.

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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.
For example, if you want to run the backup creation task at the specified time and
have the backup file sent to your e-mail, you need to specify the following command
in the Command input box:
/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/backupmng

6. Click OK.

 To temporarily suspend execution of a scheduled task:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Scheduled Tasks.
2. Select the system user account on whose behalf the task is executed.
3. Locate the task that you want to suspend and click on the command
name.
4. Clear the Switched on checkbox and click OK.

 To resume execution of a scheduled task:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Scheduled Tasks.
2. Select the system user account on whose behalf the task is executed.
3. Locate the task whose execution you want to resume and click the
command name.
4. Select the Switched on checkbox and click OK.

 To cancel a task:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Scheduled Tasks.
2. Select the system user account on whose behalf the task is executed.
3. Select a checkbox to the left of the task that you want to cancel.
4. Click Remove.
5. Confirm removal and click OK.

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Scheduling Tasks on Windows-based Servers
If you need to run scripts on your server at specific time, use the task scheduler facility
on your server to make the system automatically run the scripts for you.
During installation of Parallels Plesk Panel, the following tasks are automatically
created:


Update Parallels Premium Antivirus database - updates antivirus database.



Statistics calculation - generates statistics on resource usage, such as traffic and
disk space.

Because these tasks are related to operation of system services, it is strongly
recommended that you neither change nor remove them.

 To schedule a task:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Scheduled Tasks.
2. Click Schedule New Task.
3. Leave the Switched on checkbox selected if you want your scheduled
task to be active immediately after the creation.
4. Type a name for your task in the Description field.
5. In Scheduler notification, specify whether the scheduler should notify you
when it runs this task. The following options are available:


Switched off - do not notify you.



Send to the default e-mail - send the notification to your default e-mail address.



Send to the e-mail I specify - send the notification to the e-mail specified in the
corresponding field. After selecting this option, you need to input the required email in the field on the right.
Click Set to save scheduler notifications settings.

6. Specify which command to run. Type it into the Path to executable file input
box. If you need to run the command with certain options, type them in
the Arguments field.
For example, if you want to run the statistics calculation task to count disc space
and see more detailed information for the example.com and example.net
domains, you need to specify the following path in the Path to executable file input
box:
C:\Program Files\Parallels\Parallels
Panel\admin\bin\statistics.exe



and the following options in the Arguments field:
--disk-usage --process-domains=example.com, example.net verbose


If you want to run your own PHP script using the task scheduler, you need to
specify the following path in the Path to executable file input box:

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C:\Program Files (x86)\Parallels\Parallels
Panel\Additional\PleskPHP5\php.exe
and specify the script location in the Arguments field:
C:\Inetpub\vhosts\mydomain.tld\httpdocs\myscript.php

7. Select the appropriate priority in the Task priority field. Task priority can
be set to Low, Normal or High.
8. Specify when to run your command by selecting the appropriate
checkboxes in the Hours, Days of Month, Months or Days of Week fields.
9. Click OK to schedule the task or click Run Now to schedule the task and
immediately run it.

 To temporarily suspend execution of a scheduled task:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Scheduled Tasks.
2. Choose a task that you wish to suspend and click on the command
name.
3. Clear the Switched on checkbox.

 To resume execution of scheduled task:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Scheduled Tasks.
2. Choose a task whose execution you wish to resume and click on the
command name.
3. Select the Switched on checkbox.

 To cancel a task:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Scheduled Tasks.
2. Select a checkbox to the left of the task that you want to cancel.
3. Click Remove.
4. Confirm removal and click OK.

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131

Server Settings
In this section, we will describe general Panel server settings. These settings include a
set of parameters related to statistics, and miscellaneous options such as server-wide
permissions for customers. You can edit the server settings on the Tools & Settings >
Server Settings page.

Statistics Options
Panel lets you configure the following statistics options:


Retain web and traffic statistics for
Here you set the period for which the server will store web statistics and traffic
statistics gathered by Webalizer or AWstats programs. By default, Panel keeps the
data for the last three months.



Include in the disk space usage calculation
Here you select object types that Panel will consider when calculating disk space
usage.



When calculating disk space usage, count
This option lets you define how Panel will count the disk space used by each object:
by its size or amount of used disk space. For information on how exactly Panel
calculates disk space usage, see the section About Disk Space Usage Calculation (on
page 262).



Include in the traffic calculation
Here you select what types of traffic Panel will count when calculating traffic:
inbound, outbound, or both of them.

Miscellaneous Options
In addition to the settings related to statistics, this screen lets you edit the following
settings:


Full hostname.
The host name of the Panel server.



Forbid users to create DNS subzones in other users' DNS superzones.
When a customer creates a domain, they can specify not only the second-level
domain names (like example.com) but also third- and lower levels of domain
names, for example, doc.example.com. When a customer creates
doc.example.com and the original domain name, example.com, was created by
another customer, the system will not allow creating such a subdomain if the
corresponding option is selected. We recommend that you select this checkbox,
otherwise, users will be able to create fake subdomains and set up websites and email accounts which could be used for spamming or even phishing or identity theft.

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

Forbid customers to change the name of their system user.
When you add a subscription for a hosting customer, you specify a name of a
system user associated with this subscription. On behalf of this user, the customer
accesses the server over FTP or SSH, works with the file system, and so on.
By default, customers are allowed to change the names of system users associated
with their subscriptions. Use this option to prevent customers from modifying these
names.
Note: This option works only for customers who are not granted the Hosting
Management permission. This permission enables customers to modify the name of
the system user even if the option is selected.



Forbid customers to change the name of their main domain.
The main domain of a subscription is created when you create the subscription. The
name of the main domain is the same as the subscription name. By selecting this
option, you can prohibit customers from modifying this name. Note that the Panel
administrator and additional administrators are able to modify names of customers'
subscriptions, even if this option is selected. By default, this option is not selected.



(Only for Windows) Include the user's password into the file with Web Deploy publication
settings.
Customers have the option to write code of their websites in WebMatrix® (the
development tool) and publish the code directly to their customer accounts through
a special protocol called Web Deploy. To set up a connection to their accounts, the
customers should specify publishing settings in WebMatrix®. Panel helps such
customers by generating the XML file their can provide instead of filling in all the
settings. The customer account password along with any other settings is included
into this XML file. If you wish to improve the security of your system and prevent
stealing the passwords, you can exclude the password from the XML file. The
customers then will have to enter the password directly in WebMatrix®. Read more
about WebMatrix® in Web Publishing with Web Deploy (Windows) (see page 466).
Note: You can change this option programmatically. For details on how to do it, see
http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/PP11/11.5/Doc/en-US/online/plesk-wincli/60982.htm

System Services
You can monitor, start, stop, restart and disable various services, and also change their
startup type from the Panel (on Windows-based servers).

 To see the status of a system service:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Services Management.
2. Click Show All to show all services from the service groups. To hide all
services, click Hide All. The current state of a service or a group of
services is marked by an icon:


means that the service or all services in a group are running,

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

means that the service or all services in a group are stopped,



means that several services in a group are running and some are stopped,



means that the service is not installed or its management capabilities are not
supported by the license key.



In the Startup Type field you can see whether the service is started automatically
or should be started manually.

 To start a service:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Services Management.
2. Click the

icon corresponding to the service you wish to start.

 To restart a service:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Services Management.
2. Click the

icon corresponding to the service you wish to restart.

 To stop a service:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Services Management.
2. Click the

icon corresponding to the service you wish to stop.

 To set service startup type (on Windows-based servers):
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Services Management.
2. Select the checkbox corresponding to the required service in the list.
3. Select the required startup type:


Click

Manual to start selected services manually upon the Panel startup.



Click

Auto to start selected services automatically upon the Panel startup.

 To disable a service:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Services Management.
2. Select the checkbox corresponding to the required service in the list.
3. Click

Disable.

 To make changes to a group of services:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Services Management.
2. Select the checkboxes corresponding to the required services in the list.

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3. Click the button corresponding to the action you want to perform on the
selected services:


Click

Start to start selected services.



Click

Stop to stop selected services.



Click

Restart to restart selected services.



Click

Disable to disable selected services.



Click

Manual to start selected services manually upon the Panel startup.



Click

Auto to start selected services automatically upon the Panel startup.

System Date and Time
You can manually set the server date and time through the interface and enable server
time synchronization with a Network Time Protocol (NTP) server.

 To adjust the system date and time settings:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > System Time.
2. Change the time and date settings as desired, and select your t ime
zone.
You will need to restart your Parallels Plesk Panel-managed server for the time
zone change to take effect.
Note for users of Parallels Panel for Windows: Clear the Automatically adjust clock
for daylight saving changes checkbox, if you do not want Parallels Plesk Panel to
automatically adjust the server clock.

3. To synchronize your server time with that of a server running the
Network Time Protocol, select the Synchronize system time checkbox, and
specify a valid IP address or a domain name. For a list of available NTP
servers, visit http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Servers/WebSearch
4. Click OK.
Note: Enabling the Synchronize system time function will override any time and date you
manually enter in the System date and time fields. Also, make sure that the domain name
or IP address you enter for synchronization is a valid NTP server. Otherwise, this
function will not work and your server will continue running with its current time
settings.

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Firewall
Next in this section:
The Panel Firewall (Linux) ................................................................................. 135
The Panel Firewall (Windows) ........................................................................... 136

The Panel Firewall (Linux)
On Linux, you can use the Panel Firewall extension to protect your server and network
from unauthorized access. Learn how to use the extension in the section Firewall
Extension (on page 223).
For details about Panel extensions and how to install them, see Panel Extensions (Linux)
(on page 203).

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The Panel Firewall (Windows)
The firewall component allows you to protect a server from incoming network
connections that could be used to compromise the server's security. The firewall comes
with a set of predefined rules that allow connections to the services required for the
proper functioning of a hosting server, such as web hosting, mail hosting, and FTP.

Turning the Firewall On and Off
In clean installations, the firewall is switched on. You can switch it off and on again at
any time using the corresponding button on the Tools & Settings > Firewall page.

Viewing and Managing Allowed Inbound Connections
By default, the firewall blocks all inbound connections that are not explicitly allowed. To
view the currently applied firewall rules for inbound connections, go to Tools & Settings >
Firewall > Firewall Rules tab. On this tab, you can do the following:


Allow inbound connection to a service.
If the service is not shown in the list of rules, click Add Firewall Rule, specify the rule
name for future reference, then specify the port and the protocol for which incoming
connections must be allowed. Leave the Switch on the rule checkbox selected if you
wish to apply the rule immediately.
If the service is already in the list of rules, click the corresponding rule's name and
select the Switch on the rule checkbox.



Temporarily block connections to a service by clicking the corresponding rule's
name and clearing the Switch on the rule checkbox.



Permanently block connections to a service by selecting the corresponding rule and
clicking Remove.
Restore the default firewall configuration by clicking Default.




Close down all connections to the server. If your server is compromised and
websites are damaged, you may want to make the server unavailable over the
Internet and keep it isolated until all vulnerabilities are patched and websites are
restored from backup files. To close all connections to the server, click Panic Mode.

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Allowing and Blocking ICMP Communications
ICMP communications are used for network troubleshooting purposes. By default, all
ICMP communications are allowed. For a detailed description of ICMP messages,
please refer to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms912869.

 To block or to allow ICMP communications:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Firewall > ICMP Protocol.
The predefined rules for ICMP communications are listed. The S (status) column
shows the
icon if the firewall blocks the packets that match the rule, and the
icon if the firewall allows the packets that match the rule to pass through.

2. Do any of the following:


To allow ICMP requests of a specific type, click the respective
column.

icon in the S



To block ICMP requests of a specific type, click the respective
column.

icon in the S



To block all ICMP requests, click Panic Mode.



To restore the default settings for ICMP requests, click Default.

CHAPTER 9

Panel Administration
In this chapter:
Panel Licensing ................................................................................................. 139
Securing Panel .................................................................................................. 142
Panel and Network Environments ..................................................................... 151
Setting Up Help Desk ........................................................................................ 155
Trial (Try and Buy) Mode for Presence Builder .................................................. 157
Changing Your Password and Contact Information ........................................... 168
Appearance and Branding ................................................................................. 170
Panel Components ............................................................................................ 176
Web Applications .............................................................................................. 177
Session Preferences ......................................................................................... 187
Managing Panel from Mobile Devices ............................................................... 188
Panel Inside Parallels Virtuozzo Containers ...................................................... 192
Remote Access (Windows) ............................................................................... 194
Additional Administrator Accounts ..................................................................... 195
Event Tracking .................................................................................................. 198
Migration from Other Hosting Platforms............................................................. 202
Data Transfer from Another Panel ..................................................................... 202
Panel Extensions (Linux) ................................................................................... 203

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139

Panel Licensing
Panel comes with a trial license key, which is already installed in the system. This
license key provides limited functionality and is active only for a short period of time.
Therefore, after installing Panel, you should obtain a proper license key from Parallels
or its partners and install it.

Panel License Keys
You can install a Panel license key either by entering an activation code or by
uploading a license key file to Panel. Learn how to do this in the section Installing a Panel
License Key (on page 140).
Panel license keys have a built-in expiration date. This has been implemented to help
prevent fraud and theft. It requires the Panel software to check with the Parallels
licensing server within a 10-day period before the expiration date to verify that the key
has not been reported stolen and is being used in accordance with the End User
License Agreement (that is, installed on only one server). Once this is verified, the
expiration date is extended. The verification runs automatically and you do not need to
do anything unless there is a problem. If the key has expired, go to Tools & Settings >
License Management and click Retrieve Keys. If the key cannot be updated, contact your
reseller, or Parallels (if you purchased the license key directly from Parallels).
Note: Panel uses the TCP port 5224 for connections to the licensing server. Please
make sure that the port is not blocked by a firewall. To test the connection to the
licensing server at anytime, click Retrieve Keys in Tools & Settings > License Management.

Additional License Keys
Additional license keys are used to activate third-party software in Panel:


Additional Panel components.
Typically, these components are commercial Panel extensions such as anti-virus
software, webmail software, and so on. Additional keys are associated with the
Panel license key and can be found in Tools & Settings > License Management >
Additional License Keys. Learn how to order add-ons and install additional license
keys in the section Installing Additional License Keys for Panel Add-ons (on page 141).



APS web apps.
Since Panel 11.0, it has been possible to purchase a Panel license key that comes
in a bundle with APS app licenses. For example, you can purchase a bundle that
contains a Panel license key and a key for a commercial online store app.
Technically, this means that once a user installs the app on their site, it will be
automatically activated without the need to purchase the app license from the
vendor.

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Note: If you are a hosting provider, you can allow your customers and resellers to
use bundled app license keys. To do this, grant them permission using the Allow
activating APS apps using license keys from the Panel license pool option on the
Permissions tab of the relevant service plan or subscription. Note that you cannot
limit the number of app installations a customer is allowed to perform. Thus, a
customer can install a commercial app twice or more times on his websites without
being charged for additional installations.
Licenses for APS apps are provided as additional license keys to Panel and can be
found in Tools & Settings > License Management > Additional License Keys.

Next in this section:
Installing a Panel License Key ........................................................................... 140
Installing Additional License Keys for Panel Add-ons ........................................ 141
Upgrading Your License Key ............................................................................. 142
Rolling Back to Your Previously Used License Key ........................................... 142

Installing a Panel License Key
Right after the installation, Panel uses a trial license key. To get a new license key,
proceed to the Parallels online store (Tools & Settings > License Management > Order New
Key).
Once you purchase the key, you will receive an activation e-mail with your activation
code and a license key file. You can install a Panel license key either by entering the
activation code or by uploading the file from this e-mail.

 To install a license key using an activation code:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > License Management > Parallels Panel License Key and
click Install Key.
2. Enter the code you received in the e-mail to the Enter an activation code
field and click OK.

 To install a license key using a license key file:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > License Management > Parallels Panel License Key and
click Install Key.
2. Choose Upload a license key file.
3. Specify the path to the key file you received in the e-mail and click OK.

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Installing Additional License Keys for Panel Add-ons
Typically, Panel add-ons (like Panel extensions, web apps, and so on) are associated
with a Panel license key. That is why, when you purchase Panel add-ons at the
Parallels online store, you are prompted to enter the number of your license key. Once
you purchase a key, you will receive an activation e-mail.

 To install an add-on license key:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > License Management > Additional License Keys and click
Retrieve Keys.
2. The Panel's License Manager will retrieve the upgraded license key
from the Parallels licensing server and automatically install it to your
Panel.
If your activation e-mail contains an activation code or a license key file, you should
install the key manually.

 To install an add-on license key using an activation code:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > License Management > Additional License Keys and click
Install Key.
2. Enter the code you received in the e-mail to the Enter an activation code
field and click OK.

 To install an add-on license key using a license key file:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > License Management > Additional License Keys and click
Install Key.
2. Choose Upload a license key file.
3. Specify the path to the key file you received in the e-mail and click OK.

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Upgrading Your License Key
If you are planning to expand your customer base and host more sites on the server
than your current license allows, you need to upgrade your license key. All upgrades
are applied to your main Panel license key. Once you purchase upgrades at the
Parallels online store, you will receive an activation e-mail.

 To upgrade the license key:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > License Management > Parallels Panel License Key and
click Order Panel Upgrades.
2. Order desired upgrade options. Once your order is processed, you will
receive a notification e-mail.
3. Go to Tools & Settings > License Management > Parallels Panel License Key and
click Retrieve Keys.
4. The Panel's License Manager will retrieve the upgraded license key
from the Parallels licensing server and automatically install it to your
Panel.

Rolling Back to Your Previously Used License Key
 To roll back to the license key you previously used:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > License Management > Parallels Panel License Key.
2. Click Roll Back Key. The previously installed license key will be restored.

Securing Panel
Next in this section:
Restricting Administrative Access...................................................................... 143
Restricting Remote Access via API RPC ........................................................... 144
Setting Up the Minimum Password Strength ..................................................... 144
Turning On the Enhanced Security Mode .......................................................... 145
Using Secure FTP ............................................................................................. 146
SSL Protection .................................................................................................. 146

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143

Restricting Administrative Access
To alleviate security concerns, you may want to restrict administrative access to your
control panel from specific IP addresses.

 To allow administrative access to the Panel only from specific IP
addresses or networks:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Restrict Administrative Access (in the Security group).
2. Click Add New Network and specify the required IP addresses. Click OK.
To specify subnets, you can use wildcard symbols (*) and subnet masks.

3. Select the Denied from the networks that are not listed option, and click Set.
When prompted to confirm the operation, click OK.

 To prohibit administrative access from specific IP addresses or networks:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Restrict Administrative Access (in the Security group).
2. Click Add New Network and specify an IP address. Click OK.
To specify subnets, you can use wildcard symbols (*) and subnet masks.

3. Select the Allowed, excluding the networks in the list option, and click Set.
When prompted to confirm the operation, click OK.

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Restricting Remote Access via API RPC
For integration purposes, Panel has the API called API RPC that lets third partysoftware interact with Panel. This interface allows Panel operations, for example,
creating customer accounts or subscriptions, to be called remotely. At the same time,
the remote API can be used for malicious purposes. For example, an attacker can try
to use the API to gain control over your server.
To improve Panel protection from attacks that use the remote interface, you can
prohibit connections through API RPC completely, or allow them only for a limited
number of IP addresses that you trust.

 To restrict access to Panel via API RPC:
1. Open for editing the configuration file panel.ini located in the
following directory:


On Linux: /usr/local/psa/admin/conf



On Windows: %plesk_dir%\admin\conf\

If the file does not exist, create it.

2. Add the following lines to the file:


To prohibit all connections:
[api]
enabled = off



To allow connections only from specific IP addresses:
[api]
allowedIPAddresses =
here is a comma-separated list of IP addresses from which
software can connect to Panel via API RPC.

Setting Up the Minimum Password Strength
In order to improve Panel security, you can set the minimum password strength (in
Tools & Settings > Password Security > Password strength) for all passwords in the system.
Password strength is a measure of how resistant a password is to various types of
attacks. Generally, the strength of a password depends on its complexity and overall
length.
When any Panel user (the administrator, a customer, reseller, or auxiliary user) sets a
new password in Panel (for example, creates a new mail account or changes the
password of an FTP user), they are required to adjust the password until it meets the
minimum password strength. Note that if you increase the minimum strength, already
existing passwords will not be affected by the new requirements.
We recommend that you force your users to employ stronger passwords. However,
note that such passwords are harder to remember.

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Panel distinguishes five levels of password strength which allow you to get the right
balance between required protection and password complexity: Very weak, Weak,
Medium, Strong, and Very strong.

Turning On the Enhanced Security Mode
The enhanced security mode introduces advanced protection of sensitive data in
Panel. In this mode, Panel employs multiple security mechanisms to protect the data
from unauthorized access. In order to improve Panel security, we recommend that you
turn the mode on.
This security measure is absolutely transparent to all Panel users: Turning the mode on
does not imply any significant changes in the Panel behavior. The only consequences
you should be warned about are the following:


Remote API compatibility.
Once you turn on the mode, it will be impossible to obtain sensitive data (for
example, user passwords) using the Panel's remote API. This may affect third-party
apps or your custom scripts that use corresponding API RPC functions. Therefore,
if you (or your customers) employ such apps, contact the corresponding vendors to
ensure they provide the full support for Panel 11.



Password reminders behavior.
A password will no longer be sent by e-mail in case a user forgets it. Instead, the email will contain a link to a page where the user will be able to change the
password.

Turning On the Mode
If you have a clean installation of Panel 11, the enhanced security mode is turned on
by default.
If you upgraded to Panel 11 from earlier versions, you can turn on the mode in Tools &
Settings > Security Policy. Note that this is an irrevocable operation.
Note: If you use Parallels Business Automation Standard (PBAs) as an accompanying
billing solution, the enhanced security mode should be turned on.

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Using Secure FTP
To secure FTP connections to your server, supports the FTP Secure
(FTPS, FTP-SSL) protocol. Unlike the traditional (plain) FTP, FTPS supposes
protecting data transferred to and from your server over FTP with SSL and TLS
protocols.
As a Panel administrator, you have the option to select allowed types of FTP
connections: secure, plain, or both of them on the Tools & Settings > Security Policy >
Secure FTP page.
We recommend that you allow only FTPS connections. This option secures data and
access credentials transferred between the server and clients. Moreover, if you need to
comply with the PCI DSS standard, selecting this option is required.
Though most of modern FTP client applications support FTPS, some of your customers
may use clients that are able to work only through plain FTP. To let such clients
connect to your server, allow both FTP and FTPS connections.

Next in this section:
Defining FTPS Usage Policy per IP Address (Windows) ................................... 146

Defining FTPS Usage Policy per IP Address (Windows)
In Panel for Windows, there is an option to select the FTPS usage policy separately for
each IP address. This means that you, for example, can prohibit non-secure FTP
connections for certain IP addresses and allow them for other ones.

 To define FTPS usage policy per IP address:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Security Policy.
2. Select the Use custom FTPS policy per IP address option for the FTPS usage
policy.
3. Go to Tools & Settings > IP Addresses.
4. For each IP address, click its name and select the desired option for the
FTPS usage policy parameter.

SSL Protection
Next in this section:
Getting SSL Certificates .................................................................................... 147
SSL and Shared IP Addresses .......................................................................... 150
Shared SSL Certificates (Windows) .................................................................. 150

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Getting SSL Certificates
For security reasons, you can access your control panel only through a secure
connection provided by Secure Sockets Layer-enabled hypertext transfer protocol. All
data you exchange with the Parallels Plesk Panel-managed server are encrypted, thus
preventing interception of sensitive information. The SSL certificate used in the data
encryption process is automatically generated and installed on the server during
installation of the control panel. This is the so-called self-signed certificate: it is not
signed by a recognized certification authority (CA), therefore, upon attempt to connect
to your control panel, you and your customers will see warning messages in web
browsers.
To gain customer confidence, you should purchase an SSL certificate from a reputable
certification authority, and install it to the control panel.
You can either:


use the functions for purchasing SSL certificates from Comodo, GeoTrust, Inc. or
GoDaddy provided by your control panel,
OR



create a certificate signing request (CSR) from the control panel and submit it to the
certification authority of your choice, which will create an SSL certificate for you.
Note: If you are going to use the control panel's facilities for purchasing a certificate
through MyPlesk.com online store, you should not use command line tools for
creating the certificate signing request.

 To purchase an SSL certificate from Comodo, GeoTrust, Inc. or GoDaddy
through MyPleskCom online store and secure your control panel:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > SSL Certificates (in the Resources group). A list of
SSL certificates that you have in your repository will be displayed.
2. Click Add SSL Certificate.
3. 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 host name for which you wish to purchase an SSL certificate. For
example: your-domain.com



Enter your e-mail address.

4. Make sure that all the provided information is correct and accurate, as it
will be used to generate your private key.
5. Click Buy SSL Certificate.
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.

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6. Register or log in to an existing MyPlesk.com account and you will be
taken step by step through the certificate purchase procedure.
7. Choose the type of certificate that you wish to purchase.
8. Click Proceed to Buy and order the certificate. In the Approver E-Mail
drop-down box, please select the correct Approver e-mail.
The approver e-mail is an e-mail address that can confirm that certificate for
specific domain name was requested by an authorized person.

9. Once your certificate request is processed, you will be sent a
confirmation e-mail. After you confirm, the certificate will be sent to your
e-mail.
10. When you receive your SSL certificate, save it on your local machine or
network.
11. Return to the SSL Certificates repository (Tools & Settings > SSL
Certificates).
Click Browse in the middle of the page and navigate to the location of the saved
certificate. Select it, and then click Send File. This will upload the certificate to the
repository.

1. Select the checkbox corresponding to the certificate you just added,
and click
Secure the Panel.

 To secure your control panel with an SSL certificate from other certificate
authorities:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > SSL Certificates (in the Resources group). A list of
SSL certificates that you have in your repository will be displayed.
2. Click Add SSL Certificate.
3. 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 host name for which you wish to purchase an SSL certificate. For
example: your-domain.com



Enter your e-mail address.

4. Make sure that all the provided information is correct and accurate, as it
will be used to generate your private key.
5. Click Request. Your private key and certificate signing request will be
generated and stored in the repository.

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6. In the list of certificates, click the name of the certificate you need. A
page showing the certificate properties opens.
7. Locate the CSR section on the page, and copy the text that starts with the
line -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- and ends with the line -----END
CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- to the clipboard.
8. Visit the website of the certification authority from which you want to
purchase an SSL certificate, and follow the links on their site to start a
certificate ordering procedure. When you are prompted to specify CSR
text, paste the data from the clipboard into the online form and click
Continue. The certification authority will create an SSL certificate in
accordance with the information you supplied.
9. When you receive your SSL certificate, save it on your local machine or
network.
10. Return to the SSL Certificates repository (Tools & Settings > SSL
Certificates).
Click Browse in the middle of the page and navigate to the location of the saved
certificate. Select it, and then click Send File. This will upload the certificate to the
repository.

1. Select the checkbox corresponding to the certificate you just added,
and click
Secure the Panel.

 In case you need to generate a self-signed certificate, follow this
procedure:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > SSL Certificates (in the Resources group). A list of
SSL certificates that you have in your repository will be displayed.
2. Click Add SSL Certificate.
3. 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 host name for which you wish to purchase an SSL certificate. For
example: your-domain.com



Enter your e-mail address.

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

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SSL and Shared IP Addresses
Parallels Plesk Panel supports the Server Name Indication (SNI) extension to the
Transport Layer Security protocol, which makes it possible to use authentic SSL
certificates for sites hosted on shared IP addresses.
SNI helps to efficiently use IPv4 resources and provides the following benefits:


Providers can run any number of SSL sites with independent certificates on a single
IPv4 address.



Hosting customers can install independent SSL certificates on each of their sites;
therefore, there is no need to purchase another subscription. Each customer can
install an SSL certificate even if there is only one shared IP address on the whole
server.

The SSL support with SNI is possible only if the following requirements are met:




The operating system of your Panel server supports SNI.


Linux systems (see the full list in the release notes).



Windows 2012.

Users' browsers support SNI.
Most modern web browsers, starting with IE 7, Firefox 2.0, Opera 8.0, and Chrome
1.0, support SNI, unless they are run on Windows XP. To learn more about SNI and
the client software that supports it, refer to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication.

If SNI is not supported and you (as the administrator) assign an SSL certificate to a site
hosted on a shared IP address, Panel will associate that certificate with all other sites
hosted on this IP address. In the same case, hosting customers with shared IP
addresses will not be able to assign SSL certificates to their sites: the page Websites &
Domains > > Secure Your Sites will be hidden in their Control Panel.
For instructions on assigning SSL certificates to websites, refer to the section Securing
Connections with SSL Certificates (on page 430).

Turning On Support for SNI
By default, in clean Panel installations (Linux and Windows), the support for SNI is
turned on.
If you upgrade Panel for Windows from version 11.0 or earlier, the support for SNI will
be switched off. You can turn it on in Tools & Settings > Server Settings.
On Panel for Linux, the support for SNI is always on and cannot be disabled.

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Shared SSL Certificates (Windows)
On Windows-based installations, you can secure access to a site with SSL for site
owners without having them purchase their own SSL certificate. Websites that employ
shared SSL are, in fact, using the certificate shared by another domain. The domain
that shares its SSL certificate with others is called master SSL domain.
You can pick any website that belongs to you, switch on SSL support in web hosting
settings, install a valid SSL certificate on that site, and make it act as a master SSL
domain for all other websites hosted on the server. Or you can pick a website that
belongs to one of your users (reseller or customer account), switch on SSL support in
web hosting settings, install a valid SSL certificate on that site, and make it act as a
master SSL domain for all websites of this user.
Once the master SSL domain is assigned, you or your customers need to add shared
SSL links for each website that needs secure access.

 To configure the master SSL domain and enable shared SSL on your
server:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Shared SSL (in the Resources group).
2. Select the Switch on shared SSL checkbox.
3. Select the required website from the Domain name menu. Only websites
that are hosted on your server and have SSL enabled are present in the
list.
4. Click OK.
For information about adding shared SSL links for websites, refer to Customer's Guide,
section Using Shared SSL Certificate (Windows).

 To disable shared SSL on your server:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Shared SSL (in the Resources group).
2. Clear the Switch on shared SSL checkbox.
3. Click OK.

Panel and Network Environments
Next in this section:
Ports Used by Panel.......................................................................................... 152
Running Panel Behind a Router with NAT ......................................................... 153
Configuring Port Range for Passive FTP Mode (Windows) ............................... 153

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Ports Used by Panel
This section provides information about setting up the firewall built into your panel so
as to allow access to Panel and its services.
The following is a list of ports and protocols used by Parallels Plesk Panel services.
Service name

Ports used by service

Administrative interface of Panel over
HTTPS

TCP 8443

Administrative interface of Panel over HTTP

TCP 8880 *

Samba (file sharing on Windows networks)

UDP 137, UDP 138, TCP 139, TCP
445

VPN service

UDP 1194

Web server

TCP 80, TCP 443

FTP server

TCP 21

SSH (secure shell) server

TCP 22

SMTP (mail sending) server

TCP 25, TCP 465

POP3 (mail retrieval) server

TCP 110, TCP 995

IMAP (mail retrieval) server

TCP 143, TCP 993

Mail password change service

TCP 106

MySQL server

TCP 3306

MS SQL server

TCP 1433

PostgreSQL server

TCP 5432

Licensing Server connections

TCP 5224

Domain name server

UDP 53, TCP 53

Panel upgrades and updates

TCP 8447

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153

Note: If you install Presence Builder as part of Parallels Plesk Panel, Presence Builder
uses the same protocol and opens on the same port as the Parallels Plesk Panel UI.

Running Panel Behind a Router with NAT
Every time you set up a new website in Panel, the domain name used by your website
is associated with the IP address of your Panel-managed server in the DNS zone of
this domain. If you are running the Panel behind a routing device with NAT (network
address translation), this IP address will be an internal network address like
192.168.1.10. The website will not be accessible to the Internet users. To work around
this, you have to associate this domain name with the public IP address of the routing
device in the DNS zone of this domain. This is done by adjusting the Panel DNS
template.

 To move your Panel server behind a router with NAT:
1. Configure your routing device so as to ensure the proper address
translation. Refer to the documentation of your routing device for
detailed instructions.
2. Log in to the Panel and go to Tools & Settings > DNS Template (in the General
Settings group).
3. Locate all resource records of A type. These records look like the
following:


. A



mail.. A



ns.. A



webmail.. A

4. Edit all of these A type records:
a. Click the corresponding links in the Host column.
b. In the Enter IP address input box, delete the templates, and
type the public IP address of the routing device.
c. Click OK.
5. Apply DNS template changes to all domains in the system by clicking
Apply DNS Template Changes.
After this, all existing and newly created domains will get proper DNS configuration:
Their A DNS records will point to the public IP address.

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Configuring Port Range for Passive FTP Mode
(Windows)
 To set a specific port or port range for connecting to the server over FTP
in passive mode:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > FTP Settings.
2. Specify the required port or port range in the Port or port range for passive
FTP mode connections field and click OK.

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Setting Up Help Desk
To allow your customers to submit problem reports through Control Panel, you can do
the following:
1. Set up a subscription for hosting your corporate website.
2. Install on your site the application osTicket 1.6 or later from Application Catalog.
Among available free solutions, osTicket is considered the best for its ease of use
and feature set. For information about osTicket, visit their website at
http://osticket.com.

 To set up a subscription for hosting your own website:
1. In Server Administration Panel, click the Subscriptions link in the
navigation pane, under the Hosting Services group.
2. Click Add New Subscription.
3. Type the domain name of your corporate site, for example providerexample.com.
4. Select IP address.
5. Type the username and password that you will use for connecting to the
webspace over FTP and managing files.
6. In the Service plan menu, select Unlimited to allow your site to consume
unlimited amounts of resources.
7. Click OK.
Next time you log in to Server Administration Panel, the Install Help Desk link will appear
in the navigation pane. You can use it to install osTicket on your website.

 If you want to start installation immediately, without logging out and then
logging in again:
1. Click the link Control Panel next to your site's domain name. Control
Panel will open in a new browser window or tab.
2. On the Home tab, click the osTicket link in the Applications group.
3. Click Install.
4. Read the terms of license agreement, confirm that you accept them,
and click Next.

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5. To open all application settings, click the link Show All Settings and
specify the following:


Path to the installation directory on the server.



Administrative access to the application. Leave the Grant administrative access to
existing user option selected, and select Admin from the menu if you want to use
your site's FTP account username and password for managing Help Desk.



Administrator's e-mail. Specify the Help Desk administrator's e-mail address.



Website name. For example, Company Name customer service portal.



Default system e-mail. Specify an e-mail address that you will advertise on your
site as a means to contact your support engineers. For example,
support@example.com.



Database administrator's password.

6. Click Install.
Once installation is finished, you will be able to use the Help Desk link in the navigation
pane of Server Administration Panel for configuring Help Desk and processing tickets
submitted by your customers and customers of your resellers.
The customers will be able to submit tickets by clicking the link Help Desk in their Control
Panels, in the Custom Buttons group.

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157

Trial (Try and Buy) Mode for Presence
Builder
If you have Parallels Panel with Presence Builder and Business Manager, you can tune your
system to offer Presence Builder in the Try and Buy (or trial) mode. This mode lets everyone
evaluate the editor and create websites for free. However, to acquire such websites, a site
owner will need to subscribe to your hosting plan or purchase a plan add-on.
Note: If you use some other billing solution instead of Business Manager, you can use the
Try and Buy mode as well. Learn more in the section Offering the Try and Buy with Alternative
Billing Solutions (on page 165).

How the Try and Buy Mode Works
The Try and Buy mode is aimed at customers who wish to create their own sites but have
little or no programming skill. Panel helps such customers by giving them full access to
Presence Builder functions to create sites at no charge. To claim the created sites the
customers subscribe to a hosting plan in Panel or upgrade the existing one. The more people
you attract by this promotion, the more hosting subscriptions with Presence Builder you will
have.
The Try and Buy mode targets two different groups:


Existing customers who want to have a website but are unable to launch Presence
Builder due to various limitations. For example, their hosting plan does not provide this
option, or they have exceeded the number of sites to publish. By using the Try and Buy,
you can upsell Presence Builder to these customers. Learn more in the section
Configuring the Try and Buy for Existing Customers (on page 160).



New customers who have created a trial site and now want to claim it with a new hosting
plan. Learn how to configure the Try and Buy mode for such customers in the section
Configuring the Try and Buy for Potential Customers (on page 161).

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 The scenario for upselling to existing customers works this way:
1. Links to launch Presence Builder become available to such customers on a
number of pages in Control Panel. The customers see the links and click
them.

2. Panel forwards these customers to Presence Builder where they create trial
sites.

3. When the site is ready and the customers click Publish, they are prompted to
upgrade their subscription.

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4. If the upgrade is successfully completed, the site can be published to the
upgraded hosting account.

 The scenario for selling hosting with Presence Builder to potential customers
is as follows:
1. You enable public access to the Presence Builder trial mode in Panel by
selecting the corresponding checkbox in the Server Administration Panel > Tools &
Settings > Try and Buy Mode Settings. If this mode is activated, everyone who
follows a special promotional link is able to create a trial site.

2. You obtain the promotional link from the Panel GUI and put this link on your
website so that potential customers can access it.
3. When the customers click the link, they are forwarded to Presence Builder
where they create trial sites. The editor interface is identical to the one that
appears in step 2.
4. As soon as the site is ready, the customers click Publish, and Panel requests
them to buy a hosting plan.

5. The customers subscribe to a new plan and are free to publish the site.
Note: All notifications that customers receive while using the Try and Buy mode can be
customized. Learn more in the section Customizing Trial Mode Notifications (on page 162).

Next in this section:
Configuring the Try and Buy for Existing Customers ......................................... 160
Configuring the Try and Buy for Potential Customers ........................................ 161
Customizing Trial Mode Notifications................................................................. 162
Offering the Try and Buy with Alternative Billing Solutions ................................. 165

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Configuring the Try and Buy for Existing Customers
Use the Try and Buy mode if you want your existing customers to create trial sites even if
Presence Builder is not provided with their license or they have exceeded the number of
sites they can publish.
To configure the mode, update the settings of your hosting plans. To do that, open the
settings and select the item Allow customer to create trial Presence Builder websites. After you
update the plan settings, customers are able to launch Presence Builder by clicking the
corresponding link in the Control Panel.
This feature is controlled on a per plan basis, so you can offer the Try and Buy mode only for
certain plans. If you deselect this item, your customers will still see the buttons to launch
Presence Builder but they will not be able to actually launch it unless their plan includes
Presence Builder support.
Note: If the hosting plans you want to change are imported from Business Manager and you
want to keep them synced, go to the properties of corresponding plans in Business Manager,
make sure that the item Allow up-selling Presence Builder sites is selected, and send changes to
Panel by clicking Events > Run Events.
For details on how to edit hosting plan properties in Business Manager, see the section
Setting Up Hosting Plans in Business Manager.

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Configuring the Try and Buy for Potential Customers
Acquire potential hosting customers with Presence Builder by giving them a link to Presence
Builder in the Try and Buy mode. After your customers follow this link, create a site, and try
to publish it, Panel forwards them to the default online store of Business Manager. In the
store, customers choose a plan with Presence Builder and subscribe to it. The subscription
automatically includes the newly created site. On completing the billing and subscription
setup routines, the customers become owners of the site and can publish it. You are free to
block access to the trial mode URL thus make Presence Builder unavailable.

 To offer the Try and Buy mode to potential customers, do the following:
1. Prepare the default online store in Business Manager to display Presence
Builder-compatible plans.
This step requires a cosmetic update: Make sure that all plans available to potential
customers include at least one Presence Builder site. By default, customers see the plans
from the default online store. For each of these plans, go to plan properties and check
that the value of item Sites published with Presence Builder is not 0. If a plan includes 0 sites,
your customers will not be able to publish them after subscribing to such a plan.
For details on how to edit hosting plan properties in Business Manager, see the section
Setting Up Hosting Plans in Business Manager.

2. Enable the Try and Buy in the Server Administration Panel.
This allows customers to launch Presence Builder by following the trial mode access
URL. In the Server Administration Panel, go to Tools & Settings > Try and Buy Mode Settings,
and ensure that the Enable public access to trial mode checkbox is selected.

3. Obtain the trial mode access URL and put it on your website to advertise
hosting with Presence Builder and attract customers.
The trial mode access URL is also available on the Presence Builder settings page.

4. (Optionally) Configure lifetime of trial sites.
On the same page you can optionally specify how often to remove unclaimed sites.

5. (Optionally) Forward customers to a separate online store. This is relevant
when you want to display a separate list of plans to potential customers who
want hosting with Presence Builder.
If you wish to have a separate store for the trial offering, extend the trial mode access
URL with a store ID to point to a particular store. The syntax of the new URL is: &storeId=. To control the plans list view, independently add a
widget ID to the URL. The syntax of the new URL is: &widgetId=.
Note: The store and widget IDs must exist in Business Manager.
Learn how to create online stores in the section Adding an Online Store.
Learn how to create and manage website widgets in the section Using Website Widgets to
Embed Stores into Websites.
Once you complete these steps, your potential customers will be able to create trial sites and
acquire them. To block this feature, deselect access to the Try and Buy mode on the mode
settings page.

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Customizing Trial Mode Notifications
The Presence Builder settings (Tools & Settings > Try and Buy Mode Settings) let you either
display the Try and Buy mode notification to customers or hide it. The notification is
displayed in a bar at the top of the editor page. This section explains how to change the
notification text or add some extra information to the notification. By default, Presence
Builder in trial mode uses messages from the tbbMessagesDefault.lng file of the used
locale.

 To customize notifications displayed to your customers by Presence Builder in
trial mode:
1. Go to the /usr/local/sb/resources/locale/
directory on Linux operating systems, or to
C:\Parallels\Plesk\sb\resources\locale\
directory on Windows operating systems.
is the name of the locale for which you change the notifications. For
example, the default English locale name is en_US.

2. Copy the tbbMessagesDefault.lng and rename it to
tbbMessagesCustom.lng.
When the tbbMessagesCustom.lng file exists, Presence Builder uses it instead of
tbbMessagesDefault.lng.

3. Edit messages in the tbbMessagesCustom.lng file.
You can edit the following messages:
Message Keyword in Locale

Message Description

startUpsellLimitExceedingTitle

Title of the dialog window shown on Presence Builder start
page to a customer who has exceeded the limit on the
websites published with Presence Builder.

startUpsellLimitExceedingBod
y

Body of the dialog window shown on Presence Builder
start page to a customer who has exceeded the limit on
websites published with Presence Builder.

startUpsellNoSitesTitle

Title of the dialog window shown on Presence Builder start
page to a customer whose subscription does not include
Presence Builder.

startUpsellNoSitesBody

Body of the dialog window shown on Presence Builder
start page to a customer whose subscription does not
include Presence Builder.

editorTopMessageTrialSite

"Call to action" bar message at the top of Presence
Builder Editor shown to a new customer who creates a
trial site.

editorTopMessageUpsellLimit
Exceeding

"Call to action" bar message for a trial site at the top of
Presence Builder Editor shown to a customer who has
exceeded the limit on the websites published with
Presence Builder.

Panel Administration
editorTopMessageUpsellNoSit "Call to action" bar message for a trial site at the top of
es
Presence Builder Editor shown to a customer whose
subscription does not include Presence Builder.
defaultPersonalName

Default name of the customer shown on Presence Builder
start page to existing customers.

initialMailSubject

Subject of website creation e-mail confirmation sent to a
new customer.

initialMailHtml

Body of website creation e-mail confirmation sent to a new
customer.

limitsExceededTitle

Title of the dialog window shown upon clicking the Publish
button to a customer who has exceeded the limit on the
websites published with Presence Builder.

limitsExceededMsg

Body of the dialog window shown upon clicking the
Publish button to a customer who has exceeded the limit
on the websites published with Presence Builder.

firstSitePublishTitle

Title of the dialog window shown upon clicking the Publish
button to a customer whose subscription does not include
Presence Builder.

firstSitePublishMsg

Body of the dialog window shown upon clicking the
Publish button to a customer whose subscription does not
include Presence Builder.

licenseExceededMsg

Error message shown in the Status bar upon clicking the
Publish button to a customer when the number of
Presence Builder websites allowed by the Panel license
has been reached.

trialSiteSignUpPublishTitle

Title of the dialog window shown upon clicking the Publish
button to a new customer who creates a trial site.

trialSiteSignUpPublishMsg

Body of the dialog window shown upon clicking the
Publish button to a new customer who creates a trial site.

trialFeatureDisabled

Error message shown in the Status bar when a new
customer tries to verify ownership in the settings of a trial
site.

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You can use the following placeholders in Presence Builder trial mode notifications:


ppServerId - unique ID of Parallels Plesk Panel server;



billingSignUpEntryPoint - entry point to Business Manager for new customers;



billingUpSellEntryPoint - entry point to Business Manager for existing customers;



subscriptionId - unique ID of the user subscription;



sbSiteUuid - unique ID of a website in Presence Builder;



sbOneTimeBackUrl - link Presence Builder that can be used only once;



locale - locale name;



trialSiteLifeTime - time that passes before trial websites that were not purchased by
customers are removed from the server;



trialSiteExpireDate - expiration date of trial websites;



trialSiteUrl - link to trial website;



siteOwnerName - name of the user owning the website;



siteOwnerCompanyName - user's company name;



siteOwnerEmail - user's e-mail;



siteOwnerPhone - user's phone number;



siteOwnerAddress - user's address;



siteOwnerCity - user's city;



siteOwnerCountry - user's country;



queryString - an additional query string passed to trial mode access URL;



helpUrl - link to Presence Builder documentation;



sbHttpHost - Presence Builder host name.

When using placeholders in messages, use the following placeholder markers:


&placeholder_name& - when you use a placeholder inside a hyperlink;



@placeholder_name@ - when you use a placeholder inside a JavaScript code;



%placeholder_name% - when you use a placeholder in plain text.

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Offering the Try and Buy with Alternative Billing Solutions
If you wish to offer the Try and Buy mode for Panel with Presence Builder and a custom
billing solution, you should also carry out the following operations:
1. Forward customers from Presence Builder to a custom store and save details about
created sites.
When a customer clicks to purchase a site, Presence Builder sends an HTTP POST
request to a billing entry point. This request contains information about the customer and
the created site. Business Manager (billing engine) uses this information to associate the
site with the customer's hosting account. To shift to a custom billing engine, you should
change the billing entry point URL and extend your billing engine logic to save the POST
parameters that come to the URL.
2. Ensure that customers purchase a hosting plan or add-on.
This solely depends on the billing system and is beyond the scope of the CAS integration.
3. (For new customers only) Create a customer account, a subscription, and a site in Panel.
4. Associate the site created in Presence Builder with an appropriate site in Panel.
This appendix explains how to complete operations 1, 3, and 4.

How to Forward Customers to a Custom Entry Point
By default, the store entry point URL points to Business Manager. This URL is stored in two
placeholders (billingSignUpEntryPoint and billingUpSellEntryPoint) in file
tbbMessagesDefault.lng. The location of this file depends on a Panel installation
directory (we assume that you use the default one), server OS and architecture. Find the file
in one of the following directories:


(On Microsoft Windows) C:\Program
Files\Parallels\sb\resources\locale\en_US or C:\Program Files
(x86)\Parallels\sb\resources\locale\en_US depending on the server
architecture.



(On RPM package-based Linux) /usr/local/sb/resources/locale/en_US



(On DEB package-based Linux) /opt/sb/resources/locale/en_US

To customize the entry point URL, you should create a copy of the
tbbMessagesDefault.lng. file, name it tbbMessagesCustom.lng, and modify the
settings in the latter file.
Note: We assume that you change the entry point for a store in the en_US locale. To
change the entry point for other locales, create and modify the tbbMessagesCustom.lng
file in the respective directories that are on the same level with en_US.

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To change the entry point URL, substitute all occurrences of the placeholders
billingSignUpEntryPoint and billingUpSellEntryPoint with the URL you need, and remove
leading and trailing "@" and "%" symbols in all occurrences of the placeholders in the file.
For example, if the new entry point URL is http://www.example.com, you should change
@billingUpSellEntryPoint@ to http://www.example.com.

What Parameters to Save
The billing entry point receives POST requests that contain information about customers and
trial sites they have created. Although the requests contain a number of parameters, you
need to save only one - sbSiteUuid. This is the unique identifier of the created site. To move
the site to the customer's hosting account, you should associate the parameter with an
appropriate site in Panel.

How to Create a Customer Account, a Subscription, and a Site
To create these three objects, use API RPC - the protocol to create and manage Panel
objects remotely. First, you should create a customer account and save the resulting ID.
Then, create a subscription with the owner-id (in add/gen_setup) set to the customer ID.
Finally, create a site with the webspace-id (in add/gen_setup) set to the subscription ID.
Each of these three operations is presented by a packet you send to Panel.
If you wish to quickly get started with sending API RPC packets, read API RPC Manual. It
contains the chapter Client Code Samples that describes how you can implement your own
packet sender by using samples of client applications (PHP, C#, VB.NET).
Find samples of the packets in API RPC Manual, sections:


Supported Operations > Managing Customer Accounts > Creating Customer Accounts > Request
Samples



Supported Operations > Managing Subscriptions (Webspaces) > Creating a Subscription
(Webspace) > Request Samples
Supported Operations > Managing Sites (Domains) > Creating a Site > Request Samples



How to Associate a Site Created in Presence Builder with a Panel Site
An association between a Presence Builder site and Panel site is also achieved through API
RPC. One of the protocol calls turns a trial site into a regular site and associates it with a
Panel site. This association means that when a customer clicks Edit in Presence Builder, their
previously created site is displayed. This operation requires two parameters - the GUID of a
Panel site and sbSiteUuid that you previously received.
The protocol call (or packet) to associate Presence Builder and Panel sites is found in API
RPC Manual, section Supported Operations > Managing Integration With Presence Builder > Assigning
a Trial Site > Request Samples. This section contains call samples that you can reuse with your
own values. Details on how to find a site GUID are also included in the reference document,
section Supported Operations > Managing Sites (Domains) > Getting Information About Sites > Request
Samples.

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What to Do Next
After you have successfully achieved the basic integration, you can extend your application
to work with existing customers as well. This involves you showing them the options of
upgrading their current subscription with Presence Builder support (existing customers are
forwarded to billingUpSellEntryPoint, while new customers go to billingSignUpEntryPoint)
rather than creating new subscriptions.
You can also personalize the store interface by using parameters received from Presence
Builder. For example, you can adjust the store locale based on customers' personal data, or
use the data in messages displayed to customers.

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Changing Your Password and Contact
Information
 To change your password:
1. Click the Change Password link in the navigation pane.
2. Enter your old and new passwords.
3. Click OK.

 To update your contact information:
1. Click the Profile & Preferences link in the navigation pane.
2. Update your information as required, and click OK.

 If you forgot your password:
1. In your web browser’s address bar, type the URL where your Parallels Plesk
Panel is located.
For example, https://your-server.com:8443.

2. Press ENTER. Parallels Plesk Panel login screen will open.
3. Click the Forgot your password? link.
4. You will be prompted to specify your login name and e-mail address
registered in the system. 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.
5. If your password cannot be sent by e-mail because it was stored by the
system in encrypted form, you will be prompted to set up a new password
using a secret code that will be generated for that purpose and sent to your
e-mail.
6. Once you received the e-mail from the password reminder, click the link in
the message body. A new browser window will open.
7. At this step, specify your login name and a new password.
The Secret Code field of the form should be automatically filled by the system, and if it is
not, copy the secret code from the message you received to the clipboard and paste to
the form.

8. Click OK to submit.
The instructions on how to restore your password will be sent to your e-mail address.

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If Your Panel Works with Parallels Customer and Business
Manager
For the Panel to work fine with Parallels Customer and Business Manager, you will have to
actually change two passwords. The first is that you and Business Manager use to work with
the Panel, and the second is a global password you use to log in to both Business Manager
and the Panel.

 To change your password if you employ Business Manager:
1. Change your password in the Panel by following instructions from section
Changing Your Password and Contact Information (on page 168).
2. Update this password in connection settings of Business Manager.
a. Click Business Setup > All Settings.
b. Click Hosting Panels.
c. Select the ID of the group where the Panel resides (PleskUnix or
PleskWin).
d. Click Edit.
e. Change the password to the one you specified at step 1.
3. Set this password as global account password.
a. Make sure you are in Business Manager and click the Profile link in
the upper-right corner of the page.
b. Repeat the password you specified at step 1.

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Appearance and Branding
Next in this section:
Appearance ....................................................................................................... 170
Branding and Themes ....................................................................................... 176

Appearance
Next in this section:
Interface Preferences ........................................................................................ 171
Administrator's Interface Language ................................................................... 172
Setting Up Supported Languages ...................................................................... 173
Adding and Removing Custom Buttons ............................................................. 174

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Interface Preferences
Changing Panel View
Depending on your goals, Panel provides two different views you can choose from when
working with Panel:


Select Service Provider if you use Panel for selling web hosting services.



Select Power User if you use Panel for you own needs, for example, to manage hosting
on a VPS.

Read more about the views in Interface Views (on page 24).
To quickly change your view, go to Tools & Settings > Interface Management.

Hiding Panel Controls
To make Panel interface better suit your needs, you can hide predefined sets of controls in
Panel. For example, by default, Panel offers domain names and SSL certificates from the
MyPLesk.com online store to your customers in the Control Panel. If you resell domain
names or SSL certificates from other providers, you can hide the links to MyPlesk.
The tools for hiding Panel controls are available at Tools & Settings > Interface Management >
Interface Controls Visibility tab. Here you can show or hide the following things:


Hide buttons for domain registration. Hides links to domain registration services provided by
the MyPlesk.com online store. Select this option if you are reselling domain registration
services from other registrars.



Hide buttons for certificate purchasing. Hides links to SSL certificates purchasing services
provided by the MyPlesk.com online store. Select this option if you are reselling SSL
certificates from other registrars.



Hide buttons for extra services. Hides links to extra services provided by the MyPlesk.com
online store.



Hide controls for rejection of messages for non-existent mail addresses. Select this option if you
want to prohibit your users from using their own mail bounce policies for email addressed
to non-existent recipients within their domains.



Hide newsfeeds in webmail and on default domain pages. Hides news feeds shown on default
website pages.



Hide Parallels Virtuozzo Containers promotion page. Hides Parallels Virtuozzo Containers
promotional links in Panel.



Disconnect Customer & Business Manager. This option is shown only if Parallels Customer
and Business Manager is installed on the server. Select this option if you installed
Parallels Customer and Business Manager by mistake or want to stop using it. Panel will
hide the Parallels Customer and Business Manager links in the left navigation pane and
stop interacting with Parallels Customer and Business Manager. Note that this will not
actually remove Parallels Customer and Business Manager from the server.

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Administrator's Interface Language
 To change the interface language and other settings for your Panel:
1. Click the Profile & Preferences link in the navigation pane.
2. Specify the following:
a

Administrator's interface language. Select the language for your Panel.

Button label length. To prevent lengthy button captions in languages other than English
from overlapping in the Panel, you may want to specify a limit here. Any button
caption longer than the defined limit will be shortened and ended with ellipsis (...).

Allow multiple sessions under administrator's login. By default Parallels Plesk Panel allows
multiple simultaneous sessions for several users logged in to the Panel using the
same login and password combination. This can be useful when delegating
management functions to other users or in case if you accidentally close your browser
without logging out, thus becoming unable to log in again until your session expires.
You may want to switch off this capability, if you do not need it.

 To select the default interface language for your customers:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Languages (in the Panel Appearance group).
2. Select a checkbox corresponding to the language that will be set as default
for new Panel users and click Make Default.

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173

Setting Up Supported Languages
Panel includes language packs, the translations of user interface into different languages. If
you would like to see the list of supported languages, refer to the product release notes
available at http://www.parallels.com/products/plesk/docs/. All the supported languages are
installed during the Panel installation (either clean installation or upgrade), and do not require
any additional actions from you to start using them. The number of languages you can use
depends on the Panel license you purchased. The Panel will alert you when you attempt to
use more languages than allowed.

 To view the interface languages installed in the Panel:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Languages (in the Panel Appearance group). The following
information is displayed:


Language status icon shows the current status of the language pack:
language
pack is accessible to users,
not accessible,
the language pack is not available
to users because the limit on the number of language packs supported by your current
license is exceeded.
Note: you can make a language unavailable to control panel users. To do this, click
an icon . To make a language available to users, click an icon .



Language pack contains the four-letter language code;



Language shows the name of the language;



Country displays the countries where this language is native;



Used displays the number of control panel users at all levels that use this language in
their interface.

 To select a new default language for the Panel:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Languages (in the Panel Appearance group).
2. Select the checkbox corresponding to the language you wish to set as
default and click Make Default.

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Panel Administration

Adding and Removing Custom Buttons
You can add custom hyperlink buttons to the Panel and make them visible for your resellers
and customers. The links may lead to web resources, such as your corporate site, or to a
web application that can process online requests and accept additional information about the
users who click these links.
You can specify what information about users should be passed:


Subscription ID.




Primary domain name associated with a subscription.
FTP account username and password.



Customer's account ID, name, e-mail, and company name.

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

On the Home page in the Server Administration Panel, visible only to you and to the users
logged in under additional administrator accounts. This is achieved by selecting the
Administrator's Home page option in the button properties.



On the Home page in the Server Administration Panel, visible only to your resellers. This
is achieved by selecting the Reseller's Home page option in the button properties.



On the Home tab in the Control Panel, visible to the hosting service customers and their
users who are allowed to log in to the Control Panel. This is achieved by selecting the
Customer's Home page option in the button properties.



On the Websites & Domains tab in the Control Panel, visible to the hosting service
customers and their users who are allowed to log in to the Control Panel. This is achieved
by selecting the Websites & Domains page of Subscription option in the button properties.



On the Home page in the Server Administration Panel and Control Panel, visible to you,
all resellers and customers. This is achieved by selecting the Common access option in the
button properties.

 To add a custom hyperlink button to the Server Administration Panel or Control
Panel:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Custom Buttons (in the Control Panel Appearance group),
and click Add Link to Service.
2. Specify the following properties of the button:


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



Choose the location for your button.



Specify the priority of the button. Your custom buttons will be arranged in the Panel in
accordance with the priority you define: the lower the number, the higher the priority.
Buttons are placed in the left-to-right order.



To use an image for a button background, type the path to its location or click Browse
to browse for the desired file. It is recommended that you use a 16x16 pixels GIF or
JPEG image for a button to be placed in the navigation pane, and 32x32 pixels GIF or
JPEG image for buttons placed in the main frame or desktop.



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

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175



Using the checkboxes, specify whether you want the customer information and other
data to be transferred within the URL. These data can be used for processing by
external web applications.



In the Tooltip text input field, type in the help tip that will be displayed when you hover
the mouse pointer over the button.



Select the Open URL in Parallels Panel checkbox if you want the destination URL to be
opened right on the Panel page, otherwise, leave this checkbox cleared to open the
URL in a separate browser window or tab.
If the URL leads to a Panel extension or web app, you can use the Do not use frames
option to specify how the extension/app should be displayed on the Panel page: in a
frame or as a part of the Panel GUI. The latter is recommended as the extension/app
is seamlessly integrated into the Panel GUI. Note that the Do not use frames option is
relevant only for the extensions/apps that support this feature. If an extension/app
does not support the integration with the Panel GUI, it will be displayed in a frame
regardless of the Do not use frames option.



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

3. Click Finish to complete creation.

 To remove a hyperlink button from the Panel:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Custom Buttons (in the Control Panel Appearance group).
2. Select a checkbox corresponding to the button that you want to remove and
click Remove.

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Branding and Themes
Configure your own branding for Parallels Plesk Panel by modifying page titles, logo, or
applying custom Panel themes (former skins). The branding tools are available in Tools &
Settings > Panel Branding (in the Panel Appearance group).
Here we provide details about each of the options:


Title of Panel pages is the title your customers see at the top of the browser window
when they log in to Panel. By default, it is Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5.30.



Logo is a banner in the top frame visible to your customers when they log in to their
Panels. You can also make your logo a clickable hyperlink.You should use a GIF, JPEG,
or PNG format file for your logo, preferably not larger than 100 kilobytes to minimize the
download time. It is recommended that you use an image of 50 pixels in height.

In addition to these two options, you are able to change the visual appearance and branding
of the Panel by applying custom themes. Two themes are available by default: Panel 11 and
Panel 10. You can try the new look or continue using the appearance of the previous Panel
version. For information about using custom themes, refer to the document Creating Custom
Themes.

Panel Components
Panel orchestrates the work of a number of web, mail, DNS, and other services. Technically,
Panel does not provide the services by itself; it just takes control over a number of third-party
components. For example, when a customer creates a website through the Panel GUI, Panel
propagates this request to a web server (Apache or IIS) and the latter adds a new virtual host
to the system. The list of components is defined during Panel installation (see the Installation,
Upgrade, Migration, and Transfer Guide for details). Panel allows you to view the list of installed
components, add new ones, switch between interchangeable components, and remove them
(only in Windows).

Viewing Panel Components
You can view the list of installed components and their versions in Tools & Settings > Server
Components. Panel for Windows has an additional indication of a component state (the
appearance of the icons depends on the Panel theme):





means that Panel is using this component, and the component is working.
means that Panel is not using this component (usually because a license key has
expired or missing), but the component is working.
means that Panel is not using this component because the component is stopped.
means that Panel is not using this component, but the component is installed on the
system and is available.

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177

Installing Panel Components
If you did not include a component in your Panel installation, you can add it later in Tools &
Settings > Updates and Upgrades > Add Components.

Switching Between Interchangeable Components
Some Panel components are interchangeable. For example, in Windows you can use either
MS DNS Server or BIND as your DNS server; in Linux you can choose between Postfix and
Qmail for mail delivery, and so on.
On Panel for Linux, you can switch between interchangeable components in two ways:


Using service settings. Some Panel components with a similar purpose can be installed
side-by-side on the same Panel server. For example, if you have two installed antivirus
components, you can specify the one that will process your mail in Tools & Settings > Mail
Server Settings.



Using Parallels Installer. Some Panel components with a similar purpose do not allow
side-by-side installation. For example, there can be only one mail server in Panel: either
Postfix or Qmail. In this case, you should choose the component you want in Tools &
Settings > Updates and Upgrades > Add Components.

On Panel for Windows, you can switch between interchangeable components in Tools &
Settings > Server Components. To perform the switch, click on the component name (for
example, Mail Server) and select the required component from the list.

Removing Panel Components (Windows)
If you no longer need a certain Panel component, you can remove it from Panel in Tools &
Settings > Updates and Upgrades > Add/Remove Components or by clicking the Add or Remove
Components link on the Home page.

Web Applications
The majority of customers purchase web hosting accounts to run different web applications:
Webmail, CRM, e-commerce systems, blogs, image galleries and so on. Typically, such
users are unable to install the apps by themselves because they lack the necessary technical
skills and experience, so they ask their service providers to do it. Hence, the provider's staff
becomes overloaded with routine operations related to the apps. To ease the installation
(and maintenance) of web apps and reduce the staff's workload, Parallels offers a number of
free and commercial apps available to Panel users directly from their Control Panel.
There are various factors that regulate what apps are available to your customers. For
example, the app list is restricted by service plan or subscription properties, local repository
settings and so on. To see how the apps list is formed, refer to the How Apps Become Available
to Your Customers section.

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App Types
Parallels offers two types of apps:


Apps that are installed directly on a website (such as the WordPress blogging platform or
the Joomla! content management system).



Apps that do not require a website for their installation. These are usually external apps
located somewhere on the web that only provide a link to their services (such as the
iMind videoconference service or OfficeDrive - an online office suite).

Apps can be either free or commercial. Commercial apps require providing a license key to
start working with them. You or your customers can buy licenses for commercial apps right
from the Control Panel: In the Applications tab such apps are accompanied by the Buy Now
button instead of Install Now. If your Panel license comes in a bundle with licenses for certain
commercial apps, you do not need to additionally obtain app licenses.

App Installation and Maintenance
The process of installation does not require any specific skills from customers. They fill in
app settings (for example, administrator credentials), and Panel installs the app for them.
Subsequent app management is also facilitated as apps are updated or removed directly in
Panel. Moreover, customers can access some functions that apps make available in the
Control Panel (without the need to log in to an app). For example, customers can upload a
new WordPress theme or add a SugarCRM user account directly from their Control Panel.
Such app functionality is a service the app provides to customers.

Apps Backup and Restoration
Apps are backed up by standard Panel means (the backup utility). Since the backup unit is
a subscription, all apps in a subscription must be backed up at once. The apps from a
backup are restored along with other subscription data.

Application Vault and Application Catalog
If there are no restrictions on app availability, the list of available apps in the Control Panel
includes all apps from the following two sources:
1. Application Catalog - the remote repository held by Parallels, the main source of apps.
2. Application Vault - a local repository in Panel. Every Panel has own Application Vault that
is available through the Server Administration Panel (Server Management > Tools & Settings >
Application Vault).
The main purposes of the Application Vault are to:


Extend the list of available apps by uploading your own APS packages.
This is relevant if you want to offer some apps to your customers but these apps are not
listed in the Application Catalog.

Panel Administration



Apply updates to apps installed from the Application Catalog.



Gain control over apps from the Application Catalog.
Download an app from the Catalog to the Vault to control some of its options. For
example, you can toggle its visibility to customers or configure its server-wide settings.

179

For more information on managing apps through the Application Vault, refer to the Managing
Apps with the Application Vault (on page 183) section.
Summing up, the Application Vault is not only a local repository of apps but a tool to control
versioning, visibility, and server-wide settings of apps from the Application Catalog. For
better understanding of the Application Vault, refer to the scheme shown in the How Apps
Become Available to Your Customers section.

Sharing Apps among Panel Servers
Adding an APS package to the Application Vault will make it available only to your
customers. If you wish to share your app with users of other Panel servers, add an app to the
Application Catalog. The Catalog accepts only apps packaged according to Application
Packaging Standard (APS) - the set of rules that allows easy app installation and
management. After you have packaged your app, it must pass the certification procedure.
For details on how to do this, see http://www.apsstandard.org/why-aps/isv/.

Storefront
Since Panel 10, Parallels Partner Storefront program offers you the possibility to earn by
selling commercial apps to customers in a revenue-share model. Within this program, you
select the apps you want to sell and Parallels adds them to the list of apps available in
Control Panel. Once customers choose one of the paid apps selected for the program, they
are forwarded to a store with your own branding to complete the order. This branded store is
called the Storefront.
All ordering, licensing, and billing aspects are handled by the Storefront. You just track the
sales and receive a profit from each app sold.
Note: Storefront may contain some commercial apps that are available in Application
Catalog as well. In this case, Storefront apps have a priority and customers always see them
first in the list of available apps.
Note that you should have the appropriate Panel license to participate in the program. For
more information on Parallels Partner Storefront, refer to the
http://www.parallels.com/products/plesk/storefront/.
For the details about how you can manage the availability of Storefront apps to your
customers, refer to the section How Apps Become Available to Your Customers (on page 181).
Next in this section, we will provide details on how to manage apps using the Application
Vault as well as the information on how apps become available in the customer's Control
Panel.

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Next in this section:
How Apps Become Available to Your Customers .............................................. 181
Application Vault................................................................................................ 183

Panel Administration

181

How Apps Become Available to Your Customers
The list of apps available to a customer depends on various factors, such as the service plan
settings, the Application Vault configuration, and so on. Moreover, service providers are able
to forbid accessing apps for all Panel users. If you do not adjust the app availability, your
customers will see all apps from Application Catalog, Storefront (either yours or Parallels's),
and all apps you uploaded to the Vault.
To view the list of apps available to a certain customer, go to the Applications tab > All Available
Applications.
This diagram explains how the list of available apps is formed.

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Before an app becomes available in the app list of a certain customer, it passes through a
series of filters. The app is filtered on the following levels:
1. Panel configuration (Storefront apps only).
Since Panel 10.4, you can specify whether you want to offer premium commercial apps
to your customers in Tools & Settings > Interface Management > the Interface Controls Visibility
tab. Turning this option on implies the following:


If you participate in the Storefront program, customers will proceed to your own
branded store to buy premium commercial apps. You will receive the commission for
each app.



If your license does not have the Storefront feature, customers will be able to buy
premium apps as well but the purchase will be performed in Parallels Storefront
(Parallels online store). In this case, you do not get any sales revenue.

If you decide not to offer premium commercial apps, they will not be shown to your
customers in Control Panel regardless of your participation in the Storefront program.
2. Application Vault.
Panel lets you toggle the availability of APS packages you have uploaded to the Vault.
Note that this works only for your own packages: There is no way to control the
availability of apps downloaded from the Catalog. Learn more about apps management in
the Managing Apps with the Application Vault (on page 183) section.
3. Service plan.
Panel allows you to specify what apps to include in a certain service plan. The filter
affects all customers with this service plan.
4. Subscription.
If you want to select the apps available to a particular customer, update the apps list in
the respective subscription.
The resulting app list is available to your customers.

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183

Application Vault
Application Vault performs the functions of a local repository and an apps management tool.
The repository functionality allows you to add, update, and remove app packages. Using the
management capabilities, you can view what apps were installed in Panel, configure apps, or
make them unavailable for installation. In addition, you can delete temporary installation files
by clearing the Vault cache. Next in this section, you will find detailed instructions on
performing these operations with apps.
Application Vault is available in the Server Administration Panel: Server Management > Tools &
Settings > Application Vault.

Next in this section:
Adding Your Apps to Panel ............................................................................... 184
Configuring Server-Wide Settings of Apps......................................................... 184
Managing Apps Availability to Customers .......................................................... 185
Removing App Packages .................................................................................. 185
Tracking App Installations ................................................................................. 185
Updating Installed Apps..................................................................................... 185
Clearing the Application Vault Cache ................................................................ 186
Troubleshooting App Installations ...................................................................... 186

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Panel Administration

Adding Your Apps to Panel
If you have a web app that you want to offer to your customers in addition to Catalog apps,
you should add it to the Application Vault. Note that you can only upload apps packaged in
the APS format.
To upload your app, use Tools & Settings > Application Vault > My Apps > Add App. After you
upload the app, it will appear in the Control Panel of all customers.

Configuring Server-Wide Settings of Apps
In some cases, apps from the Catalog require server-wide configuration before customers
can install them. For example, if an app installation affects some Panel services, it may
require an administrator password. When your customers attempt to install such an app, they
are asked to contact their provider (you) to perform the configuration. After you configure the
settings, customers can install the app on their websites.
Generally, server-wide settings of an app are the settings that apply to all app installations
and they cannot be changed by customers. For example, customers cannot install the
ePages e-commerce app until you define how customers should access the app, either by
HTTP or HTTPS.
To configure server-wide settings, complete these two steps:
1. Add the Catalog app by using Tools & Settings > Application Vault > My Apps > Add App.
2. Select the app from the list in the My Apps tab and submit the settings.

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Managing Apps Availability to Customers
After an APS package is uploaded to the Vault, you can manage its availability to customers.
This can be useful when you want to temporarily hide your app from all customers. In that
case make the app unavailable in the Tools & Settings > Application Vault > My Apps tab. The app
will disappear from the list of available apps of all customers. To return the app to the list,
make it available in the My Apps tab. Note that you cannot perform these operations on apps
you downloaded from the Catalog.

Removing App Packages
You can only remove packages stored in the Vault. If you remove an app from the Tools &
Settings > Application Vault > My Apps tab, the Vault will delete the app package.
This operation does not affect app installations. Installed apps can be removed only by
particular customers (installation owners) from their Control Panel.

Tracking App Installations
In general, customers install apps directly from the Application Catalog, bypassing the local
repository. The only exceptions are apps that you have added to the Vault. Nevertheless, all
app installations are registered in the Vault. You can view the details on the installations in
the Tools & Settings > Application Vault > Installed Apps tab. A zero number of app installations in
the list means that the app package is stored in the Vault but is has not been installed by any
customers.

Updating Installed Apps
The Application Vault allows updating of any app installed in Panel to the latest version
available in the Catalog. There are two main scenarios of updating apps in Panel: either
when a certain app installation is updated by you or by your customer (installation owner).
You can check for app updates by clicking the app name in the Tools & Settings > Application
Vault > Installed Apps tab. If an update is available, you can apply it by clicking the link Updates
are available. To learn how customers can update their app, refer to the section Updating Apps
(on page 425).

Forced Apps Updating
You can force automatic updating of all installed apps in Panel. In this case, Panel will
automatically update all app instances once updates are available.

 To turn on forced automatic updates:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Application Vault > Installed Apps > Update Settings page.
2. Select the option Force updates for all installed apps.

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We recommend that you use this option only if you are sure that this will not affect the
functionality of websites. This may happen, for example, if your customers use app
extensions: An extension developed for a certain app version may be incompatible with
newer versions.
Note: If you force app updates, your customers will be unable to turn off automatic app
updating as described in the section Updating Apps (on page 425).

Clearing the Application Vault Cache
After customers install an app from Application Catalog, the app package is stored in a
temporary directory on the server, the Vault cache. The files in the cache can speed up
further app installations, but you can delete these files to free disk space on your server.
To delete temporary files from the Application Vault cache, use the Tools & Settings >
Application Vault > Installed Apps tab > Clear Cache.

Troubleshooting App Installations
When an app cannot be installed to a customer's website due to some reason, a customer
gets an error message with the recommendation to contact their hosting provider (you). The
error message also contains the brief error description that should help you find the reason of
a problem.
The most common problem that may occur during an app installation is when PHP does not
meet app requirements:


PHP version is not supported.
To resolve the problem, install the latest available PHP version in Tools & Settings >
Updates and Upgrades.



Required PHP extension is turned off.
To resolve the problem, turn on the required extension.You can do this by adding a
certain PHP directive to the server-wide php.ini file or to the custom PHP configuration
of the subscription (in case you want the extension to be available to a certain user only).
Learn how to do this in the section Customize PHP Configuration (on page 54).
After you add the directive, restart a web server. Learn how to do this on Linux and on
Windows.

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187

Session Preferences
You can adjust the allowed idle time for all sessions in Parallels Plesk Panel as required.

 To adjust session security parameters:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Session Idle Time (in the Security group).
2. Specify the required Session idle time in minutes in the appropriate field.
Should a user session remain idle for the time period exceeding the one
specified as the Session idle time, the control panel terminates this session.
3. Click OK.

 To allow IP changes during one client session (available only on Windows
hosting):
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Session Idle Time (in the Security group).
2. Select the Allow IP changes during one session checkbox. This option will allow
customers with dynamic IP addresses and unstable Internet connection to
work with Parallels Plesk Panel at the cost of increasing the security risks.
3. Click OK.

 To reset all parameters back to their default values:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Session Idle Time (in the Security group) and click Default.
The default session idle time will be set to 30 minutes.
2. Click OK.

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Managing Panel from Mobile Devices
If you need a mobile app to keep pulse on Panel server indicators, use the
Parallels Plesk Mobile Server Monitor. If you also need to take immediate actions on Panel
servers right from your mobile device, take advantage of the other application, Parallels
Plesk Mobile Server Manager. This section discusses the features of these apps, their
installation and usage instructions.

Application Features
With Mobile Server Monitor, administrators can:


View the list of services on a particular server.



View information about a server: OS, CPU, Panel version and so on.



View vital indicators of a server health: CPU load average, memory consumption, swap
usage, etc.
Receive information about certain Panel events.



Mobile Server Manager incorporates the features of Mobile Server Monitor and additionally
gives administrators control over core Panel administration functions.
With Mobile Server Manager, administrators can:


View the list of services on a particular server.



View information about a server: OS, CPU, Panel version and so on.



View vital indicators of a server health: CPU load average, memory consumption, swap
usage, etc.



Receive information about certain Panel events.



Authenticate themselves by a secret key.




View health monitor events.
Roll back and retrieve a Panel license key.



Restart a server.



Stop and start services on a particular server.

Note: Mobile Server Manager works only with servers which license includes Parallels Plesk
Panel Power Pack. This is the license add-on that can be acquired when purchasing a Panel
license or added to the license later on. Along with mobile server management, Power Pack
offers premium commercial antivirus protection, web hosting of Tomcat applications and
many other features. Learn more about Power Pack at
http://www.parallels.com/products/plesk/power-pack/. You are welcome to try Mobile Server
Monitor for free; if you feel you need control over your servers, add Power Pack to your
Panel servers and enjoy Mobile Server Manager.

Panel Administration

Supported Operating Systems and Devices
Currently, Monitor and Manager apps are supported on Android, Blackberry, and iPhone.
Use the following links to download the apps from the respective app stores.
Operating System and Devices

Server Monitor

Android 2.2+ compatible
devices.

https://play.google.com/store/a https://play.google.com/stor
pps/details?id=com.parallels.p e/apps/details?id=com.para
anel.monitor
llels.panel.manager

BlackBerry OS 5.0+ compatible
devices:

http://appworld.blackberry.com http://appworld.blackberry.c
/webstore/content/62901?lang om/webstore/content/62900
=en
/?lang=en



Bold 9000, 9650, 9700,
9780, 9788, 9790, 990,
9930



Curve 9330, 8350i,
8520, 8530, 8900, 8910,
8980



Curve 3G 9300, 9330,
9350, 9360, 9370, 9380
Pearl 3G 9100, 9105




Storm 9500, 9530



Torch 9800, 9810,
9850, 9860
Tour 9630



iOS 4.0+ compatible devices.

Server Manager

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ http://itunes.apple.com/us/a
parallels-panel-serverpp/pleskmonitor/id477441966?mt=8
manager/id477441273?mt=
8

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Panel Administration

Installation and Usage Instructions
If you have a Panel installation, find guidelines on how to install and use the mobile apps at
the following URLs:


Mobile Server Monitor - https://Server_URL:8443/admin/promotion/mobile-monitor/

Mobile Server Manager - https://Server_URL:8443/admin/promotion/mobile-manager/ Here
Server_URL stands for the IP address or host name of your server.

Configuring Panel to Work with Mobile Apps
To interact with Mobile Server Manager or Mobile Server Monitor 1.1 and earlier, Panel uses
the built-in mechanism and does not need any additional configuration.
Starting with Mobile Server Manager and Mobile Server Monitor 1.2, Panel uses the Mobile
Center extension for interaction with the apps. Panel installs this extension automatically
after you try to connect the apps to your Panel server.
The Mobile Center extension accepts requests from the mobile apps to the Panel server,
processes them, and sends responses back to mobile apps.
The extension writes information about its activities and problems to its own log file. The log
file location on the Panel server is the following:


On Linux: /usr/local/psa/var/modules/pleskmobile/MobileConnector.log



On Windows: %plesk_dir%/var/modules/pleskmobile/MobileConnector.log, where %plesk_dir% is the path to the Panel
installation directory.

There are three types of log entries:


Notices - general information that may be useful for troubleshooting, for example,
updating the extension database.



Warnings - information about events that may cause problems but the system solves
them automatically. For example, if the extension's configuration file is unavailable, the
system will create a new file automatically and add the corresponding warning message
to the log.



Errors - information about failing certain operations, for example, when the extension fails
to deliver a response to the mobile app because the mobile device is unavailable.

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On the Mobile Center page (Extensions > Mobile Center), you can define the following settings:


The verbosity of the extension log (the Log level parameter). Once you choose a certain
level, the extension will write entries of the selected type and entries with higher severity
as well. For example, if you choose the Warning log level, the log will contain warnings
and errors. The Off level turns off logging.



iOS push notification service. If you use Mobile Manager or Mobile Monitor on iOS, you
may configure Panel to send push notifications to your device. Such notifications enable
your device to inform you about important events on Panel server by showing alert
messages when the apps are not running in foreground. Note that to accept push
notifications, you should switch on the corresponding option in your mobile apps as well.

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Panel Inside Parallels Virtuozzo Containers
The following operations are not available from the Panel when it is operating inside Parallels
Containers:


Adding to and removing IP addresses from the server's network cards.



Changing host name.



Setting system date and time.

After adding IP addresses to the Parallels Virtuozzo Containers hardware node, you need to
use the Reread IP function in Server Administration Panel (in Tools & Settings > IP Addresses) to
update the Panel's IP pool.
When installing the Panel inside a Parallels Container, you need to configure the Offline
Service parameter for the Container to ensure that the both Parallels Plesk Panel web
interface and the Parallels Power Panel, used for managing Containers, are accessible.
By default, the Container is configured so that the following parameters are enabled for the
Offline Management service: VZPP-plesk (redirection of connections on the port 8443) and
VZPP (redirection of connections on the port 4643). You need to disable the VZPP-plesk
service. You can do this on Parallels Virtuozzo Containers for Linux and Windows by using
the Parallels Management Console utility.

 To configure the container using the Parallels Management Console:
1. Open the Parallels Management Console.
2. Connect to the Parallels Containers hardware node.
3. Click Virtuozzo Containers.
4. Select the Container, right-click it, and select Properties from the context
menu.
5. Go to Network > Offline Management, and disable the VZPP-plesk service.

 To configure the container using the command line tools on a Linux-based
hardware node:
1. Connect to the hardware node over SSH.
2. Issue the following command:
vzctl set CT_ID --offline_management yes --offline_service vzpp --save

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 To configure the container using the command line tools on a Windows-based
hardware node:
1. Connect to the hardware node over Remote Desktop.
2. Issue the following commands:
vzctl set CT_ID --offline_management yes --save
vzcfgt set CT_ID offlineservices vzpp

After configuring the Container, you will be able to access the Container management
functions from the Panel (at Tools > Manage Your Container [in the Server Management group]).

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Remote Access (Windows)
The remote desktop (RDP) access feature allows you to remotely log in to the Parallels Plesk
Panel server and interact with it using standard Microsoft Windows desktop interface.

 To access the server via Remote Desktop interface:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Remote Desktop.
2. Set up screen resolution for the session in the Screen resolution for terminal
session menu.
Note: Higher resolutions are more taxing for your connection, decreasing the interaction
speed and spending more bandwidth.

3. Select the connection method according to your browser:


Microsoft RDP ActiveX - recommended to use with Internet Explorer browser, since it
may not work with other browsers. When you use this method for the first time, your
browser will automatically install the required ActiveX component, if Internet Explorer
security settings permit this. If your browser shows security alerts, try to temporarily
lower security measures in the browser options.



properoJavaRDP - recommended to use with Netscape, Mozilla, or Firefox browsers,
since it may not work with Internet Explorer. Only 8.0 and higher versions of Opera
are supported. This component requires Java Runtime Environment (JRE) to be
installed on your system. If you do not have JRE, you can download it from
http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp (version 1.4 and higher) and install it
before using the remote desktop feature.
Note: You don't need to install JDK (Java Development Kit) in order for the RDP
feature to work.
If you use Internet Explorer or Mozilla, you should open the Terminal Services
Configuration console in Microsoft Windows (Start > Administrative Tasks), and set the
Licensing option to Per user on the Server Settings screen.

4. Click OK. A new window will open with an area where your interaction with
the server's desktop will take place.
5. Log in to the system. By default, the Panel uses the subscription's
FTP/Microsoft FrontPage username. You can supply any valid username and
password.
6. After logging in to the system you can start working with it as with a regular
Windows desktop.

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 To finish your Remote Desktop session:


Close the browser window with the remote desktop session. This way, the session you
had will be detached from your desktop, but it will keep running on the server, so when
you log in there next time, you will see the remote desktop in the state you left it,
or



Select Start > Log off if you want to quit the session permanently (all running sessions
consume the server's resources).

Additional Administrator Accounts
You can create additional Administrator level accounts for your technical support engineers,
enabling them to perform a virtually limitless variety of administrative tasks. All actions
performed by additional Parallels Plesk Panel administrator accounts are logged, which gives
the actual Parallels Plesk Panel administrator an unprecedented level of control over
additional administrator accounts' activities. Additional administrator accounts have virtually
all the privileges that the actual server administrator has, except the following:


View and manage additional administrator accounts belonging to other users.




View and manage administrator account settings.
Clear Action Log.

Next in this section:
Creating Additional Administrator Accounts ...................................................... 196
Modifying Additional Administrator Accounts..................................................... 196
Suspending and Activating Additional Administrator Accounts .......................... 197
Removing Additional Administrator Accounts .................................................... 197

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Creating Additional Administrator Accounts
 To create additional administrator account:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Additional Administrator Accounts.
2. Click Create Account.
3. Specify administrator account properties:


Specify account login, password and e-mail address in the corresponding fields.



Specify the name of additional administrator account user in the Contact name field.



Use Comments field to add your own comments about this particular additional
administrator account and its user. This can be useful to differentiate between the
accounts: for example, you can create one account for a technical support engineer
who manages user accounts, and another account for a technical support engineer
who works with all mail-related issues. By adding appropriate comments in the
Comments field, you can always tell who's doing what, and avoid confusion.

4. Click OK to finish the creation of additional administrator account.
Now you can tell account login and password to its owner.

Modifying Additional Administrator Accounts
 To modify settings of additional Administrator account:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Additional Administrator Accounts.
2. Click the required additional administrator account login in the list.
3. Specify new administrator account properties:


Specify new account login, password and e-mail address in the corresponding fields.



Specify the new name of additional Administrator account user in the Contact name
field.



Use Comments field to add your own comments about this particular additional
Administrator account and its user. This can be useful to differentiate between the
accounts: for example, you can create one account for a technical support engineer
who manages customer accounts, and another account for a technical support
engineer who works with all mail-related issues. By adding appropriate comments in
the Comments field, you can always tell who's doing what, and avoid confusion.

4. Click OK to update the information of additional administrator account.

Panel Administration

Suspending and Activating Additional Administrator
Accounts
 To suspend additional administrator account:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Additional Administrator Accounts.
2. Click the required additional administrator account login in the list.
3. Clear the Allow access to control panel checkbox and click OK.

 To activate additional administrator account:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Additional Administrator Accounts.
2. Click the required additional administrator account login in the list.
3. Select the Allow access to control panel checkbox and click OK.

Removing Additional Administrator Accounts
 To remove additional administrator account:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Additional Administrator Accounts.
2. Select the checkbox corresponding to the account you want to remove and
click Remove.
3. Confirm removal and click OK.

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Event Tracking
The Event Manager is designed to help you organize data interchange between Parallels
Plesk Panel and external systems. It works the following way:
1. Create a script to be executed upon a certain control panel event: Shell script file for
Linux or batch file for Windows.
2. Create an event handler that triggers the event processing. You can process a single
event by a number of different handlers.
3. Assign your script to the event handler.
For the full list of event parameters passed by event handlers, refer to Appendix C: Event
Parameters Passed by Event Handlers (on page 579).
Note for users of Linux: The server administrator can create the event handlers that will be
run on the server on behalf of user root. If you wish to restrict usage of the root account,
create an empty file with name root.event_handler.lock in the location
/parallels_panel_installation_directory/var/.

Next in this section:
Adding Event Handlers (Linux) .......................................................................... 199
Adding Event Handlers (Windows) .................................................................... 200
Removing Event Handlers ................................................................................. 201

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Adding Event Handlers (Linux)
Let's, for example, create an event handler for the 'customer account creation' event. The
handler will accept a customer's name and username in the Panel from environment
variables. For simplicity, we will use a shell-script called test-handler.sh that looks as
follows:
#!/bin/bash
echo "--------------" >> /tmp/event_handler.log
/bin/date
event date and time

>> /tmp/event_handler.log # information on the

/usr/bin/id
>> /tmp/event_handler.log # information on the
user, on behalf of which the script was executed (to ensure control)
echo "customer created" >> /tmp/event_handler.log # information on
the created customer account
echo "name: ${NEW_CONTACT_NAME}"
customer's name

>> /tmp/event_handler.log #

echo "login: ${NEW_LOGIN_NAME}"
customer's username in the Panel

>> /tmp/event_handler.log #

echo "--------------" >> /tmp/event_handler.log
This script prints some information to a file so that we could control its execution (we cannot
output information to stdout/stderr, as the script is executed in the background mode).
Note: We strongly recommend that you use shell script files to handle events. Although you
can assign direct system commands, they might not work. For example, commands with
output redirection operators < or > will not work.
Suppose that our script is located in the directory
/parallels_panel_installation_directory/bin (for instance). Let's register it by
creating an event handler via the Administrative Panel:

1. Go to Tools & Settings > Event Manager.
2. Click Add New Event Handler.
3. Select the event, you wish to assign a handler to in the Event menu.
4. Select the priority for handler execution, or specify a custom value. To do
this, select custom in the Priority menu and type in the value.
When assigning several handlers to a single event you can specify the handler execution
sequence, setting different priorities (higher value corresponds to a higher priority).

5. Select the system user, on behalf of which the handler will be executed
("root" user, for example).

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6. In the Command input field, specify a command to be executed upon the
selected event. In our example it is /usr/local/psa/bin/testhandler.sh.
7. Click OK.
Note: In the script, we have specified the variables $NEW_CONTACT_NAME and
$NEW_LOGIN_NAME. During execution of the handler, they will be replaced with name and
username of the created user account respectively. The entire list of available variables is
provided in Appendix C: Event Parameters Passed by Event Handlers (on page 579).
Now if you log in to your Parallels Plesk Panel and create a new customer account,
specifying the value 'Some Customer' in the Contact name field, and 'some_customer' in the
field Login, the handler will be invoked, and the following records will be added to the
/tmp/event_handler.log:
Fri Mar 16 15:57:25 NOVT 2007
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root)
customer created
name: Some Customer
login: some_customer
If you want to specify one or few handlers more, repeat the actions above for another
handler.

Adding Event Handlers (Windows)
 To add an Event Handler:
For instance, let's create an event handler for the 'customer account creation' event. The
handler will accept a customer's name as the first parameter, and the customer's
username as the second. For simplicity, we will use a batch file called test-handler.bat
that looks as follows:
echo "--------------" >> c:\windows\temp\event_handler.log
rem information on the event date and time
date /T
>> c:\windows\temp\event_handler.log
rem information on the created customer account
echo "customer created" >> c:\windows\temp\event_handler.log
rem customer's name
echo "name: %1"
>> c:\windows\temp\event_handler.log
rem customer's username in the Panel
echo "login: %2"
>> c:\windows\temp\event_handler.log
echo "--------------" >> c:\windows\temp\event_handler.log

This script prints some information to a file so that we could control its execution.
Suppose that our script is located in the directory c:\program
files\parallels\parallels panel\scripts\. Let's register it by creating an
event handler via the Administrative Panel:

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1. Go to Tools & Settings > Event Manager.
2. Click Add New Event Handler.
3. Select the event you wish to assign a handler to in the Event drop-down box.
4. Select the priority for handler execution, or specify a custom value. To do
this, select custom in the Priority drop-down list and type in the value.
When assigning several handlers to a single event you can specify the handler execution
sequence, setting different priorities (higher value corresponds to a higher priority).

5. Select the system user, on behalf of which the handler will be executed.
6. In the Command input field, specify a command to be executed upon the
selected event. In our example, it is c:\program
files\parallels\parallels panel\scripts\test-handler.bat"
.
Note that if directory names or the file name contains spaces, the path should be quoted.

7. Click OK.
Note: In the command, we have specified the parameters in the angle brackets
and . Before executing the handler, they will
be replaced with name and username of the created customer. The entire list of available
parameters is provided in the section Event Parameters Passed by Event Handlers (on page
579).
Now if you login to your Parallels Plesk Panel and create a new customer account, specifying
the value 'Some Customer' in the Contact name field, and 'some_customer' in the field Login,
the handler will be invoked, and the following records will be added to the
c:\windows\temp\event_handler.log:
Mon March 15 21:46:34 NOVT 2010
customer created
name: Some Customer
username: some_customer

If you want to specify one or few handlers more, repeat the actions above for another
handler.

Removing Event Handlers
 To remove an event handler:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Event Manager.
2. Select the corresponding checkboxes in the list of handlers and click Remove.

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Migration from Other Hosting Platforms
If you have a server with a different hosting platform (for example, cPanel, Confixx, or other
supported solution) and want to switch from this platform to Panel, you should migrate all
hosting data from this server (source) to your Panel server (destination server).
Panel 11.5 supports migration from the following platforms:


cPanel for Unix, versions 9, 10, 11



Confixx 3.3.7 for Linux



Parallels Pro Control Panel for Linux version 10.3.4 (formerly known as Ensim Pro)



Parallels Helm 3.2



Parallels Small Business Panel 10.x

To migrate data from another hosting solution, we recommend that you use the Migration &
Transfer Manager utility. Before running the utility, you should perform a number of
preparation steps which may vary depending on your source platform. For the detailed
instructions on how to perform migration, refer to the chapter Migrating to Panel of the
Installation, Upgrade, Migration, and Transfer Guide.

Data Transfer from Another Panel
If you want to relocate your Panel to another server, the easiest way to do this is to transfer
Panel data to this server. In terms of Panel, transfer is a process of moving hosting data from
one Panel server (source) to another server with Panel of the same version (destination
server). There are two ways to transfer data from one Panel to another:


Transfer with the Migration & Transfer Manager utility (recommended).
We recommend that you transfer hosting data using the Migration & Transfer Manager
utility. This utility runs on a destination server and automatically copies hosting data from
your source Panel.



Transfer through backup files.
You can also transfer data from the source to destination server using backup files. To
perform the data transfer, you should back up data on the source server, transfer the
resulting archive file to the destination server manually, and restore the data on this
server.

For the detailed instructions on transferring data between two Panels, refer to the chapter
Transferring Panel Data of the Installation, Upgrade, Migration, and Transfer Guide.

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Panel Extensions (Linux)
Using extensions is another way of increasing the functionality of your Panel for Linux.
Extensions are functional components (such as a file server, firewall, or system monitor)
developed by Parallels or third parties.
To obtain add-ons developed by Parallels partners, visit our online store at
http://www.parallels.com/store/plesk/partners/.
The extensions can be easily installed, removed, and configured directly from Panel
(Extensions > Manage Extensions). Learn more about installing Panel extensions in the
Installation, Upgrade, Migration, and Transfer Guide, in the chapter Installing Panel Extensions.
This section contains information on how to configure extensions developed by Parallels:







Counter-Strike game server extension. Used to deploy Counter Strike game servers.
Starting from Plesk 11.5, this extension is no longer shipped with Plesk. However, it might
still be available to users who upgrade to Plesk 11.5 from earlier versions.
File Server extension. Used to share directories on a network directly from Panel.
Firewall extension. Used to protect the Panel server and private networks from
unauthorized access.
Watchdog extension. Used for system monitoring.
VPN extension. Used for establishing communications between geographically
distributed LAN segments over public networks.

For information on how to configure extensions developed by third parties, refer to the
respective documentation.

Next in this section:
Counter-Strike Game Server Extension ............................................................. 204
File Server Extension ........................................................................................ 215
Firewall Extension ............................................................................................. 223
Watchdog (System Monitoring) Extension ......................................................... 230
VPN Extension .................................................................................................. 242

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Counter-Strike Game Server Extension
Note: Starting from Plesk 11.5, this extension is no longer shipped with Plesk. However, it
might still be available to users who upgrade to Plesk 11.5 from earlier versions.
With this extension you can:


Deploy, configure, and uninstall Counter-Strike game servers.



Specify which maps each game server should use.



Start, stop, and restart game servers.



Add and update game mods with the Steam utility provided by Valve.



Delegate permissions for managing game servers to other users.

Next in this section:
Deploying Game Servers .................................................................................. 205
Starting, Stopping, Restarting Game Servers .................................................... 213
Updating Game Servers .................................................................................... 214
Removing Game Servers .................................................................................. 215

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Deploying Game Servers
Once you install the Counter-Strike Game Server extension on your Parallels Plesk Panel,
you will need to take a few steps to install the game server program files and other required
components. These files will be shared among all game servers that you will set up.

 To obtain and install the core components of game servers:
1. Click the Extensions shortcut in the navigation pane and, in the Extensions
group, click the Counter-Strike game server icon.
2. The installation program starts searching for an installed game server
engine. If it does not detect it, the installer will offer you the two options:


Install the game server automatically - download the game server files from the official
directory servers on the Internet and install them automatically. This procedure might
take much time and hundreds megabytes of data transfer, depending on the number
of components you wish to install. During automatic installation, you will be asked to
choose the game version (Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike Source, and Counter-Strike
Condition Zero) to install.



Use an existing installation - if you already have the game server engine installed, use
this option to specify the path to the directory where it is installed.

3. Click OK.
4. Install the Steam software. Steam is an online content delivery system
designed by Valve Corporation. To be able to download, install and update
games from the Valve website through the Internet, you need to install the
Steam client.
Important: By downloading and installing the Steam client, you assume responsibility for
the consequences of using this software. Use it at your own risk!


If you do not have the Steam client program or Counter-Strike game server installed,
leave the Download from the official Valve site and install option selected and click OK. The
Steam software will be downloaded from the official download site
(http://www.steampowered.com/download/hldsupdatetool.bin). Then, the License
Agreement with Valve Corporation will appear. Click Accept to accept the license
agreement to download and install the Steam client.



If you have already downloaded this file (hldsupdatetool.bin) and have it on your local
machine, select the Install from the local machine option to upload it. Click OK. Then,
specify the path to the hldsupdatetool.bin file and click OK. Click Accept to accept the
license agreement.



To specify the path to an existing Steam installation, select the Use an existing Steam
client installation on your Plesk server option and click OK. Locate the Steam distribution
package and click OK.

5. All game modifications (also commonly referred to as mods) that are
available for downloading are shown in a list. Each mod title is accompanied
with the following icon indicating whether the mod is already installed:
the game mod is already installed and
- game mod is not installed.

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If you have a steam account that you would like to use for retrieving installation files or
updates from Valve, click the Switch Steam Account icon, specify your username and
password, and click OK.
Select the checkboxes corresponding to the game mods you wish to install and click OK.

6. When the selected game components are installed, click OK to quit the
wizard.
Now the core components of the selected game servers are installed, and you can proceed
to setting up your game servers.

Next in this section:
Setting Up a Game Server ................................................................................ 207
Choosing Maps for the Game ............................................................................ 211
Delegating Permissions for Managing Game Servers to a Panel User .............. 212

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207

Setting Up a Game Server
 To set up a new game server:
1. Click the Extensions shortcut in the navigation pane and, in the Extensions
group, click the Counter-Strike game server icon.
2. Click the Add CS Game Server icon in the Tools group.
3. Select a game modification you want to run on your server. Click Next >>.
4. Choose the operation mode. If your server is going to be restricted to LAN
clients only, select the Server is running in LAN-Only mode option. If you are
serving both LAN and Internet clients, select the Server is running in LAN &
Internet mode option.
5. To prevent the players connected through the Internet from cheating on your
server, select the Use Valve anti-cheat extension option.
6. Click Next >>.
7. Specify the maximum number of players who can connect simultaneously to
your server. Click Next >>.
8. Enter the name for this game server. Click Next >>.
9. Select how you want to configure your game server:


If you wish to customize the default configuration prior to running the game server,
select the Customize the default configuration prior to running the game server option.



If you wish to create the game server with default configuration and run it upon
completion, select the Run the game server with the default configuration option.

10. Click Finish.
The game server with optimal configuration will be set up.
If you selected the Run the game server with the default configuration option, the game server will
run.
If you chose the Customize the default configuration prior to running the game server, you will be
taken to the game server configuration screen on which you can adjust the following settings
for your game server.
Setting

Description

Game server name

The name that you would like to call your server.

Configuration file

Select the configuration file that will be used for this
game server. This drop-down list contains all
configuration files available for this game mod. To edit
the selected configuration file, click the Edit button on
the right.

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Operation mode

If your server is going to be restricted to LAN clients
only, select the Server is running in LAN-Only mode option.
If you are serving both LAN and Internet clients, select
the Server is running in LAN & Internet mode option.

IP address

Specify the IP addresses at which the game server will
be accessible.

Game server port

The port number the game server will work on.
Default is 27015.

Maximum number of players

The maximum number of players who can
simultaneously connect to your game server.

Game server auto update

Use this to automatically update the game server
through the Internet upon each start.

Use WON authorization server

If you set up a game server in LAN without Internet
access, and do not want your game server to connect to
WON authorization server, leave this checkbox cleared.

Use Valve anti-cheat module

Valve Anti-cheat is the program that bans cheaters from
game. The ban issued to the cheater depends on the
severity of the cheat, and the number of offenses.

RCON password

Remote Console password is required if you wish to
manage the game server remotely. The RCON
password is also used by Parallels Plesk Panel for
restarting the game server.

Game server entry password

If you wish to restrict access to your game server,
specify the password that the authorized users will use
for entering this game server.

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Subsequently, when you need to modify these settings, you will access this screen by
clicking Extensions > Counter-Strike > game server name > Configuration tab.

 To fine tune your game server by modifying configuration files:
1. Go to Extensions > Counter-Strike > game server name > Configuration tab.
2. In the Configuration file group, select the configuration file you need and click
the Edit button.
3. In the Commands text input area, enter a list of commands. To generate the
list of commands, we recommend that you use the Configuration Editor Tool
available at http://server.counter-strike.net. To use the Configuration Editor,
open http://server.counter-strike.net/server.php?cmd=tools# in a new
browser window and click the config editor link in the left navigation pane. A
pop-up window will open. Specify required settings and click Configure! at the
bottom of the page. A list of commands will be generated and displayed in
the Generated Server.cfg section of the page. Copy the generated commands to
the clipboard, then return to your Parallels Plesk Panel and paste them into
the Commands text input area.
Note: Changes made to the configuration file will affect all game servers that run on a
given configuration.

4. Click OK to submit the changes.

 To create a new configuration file:
1. Go to Extensions > Counter-Strike.
2. Click the Configuration Files icon.
3. Click the New Configuration icon.
4. Enter the mod name, configuration name (not the file name!) in the Name
field, and a description of this configuration file that will be displayed in the
list of game servers.
5. In the Commands text input area, enter a list of commands. To generate the
list of commands, we recommend that you use the Configuration Editor Tool
available at http://server.counter-strike.net. To use the Configuration Editor,
open http://server.counter-strike.net/server.php?cmd=tools# in a new
browser window and click the config editor link in the left navigation pane. A
pop-up window will open. Specify required settings and click Configure! at
the bottom of the page. A list of commands will be generated and displayed
in the Generated Server.cfg section of the page. Copy the generated
commands to the clipboard, then return to your Parallels Plesk Panel and
paste them into the Commands text input area.
6. Click OK to submit your configuration.
7. If you wish to apply this configuration to a game server at this time, go to
Extensions > Counter-Strike > game server name > Configuration tab, select the
configuration file you need in the Configuration file group, and then click OK.

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 To modify a configuration file you created:
1. Go to Extensions > Counter-Strike.
2. Click the Configuration Files icon.
3. Click the configuration name you need.
4. Modify the settings as desired and click OK.

 To remove a configuration file:
1. Go to Extensions > Counter-Strike.
2. Click the Configuration Files icon.
3. Select the corresponding checkbox and click Remove Selected.
4. On the next page, confirm the removal and click OK.
Note: You cannot delete the default configuration file. You can only edit it.

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Choosing Maps for the Game
 To select maps that will be available for users playing a specific type of game:
1. Click the Extensions shortcut in the navigation pane and, in the Extensions
group, click the Counter-Strike game server icon.
2. Click the game server's name.
3. Click the Maps tab. The tab has two lists: the left-hand list displays all
available maps and the list on the right contains all maps available for users
playing on this game server.
4. To add a map to the game, move maps from the list of available maps to the
list of selected maps by using the Add >> and << Remove buttons.
5. Click OK.
To simplify map selection, you can sort all maps by mission types, such as saving hostages,
assassination of VIP persons, planting a bomb, knife arena, team deathmatch, escape from
the area, or Arctic Warfare Police. To view all maps related to the category of interest, select
the category in the Map categories menu.
The maps for a game will be played consequently as they go in the list, starting from the
default map selected in the Default map menu. To move a map downward or upward in the
list, use the Move Up or Move Down buttons, respectively.
Note: Each game mod has a standard set of maps. If you remove such a standard map from
the list of maps (do not confuse the standard map with the default map!), they will be
automatically installed during updating of your game server.

Next in this section:
Adding and Removing Maps ............................................................................. 212

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Adding and Removing Maps
 To add or remove maps that your game servers can use:
1. Click the Extensions shortcut in the navigation pane and, in the Extensions
group, click the Counter-Strike game server icon.
2. Click the Maps Management icon. The list of all maps for all game mods will
show.
3. To view only the maps related to a specific game mod, select the respective
option in the Select the game modification group.
4. To upload a new map, click the Browse button, select the map file you need
(in zip or bsp file format), and then click Upload.
5. To remove the map you do not need, select the corresponding checkbox and
click Remove Selected.

Delegating Permissions for Managing Game Servers to a Panel User
 To delegate permissions for managing game servers to one of your customers
registered with your Parallels Plesk Panel:
1. Click the Extensions shortcut in the navigation pane and, in the Extensions
group, click the Counter-Strike game server icon.
2. Click the Game Server Operator button.
3. On the page that opens, enter the username of a Parallels Plesk Panel user
in the Login field.

 To revoke permissions to manage game servers from a user:
1. Click the Extensions shortcut in the navigation pane and, in the Extensions
group, click the Counter-Strike game server icon.
2. Click the Game Server Operator button.
3. On the page that opens, delete the username from the Login field and leave
this field blank.

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Starting, Stopping, Restarting Game Servers
 To start, stop or restart a game server:
1. Click the Extensions shortcut in the navigation pane and, in the Extensions
group, click the Counter-Strike game server icon.
2. Click the
icon to stop a running game server,
server and the
icon to restart it.
Alternatively, you can click a game server name. Then click the
server, the
button to start it, and
to restart it.

to start a stopped game
button to run a game

214

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Updating Game Servers
 To update the game server files and components:
1. Click the Extensions shortcut in the navigation pane and, in the Extensions
group, click the Counter-Strike game server icon.
2. Click the Update Game Servers icon.
3. A page displaying all game modifications available for updating will appear.
Each mod title is accompanied with the following icon indicating whether the
mod is already installed:
- the game mod is already installed and
game mod is not installed.
4. If you want to use another Steam account for updating, click Switch Steam
Account.
5. Select the checkboxes corresponding to the game mods you want to update
and click OK.
6. In the next step, the selected game components will be updated. When
finished, click OK to quit the wizard.
In case of updating failure you can view the log file for details. To do this, click the link next to
the operation result icon.

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Removing Game Servers
 To remove a game server:
1. Click the Extensions shortcut in the navigation pane and, in the Extensions
group, click the Counter-Strike game server icon.
2. Select the checkboxes corresponding to the game servers you want to
remove, and click Remove. On the next page, confirm removal and click OK.

File Server Extension
The File Server extension enables Parallels Plesk Panel administrators to share directories
on a network directly from the Parallels Plesk Panel. Using the Parallels Plesk Panel File
Server, you can share access to a directory on your server, grant access to this directory to
specific users or hosts, and assign read-only or write permissions for this directory. File
Server uses the Microsoft SMB (Server Message Block) protocol to share resources on a
Samba server for network users.
For the Parallels Plesk Panel File Server, the Samba server (version 2.2.x or 3.x) must be
installed and properly configured.

Next in this section:
How to Access File Server ................................................................................ 216
Configuring File Server ...................................................................................... 217
Managing Shares .............................................................................................. 219
Managing Users ................................................................................................ 220
Managing Broadcast Interfaces ......................................................................... 221
Limiting Access to the File Server ..................................................................... 222

216

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How to Access File Server
 To access the File Server:
Click the Extensions shortcut in the navigation pane > Samba File Server Configuration.
The page that opens is the File Server management page from where you can perform all
File Server operations. This page has five tabs: Status, Shares, Users, Interfaces, and Access.
Each of these tabs contains tools for managing shared resources, file server properties,
network interfaces, and users and computers who will have access to the shared directories.

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Configuring File Server
This section describes how to perform the following operations:


Configure the file server.



View the current usage of shared resources.



Refresh server statistics.



Disable your file server.

 To view the current status of your file server:
1. Go to Extensions > File Server > Status.
2. In the Current statistics section, view whether your file server is started or
stopped. The statistics on the current connections to shared directories is
provided in the table with the following columns:


Share, name of the shared resource.



Host, name of the remote host currently connected to the shared directory.



User, user name who is currently connected to the shared directory.

 To configure the file server:
1. Go to Extensions > File Server > Status > Preferences.
2. To change the workgroup for your server on the Microsoft network, click in
the Workgroup field and enter the name of a workgroup. If needed, edit the
description in the Description field containing an optional description of your
file server.
3. You can also configure the following security parameters for your Samba
server:


Authentication mode. Select one of the following security modes:


Share - in this security mode, the user authenticates themselves separately for
each share. The user sends a password along with each tree connection (share
mount). Passwords are meant to be associated with each share, independent of
the user.



User - this security mode is based on verifying the username and password. The
server can either accept or reject the username and password combination. At this
stage the server has no idea what share the client will eventually try to connect to,
so it bases the accept/reject decision only on the username and password and the
name of the client machine.



Server - in Server Security Mode, the Samba server receives the username and
password from the client and sends a session setup request to the machine
designated as the password server. If the password server is in user-level security
and accepts the password, Samba accepts the client's connection. The client
sends all passwords in encrypted form. This security mode requires the use of a
password server (see Authentication server).

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

Domain - in Domain Security Mode, the Samba server has a domain security trust
account (a machine account) and causes all authentication requests to be passed
through to the domain controllers. In other words, domain security has basically
the same concept as server security mode, with the exception that the Samba
server becomes a member of a Windows NT domain. This means that the Samba
server can participate in things such as trust relationships.



ADS - in this mode, the authentication procedure is performed through an Active
Directory domain. Samba in this security mode can accept Kerberos tickets.

Authentication server. If you set the security mode to either Server, Domain, or ADS,
you will need to specify the password server (or the authentication server). For user
and share modes, the password server is not required.
In this field, enter the NetBIOS name of the SMB server used as a password server,
on which the Samba server will check the entered passwords. You can list multiple
NetBIOS names separated with a space. This allows Samba to attempt a session
setup request to each machine in the list in order until a server is contacted. This
means that the next machine on the list is contacted only if the previous machine was
unavailable.
You must use only the NetBIOS name of the password server (not the IP address),
and Samba must have a way of resolving the name to an IP address in order to
attempt the connection.
To create a local account for all users that access the Samba server and disable the
password field, set this field to the asterisk character (*).



Encrypt password. Select Yes if you want to store passwords used to authenticate users
in encrypted form or No if password encryption is not required.



Guest account. In this menu, select the system user whose rights will be granted to
users logged on under the guest account. If you have no guest account on your
server, select the no guest account option. If you need a guest account for anonymous
users, it is advised that you select the nobody option.
For details on the Samba security configuration options, please refer to the relevant
Samba documentation.

 To refresh data on the current connections to your file server:
1. Go to Extensions > File Server > Status.
2. Click the Refresh button. The list of current connections and file server status
will be refreshed.

 To disable your file server:
1. Go to Extensions > File Server > Status.
2. Click the Disable button.

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219

Managing Shares
 To view the list of existing shared resources:
1. Go to Extensions > File Server > Shares.
2. View the following information about each share:


Name, displays the name of the shared resource.



Real path, shows the path to the shared resource.



Description, contains the description of the shared directory as specified during its
creation.



W, write permissions show whether users can add new files to this directory. The
icon means that write permissions are set for this directory. The
icon means that
the directory is read-only.

 To add a new shared resource:
1. Go to Extensions > File Server > Shares > Add New Share.
2. In the Preferences group, enter the name of the shared directory, full path to
the directory you want to share and its description. If you want to give write
permissions for this directory to network users, select the Writable checkbox.
3. To select the users that will have access to the shared directory:


Select the Any user option if you want to grant access to the shared directory to all
network users.



Select the Selected only option to grant access to the shared directory only to specified
users. Select the users that will have access to this directory from the Available users
list by using the Add and Remove buttons. If access is allowed for some users, they
should specify their login and password to access this folder.

Note: If you want to add other users to the Available users list, you must first add them
using the Add New User button on the Users tab. See Managing Users (on page 220) on
how to add new users.

4. Click OK.

 To edit the properties of a share:
1. Go to Extensions > File Server > Shares.
2. Click the name of the shared directory you want to edit.
3. Change the necessary parameters.
4. Click OK.

220

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Managing Users
 To view users who can have access to the shares:
1. Go to Extensions > File Server > Users.
2. View users listed in a table with the following columns:


Name, displays the username.



System user, shows the system user account this File Server user belongs to.

 To add a new user to the list of available users:
1. Go to Extensions > File Server > Users > Add New User.
2. Specify the following parameters:


System user - select the corresponding system user from the menu.



Name - username that will be used to access a share.



Password - password used to access a share.

 Password confirmation - confirm the password.
All these fields are mandatory.
Note: You can add only one File Server user for each Unix system user.

 To edit the user data:
1. Go to Extensions > File Server > Users.
2. Click the user name you want to edit.
3. Change the parameters as needed and click OK.

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221

Managing Broadcast Interfaces
By default, broadcast mode is disabled for all network interfaces mainly for security reasons.
Broadcast mode enables sending data packets to the broadcast address. However, you can
manually prevent your File Server from sending broadcast packets to specified network
interfaces.

 To view the list of network interfaces:
1. Go to Extensions > File Server > Interfaces.
2. The list is organized as a table with the following columns:


S - an icon indicating the status of the network interface. The
icon shows that the
broadcast mode for the interface is enabled, the
icon shows that the broadcast
mode is disabled for this interface, and the
icon means that broadcast mode for
this interface was enabled but now the interface is physically unavailable (was
removed or corrupted).



Interface name - the name of the interface, for example, eth0, eth1, and so on.



IP Addresses - all IP addresses and subnet addresses that work on this interface.

 To enable broadcast mode for an interface:
1. Go to Extensions > File Server > Interfaces.
2. Click the
icon in the Status column of the table listing interfaces. The
selected interface will be set to work in broadcast mode.

 To disable broadcast mode for an interface:
1. Go to Extensions > File Server > Interfaces.
2. Click the
or
icons in the Status column of the table. Broadcast mode will
be switched off for the selected interface.

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Limiting Access to the File Server
If you want to enhance the security of your file server, you can regulate what hosts or
networks will have access to your shared resources. Connections from other hosts will be
refused by your file server.

 To view all hosts and networks that have access to your file server:
1. Go to Extensions > File Server > Access.
2. View the table. If the list is empty, all hosts can access your file server. This
is the default option.

 To allow access to your server only from a specific range of hosts:
1. Go to Extensions > File Server > Access > Add New Host/Network.
2. Enter the IP address of the host you want to allow access (for example,
123.123.123.1) or the range of hosts (for example, network address/subnet
mask written as 123.123.123.0/255.255.255.0).
3. Click OK.
This will allow only the specified hosts to connect to the shared resources on your file server.
All connections from other hosts will be refused by the file server.

 To edit the list of hosts that have access to your server:
1. Go to Extensions > File Server > Access.
2. Click the address of the host in the list of allowed hosts.
3. Edit the host IP address or subnet mask (for multiple hosts) in the
Network/Host address field.
4. Click OK.

 To remove an address from the list:
1. Go to Extensions > File Server > Access.
2. Select the checkbox corresponding to the host address you want to remove
and click Remove.
3. Select the Confirm removal checkbox and click OK.

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223

Firewall Extension
Parallels Plesk Panel Firewall is an extension that protects your Parallels Plesk Panelenabled server and private network from unauthorized access. With this extension, you can
easily set firewall rules and fine tune them through a user-friendly interface.

Next in this section:
Setting Up Firewall ............................................................................................ 224
Predefined Firewall Rules Specifications ........................................................... 229

224

Panel Administration

Setting Up Firewall
After you installed the extension, you can do the following:


View and change the predefined rules that control connections to the following system
services: Administrative control panel; Web server; FTP server; SSH server; SMTP
server; POP3 server; IMAP server; mail password change service; MySQL server;
PostgreSQL server; Samba file sharing server for Windows clients; VPN; domain name
server; ICMP echo requests. By default, these rules allow all incoming connections to
these services.



View and change the predefined system policies that define what to do with all incoming,
outgoing, and transit communications that do not match the explicitly defined rules.



Add, change, and remove custom rules. For example, you may want to add a rule that
will allow access to FTP accounts on the server in passive mode.

Next in this section:
Managing Access to System Services ............................................................... 224
Managing System Policies ................................................................................ 225
Managing Custom Rules ................................................................................... 226

Managing Access to System Services
For each system service, you can choose whether to allow or deny all incoming
communications, or allow only communications coming from specific IP and network
addresses.

 To allow or restrict access to a service on your Parallels Plesk Panel server:
1. Go to Extensions > Firewall > Edit Firewall Configuration.
2. Click the service name.
3. Do any of the following:


To allow all incoming connections, select the Allow option and click OK.



To deny all incoming connections, select the Deny option and click OK.



To deny access to a service from specific IP and network addresses, select the Allow
from selected sources, deny from others option, specify the IP address or network address
from which access to the selected service is allowed, and click Add. After you specify
the required addresses, click OK.

4. To apply all changes to the firewall configuration, click Activate, and then click
Activate again.

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225

Managing System Policies
System policies define what to do with all incoming, outgoing, and transit communications
that do not match the explicitly defined rules. The system policies are usually displayed at the
bottom of the list of rules.

 To allow or deny communications of specific type:
1. Go to Extensions > Firewall > Edit Firewall Configuration.
2. Click the icon to the left of the policy name you want to change. If the policy
currently allows all connections, clicking this icon will prohibit all connections
and vice versa.
3. To apply the changes, click Activate, and then click Activate again.

226

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Managing Custom Rules
This section describes how to add, modify, remove custom rules, and change the order in
which the rules are applied. This section also covers the steps required for enabling passive
mode for FTP connections.

 To add a custom rule:
1. Go to Extensions > Firewall > Edit Firewall Configuration.
2. Click Add Custom Rule.
3. Enter the name of the new rule in the Name of the rule field.
4. Select one of the following communication directions: Incoming for the
communications inbound to the server, Outgoing for communications
outbound from this server, or Forwarding for communications transiting
through your server in any direction.
For incoming communications you can specify the destination ports on your server, the
protocol used for this communication, and the IP address the communications come
from.
For outgoing communications you can specify the destination ports, destination IP
address, and the protocol used for the communication.
For transit communications going through the server, you can specify the destination
ports and source / destination IP addresses.

5. To specify the port number, type it into the Add port input box, and click Add.
To remove a port number from an existing rule, select it from the list and
click Remove. If the list of ports is empty, this rule will be applied to all TCP
and UDP ports.
6. To specify the IP address or network address, type it into the Add IP address or
network input box, and click Add. To remove an IP address or network from
the list, select it in the list and click Remove. If the list of IP addresses is
empty, this rule will be valid for all IP addresses.
7. Specify the action that will be applied to the communications that match the
defined criteria: allow or deny.
8. Click OK to submit the rule.
9. After you have defined the required rules, click Activate to apply them to your
system. A confirmation screen will open, in which you can preview the shell
script generated to apply your rules (this might be of interest only to
advanced users). Click Activate to apply the new configuration.
When the new configuration is being applied, the extension will check for connection with the
Parallels Plesk Panel. If there are some connection problems, the Firewall extension will
automatically revert to the previous active configuration in 60 seconds. Thus, if you
misconfigure your firewall in such a way that access to your Parallels Plesk Panel is
prohibited even for you, this wrong configuration will be automatically discarded and you will
be able to access your server in any case.

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227

Note: Unless your configuration is activated, you have a chance to discard all the rules you
configured. To do this, click the Revert to Active Configuration button.
Under FreeBSD, all currently established TCP connections will drop when the new
configuration is activated!

 To edit a custom rule:
1. Go to Extensions > Firewall > Edit Firewall Configuration.
2. Click the rule name in the list of existing rules. Make necessary changes (the
options are the same as when creating a new rule).

 To remove a custom rule:
1. Go to Extensions > Firewall > Edit Firewall Configuration.
2. Select the checkbox corresponding to the rule you want to remove and click
Remove Selected.

 To change the order in which your custom rules are applied:
1. Go to Extensions > Firewall > Edit Firewall Configuration.
2. Click the icons Up or Down in the Order column. This will move the rule
relatively to other rules covering the same direction (incoming
communications, outgoing communications, or data forwarding).

 To enable passive mode for FTP connections on your server:
1. Log in as "root" to the server shell over SSH.
2. Edit your ProFTPD configuration file.
a. Issue the command vi /etc/proftpd.conf.
b. Add the following line anywhere within the section:
PassivePorts 49152 65534

c. Save the file.
3. Log in to Parallels Plesk Panel as "admin", go to Extensions > Firewall, and click
Edit Firewall Configuration.
4. Click Add Custom Rule.
5. Specify the following:
a. Rule name.
b. Direction: select Incoming.
c. Action: select Allow.
d. Ports: in the Add port input box, enter the value 49152-65534. Leave
the TCP option selected, and click Add.

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6. Click OK.
7. Click Activate, and then click Activate again.

Panel Administration

Predefined Firewall Rules Specifications
The following table lists the system services to which you can restrict access using the
Firewall's predefined rules.
Service name

Ports used by service

Parallels Plesk Panel administrative interface TCP 8443
Samba (file sharing on Windows networks)

UDP 137, UDP 138, TCP 139, TCP
445

Parallels Plesk Panel VPN service

UDP 1194

WWW server

TCP 80, TCP 443

FTP server

TCP 21

SSH (secure shell) server

TCP 22

SMTP (mail sending) server

TCP 25, TCP 465

POP3 (mail retrieval) server

TCP 110, TCP 995

IMAP (mail retrieval) server

TCP 143, TCP 993

Mail password change service

TCP 106

MySQL server

TCP 3306

PostgreSQL server

TCP 5432

Tomcat administrative interface

TCP 9008, TCP 9080

Domain name server

UDP 53, TCP 53

ICMP requests

229

230

Panel Administration

Watchdog (System Monitoring) Extension
The Watchdog extension is a solution that ensures that your server is clean from malware, all
services are up and running and there is enough free disk space on the server.
Watchdog can monitor the following services:


Web server providing the control panel interface



Web server providing WWW service to users’ sites



SMTP Server (QMail)



IMAP/POP3 Server (Courier-IMAP)



DNS Server (BIND)



Tomcat



ColdFusion



MySQL




PostgreSQL
SpamAssassin



Parallels Premium antivirus

It can start, stop, and restart the services it monitors, and it can be configured to take actions
depending on the stability of a service over some time period.
It can run other utilities and notify you when disk space usage has reached the specified
amount.
For the purpose of monitoring services and disk space usage, Watchdog uses the monit
utility. For information on the monit utility, visit the monit developers' website at
http://www.tildeslash.com/monit/.
The Watchdog can scan the server file system for rootkits, backdoors, exploits, trojan horses
and other malicious software on demand or on schedule. It can notify you by e-mail of
scanning results and show reports through the control panel. It updates its security
knowledge base through the Internet before each scan.
For the purpose of scanning the server for malware, Watchdog uses the Rootkit Hunter
utility. For information on Rootkit Hunter, visit the Rootkit Hunter developer's Web site at
http://www.rootkit.nl.

Next in this section:
Setting Up and Starting Watchdog Services ...................................................... 231
Viewing Status of System Services ................................................................... 238
Viewing Status of Hard Disk Drives and Connected Storage Devices ............... 239
Viewing CPU and RAM Usage Statistics ........................................................... 240
Viewing Server Scanning Reports ..................................................................... 241
Troubleshooting................................................................................................. 242

Panel Administration

231

Setting Up and Starting Watchdog Services
After you install the Watchdog extension, you should configure the settings common for all
Watchdog services, and then switch on each specific type of service you need.

 To configure Watchdog settings common for all services:
1. Click the Extensions shortcut in the navigation pane > Watchdog. A list of
Parallels Plesk Panel services will be displayed.
2. Click the Preferences icon in the Tools group.
3. Specify the following settings:


Interface language. Select the language in which Watchdog should show and send email notices and alerts. By default, the language set for your Parallels Plesk Panel
administrator's account is selected.



Automatically refresh pages. Leave this option selected, if you wish to have the
information presented on the screens automatically updated on each poll.



Monitor all services started by administrator. Leave this option selected if you wish the
extension to monitor all the Parallels Plesk Panel services that you start. If you install
a new system service later on, the extension will automatically start looking after it.
Clear this checkbox, if you are going to shut down some of the Parallels Plesk Panel
services and you do not want the extension to bring them up automatically or bother
you with any alert messages.



Polling interval. Specify the interval between service status queries in seconds.



Store resource usage statistics. Leave this option selected if you wish the system to keep
reports on CPU and RAM usage for the amount of time you specify.



Repeat security scanning. Specify how often Watchdog should scan the server for
malicious code.



Send reports. Specify how often Watchdog should send you consolidated reports on
CPU and RAM load, monitored services, disk space partitions and security scanning
results.



Send e-mail to. Specify the e-mail address where Watchdog should deliver alerts and
reports. By default, the Parallels Plesk Panel administrator’s e-mail address is used.



Send e-mail from. E-mail address on behalf of which the reports and alerts should be
sent. By default, this e-mail address is watchdog@your-host-name.



SMTP server for sending alerts. Specify local or remote SMTP servers that should be
used for sending alert messages. You can specify several host names or IP
addresses separated by commas. Leave the localhost entry to use your server's SMTP
service. If your Parallels Plesk Panel server is not running SMTP service, be sure to
specify another remote mail server, otherwise, Watchdog will not be able to send you
alerts.

4. Click Apply to submit the settings.

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You have specified the general settings, and now you can further customize and run the
Watchdog services you need: Monitoring of system services and monitoring of disk space
usage require fine tuning before you can start them, however, regular security scanning
requires no additional setup and therefore will start immediately after you have specified the
general settings. By default, security scanning is started at 2 a.m. local time at the beginning
of the specified time period.

Next in this section:
Setting Up and Starting Monitoring of System Services ..................................... 233
Setting Up and Starting Monitoring of Disk Space Usage .................................. 235
Setting Up and Starting Security Scanning ........................................................ 237

Panel Administration

233

Setting Up and Starting Monitoring of System Services
 To specify what services should be monitored and to start monitoring:
1. Go to Extensions > Watchdog.
All services controlled by Parallels Plesk Panel will be listed on the Services tab.
An icon in the S (status) column shows whether a service is currently monitored by
Watchdog and it indicates the status of a service returned by the last poll:
- the service is not currently monitored.
- you started monitoring but the service has not yet been polled for its status.
- the service is monitored and Watchdog reports that the service is running.
- the service is monitored and Watchdog reports that the service is down.
- the service is no longer monitored by Watchdog because this service was unstable.
An icon in the M (Monitoring) column shows whether you set Watchdog to monitor the
service and it also indicates whether the service was installed on the server and properly
configured:
- the service is not installed or is not configured.
- you did not set Watchdog to monitor the service.
- you set Watchdog to monitor the service.

2. Specify the services that should be monitored and specify monitoring
preferences:
a. Click a service name.
b. Select the Monitor the service checkbox to set the Watchdog to monitor
the service.
c. Select the Save service statistics checkbox if you wish Watchdog to
keep the information on CPU and RAM resources used by the
service, and present it in graphical reports (Extensions > Watchdog >
Statistics).
d. Select the Stop monitoring the service if it frequently restarts option, if you
wish Watchdog to stop monitoring the service if it fails the specified
number of times, and specify the failure ratio. Otherwise the
Watchdog will bother you with alert messages each time it attempts
to restart a non-responsive service. The default value of five failed
attempts should be enough.
e. Specify the time during which Watchdog will be waiting for response
from the polled service in the Connection timeout box. Watchdog polls
the service and then is waiting for response during the specified
amount of time. If Watchdog receives no response, it restarts the
service. If you host a great number of sites and e-mail accounts on
your machine, you are recommended to set the Connection timeout for
Qmail mail server to 120 seconds, and Apache Web server to 15
seconds, otherwise Watchdog will consider the busy services to be
malfunctioning and will restart them.

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f. Review the commands that Watchdog uses to start and stop the
service. It is recommended that you leave the prefilled values
unchanged. You can write custom scripts that, for example, will clean
up log files or send an SMS to your cell phone before actually
starting the service, and specify the commands to run your scripts in
the To start the service, run the command field.
g. If you are using the default commands for running the services, leave
the predefined value of 60 seconds in the Service startup time box. If
you are running custom scripts, and they take more than 60 seconds
to execute, specify the required time in the Service startup time box.
When a script is executed but does not complete its work within the
specified time frame, Watchdog terminates execution of that script.
h. Click OK to submit the settings.
i. Repeat this procedure to configure monitoring for all services you
need. If you are satisfied with the default monitoring settings we
have predefined for each service, you can set Watchdog to monitor
the required services by simply clicking the respective
icons in the
list of services.
3. Once you have specified all services you would like Watchdog to monitor,
click the Enable icon in the Tools group.
Now the services will be monitored in accordance with the settings you specified. If you
decided to use the default settings, the following actions will be taken:


All services will be automatically restarted in case of failure.



Watchdog will stop monitoring all services failing 5 times out of 5 polls.



Alert messages will be sent to the e-mail address specified in the Parallels Plesk
Panel administrator’s account on any event.

 To stop monitoring a specific service:
1. Go to Extensions > Watchdog.
2. Click a
icon corresponding to the service you would like Watchdog to stop
monitoring.

 To stop monitoring all services:
1. Go to Extensions > Watchdog.
2. Click the Disable icon in the Tools group.
Important: Performing this action affects the whole monitoring service, meaning that not only
all system services, but all disk partitions (see page 235) will stop being monitored.

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Setting Up and Starting Monitoring of Disk Space Usage
 To configure and start monitoring disk space usage:
1. Go to Extensions > Watchdog > the Disks tab.
All connected (mounted) devices will be listed.
An icon in the S (status) column shows whether a hard disk partition or storage device is
currently monitored by Watchdog and it indicates the current disk space usage rate:


- the disk drive or partition is not currently monitored.



- you started monitoring but the disk or partition has not yet been checked.



- the disk drive or partition is monitored and Watchdog reports that disk space
usage has not reached the threshold you defined.

- the disk drive or partition is monitored and Watchdog reports that disk space
usage has reached the threshold you defined and soon there will be no free space left
on that disk or partition.
An icon in the M (monitoring) column shows whether you set Watchdog to monitor disk
space usage on a storage device or disk partition:



- you did not set Watchdog to monitor the disk space or partition.


- you set Watchdog to monitor the disk space or partition.
The Device and Mount point columns show information on storage device and the partition
mount point. The Mount point column shows hyphen (-) if a partition is no longer
connected to the file system: when the partition is reconnected to the system, Watchdog
will resume monitoring it.
The Disk space usage rate column shows the amount of disk space that can be used
without drawing your attention. You can specify the amount of disk space either in
percentage from total amount or in measurement units: gigabytes, megabytes or
kilobytes. When the specified amount is reached, Watchdog will notify you and run the
command you defined. A hyphen (-) in this column shows that the partition or device is
not monitored.
The Files number rate column shows the amount of files or directories that can be stored on
the file system without drawing your attention. The number of files or directories is limited
not only by disk space, but also by the file system capacity. You can specify either the
exact number of files and directories (if you know it) or a percent from the total amount.
Watchdog will notify you when the specified amount is reached. A hyphen (-) in this
column shows that the partition or device is not monitored.
The Command column shows the command that Watchdog will run when the disk space
threshold is reached.

2. Specify the hard drive partitions that should be monitored and specify
monitoring preferences:
a. Click a partition or device name.
b. Specify the amount of disk space that can be used without drawing
your attention. When this threshold is reached, Watchdog will send
you an alert and run the command you specified. We would
recommend leaving the 80 % value selected.

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c. Specify the number of files and directories that can be created on the
server without drawing your attention. When this threshold is
reached, Watchdog will send you an alert. We would recommend
leaving the 80 % value selected. You can specify the exact number
of files, if you know the total capacity of your file system: to find it
out, log in as root to the server and run the command dumpe2fs
from shell.
d. Specify the command that Watchdog will run when the specified disk
space threshold is reached. This can be a command to run a disk
space cleaning utility like a tmpwatch on RedHat Linux systems.
e. Click OK.
f. Repeat the procedure to configure monitoring for all the partitions
you need.
3. Once you have specified all partitions you would like Watchdog to monitor,
click the Enable icon in the Tools group.

 To stop monitoring a specific partition:
1. Go to Extensions > Watchdog > the Disks tab.
2. Click an icon
corresponding to the partition you would like Watchdog to
stop monitoring.

 To stop monitoring all partitions:
1. Go to Extensions > Watchdog > the Disks tab.
2. Click the Disable icon in the Tools group.
Important: Performing this action affects the whole monitoring service, meaning that not only
all disk partitions, but all system services (see page 233) will stop being monitored.

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Setting Up and Starting Security Scanning
 To set up and start regular security scanning:
1. Go to Extensions > Watchdog > the Preferences tab.
2. Specify how often Watchdog should scan the server for malicious code in the
Repeat security scanning menu.
3. Click Apply.
Security scanning will start immediately and will repeat in accordance with the settings
you defined. By default, security scanning is started at 2 a.m. local time.

 To run on demand scanning:
1. Go to Extensions > Watchdog > the Security tab.
2. Click the Start icon in the Tools group.
Watchdog will update its knowledge base and start scanning. Upon completion, a
detailed report will be presented on the screen.

 To switch off regular security scanning:
1. Go to Extensions > Watchdog > the Preferences tab.
2. Select the disabled value from the Repeat security scanning menu.
3. Click Apply.

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Viewing Status of System Services
 To view the status of Parallels Plesk Panel-managed services:


Click Tools & Utilities > Services Management. A list of Parallels Plesk Panel services will
show. From that screen you can manage services and view their status.
Or



Click Extensions > Watchdog. A list of Parallels Plesk Panel services will show. From that
screen you can view service statuses and manage monitoring preferences.
The following information is displayed:
An icon in the S (status) column shows whether a service is currently monitored by
Watchdog and it indicates the status of a service returned by the last poll:
- the service is not currently monitored.
- you started monitoring but the service has not yet been polled for its status.
- the service is monitored and Watchdog reports that the service is running.
- the service is monitored and Watchdog reports that the service is down.
- the service is no longer monitored by Watchdog because this service was unstable.
An icon in the M (Monitoring) column shows whether you set Watchdog to monitor the
service and it also indicates whether the service was installed on the server and properly
configured:
- the service is not installed or is not configured.
- you did not set Watchdog to monitor the service.
- you set Watchdog to monitor the service.

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Viewing Status of Hard Disk Drives and Connected Storage Devices
 To view the status of hard disk drives and other connected storage devices:
1. Go to Extensions > Watchdog > the Disks tab.
2. View all connected (mounted) devices listed.
Note: Watchdog might not detect properly some mounted devices.
An icon in the S (status) column shows whether a hard disk partition or storage device is
currently monitored by Watchdog and it indicates the current disk space usage rate:


- the disk drive or partition is not currently monitored.



- you started monitoring but the disk or partition has not yet been checked.



- the disk drive or partition is monitored and Watchdog reports that disk space
usage has not reached the threshold you defined.



- you did not set Watchdog to monitor the disk space or partition.



- you set Watchdog to monitor the disk space or partition.

The Device and Mount point columns show information on storage device and the partition
mount point. The Mount point column shows hyphen (-) if a partition is no longer
connected to the file system: when the partition is reconnected to the system, Watchdog
will resume monitoring it.
The Disk space usage rate column shows the amount of disk space that can be used
without drawing your attention. You can specify the amount of disk space either in
percentage from total amount or in measurement units: gigabytes, megabytes or
kilobytes. When the specified amount is reached, Watchdog will notify you and run the
command you defined. A hyphen (-) in this column shows that the partition or device is
not monitored.
The Files number rate column shows the amount of files or directories that can be stored on
the file system without drawing your attention. The number of files or directories is limited
not only by disk space, but also by the file system capacity. You can specify either the
exact number of files and directories (if you know it) or a percent from the total amount.
Watchdog will notify you when the specified amount is reached. A hyphen (-) in this
column shows that the partition or device is not monitored.
The Command column shows the command that Watchdog will run when the disk space
threshold is reached.

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Viewing CPU and RAM Usage Statistics
 To view the statistics on CPU and RAM usage by system services:
1. Go to Extensions > Watchdog > the Statistics tab.
2. In the Statistics presentation preferences group, select the period and system
services for which you would like to view statistics.
3. Click Apply.
CPU and RAM usage diagrams will be presented on the screen. The CPU Usage
diagram will show the total load for all CPUs your server may have.

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Viewing Server Scanning Reports
 To view the report for the last system scan:
1. Go to Extensions > Watchdog > the Security tab.
2. View the detailed report will be presented on the screen. If you wish to run a
new scan, click the Start icon in the Tools group.

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Troubleshooting
Issue: When I stop a Parallels Plesk Panel service, it starts automatically, and the extension
does not seem to work properly.
Resolution: Make sure you did not remove the Parallels Plesk Panel event handlers that are
required for the proper work of the extension:
Service started lowest (0) psaadm /usr/local/psa/admin/bin/php
/usr/local/psa/admin/bin/modules/watchdog/wd --monit-service=
--plesk-name
Service stopped lowest (0) psaadm /usr/local/psa/admin/bin/php
/usr/local/psa/admin/bin/modules/watchdog/wd --unmonitservice=
--plesk-name

Note: If you use Debian Linux or Ubuntu Linux, the path to Watchdog's system files is
/opt/psa/admin/modules/watchdog/.
Issue: No alerts are delivered.
Resolution: Please check if the outgoing SMTP server settings you specified are correct.

VPN Extension
Virtual Private Networking technologies allow communications between geographically
distributed LAN segments over public networks. VPN message traffic passes through public
networking infrastructures, such as the Internet, via secure tunnel protocols.
One of the most useful implementations of VPN is allowing access to a local network for a
single remote host. For example, if a user needs to get access to a remote network from his
home computer, they must establish a VPN connection.
The Parallels Plesk Panel VPN extension extends Parallels Plesk Panel with the ability to
support peer-to-peer communication between two Parallels Plesk Panel hosts or between
your Parallels Plesk Panel host and any other computer. At present, the Parallels Plesk
Panel VPN extension supports connection to the server only from a single remote host and
does not support connections from multiple hosts. The extension is based on the OpenVPN
solution which uses OpenSSL for encryption and the virtual TUN/TAP driver for tunneling.

Next in this section:
Software Requirements ..................................................................................... 243
Accessing the VPN Extension ........................................................................... 243
Setting up VPN Preferences .............................................................................. 244
Managing Keys ................................................................................................. 245
Using Client Packages ...................................................................................... 246
Starting and Stopping a VPN Connection .......................................................... 247

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243

Software Requirements
You should have one of the following operating systems to use the OpenVPN solution: Linux,
Windows 2000/XP and higher, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Mac OS X, or Solaris.

Accessing the VPN Extension
 To access the Parallels Plesk Panel VPN extension:
Click the Extensions shortcut in the navigation pane > Virtual Private Networking.
If you access the extension for the first time, the first page that opens is the VPN Preferences
page (on page 244). You cannot get access to other VPN extension options unless you
specify the preferences for your VPN connection.

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Setting up VPN Preferences
 To set up a VPN connection:
1. Go to Extensions > Virtual Private Networking.
2. On the Preferences page that opens, specify the following parameters:


Remote Address, enter the host name or the IP address of the host you want to
communicate to. Leave this field blank if you wish the other party to be able to
connect to your server from different addresses or if the remote IP address is not
known in advance. Note, however, that one server cannot be involved in simultaneous
communication with two or more remote hosts.



Remote UDP port, specify the port on the remote host to which UDP packets from this
server will be sent. The default port is 1194. Note that though VPN uses only UDP for
the encrypted traffic flow, all IP protocols, including TCP, are supported over the
virtual private network. You can leave this field blank if you have not specified the
remote address above.



Local UDP port, your server will listen for incoming VPN traffic on this local UDP port.
The default port is 1194. You can leave this field blank if you do not want to allocate a
specific port, but in that case you must specify the remote address and port fields
above to allow the local host to be the initiating party.



Local peer address and Remote peer address, two hosts connected by a VPN channel
need to have a pair of virtual network interfaces to route the traffic through. You need
to assign two IP addresses to them, one for each side of the VPN circuit. These IP
addresses should be chosen from some private address spaces and it is important
that they should not overlap with any of the IP addresses present within the local
networks on either side of the tunnel. These two addresses must differ only in the two
least significant bits. You can pick .1 and .2 for the last octets, for example. Note that
the default values are only an illustration! Always check the real configuration of your
network so that you do not run into IP collision problems.

3. Click OK.
Note: The Parallels Plesk Panel VPN extension is initially disabled. To use the VPN
functionality, enable the extension by clicking the Enable button.

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Managing Keys
To establish a VPN connection between your Parallels Plesk Panel server and a remote
host, both sides must have the same cryptographic key. This key is required for
authentication and encryption of your traffic, ensuring that your communications cannot be
eavesdropped or interfered by a third party. Do not forget to share the same key between
both communicating parties each time you generate or upload a new key.
A cryptographic key is generated automatically and saved to a special directory during
extension installation. However, you might want to replace the initial key with the new one.

 To generate a new VPN key:
1. Go to Extensions > Virtual Private Networking.
2. Click Generate Key. The new key will automatically replace the existing key.
Note: After the new key is generated, your old key will become invalid. In order to continue
communication, you must share the new key with the other communicating party.

 To save the generated key to your local machine:
1. Go to Extensions > Virtual Private Networking > Download Key.
2. Save the key to a specified location on your disk.
You can then transmit this key file to another host on removable media or through another
secure way.

 To upload a cryptographic key that you received from another machine:
1. Go to Extensions > Virtual Private Networking > Upload Key.
2. Specify the location of the key file and click OK.
This way of key management is especially useful if you are establishing a VPN connection
between two Parallels Plesk Panel-enabled servers. If the remote host does not have
Parallels Plesk Panel, it is more convenient to use client packages (on page 246).

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Using Client Packages
To simplify the task of connecting a non-Plesk host to your Parallels Plesk Panel server,
Parallels Plesk Panel supplies preconfigured client packages containing configuration files
and the cryptographic key for the other party. The contents of the archives are specifically
tailored to the preferences you have specified earlier.


If your user is running Windows, click For a Windows Client to download and save the client
package on your local machine.
The client package is a ZIP archive that contains the following files:


Install TAP device.bat - installs the TAP driver on your computer.



Uninstall TAP device.bat - removes the TAP driver from your computer.



Connect to VPN.bat - establishes a VPN connection.

 System folder - contains the cryptographic key and your VPN preferences.
To install and uninstall the TAP drivers, you must have Windows administrator rights on
your computer.
To install the TAP driver, run the install TAP device.bat file. After the driver is
installed, you can establish a VPN connection to the Parallels Plesk Panel-enabled server
by running the connect to VPN.bat file. The OpenVPN software itself is contained
within the client package and does not require any installation or removal procedures.


If your user is running Unix, click For a Unix client to download and save the client package
on your local machine.
The package contains the openvpn.conf file with your current VPN preferences and the
vpn-key file that is a cryptographic key for your VPN connection. If you are using this
package, OpenVPN (version 2.0) must be already installed on the client machine. For
smooth operation, we advise that you use OpenVPN 2.0 beta 11 as the extension was
tested on this beta version.

If the preferences on the Parallels Plesk Panel server change or a new key is generated or
uploaded to the Parallels Plesk Panel server, the client packages must be downloaded again
because they include your current key and existing VPN preferences.

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Starting and Stopping a VPN Connection
 To enable a VPN connection from Parallels Plesk Panel:
1. Go to Extensions > Virtual Private Networking.
2. Click Enable.

 To disable a VPN connection from Parallels Plesk Panel:
1. Go to Extensions > Virtual Private Networking.
2. Click Disable.
If you want to disable a VPN connection on a Windows client, close the Connect to VPN dialog
box that appeared when you established your connection. When the Windows user logs out,
the VPN connection shuts down as well.

CHAPTER 10

Panel Updates and Upgrades
Panel is constantly evolving in terms of functionality, and new security enhancements
are introduced with each update. To ensure that your Panel software is up-to-date, we
recommend that you switch on automatic updates.
There is also the option to upgrade Panel to the latest versions. While updates include
some minor fixes for Panel, upgrades introduce more complex changes in product
functionality.
The information about the current Panel version and available updates and upgrades is
always displayed in the System Overview group of the Home page.

Panel Versioning
The full Panel version identifier consists of a number of fields. For example, the
identifier Panel 10.3.0 Update #12 General release appears as follows.
Version number
Major

Major

Minor

Update

Release tier

General
release

Information about how updates (on page 249) and upgrades (on page 251) affect these
fields is provided next in this section.
Note: By default, Panel updates and upgrades are downloaded from the official update
server. Learn how to install updates and upgrades from other locations in the section
Changing the Updates/Upgrades Source (on page 253).

In this chapter:
Panel Updates................................................................................................... 249
Panel Upgrades ................................................................................................ 251
Changing the Updates/Upgrades Source .......................................................... 253
Reporting Upgrade Problems ............................................................................ 254

Panel Updates and Upgrades

249

Panel Updates
Updates are fixes that enhance Panel security and stability. There are four types of
update:


Security updates.
These updates address security vulnerabilities. Such vulnerabilities may be
exploited by hackers attempting to get access to your server. We strongly
recommend that you apply security updates as soon as possible. Panel always
warns you about missed security updates on the Home page.
Note: Some security updates that Parallels considers to be mandatory are applied
automatically, regardless of your update policy.



Important updates.
These are updates that significantly improve Panel reliability. We strongly
recommend that you apply such updates once they become available.



Recommended updates.
Recommended updates improve the overall stability or introduce enhancements
developed after the Panel release.



Optional updates.
These are minor fixes and enhancements that do not have any serious impact on
your work in Panel and do not require immediate installation.

Updates are distinguished by types only for your convenience; the update type just
indicates the urgency of applying an update. For example, a security update should be
applied as soon as possible, while an optional update can be installed at any
convenient time.

Applying Panel Updates
Updates can be applied only to a current Panel version. Thus, Panel does not change
its version after an update; information about the applied update is just added to the
product version name, for example, Panel 10.3.0 Update #12. Updates are free of
charge and are available for all Panel installations, regardless of their license key.
You can update Panel in two ways:


Manually from the System Overview group of the Home page. This page contains
information about the latest available update, including its type and a link for
applying the update.



Automatically (recommended). If you activate automatic updates at Tools & Settings >
Update and Upgrade Settings, Panel will check for updates once a week. If updates are
available, Panel automatically downloads and installs them.

Note: Panel updates are applied sequentially. Therefore, you cannot install only a
specific update or skip one of the updates.

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Updating Third-party Panel Components
Panel is shipped with a number of third party components such as MySQL, Postfix, and
so on. As well as Panel itself, these components require updating with time. You can
automate this process by turning on automatic updates for third-party components. In
this case, the components will be updated together with Panel (Updates for shipped
components are included into Panel updates).
Warning: Use such automatic updates with care. Websites hosted on your server may
be incompatible with newer versions of certain components. This is why automatic
updates of third-party components are turned off by default.

 To turn on/off automatic updates for third-party components:
1. Select or deselect the option Automatically install updates for third-party
components (such as MySQL, PHPMyAdmin, and others) on the Tools & Settings >
Update and Upgrade Settings page.

Panel Updates and Upgrades

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Panel Upgrades
Upgrades always bring a significant number of Panel enhancements or even introduce
new Panel features and behavior. After an upgrade, Panel increases its major or minor
version:


Typically, if an upgrade only improves the existing functionality, then Panel
increments its minor version number (e.g. from 10.3.0 to 10.3.1).



If an upgrade includes more complex changes in Panel, then the major version
number is incremented (e.g. from 10.3.1 to 10.4.0).

Panel Upgrades and Release Tiers
During its lifecycle, each major Panel version passes through a number of development
stages (see the diagram below). It is natural that in earlier stages, some newly
implemented features may not be in their final state and may require some further
modification. The functionality of such features in subsequent Panel versions is
improved as they receive more customer feedback over time. To indicate the stage of
the current Panel version, we assign one of the following release tiers to it: Testing
release, Early Adopter release, General release, and Late Adopter release.
Notes:
1. By default, testing builds are not shown as available for installation. You can install
the testing Panel version only by running Parallels Installer with one of the special
options. Learn more in the Installation, Upgrade, Migration, and Transfer Guide, in the
chapter Installing Panel.
2. Upgrade to the next testing release is available only to the owners of a testing build.
Subsequent Panel builds do not have the corresponding option in the GUI.
The decision on what tier to use is absolutely up to you. For example, consider
upgrading to the early adopter release if you want to try new features before Panel
becomes generally available. On the other hand, if you want to get the solution that has
received all major updates and is being successfully used by a number of service
providers, wait until Panel gets the late adopter release status (which may be a couple
of months after the general release).
Once you have decided what version you need, set up Panel to notify you when
upgrades to the chosen version become available. After you select the version type in
Tools & Settings > Update and Upgrade Settings, Panel will check for upgrades once a day.
When an upgrade with the selected release tier becomes available, Panel will notify
you on the Home > System Overview. Note that Panel always notifies you when a version
with a "higher" release tier becomes available. For example, if you set Panel to notify
you about early adopter releases, you will still receive all upgrade notifications about
general and late adopter releases. However, if you decide to use only late adopter
releases, notifications for all early adopter and general release upgrades will be
skipped.
The diagram below shows the rough Panel lifecycle (the version numbers are given
only as examples and have no correlation with the real ones).

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Panel Updates and Upgrades

Applying Panel Upgrades
As upgrades imply multiple changes in the product and may require significant
downtime, Panel does not apply them automatically. Instead, it displays upgrade
notifications on the Home page. Once you receive such a notification, you can initiate
the upgrade either from Home > System Overview or Tools & Settings > Updates and
Upgrades at any time that suits you.
The scenario described above is called in-place upgrade as Panel components are
updated within one server. However, there is another way to upgrade Panel - upgrade
by transfer. This way implies transferring Panel data to another server with a later
version of Panel. Upgrade by transfer is suitable, for example, when you want not only
to upgrade Panel but also to move it to a more productive server or another operating
system. To learn more about differences between upgrade ways and get detailed
instructions on upgrading Panel, read the Installation, Upgrade, Migration, and Transfer
Guide.

Panel Upgrades and License Keys
Note that some Panel licenses do not grant permission to perform complex upgrades
(upgrades that change the major version number: e.g. from 10.3.1 to 10.4.0). If you
attempt to perform such an upgrade, Panel will warn you about license limitations.
Nevertheless, you will still be able to perform the upgrade. When it is finished, you will
need to obtain and install the license key for the new Panel version. For more
information about installing a license key after an upgrade, refer to the section
Upgrading Your License Key (on page 142).

Notes on the In-Place Upgrading Procedure


After upgrading to a new Panel version, you will receive a report on the upgrade
procedure. The notification message will include the event log and a list of installed
packages if the upgrade has been successful. However, you may not receive any
error notice if your mail server fails. In this case you can check for errors in the
autoinstaller3.log file located in the /tmp directory on the server hard drive.



All Panel operations are suspended during installation of the so-called base
packages that affect the Panel’s core functionality.



Starting from 10.3, Panel provides the ability to install alternative component
versions (PHP 5.3, MySQL 5.5, etc.) directly from the Updates and Upgrades page.

Panel Updates and Upgrades

253

Changing the Updates/Upgrades Source
By default, updates and upgrades for Parallels Plesk Panel and your operating system
are downloaded from the official updates server at http://autoinstall.plesk.com.

 If you want to receive Parallels Plesk Panel updates from another location
on the network:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Updates. Updater will open in a new browser
window or tab.
2. If Updater starts downloading updates and you would only like to
change settings at the moment, click Cancel.
3. Click Updates source and installation settings, and specify the source of
update packages:


By default, the Official Parallels Updates server is selected. Specify the location
where the installation files will be stored. By default, the installation files are
stored in the /root/parallels directory.



If you select Mirror server, specify the .inf3 file location in the URL to the directory
with .inf3 file field. Specify the location where the installation files will be stored.
By default, the installation files are stored in the /root/parallels directory.



If you select Local media, specify the .inf3 file location in the Absolute path to the
.inf3 file field.

4. If you use a proxy server, select the Connect using a proxy checkbox and
specify the following settings:


Specify proxy host name and port number in the Proxy address and port fields.



If this proxy server requires authentication, select the Require authentication
checkbox and specify username and password.

5. Click Save to save the settings.

254

Panel Updates and Upgrades

Reporting Upgrade Problems
During Panel installation or in-place upgrade, Parallels Installer captures all the
problems it encounters and sends them to Parallels. These reports do not contain any
personal or sensitive information. Our technical experts analyze and resolve these
problems making future installations and upgrades more reliable.
It is up to you whether to let Parallels Installer submit problem reports to Parallels. The
Installer asks your decision during the first installation or in-place upgrade and
remembers it for the Panel lifetime. If you decide to stop sending the reports to
Parallels, run the Installer with the following option:
--disable-feedback

To start submitting the reports, use:
--enable-feedback

CHAPTER 11

Statistics and Monitoring
In this chapter:
Action Logs ....................................................................................................... 256
Viewing Statistics .............................................................................................. 259
Server Health Monitor ....................................................................................... 266
Monitoring Connections to Panel ....................................................................... 269

256

Statistics and Monitoring

Action Logs
You may wish to keep track of actions performed by various users in the system. All actions
will be recorded in a log file that you will be able to download for viewing. The following
system events (actions) can be logged:


Administrator information changed



System service restarted, started, or stopped



IP address added, removed, changed



Customer account created, deleted, personal or system information changed



The status of customer account changed (suspended/activated)



Customer's interface preferences changed



Customer's IP pool changed



Web applications were added to or removed from a customer's pool



The limit on disk space is reached for a customer account




The limit on traffic usage is reached for a customer account
The limit on disk space is reached for a website



The limit on traffic usage is reached for a website



Website created, deleted, settings changed



Website owner changed



Website status changed (suspended/activated)



DNS zone updated for a website



Subdomain created, deleted, settings changed



Domain alias created, deleted, settings changed



DNS zone of the domain alias changed



Resource allotments were changed for a customer account



Customer's permissions for operations were changed



Resource allotments were changed for a website



Users logged in and out of the Panel



Mail accounts created, deleted, changed



Mailing lists created, deleted, settings changed



Website hosting set up, deleted, changed



Web forwarding hosting accounts were created, deleted, reconfigured



Web application installed, reconfigured, uninstalled



Web application package installed, uninstalled, updated



License key expired or updated



Database server created, deleted, updated



Database created or deleted

Statistics and Monitoring



Database user account created, deleted, updated



Customer's GUID updated



Domain's GUID updated



Parallels Plesk Panel component was updated or added

257

Next in this section:
Setting Up Action Logging................................................................................. 257
Downloading the Action Log ............................................................................. 257
Clearing the Action Log ..................................................................................... 258

Setting Up Action Logging
 To set up action logging:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Action Log (in the Logs & Notifications group).
2. In the Logged actions group, select the actions to be logged using the
checkboxes.
3. In the Store records in the database field, specify the action log cleaning options:
on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, or in accordance with the specified
number of records stored in the database.
4. To retain all action log records, select the Do not remove records option.
5. To apply all the changes made, click OK.

Downloading the Action Log
 To download the action log to your machine:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Action Log (in the Logs & Notifications group).
2. In the Log files section, select the time period using the drop-down boxes, and
click Download.
The dialog window will open, prompting you to select the location for the downloaded log
file to be saved to.

3. Select the location, and click Save.

258

Statistics and Monitoring

Clearing the Action Log
 To clear the action log:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Action Log (in the Logs & Notifications group).
2. In the Log files section, click Clear Log.

Statistics and Monitoring

259

Viewing Statistics
 To view the information on usage of server resources:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Server Information.
The following information will be presented:


Processor information.



Parallels Plesk Panel version and build number.



Operating system and its kernel version.



Parallels Plesk Panel license key number.



Server uptime.



Processor load averages for the last 1 minute, 5 minutes and 15 minutes.



The amount of RAM installed and used.



The amount of swap space used.



Hard disk usage by partitions and directories.



The connected (mounted) storage and network storage devices.



The number of hosted domains: active shows the domains that are online; problem
shows the domains that have exceeded the disk space and bandwidth allotments but
still online; passive shows the domains that are offline because they were suspended
by you or your resellers.

2. Click Refresh to update the server statistics with the latest data.

 To view a report on resource usage by your resellers, customers, and websites:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Summary Report.
2. To view a summary on bandwidth usage by months, click View Traffic History.
Operations on reports:


To get more details, select the Full Report option from the drop-down menu.



To adjust the amount of information presented in a report, edit an existing report
template or create a new one. To edit a template, click Properties, and then modify the
report template.
To create a new template, go to Report Layouts > Create Report Layout, and 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 checkbox and click OK.
To delete a custom report layout, select the checkbox corresponding to the report
layout name and click Remove.



To print the report, click Print. A report will open in a separate browser window. Select
the File > Print option from the browser's menu to print the report.

260

Statistics and Monitoring



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 Send by E-Mail. 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
Panel account.



To have the reports automatically generated and delivered by e-mail on a daily,
weekly, or monthly basis, click Delivery Schedule and follow the instructions supplied in
the section Automating Report Generation and Delivery by E-mail (on page 260).

 To view a report on traffic usage by users and sites:
1. Click Tools & Settings.
2. Do any of the following:


To view reports on the amount of traffic used by resellers, click Traffic Usage By
Resellers (in the Resources group).



To view reports on the amount of traffic used by all resellers and customers, click
Traffic Usage By Users (in the Resources group).



To view reports on the amount of traffic used by domains (websites), click Traffic Usage
By Domains (in the Resources group).

Next in this section:
Automating Report Generation and Delivery by E-mail ...................................... 260
Viewing Virus and Spam Protection Statistics (Windows) .................................. 261
About Disk Space Usage Calculation ................................................................ 262

Automating Report Generation and Delivery by E-mail
 To schedule a report delivery on a regular basis:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Summary Report > Delivery Schedule.
2. Click Add Report Delivery Schedule.
3. To send reports to your e-mail address registered with the system, select the
the server administrator value from the Deliver to menu. To send reports to
another e-mail address, select the the e-mail address I specify option and type
the e-mail address.
4. In the Delivery frequency menu, select how often the report should be sent:
daily, weekly, or monthly.
5. Click OK.

Statistics and Monitoring

261

Viewing Virus and Spam Protection Statistics (Windows)
 To view the information about viruses detected and removed by Kaspersky
Antivirus:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Mail Server Settings (in the Mail group) > Statistics tab, and
click Virus Statistics.
2. Select the period for which you want to view virus statistics.
If you want to view more detailed information about viruses, or e-mail addresses of e-mail
senders or recipients, click the respective tab.

 To view the information about spam messages detected and filtered by
SpamAssassin:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Mail Server Settings (in the Mail group) > Statistics tab, and
click Spam Statistics.
2. Select the period for which you want to view spam statistics.
If you want to view more detailed information about spam message recipients, click the
Recipients tab.

262

Statistics and Monitoring

About Disk Space Usage Calculation
When a Panel user creates a subscription or a webspace, Panel starts calculating disk space
usage for this entity. The disk space that can potentially be consumed is categorized into the
following types:


(Always included) Website, FTP, and web users' content.



Log files and statistic reports.



Databases.



Mailboxes.




Java applications.
Mailing lists.



Subscription backup files.



Subscription backups that are a part of server-level backups.

This section explains how Panel calculates disk space usage for each of these categories on
Linux and on Windows. If you would like to include or exclude options from disk space
calculation, you can do it on the Tools & Settings > Server Settings page.
The total disk space usage is available in Tools & Settings > Summary Report. The summary
report shows the sum of disk space consumption of all subscriptions and webspaces. If you
would like to view the disk space usage per subscription, go to Subscriptions and click a
subscription name.

Variables
Next in this section we use the following variables to simplify the description:


HTTPD_VHOSTS_D. This is the absolute path to the directory with virtual hosts.



CATALINA_HOME is the absolute path to the Tomcat installation directory.



PRODUCT_ROOT_D is the absolute path to the Panel installation directory.



PLESK_MAILNAMES_D is the absolute path to the directory with mailboxes.



PGSQL_DATA_D and MYSQL_VAR_D is the absolute path to the directory with MySQL
and PostgreSQL databases correspondingly.

The variable values depend on the operating system. On Linux, you can find the values in
/etc/psa/psa.conf.

Website Content, Anonymous FTP Content, Web Users' Content
This category of content is always included in the calculation of disk space usage.
On Windows, the size of website content is the total size of the
"%plesk_vhosts%\" directory excluding these directories:
"%plesk_vhosts%\\anon_ftp"
"%plesk_vhosts%\\\anon_ftp"

Statistics and Monitoring

263

"%plesk_vhosts%\\.plesk\statistics"
"%plesk_vhosts%\\\.plesk\statistics"
"%plesk_vhosts%\\web_users"
"%plesk_vhosts%\\\web_users"
On Linux, the size of website content is the total size of the following directories:
HTTPD_VHOSTS_D//cgi-bin
HTTPD_VHOSTS_D//error_docs
HTTPD_VHOSTS_D//httpdocs
HTTPD_VHOSTS_D//
HTTPD_VHOSTS_D/system//pd
On Windows, the size of anonymous FTP content is the total size of the following directories:
"%plesk_vhosts%\\anon_ftp"
"%plesk_vhosts%\\\anon_ftp"
On Linux, the size of anonymous FTP content is the total size of the following directories:
HTTPD_VHOSTS_D//anon_ftp
On Windows, the size of web users' content is the total size of the following directories:
"%plesk_vhosts%\\web_users"
"%plesk_vhosts%\Error! Hyperlink reference not
valid."
On Linux, the size of web users' content is the total size of the following directories:
HTTPD_VHOSTS_D//web_users
Note: Starting with Panel 11.5, if the directories mentioned above contain hard links, Panel
includes the size of each link in calculation only once, disregarding the number of the link
instances.
We will refer to the total of website, FTP, and web users' content as WEB_CONTENT in the
formula for calculation the total disk space usage.

Log Files and Statistic Reports
On Windows, the size of logs and reports is the total size of the following directories:
"%plesk_vhosts%\\.plesk\statistics"
"%plesk_vhosts%\\\.plesk\statistics"
On Linux, the size of logs and reports is the total size of the following directories:
HTTPD_VHOSTS_D/system//statistics
We will refer to the total logs and reports size as LOG_AND_STAT in the formula for
calculation the total disk space usage.

264

Statistics and Monitoring

Databases
The size of databases is calculated per website and then summed to obtain the total size.
On Windows, the size of MySQL databases is the sum of data length and index length in the
following query: SHOW TABLE STATUS FROM .
To get the size of MS SQL databases, the system runs the query exec sp_databases for
each database under a particular website. The results are summed and multiplied by 1024.
On Linux, the size of PostgreSQL databases is the total size of directories
PGSQL_DATA_D/base/db_oid. Here db_oid stands for OID of a database under a certain
website.
On Linux, the size of MySQL databases is the size of the directory MYSQL_VAR_D/db_name.
Here db_name stands for a database name under a certain website.
We will refer to the total databases size as DATABASES in the formula for calculation the
total disk space usage.

Mailboxes
The size of mailboxes per website is the total size of directories corresponding to mailboxes.
The path to a mailbox depends on a message transfer agent (for example, MailEnable).


(Windows, MailEnable) mailbox_dir\\MAILROOT\mailbox_name. The
mailbox_dir is stored in the Windows registry
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Mail Enable\Mail
Enable\Connectors\SF.



(Windows, SmarterMail) mailbox_dir\Users\mailbox_name. The mailbox_dir is obtained
by calling the GetDomainSettings method of the svcDomainAdmin web service.



(Linux) PLESK_MAILNAMES_D/.

We will refer to the total mailboxes size as MAILBOXES in the formula for calculation the
total disk space usage.

Java Applications
On Windows, the total size of Java applications is the size of the directory
CATALINA_HOME\psa-wars\domain_name. Here CATALINA_HOME is the value of the
InstallPath parameter in the Windows registry, in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Apache Software
Foundation\Tomcat\.
On Linux, the directory with Java content is CATALINA_HOME/psa-wars/.
We will refer to this total as JAVA_APPS in the formula for calculation the total disk space
usage.

Statistics and Monitoring

265

Backup Files
On Linux, the size of backups is obtained from the following utility call:
PRODUCT_ROOT_D/admin/bin/pmm-ras --get-domain-dumps-disc-usage
--domain-guid --session-path
PRODUCT_ROOT_D/PMM/logs
If the administrator specifies to exclude website backups nested in server-level backups from
user quota, the utility is run with an extra option, --skip-server-dumps.
On Windows, the size of backups is cached and is the sum of numbers that follow size_ in
file names size_xxxxxx. These size_ files are stored in
"%plesk_dir%\Backup\backups_dir\\.discovered\*\".
The backups_dir is:
/domains – if the backups are owned by the administrator.
/resellers//domains - if a website is owned by a reseller.
/resellers//clients//domains - if a
website is owned by a customer of some reseller.
/clients//domains – if a website is owned by a customer directly
under the administrator.
If the file
"%plesk_dir%\Backup\dumps_dir\\.discovered\*\ownertype_
server" exists then the size of website backups nested in server-level backups is not
added to the disk space usage.
We will refer to the backups size as BACKUPS in the formula for calculation the total disk
space usage.

Calculating the Total Disk Space Usage
The formula for calculating the total disk space usage is as follows:
TOTAL = WEB_CONTENT
+ LOG_AND_STAT (if the log files and statistic reports option is selected in Tools & Settings >
Server Settings)
+ DATABASES (depends on the databases option on Linux and MySQL databases and
Microsoft SQL databases)
+ MAILBOXES (if the mailboxes option is selected)
+ JAVA_APPS (if the Java applications option is selected)
+ BACKUPS (if the domain backup files option is selected; the value depends on backup
files created by the administrator)
Here placeholders (for example, WEB_CONTENT) stand for the totals of respective
categories

266

Statistics and Monitoring

Server Health Monitor
Generally, as time goes by, Panel server resources become more and more utilized: The
number of Panel users grows; customers create new sites that use different system services,
and so on. This means that at some point you can experience the lack of system resources,
such as RAM, CPU performance, or disk space. To keep you notified about the server
resources usage, we offer the component - Health Monitor. Based on its statistics, you can
promptly decide what services should be adjusted to lower the system resources usage or
what hardware components require an upgrade.
Health Monitor is an additional Panel component that tracks all main server health
parameters, such as: Memory and CPU usage by different services, hard disk utilization,
number of running processes, and so on. Besides, Health Monitor can be configured to make
visual and e-mail notifications when a certain health parameter exceeds some threshold.
This section provides the detailed information on how to install and configure Health Monitor
as well as to get statistics on a resources usage.

Next in this section:
Installing Health Monitor .................................................................................... 266
Tracking Server Health ...................................................................................... 266
Accuracy of Health Monitor Values .................................................................... 268
Configuring Alarms, Trends, and E-mail Notifications ........................................ 268
Updating Health Parameters After Hardware Change ....................................... 268

Installing Health Monitor
Health Monitor is an additional component that is provided with Panel by default. You can
install it during the Panel custom installation or add it later using the Server Management > Tools
& Settings > Updates.

Tracking Server Health
Health Monitor displays the information on server resources usage in two ways:


A summary report on all main health parameters.



A detailed report with graph of changes for each health parameter.

Statistics and Monitoring

267

Summary Report
The summary report contains the information on all main server health parameters that are
grouped for the sake of convenience. The report displays the status of each group, the
instantaneous parameter values and their trends. To get the Health Monitor summary report,
go to the Server Administration Panel > Home > Server Health.
Note that the summary report shows you instantaneous parameters values that are relevant
only for the moment when the Home page was refreshed.
The example of summary report (random values) is shown below.

Yellow and Red Alarms
As you can see, one of the parameters exceeded some threshold and Health Monitor
alarmed about it with the yellow highlighting. There are two types of alarms for each
parameter:


Yellow alarm - a parameter is close to its critical value.



Red alarm - a parameter exceeds its critical value.

The threshold of these alarms can be set using the configuration file.

Trends
Health Monitor can also warn you if one of the parameters grows too fast. This is done with
the help of trends. Trend is a way to show how a parameter value changes over time. In this
example, the parameter, which was the source of the alarm increased ( ) for the last hour by
1.87 times comparing to the hour before (the default trend interval is one hour). If a
parameter value is insignificant, its trend is not shown.

Detailed Report
Detailed report can help you find out the time periods when the resources usage is maximal
(minimal). To view the report, go to the Server Management > Health Monitoring. To see how
server health parameters have been changing over time, select the corresponding
checkboxes. You can select a period for which the graph is generated: From the past 3 hours
to a week.
Note that the parameters values behind the graph are also instantaneous and are relevant
only for the moment when the page was refreshed.

268

Statistics and Monitoring

Accuracy of Health Monitor Values
Note that Health Monitor shows instantaneous parameter values. These values are relevant
only for the moment when the web page, which contains them, was refreshed. This means
that if your server is permanently loaded, you will never see the conformity between Health
Monitor and a system resource usage monitor (for example, top in Linux or Task Manager in
Windows).

Configuring Alarms, Trends, and E-mail Notifications
After the installation, Health Monitor works with all parameters by default. If you want to
adjust some of its options, such as alarm thresholds and e-mail notifications, you should
perform the component configuration. Such configuration is available using the XML file.

 To configure Health Monitor:
1. Download the current configuration file by clicking the Download Configuration
File button in Server Management > Health Monitoring.
2. Change the configuration file in any text editor. With the help of this file you
can define:


Alarm threshold for each parameter.



Type of the alarm for each parameter: Exceeding of an absolute value, a relative
value, or a trend value.



Trend calculation parameters.



E-mail notification parameters.
The detailed file structure and description for each of the file parameters is provided in
the top of the configuration file.

3. Upload the file with changes to Panel by clicking the Upload Configuration File
button in Server Management > Health Monitoring.

Updating Health Parameters After Hardware Change
Note that the hardware configuration of your Panel server is specified in Health Monitor just
once - during component installation. Further changes in hardware parameters are not
propagated to Health Monitor. For example, if you increase the amount of RAM from 1 GB to
2 GB, Health Monitor will continue to show that the total RAM is 1 GB. To update Health
Monitor data on server configuration, use Server Management > Health Monitoring > Detect
Hardware Changes.

Statistics and Monitoring

269

Monitoring Connections to Panel
Next in this section:
Monitoring User Sessions.................................................................................. 269
Monitoring FTP Users Sessions ........................................................................ 270
Monitoring Terminal Connections (Windows) .................................................... 271

Monitoring User Sessions
 To find out who of your customers is logged in to Panel at the moment:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Active Sessions. All sessions including yours will be
presented and the following details will be displayed:


Type. A type of Panel user who established the session:
for server administrator.
for reseller or customer.
for mailbox owner.



IP address. The IP address from which the Panel is accessed.



Logon time. The date and time when the user logged in to the Panel.



Idle time. The time that user was not doing anything in the Panel while being logged in.

2. To refresh the list of user sessions, click Refresh.
3. To end a user session, select the corresponding checkbox and click Remove,
then confirm removal and click OK.

270

Statistics and Monitoring

Monitoring FTP Users Sessions
Your Parallels Plesk Panel can show active FTP sessions only when any of the following
FTP server programs is installed on the hosting server:


Microsoft FTP 7.0 (Windows hosting)



Gene6 FTP Server (Windows hosting)




Serv-U FTP Server (Windows hosting)
ProFTPd (Linux/UNIX hosting)

 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. Go to Tools & Settings > Active Sessions.
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:
for users not registered with the Panel.
for anonymous FTP users.
for website administrators.
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.



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 checkbox and click Remove.

Statistics and Monitoring

271

Monitoring Terminal Connections (Windows)
 To find out who of your customers is logged in to the server via Terminal
Server session at the moment:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Active Sessions.
2. Click the TS Sessions tab. All sessions including yours will be presented and
the following details will be displayed:


S. The status of the terminal session:
- for server administrator.
- client is connected and logged in, using valid login and password.
- client is connected, but not logged in.
- client is disconnected.



Name. The name of this terminal session.

 User. The name of the terminal session user.
You can see the session details by clicking the session name in the list.

3. To refresh the list of terminal sessions, click Refresh.
4. To disconnect a terminal session, select the respective checkbox and click
Disconnect, then confirm disconnection and click OK.
5. To close a terminal session, select the respective checkbox and click
Out, then confirm disconnection and click OK.

Log

CHAPTER 12

Backup and Restoration
With the data backup and restore functions provided by your Parallels Plesk Panel, you
can perform the following operations:


Back up the entire server. The backup archive will include your Panel license key,
settings and configuration of system services, accounts, sites, databases and
mailboxes.



Back up individual user accounts with websites. The backup archive will include all
settings and data related to user account and user's sites.




Back up individual websites. The backup archive will include all data and settings
related to a website.
Schedule backups.



Restore data from backup archives.

Storing Backups
Backups can be stored either in:


The internal Panel repository - a backup storage located on your Panel server.



An external FTP repository - a backup storage located on some external server in
the Web or your local network. In this case, you should provide Panel with a
server's hostname and FTP user credentials.

Backups Created by Your Customers
Your customers granted with the permission to use the backup and restore facilities
can back up and restore their own account settings and websites through the Control
Panel. Your customers, resellers and your resellers' customers will find shortcuts to
their backup repositories in their Control Panel (Websites & Domains tab > Backup
Manager).
The backup and restore functions are provided by optional Panel components that are
not included in typical installations. You can install these components by using the
web-based installation and update wizard: in Server Administration Panel, go to Tools &
Settings > Updates > Add Components, and select Plesk Backup Manager in the Server backup
solutions group.

Backup and Restoration

273

Panel users are able see the role of a user who created a backup (administrator,
customer, or reseller) in the the backup tasks list (Tools & Settings > Backup Manager).
This lets customers differentiate between the backups they created by themselves and
technical backups of their subscription. The technical backups happen when
administrators or resellers back up customer subscriptions as a part of a larger backup.
For example, when the Panel administrator creates a server-level backup, all customer
subscriptions are backed up as well, and they are displayed to the customers as
subscription backups created by the administrator.
If a certain backup task fails, Panel shows the detailed error description in a separate
field of a backup task.

Creating Password-protected Backups
Since Panel 11.0, you are able to secure sensitive data in your backups by using
password protection. This makes impossible for an attacker to reveal backup data if the
security of your external backup storage is compromised.

You can specify a backup password in the following circumstances:


In your FTP repository settings (Websites & Domains > Backup Manager > Personal FTP
Repository Settings).



When downloading a backup file from the Panel internal repository to some
external location.

When uploading these backups back to Panel and restoring them, you will be prompted
to provide the password you used for protection.

In this chapter:
Configuring Global Backup Settings .................................................................. 274
Configuring Panel for Using FTP Repository ..................................................... 275
Backing Up the Entire Server ............................................................................ 276
Backing Up Individual Accounts and Sites......................................................... 276
Scheduling Backups .......................................................................................... 277
Restoring Data from Backup Archives ............................................................... 279
Downloading Backup Files from Server ............................................................. 281
Uploading Backup Files to Server ..................................................................... 281
Removing Backup Files from Server ................................................................. 281
Backup Logs ..................................................................................................... 282

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Configuring Global Backup Settings
If you serve numerous websites, you may want to configure the backing up process so
that it does not consume much server resources.

 To reduce the server load and set the disk space usage policy:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Backup Settings.
2. Specify the number of simultaneous backup processes in the Maximum
number of simultaneously running scheduled backup processes box. The default
value is 10. Type a lesser value.
3. To make the backup processes relinquish resources to other processes
on the server, select one or both of the following settings:


Run scheduled backup processes with low priority

 Run all backup processes with low priority
Note that these options increase the backup time. Other server tasks will not work
slower during the backup.

4. Select the Do not compress backup files checkbox to disable compression.
5. Click OK.
6. To prevent the backing up processes from consuming all available disk
space on the server, choose one of the following:


Set Panel to to start a backup only if your server has enough free disk space to
store it. Be aware that this option significantly increases the backup time as
Panel additionally has to calculate the size of the future backup.
Note: Panel for Windows does not directly calculate object sizes but takes them
from the database. As object sizes in Panel database are updated only once
a day, the overall calculated backup size can differ from its real value.



Set Panel to start a backup only if your server has the specified free disk space.
This option is convenient when you approximately know the size of the future
backup and do not want Panel to waste time and resources on calculating it.

Backup and Restoration

Configuring Panel for Using FTP
Repository
If you are going to use an FTP server for storing backup files, you should specify its
settings in Tools & Settings > Backup Manager > Personal FTP Repository Settings:


FTP server's IP address or host name.



Directory on the server where you want to store backup files.




User name and password for access to the FTP account.
Password that Panel will use for backup protection.
Note: Password protection secures only users' passwords included in backups.
Other content, such as users' files, is not protected.

275

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Backing Up the Entire Server
 To back up the server configuration settings and all user data you have on
your hosting machine:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Backup Manager.
2. Click Back Up.
3. Specify the following:


Backup file name prefix and description. You cannot specify an arbitrary file
name, however, you can set the control panel to add a prefix to backup file
names. Note that the control panel automatically adds the date and time of
backup file creation (in Universal Time) to backup file names.



Splitting of the backup file. To create a multi-volume backup, select the
respective checkbox and specify volume size in megabytes.



Location where to store the backup file. Select the repository where you would
like to store the backup file.



E-mail notification on backup completion. If you want to be notified of the
backup completion, type your e-mail address.



What data to back up. You can back up only the server settings, or server
settings and all user data (including data in databases).

4. Click Back Up. The backup process will start and the progress will be
shown under the Current Back Up Tasks tab. You can use the Refresh button
to update the information on the screen.
5. When backing up is finished, the backup file will be saved to the
repository you selected.
Note: Custom view settings (that are stored as the Simple plan) are included into
server-level backups. However, the restoration of these settings is only possible if
Panel has not been yet initially configured (either by the init_conf utility or from
GUI). Learn more about Custom view (on page 25).

Backing Up Individual Accounts and Sites
 To back up a user account with or without sites:
1. Click Customers.
2. Locate the customer whose account you want to back up, and click the
corresponding Control Panel link.
3. Click the Account tab.

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4. Do any of the following:


To back up a user account with sites, click Back Up My Account and Websites.



To back up only websites with content, click Back Up Websites.

5. Click Back Up.
6. Specify the following:




Splitting of the backup file. To create a multivolume backup, select the
respective checkbox and specify volume size in megabytes.



Location where to store the backup file. Select the repository where you would
like to store the backup file.



E-mail notification on backup completion. If you want to send an e-mail notice
on the backup completion, type the required e-mail address.



What data to back up. You can back up only the settings, or the settings and all
data (including data in databases).

7. Click Back Up. The backup process will start and the progress will be
shown under the Current Back Up Tasks tab. You can use the Refresh button
to update the information on the screen.
When backing up is finished, the backup file will be saved to the repository you
selected.

Scheduling Backups
 To schedule backing up of data:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Backup Manager.
2. Click Scheduled Backup Settings.
3. Select the Activate this backup task checkbox and specify the following:


When and how often to run the backup.



Backup file name.



Splitting of the backup file. To create a multivolume backup, select the
respective checkbox and specify volume size in megabytes. Note that volume
size cannot exceed 4095 megabytes.



Location where to store the backup file. Select the repository where you would
like to store the backup file.



Maximum number of backup files stored in the repository. Type a number if you
want to recycle backup files: When this limit is reached, the oldest backup files
are removed.

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

E-mail notification on backing up errors. If you want to send an e-mail notice
when something goes wrong during backing up, type the e-mail address you
need.



What data to back up. You can back up only settings, or settings and user data.

4. Click OK.

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Restoring Data from Backup Archives
You can restore data from backup files kept in:


The Panel internal repository.
To restore backup files from Panel repository, choose the backup file name you
want to restore on the Tools & Settings > Backup Manager > Server Repository tab.



An external FTP repository (on page 275).
To restore backup files from Panel repository, choose the backup file name you
want to restore on the Tools & Settings > Backup Manager > Personal FTP Repository tab.

After you choose the backup file, Panel will start the restoration wizard. You will be
prompted to specify the following restoration parameters:


Types of data to be restored.



Suspend website until restoration task is completed. Select this if you want to avoid
possible conflicts that may occur when users modify site content or settings while
they are being restored.



Send an e-mail notice when restoration task is completed. Type your e-mail address if you
want the control panel to notify you when restoring is completed.



Conflicts resolution policy. Specify what to do if any conflicts occur during restoration.



Backup security settings. If the backup was protected with a password, enter the
password into the Password field.
If you have forgotten your password, clear the Provide the password option. Note that
in this case, some sensitive data will not be restored properly. For example, user
passwords will be replaced with random ones, the information about already
installed APS apps will be lost, and so on.
Restore the modified backup file. You will see this option in the following cases:



The selected backup file was modified after creation.



The selected backup file is corrupted.



The selected backup file was created on another Panel server.



The selected backup file was created on the same server before Panel upgrade
to 11.5.

Panel will inform you in any of these cases with a warning. You will not be able to
start the restoration until you select the Restore the modified backup file option. We
strongly recommend that you do not restore such backups except in the following
situations:


The backup was created on the same server before Panel was upgraded to
version 11.5. Earlier Panel versions did not sign backups, so Panel 11.5 is
unable to check their signatures and shows such backups as potentially
problematic.



You are performing a transfer through backup files. Learn more in the section
Transferring Data Through Backup Files of the Installation, Upgrade, Migration, and
Transfer Guide.

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Troubleshooting Restoration Errors
In case if any errors or conflicts occur during restoration of data, the wizard will prompt
you to select an appropriate resolution. Follow the instructions provided on the screen
to complete the wizard.
Note: The Overwrite data restoring mode means that all objects will be restored from
the backup files regardless of their current presence in the system. The Overwrite
mode works as follows:


If an object or settings from the backup file are not present in Parallels Plesk Panel,
then they are created or set in Parallels Plesk Panel.



If an object or settings from the backup file are present in Parallels Plesk Panel,
then the object or settings from the backup file replace the corresponding object or
settings that are present in Parallels Plesk Panel.



If an object or settings are present in Parallels Plesk Panel, but are missing from
the backup file, then the object or settings currently present in Parallels Plesk Panel
are not changed.

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Downloading Backup Files from Server
To download a backup file from the Panel repository, choose the corresponding backup
file name in Tools & Settings > Backup Manager and specify the location for the file.
In order to improve backup security, we recommend that you protect the backup with a
password. This makes impossible for an attacker to obtain sensitive data in case the
security of your backup storage is compromised.
Note: If you forget your password, it cannot be recovered. Therefore, it is strongly
recommended to keep a list of your passwords and corresponding backup file names in
a safe place.

Defining Location of Temporary Backup Files
When somebody downloads a backup from the server, Panel creates a temporary
archive file with the backup on the server. By default, this file is located in the /tmp
directory. If there is not enough disk space for storing the temporary file on the
corresponding partition, downloading the backup file will be impossible. To avoid such
situations, you can change the location of temporary backup files on the Panel server
by editing the DUMP_TMP_D variable in the /etc/psa/psa.conf configuration file.

Uploading Backup Files to Server
You can upload a backup file to the Panel repository, by running the Tools & Settings >
Backup Manager > Upload Files to Server Repository wizard. Before starting the upload,
Panel will prompt you to enter the following backup parameters:


Backup file location.



The password you used for protection.
This is the password that you used for protecting the backup data.
Note: If you provide an incorrect password, Panel will warn you but will upload the
backup to the server anyway. During the backup restoration, you will be prompted
to enter the password again.

Additionally, if you want to upload a backup file created on another server or in a Panel
version earlier than 11.5, you should allow uploading such backups by selecting the
corresponding option on this page. In this case, Panel will upload the files and display a
warning. If you do not select this option, Panel will display an error message and the
files will not be uploaded.

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Removing Backup Files from Server
 To remove a backup file from the backup repository in the Panel:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > Backup Manager.
2. Select a checkbox corresponding to the backup file you want to remove.
3. Click Remove.
4. Confirm removal and click OK.

Backup Logs
When Panel starts performing a backup, it reports the progress to a log. Backup logs
contain only general errors such as syntax errors (no or wrong command specified,
invalid input parameters), runtime errors and unhandled exceptions, low disk space for
backup, and so on.
Backup logs are stored in /usr/local/psa/admin/PMM/sessions on Unix/Linux
systems and %plesk_dir%\admin\PMM\sessions on Windows systems, where
%plesk_dir% is an environment variable for the Panel installation directory on
Windows systems. Each backup log is located in a separate folder that contains date
and time of the backup in its name.
You can change the level of details included into logs. This feature is available only for
scheduled backups and for backups made through command line. For more
information on how to change level of details, see the Advanced Administration Guide for
Linux and Windows.

CHAPTER 13

Shared Files and Folders
If you use Panel to run your own websites within a webspace, you can set up file and
folder sharing. Use sharing to achieve the following goals:


Allow users within the organization to collaborate on the same documents or other
files.



Allow privileged customers or partners, after authorization in the system, to access
documents such as product roadmaps, price lists with discounts, marketing
presentations.

In this chapter:
File Sharing Settings ......................................................................................... 284
Sharing and Protecting Files ............................................................................. 285

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Shared Files and Folders

File Sharing Settings
You can access file sharing settings in both Service Provider (Server Management > Tools
& Settings > File Sharing Settings) and Power User view (Settings tab > File Sharing Settings).

 To set up file sharing in your information system:
1. Open the file sharing settings page.
2. Web Folder root URL defines the URL for accessing the root Web Folder
used by file sharing services. If you want to change the root location of
the Web Folder used for file sharing, select the host name, domain
name or IP address and specify a folder name.
All other file sharing Web Folders are created inside the folder specified above. The
resulting URL will be used for mounting the root Web Folder used by file sharing.

3. If you want the Panel to generate secure links to protect file transfers
with SSL encryption, select the Generate secure links to files and folders
check box.
4. If you want to grant Panel users the ability to publish uploaded files and
make these files accessible to all website visitors, select the Enable public
files check box.


If you want to change the folder for storing the public files, specify a new folder
name in the Folder for public files storage field.



If you want to change the URL for read-only visitor access, specify a new folder
name in the URL for visitor access to public files field.

5. If you want to allow uploading of files into a password-protected folder,
that can be accessed by privileged partners or customers, select the
Enable password-protection of public files, and provide the username and
password for accessing the folder.


If you want to change the folder for storing the password-protected files, specify
a new folder name in the Folder for password-protected files storage field.

6. Click OK.

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285

Sharing and Protecting Files
When file and folder sharing is set up on the server, you can accomplish the following
tasks:


Share files with other users within your organization for collaboration purposes.



Share files with privileged customers and partners. Files can be placed in a
password-protected directory, and authorized users outside your organization will
be able to access them.



Place files in a private secured directory on the server for backup purposes, or to
enable access them over the Internet.



Transfer files that are too large to be sent by e-mail. You upload files to the server,
generate a secret link, and send the link to the intended recipients so they can
download the files.



Access shared files and work with them:


Through a web browser, using File Manager built into your information system,
or



By connecting the folder on the server to your computer's operating system as a
Web Folder, and working as if the files are located on your computer.

Note that all operations described below are accessible only in Power User view.

Next in this section:
Sharing Files with Other Users Within the Organization .................................... 286
Publishing Files for Partners .............................................................................. 287
Publishing Files for Your Customers ................................................................. 289
Uploading Your Files to a Private Directory on the Server ................................. 290
Transferring Large Files that Cannot Be Sent by E-mail .................................... 291
Accessing and Working with Files ..................................................................... 292

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Sharing Files with Other Users Within the Organization
 To share files with other users within the organization, in Power User
view:
1. Go to the File Sharing tab and select the files that you want to share:
If you have to upload new files to the Panel:

a. Go to Shared Files in the left navigation area and click Upload Files.
b. Click Browse and select the files you need.
c. Select the location inside the Shared Files folder where you want
to upload files.
If you want to share the files from your Personal Files folder:

d. Under the Files tab go to Personal Files in the left navigation area
and browse to the directory where required files are located.
e. Select the required files and click Share.
f. Select the location inside the Shared Files folder where you want
to upload files.
2. If you want to send an e-mail notice with links to shared files, select the
check box Send e-mail with links to uploaded files upon completion, and click
Next. Otherwise, click Upload without selecting this check box.
If you chose to send an e-mail notice, you will have to do the following on the next
screen:

a. Select whether authorization in the Panel should be required for
accessing the files and whether those who have the links to
files should be able to modify them.
b. If you selected the linked files to be accessible for everyone,
select the link expiration period. After this period has elapsed,
the links will be no longer valid.
c. Select the Panel user accounts who should receive the notice
and type e-mail addresses of other notice recipients.
d. Specify e-mail subject and body. Note that links to files will be
inserted automatically in place of <- [LINKS WILL BE
INSERTED HERE - DO NOT REMOVE] -> text.
3. Click OK.
Now the files are uploaded to the directory called shared, and all users registered in
your information system will be able to view, modify, and delete them.

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287

Publishing Files for Partners
If publishing to the password-protected directory called protected is allowed by the
server policy, then authorized users of your information system will be able to upload
files to this directory. After that, your partners or privileged customers will be able to
download files from this directory after specifying the password that was sent to them.

 To publish files for your partners and privileged customers, in Power User
view:
1. Go to the File Sharing tab and select the files that you want to publish:
If you have to upload new files to the Panel:

a. Under Public Files in the left navigation area go to Passwordprotected files.
b. To view the credentials currently used for accessing passwordprotected files, click Show Access Info in the lower right corner of
the screen. You will need to send these credentials to your
partners who should have the access to files in the protected
directory.
c. Click Upload Files and select the location inside the Passwordprotected files folder where you want to upload files.
d. Click Browse and select the files you need.
If you want to publish the files from Personal Files or Shared Files folder:

e. To view the credentials currently used for accessing passwordprotected files, go to Password-protected files and click Show Access
Info in the lower right corner of the screen. You will need to send
these credentials your partners who should have the access to
files in the partners directory.
f. Browse to the directory where required files are located, select
the required files and click Publish.
g. Select the Protect access to files with a password check box.
h. Select the location inside the Password-protected files folder where
you want to publish the files.
2. If you want to send an e-mail notice with links to published files, select
the check box Send e-mail with links to published files upon completion, and
click Next. Otherwise, click Upload without selecting this check box.
If you chose to send an e-mail notice, you will have to do the following on the next
screen:

a. Select whether authorization in the Panel should be required for
accessing the files and whether those who have the links to
files should be able to modify them.

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b. If you selected the linked files to be accessible for everyone,
select the link expiration period. After this period has elapsed,
the links will be no longer valid.
c. Select the user accounts in the Panel who should receive the
notice and type e-mail addresses of other notice recipients.
d. Specify e-mail subject and body. Note that links to files will be
inserted automatically in place of <- [LINKS WILL BE
INSERTED HERE - DO NOT REMOVE] -> text.
3. Click OK.
Now the files are published in the directory called protected, and only authorized
users who know the password will be able to download and view these files.

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289

Publishing Files for Your Customers
If publishing to the public directory is allowed by the server policy, then authorized
users of the information system will be able to upload files to this directory, thus making
them accessible to your customers who visit your website, and any Internet user who
knows where these files are located.

 To publish files on the Web for your customers, in Power User view:
1. Go to the File Sharing tab and select the files that you want to publish:
If you have to upload new files to the Panel:

a. Go to Public Files in the left navigation area.
b. Click Upload Files and select the location inside the Public Files
folder where you want to upload files.
c. Click Browse and select the files you need.
If you want to publish the files from Personal Files or Shared Files folder:

d. Browse to the directory where required files are located, select
the required files and click Publish.
e. Do not select the Protect access to files with a password check box.
f. Select the location inside the Public Files folder where you want
to publish the files.
2. If you want to send an e-mail notice with links to published files, select
the check box Send e-mail with links to uploaded files upon completion, and click
Next. Otherwise, click Upload without selecting this check box.
If you chose to send an e-mail notice, you will have to do the following on the next
screen:

a. Select whether authorization in the Panel should be required for
accessing the files and whether those who have the links to
files should be able to modify them.
b. If you selected the linked files to be accessible for everyone,
select the link expiration period. After this period has elapsed,
the links will be no longer valid.
c. Select user accounts in the Panel who should receive the notice
and type e-mail addresses of other notice recipients.
d. Specify e-mail subject and body. Note that links to files will be
inserted automatically in place of <- [LINKS WILL BE
INSERTED HERE - DO NOT REMOVE] -> text.
3. Click OK.
Now the files are uploaded to the directory called public, and your customers,
including any Internet users who know where the files are located, will be able to
download and view these files.

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Uploading Your Files to a Private Directory on the
Server
All authorized users of your information system can use private folders on the server to:


Store backup copies of their files.



Access files in their private directories over the Internet.

 To upload your files to the private directory through File Manager, in
Power User view:
1. Go to the File Sharing tab and click Personal Files in the left navigation
area.
2. Click Upload Files.
3. Click Browse to select the files you need.
4. Select the folder where you want to upload files.
5. If you want to send an e-mail notice with links to the uploaded files,
select the check box Send e-mail with links to uploaded files upon completion,
and click Next. Otherwise, click Upload without selecting this check box.
If you chose to send an e-mail notice, you will have to do the following on the next
screen:

a. Select the link expiration period. After this period has elapsed,
the links will be no longer valid. If you want to make the link
permanent, so that it will not expire, select the option never.
b. Select user accounts in the Panel who should receive the notice
and type e-mail addresses of other notice recipients.
c. Specify e-mail subject and body. Note that links to files will be
inserted automatically in place of <- [LINKS WILL BE
INSERTED HERE - DO NOT REMOVE] -> text.
6. Click OK.
Now the files are uploaded to the directory called private/username, and only the
owner of this directory will be able to view, download, modify, and delete these files.

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291

Transferring Large Files that Cannot Be Sent by E-mail
 If you need to send someone a file that is too large to be sent by e-mail, in
Power User view:
1. Upload the file to the server, or select the file, if it has already been
uploaded to the server:
If you have to upload new files to the Panel:

a. Go to the File Sharing tab and click the Upload Files link.
b. Select the folder where you want to upload files, for example,
Personal Files > admin.
c. Click Browse and select the files you want to send.
d. Select the check box Send e-mail with links to published files upon
completion and click Next.
If files are already uploaded to the Panel:

e. Go to Files tab and browse to the directory where required files
are located.
f. Select the required files and click E-Mail Link.
2. If you have chosen to send a file from locations other than a user's
private directory (Personal Folder), then also select whether authorization
in the Panel should be required for accessing the files and whether
those who have the links to files should be able to modify them.
3. Select the link expiration period. After this period has elapsed, the links
will no longer be valid.
4. Select user accounts in the Panel who should receive the notice and
type e-mail addresses of other notice recipients.
5. Specify e-mail subject and body. Note that links to files will be inserted
automatically in place of <- [LINKS WILL BE INSERTED HERE DO NOT REMOVE] -> text.
6. Click OK.
The links to files will be sent to the intended recipients, and they will be able to
download the files.

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Accessing and Working with Files
There are two ways to work with shared files:


If you need to work with the files frequently, connect a Web Folder on the server to
your computer.



If you occasionally need to access the files, use the Panel interface (Files tab).

 To use the File Manager built into your information system for working
with files:
1. In the Panel, click the Files tab. The file manager opens.
2. Use the following icons and links to work with files and directories.
In the left area:


Upload Files. This starts a wizard that allows you to upload files and directories to
the server.



Personal Files. This takes you to the private directory where you can place files
that only you can access. If you need to use the storage space on the server for
backup purposes, or if you need to access files over the Internet, place your
files into this directory. For more information, refer to the section Uploading Your
Files to a Private Directory on the Server.

Shared Files. This takes you to the shared (or common) directory where you
should place files that must be available to other users within your organization.
When you need to collaborate with other employees, place files into this
directory. For more information, refer to the section Sharing Files with Other
Users Within the Organization.
The right area shows a list of files and directories located in the currently selected
directory, and a toolbar with the following items:



Share. Select files in any directory and click this to move the files to the Shared
Folder. This will make them accessible to all users authorized in your
information system.



E-mail Link. Select files in any directory and click this to send an e-mail message
notifying users of files location, so that the users could download them.



Delete. Select files and click this to permanently remove them.



More. This menu provides access to the following operations: Create new folder,
copy or move files and folders.



The icon
(Link to this Folder). Click this to view or copy to clipboard the Internet
address of the current folder.

Next in this section:
Connecting to Web Folders on Microsoft Windows Systems ............................. 293
Connecting to Web Folders on Linux Systems .................................................. 301
Connecting to Web Folders on Mac OS ............................................................ 302

Shared Files and Folders

Connecting to Web Folders on Microsoft Windows Systems
 To connect a Web Folder to your computer running Microsoft Windows
XP:
1. Right-click the Start menu button, and select Explore.
2. In the Tools menu, select Map Network Drive.
3. Select the drive letter that will be assigned to the network drive and
click Sign up for online storage or connect to a network server.

293

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Shared Files and Folders

4. Click Next.
5. Make sure that the Choose another network location option is selected and
click Next.

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295

6. Go to Panel and find out the address of the required Web Folder. Log in
to the Panel, go to File Sharing, find and enter the required folder and
click the icon
in the upper right corner of File Manager. The link to
the current Web Folder will be shown in the opened window. Click the
Copy Link to Clipboard button.

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7. Return to the Add Network Place Wizard, specify the full URL to the
required Web Folder and click Next.

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297

8. In the window that opens, specify the username and password that you
use for logging in to the Panel. Select the Remember my password check
box and click OK.

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9. Specify a name that you want to designate for this Web Folder in your
operating system and click Next.

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299

10. Click Finish.
Now, every time you start your computer, this Web Folder will show in your Windows
Explorer, under My Network Places.
Note for users of Microsoft Windows operating systems: If you experience
problems with connecting to a Web Folder, make sure you have installed all available
operating system updates and service packs. If you are using a 32-bit version of
Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 2003 Server, then also install the hotfix
available at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=17C36612632E-4C04-9382-987622ED1D64.


 To connect a Web Folder to your computer running Microsoft Windows
Vista or Microsoft Windows 7:
1. Click the Start menu button, and select Computer.
2. Click Map Network Drive.
3. Select the drive letter that will be assigned to the network drive and
click Connect to a Web site that you can use to store your documents and pictures.

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Shared Files and Folders

4. Go to the Panel and find out the address of the required Web Folder.
Log in to the Panel, go to File Sharing, find and enter the required folder
and click the icon
in the upper right corner of File Manager. The link
to the current Web Folder will be shown in the opened window. Click
the Copy Link to Clipboard button.

5. Return to the Map Network Drive Wizard, specify the full URL to the
required Web Folder and click Finish.
6. In the window that opens, specify the username and password that you
use for logging in to the Panel. Select the Remember my password check
box and click OK.

Now, every time you start your computer, this Web Folder will show in your Windows
Explorer, under Network Locations.

Shared Files and Folders

301

Connecting to Web Folders on Linux Systems
 To connect a Web Folder as a network drive to your Linux-based
computer using GNOME Nautilus file manager:
1. Open the file browser.
2. In the File menu, select Connect to Server.
3. From the Service type menu, select either WebDAV (HTTP) or Secure WebDAV
(HTTPS).
To find out which option you need, ask your systems administrator.

4. In the Server field, type the host name or IP address of your server.
5. In the Folder field, type the path to your shared folder.
To learn the location of your Web Folder, log in to the Panel, go to File Sharing, find
and enter the required folder and click the
icon in the upper right corner of File
Manager. The link to current Web Folder will be shown in the opened window.

6. Click Connect.
7. The shortcut to the file share will be added to the Places pane. Click this
shortcut.
8. Specify the username and password that you use for logging in to the
Panel.
9. Select the option Remember password forever so that you would not have to
type it every time you connect to the server.
10. Click Connect.

 To connect to a Web Folder using KDE Konqueror file manager:
1. Open Konqueror, and type the address of the shared folder in the
address bar. Use webdav or webdavs as the protocol, instead of http or
https.
To learn the location of your Web Folder, log in to the Panel, go to File Sharing, find
and enter the required folder and click the
icon in the upper right corner of File
Manager. The link to the current Web Folder will be shown in the opened window.

2. Specify the username and password that you use for logging in to the
Panel.

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Connecting to Web Folders on Mac OS
 To connect a Web Folder as a network drive to your Mac OS X-based
computer:
1. Open Finder.
2. Click Go, and select the option Connect to Server.
3. Specify the location of your shared folder.
To learn the location of your Web Folder, log in to the Panel, go to File Sharing, find
and enter the required folder and click the
icon in the upper right corner of File
Manager. The link to the current Web Folder will be shown in the opened window.

4. Click Connect.
5. Specify the username and password that you use for logging in to the
Panel.
6. Select the option Remember this password in my keychain so that you would
not have to type it every time you connect to the server.
7. Click OK.
If you use SSL, you might receive an alert that the SSL certificate on the server is
invalid. In such a case, just click through the SSL warning.
After the network drive is mounted, a shortcut to it will be placed on your desktop.

8. Open System Preferences, and select Accounts.
9. Select your user account and then click the Login Items tab.
10. Select the network drive shortcut on your desktop and drag it to the
Login Items window (in System Preferences > Accounts).
11. If you do not want the mounted drive to automatically open in Finder
every time you start your Mac, select the corresponding Hide check box.
12. Click OK.

CHAPTER 14

Customers and Resellers
When you start your hosting business, you should define how you will offer hosting
resources and services to customers. Parallels Plesk Panel lets you organize your
business by means of service plans and subscriptions.

Serving Customers
A service plan is a combination of resources and services that you sell to your
customers. For example, a hosting account with 1 GB of disk space and 50 GB of
traffic is a hosting service plan. If you use Panel with the Business Manager solution,
you can offer your customers service plans of other types, such as domain name plans
and SSL certificate plans. For example, a 1024 bits SSL certificate for a year.
When customers want to host a website on a Panel server, they subscribe to a plan
that offers hosting resources. In other words, a subscription is a set of resources and
services defined by a plan that is available to a certain customer for a limited period of
time.
The typical workflow to start serving hosting customers in Panel is as follows:
1. You create a hosting service plan in Panel (on page 308).
2. When a customer is ready to subscribe to the plan, you create the account and
subscription for the customer (on page 312).
3. Panel grants the customer permissions to log in and use services provided with the
subscription.
Using add-on plans, you can offer resources and services to customers in addition to
those provided by their main service plan, for example, an additional gigabyte of disk
space.
Learn more about hosting service plans and their relationship with subscriptions in the
section Hosting Plans and Subscriptions (on page 305).

Serving Resellers
Reseller plans allow you to sell your services to a special category of customers resellers. Resellers are people who sell hosting accounts on your servers to others.
From a business perspective, resellers are similar to hosting providers: they have
accounts in hosting panels, and their own online stores and customer management
tools. The difference is that resellers do not have their own hosting servers. Learn how
to start serving resellers in the section Reseller Plans (on page 322).

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Business Automation with Business Manager
Organizing your offerings into plans is only one stage in getting your business ready to
run. Before you can start serving customers, you should also think about how potential
customers will find your offerings, how you will subscribe new customers and take
payments, and other aspects of your business. To make it easier to start your
business, we recommend that you use an integrated automation solution - Business
Manager. This will allow you to completely automate all aspects of your business.
Though you can decide to use another third-party automation tool, Business Manager
provides the most complete integration with all Panel features. To learn more about
Business Manager, refer to the Administrator's Guide to Parallels Customer and Business
Manager.
Note: You can choose not to use any automation solution at all. In this case, you
should control the money flow by yourself as well as perform a number of tasks
manually in the Server Administration Panel, for example, create customer accounts
and subscribe them to your offerings.
This chapter contains instructions on how to set up your hosting offer in Panel.

In this chapter:
Hosting Plans and Subscriptions ....................................................................... 305
Reseller Plans ................................................................................................... 322

Customers and Resellers

305

Hosting Plans and Subscriptions
A hosting plan is a set of hosting resources and services you offer to your customers.
For example, the properties of a hosting plan define the server resources available in a
plan subscription, such as disk space, traffic, number of mailboxes and so on. To learn
more about how plan resources are allocated in the subscription, refer to the section
Relationship Between Plans and Subscriptions (on page 306).
This section will guide you through the process of creating a hosting plan and starting
to serve your customers.
The amount of resources and services provided with a subscription can be extended by
associating the subscription with add-on plans. To learn how to create add-on plans,
refer to the section Setting Up Add-on Plans in Panel (on page 311).

Next in this section:
Relationship Between Plans and Subscriptions ................................................. 306
Setting Up Hosting Plans................................................................................... 308
Setting Up Add-on Plans ................................................................................... 311
Subscribing Customers to Plans........................................................................ 312
Managing Customers ........................................................................................ 314
Managing Subscriptions .................................................................................... 317
Serving Non-Technical Customers .................................................................... 321

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Relationship Between Plans and Subscriptions
Normally, a subscription is associated with a service plan, and this association is
reflected in a list of subscriptions: each subscription name contains the service plan
name in brackets at the end. The amount of resources and services provided with a
subscription can be extended by associating the subscription with add-on plans. A
subscription can be associated with several add-ons, but each add-on can be added to
the subscription only once.
It is also possible that a subscription may not be associated with a service plan, and so
it cannot be associated with any add-on plans: add-ons are only added to a "main"
service plan. We call such subscriptions custom subscriptions, and their names are
extended with "(Custom)" in the list of subscriptions. Having a custom subscription may
be useful if you want to provide services on specific terms that are different from the
usual offerings in your business model.
You can change the association between a subscription and plans at any time as
follows:


Associate the subscription with another service plan.



Add and remove add-on plans.



Remove the subscription association with the service plan and add-ons.

States of Subscription
Subscriptions associated with a particular plan are synchronized, or synced, with it: any
changes made to the plan are automatically applied to all its subscriptions. This is true
for all kinds of plans: service plans, their add-ons, and reseller plans.
The Panel allows the following deviations from the default subscription state (active
and synced with the service plans):


Locked state, which means locked for syncing, indicates that a subscription is
excluded from syncing with the associated plans.
A subscription gets locked if you change the parameters of the subscription, without
changing the associated service plan. Such locking secures your customizations so
that they are not overwritten the next time you change the plan and all its
subscriptions are synced.



Unsynced state indicates that some services or resources offered with the
associated plans cannot actually be provided with the subscription.



Suspended state. This state is not related to the synchronization of a subscription
with the service plan, but it affects the behavior of websites. Panel suspends
subscriptions automatically if their expiration date passes. In addition, you can
suspend a subscription manually. To learn more, see Managing Subscriptions (on
page 317).

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307

Note: If a plan offers a privilege that makes it possible for a subscriber to change a
particular resource or service, this resource/service allocation is ignored during a sync.
For example, if the plan provides the privilege of PHP settings management and a
customer changes some PHP setting, its subscription remains synced with the plan
(even if a value of the PHP setting in the subscription differs from the corresponding
one in the plan).

Unsynced Subscriptions
Panel does not check whether a service or a resource that a service plan should
provide is actually available in the system. For example, when creating a plan, you can
select to provide ColdFusion when ColdFusion is not installed on the server, and Panel
will let you do it and will show no error or warning messages.
A subscription is automatically marked as Unsynced if Panel cannot provision the
resources and/or services defined by the plan. This may happen in the following cases:


When the subscription is created.



When the properties of the associated plan are changed.



When an add-on plan is added to or removed from the subscription.

 To know which of the subscription's resources or services are not synced
with the plan:
1. Go to Subscriptions, and click the unsynced subscription name.
2. Click Sync.
The Panel will retry syncing the subscription with associated plans, and will display
the conflicting properties if syncing fails.
Be sure to take the note of the conflict report: which properties are affected, and
what the Plan value and the Available value are.
Clicking OK at this page will initiate setting the subscription values according to the
available values, Cancel will leave everything unchanged.
Once you have identified the problem, you can resolve it. There are two possible ways:
1. Fine-tune the plan to conform to the system actual state.
2. Fine-tune the system to provide resources and services offered with the plan.

 To change the plan properties to conform to the system:
1. Go to Service plans > .
2. Adjust values of the problem properties so that they correspond to the
Available values (see above).
3. Click Update & Sync.
The subscriptions will be synced automatically.

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 To adjust the system and re-sync a subscription:
1. Adjust your system: install missing components, add hard disks whatever is indicated by the conflict report.
2. Go to Subscriptions, and click the unsynced subscription name.
3. Click Sync.
The Panel will retry syncing the subscription with associated plans.

Setting Up Hosting Plans
To create a hosting service plan in Panel, run the Service Plans > Add New Plan wizard in
the Server Administration Panel.
During the plan creation process, you will be prompted to specify various plan
parameters. Learn more next in this section.
If you already have service plans and want to create plans with similar settings, you
can create copies of these plans by clicking Clone Plans on the Service Plans page and
then edit the copies as described in this section.
Once the plan has been created, you are ready to start serving your customers. In
other words, you can create customer accounts and subscriptions. Learn more in the
section Subscribing Customers to Plans (on page 312).

Next in this section:
Specify Plan Properties ..................................................................................... 309
Offer Additional Services ................................................................................... 309

Customers and Resellers

309

Specify Plan Properties
When creating a plan, you are prompted to specify a number of service plan
parameters. These parameters are grouped with a number of tabs:
Properties of a hosting plan and subscription are grouped as follows:


Resources
These are hosting resources provided with a plan. Includes validity period, policy on
overusing resources, system resources like disk space and traffic, and service
resources like websites, subdomains, mailboxes, databases and so on. For
example, the Domains resources sets the number of domains that a customer can
register and manage in Panel.



Permissions
Includes provided services and privileges.
Note: Some permissions prevent settings of the corresponding services from
syncing (on page 306).



Hosting Parameters
Includes parameters of the provided hosting service.



PHP Settings
Includes the customizable PHP settings. The PHP settings have a great importance
as they affect the work of the major part of web applications. Learn more about how
to adjust PHP settings for service plans in the section PHP Configuration (on page
50).



Mail
Includes parameters of the provided mail service.



DNS
Specifies if the DNS zones of the subscription's domains should be master or slave.
Note: In case the DNS zone management privilege is provided, this parameter is not
synced, and subscribers can set up this parameter on a per-domain basis.



Performance
Includes parameters that affect performance of all services provided with the plan.



Logs & Statistics
Includes settings of how statistics and logs of the plan's subscriptions should be
stored



Applications
Lets you select which applications should be available to subscribers.

Learn more about hosting plan properties in the Appendix A: Properties of Plans and
Subscriptions (on page 558).

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Offer Additional Services
In addition to the hosting services and features provided by your plan, you can expand
the offering by using the following means:


Install third-party applications packaged as Panel extensions and include the
services they provide into your hosting plans.
When such an extension is installed, the service provided by it is registered in
Panel and is made available for inclusion into hosting plans by the server
administrator and resellers: The option corresponding to the new service is listed in
hosting plan properties, on the Additional Services tab.



Add custom options to plans.
If you, for example, run an online support service at http://premiumsupport.example.com, and want to include the support option into a service
plan, you should set up a custom plan option:
1. Go to Service Plans > Additional Services > Add Service.
2. Specify service name (Premium support), service description, and select the
option to place a button to Control Panel with the link to the online service
(http://premium-support.example.com).
After this is done, a new tab called Additional Services appears in hosting plan
settings. It shows your Premium support option which you or your resellers can select
for provisioning to customers.

 To add a service provided by an application packaged as an extension:
Install the extension according to the instructions provided in the Installation, Upgrade,
and Migration Guide, chapter Installing Panel Extensions, or use the instructions provided by
the extension packager.

 To add a service as a custom plan option:
1. Go to Service Plans > Additional Services tab.
2. Click Add Service.
3. Specify the following:


Service name.



Service description.



Use custom button for the service. Select this checkbox to place a hyperlink to your
online service or a web application to subscriber's Control Panel.



URL attached to the button. Specify the Internet address where the user should be
directed after clicking the button. For example: http://premiumsupport.example.com.



Background image for the button. If you do not select an image, the Panel will use
the default image .



Open URL in the Panel. Leave this checkbox cleared if you want the external web
resource to open in a new browser window or tab.

Customers and Resellers



311

If you want the Panel to send the customer and subscription information with the
HTTP request, specify what information should be included:


Subscription ID.



Primary domain name associated with a subscription.



FTP account username and password.



Customer's account ID, name, e-mail, and company name.

4. Click OK.

 If you do not want to let your resellers use an additional service and
provision it to their customers:
1. Go to Service Plans > Additional Services tab.
2. Select a checkbox corresponding to the service and click Make
Unavailable.

 To let resellers use an additional service and provision it to their
customers:
1. Go to Service Plans > Additional Services tab.
2. Select a checkbox corresponding to the service and click Make Available.

 To remove a custom plan option from service plan properties:
1. Go to Service Plans > Additional Services tab.
2. Select a checkbox corresponding to the service and click Remove Service.

 To remove an additional service provided by an extension:
Remove the extension from the Panel.

Setting Up Add-on Plans
Add-on plans extend the amount of resources and services provided with a
subscription (for example, additional gigabytes of disk space or Perl scripting language
support). A subscription can be associated with several add-ons, but each add-on can
be added to the subscription only once.
To create an add-on plan, start the wizard Service Plans > Add New Add-on and specify
the plan properties (on page 558).

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Subscribing Customers to Plans
If you do not use billing automation, then to start serving a customer in Panel, you
should create a customer account and subscribe the customer to a service plan. Any
user can be subscribed to several service plans simultaneously, meaning that they will
have several service subscriptions, some of which may be custom, and some of which
may be associated with different add-on and service plans.
Subscribing a new customer generally means creating the customer account together
with their first subscription. However, starting from Parallels Plesk Panel 10.2, you can
also create customer accounts without subscriptions. This can be useful if you do not
need to set up a website for a customer at the moment, and want to transfer a
subscription from another customer account, or set up a subscription later. Note that
customers without subscriptions cannot log in to the Control Panel.

 To create a new customer account without a subscription:
1. Go to Customers, and click Add New Customer.
2. Specify the customer's contact and billing information, Control Panel
account user name and password.
3. Clear the Create subscription for the customer checkbox.
4. Click OK.

 To subscribe a new customer to a service plan and, optionally, add-ons:
1. Go to Customers, and click Add New Customer.
2. Specify the customer contact/billing information, user name and
password, attributes of the domain linked with the subscription.
3. Select a service plan with which the subscription should be associated.
4. Select add-on plans if you wish to add any.
5. Leave the Proceed to customizing the subscription... checkbox cleared.
6. Click OK.

 To subscribe a new customer to a service plan and add-ons on specific
terms (customize subscription associated with plans):
1. Go to Customers, and click Add New Customer.
2. Specify the customer contact/billing information, user name and
password, attributes of the domain linked with the subscription.
3. Select a service plan and add-ons.
4. Select the Proceed to customizing the subscription... checkbox.
5. Click OK.

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313

The customer account and the subscription will be created, and the Panel will offer
to customize such subscription properties (on page 558) as resources and
permissions. Customizing hosting, mail, DNS service parameters is not available in
the Server Administration Panel.

6. Customize the subscription properties.
7. Click Update & Lock.
The customized subscription will get locked for syncing, it will not be synced with
the service plan or add-ons in case they change. For details, refer to the section
Relationship Between Plans and Subscriptions (on page 306).

 To subscribe a new customer to your services on specific terms (create
custom subscription):
1. Go to Customers, and click Add New Customer.
2. Specify the customer contact/billing information, user name and
password, attributes of the domain linked with the subscription.
3. Select None next to the Service plan.
The subscription properties will be set according to the Panel default service plan.

4. Leave the Proceed to customizing the subscription... checkbox selected.
5. Click OK.
The customer account and their custom subscription will be created. For details on
custom subscriptions, refer to the section Relationship Between Plans and Subscriptions
(on page 306).
The Panel will offer to customize such subscription properties (on page 558) as
resources and permissions. Customizing hosting, mail, DNS service parameters is
not available in the Server Administration Panel.

6. Customize the subscription properties.
7. Click OK.

 To add a subscription to host your own websites and mail:
1. Go to Subscriptions, and click Add New Subscription.
2. Specify attributes of the domain provisioned with the subscription,
service plan and add-ons.
3. Optionally, select the Proceed to customizing the subscription... checkbox.
4. Click OK.

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Managing Customers
Once you create a customer account, you can perform the following operations with it:

Changing Contact Information
 To change a customer's contact information:
1. Go to Customers, and click the in the list.
2. Click Edit Contact Info.
3. Update the information, and click OK.

Changing Username and Password
 To change username and password a customer uses to access Control
Panel:
1. Go to Customers, and click the in the list.
2. Click Change Login Info.
Update password and username, and click OK.
Note: The Panel does not notify customers upon the login information change
automatically. What is more important is that a customer must provide their username
and e-mail address to retrieve their password. So be sure to update your customers on
login information changes, especially if you change their username. Otherwise, they
will not be able to use the Panel.

Suspending Accounts
Access to the Panel is blocked for suspended customers and Control Panel users that
they created. The customer's subscriptions are suspended, too, meaning that their
websites, FTP and mail services will no longer be accessible to the internet users.

 To suspend a customer's account:
1. Go to Customers, and click the in the list.
2. Click Suspend.

Customers and Resellers

 To suspend several accounts at once:
1. Go to Customers.
2. (Optional) Filter out active accounts:
a. Click the

button next to the search field above the list.

This will open the list filter.

b. Under the Status filter, select Active.
3. Select target accounts in the list.
4. Click More Actions > Suspend.

Activating Accounts
Once an account is activated, all its subscriptions are activated, too, and all the
services start working properly.

 To activate a customer account:
1. Go to Customers, and click the in the list.
2. Click Activate.

 To activate several accounts at once:
1. Go to Customers.
2. (Optional) Filter out suspended accounts:
a. Click the

button next to the search field above the list.

This will open the list filter.

b. Under the Status filter, select Suspended.
3. Select target accounts in the list.
4. Click More Actions > Activate.

315

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Customers and Resellers

Removing Accounts
Once a customer account is removed, all customer's subscriptions and websites are
removed as well.

 To remove customer accounts:
1. Go to Customers, and select the accounts you want to remove.
2. Click Remove.
3. Click Yes at the confirmation box.

Managing Customers in Business Manager
If you installed the Customer and Business Manager component and configured it to
work with your Panel, then the following additional links are available in Panel:



Business Manager.
Billing Details.



Invoices.




Payment History.
Generate Outstanding Invoices (in the More Business Operations menu).



Create Invoice (in the More Business Operations menu).



Credits (in the More Business Operations menu).



Billing Accounts (in the More Business Operations menu).

Use these links for managing customer accounts in Business Manager. Learn how to
manage customer accounts in Business Manager in the section Administering
Customers in Business Manager.

Customers and Resellers

317

Managing Subscriptions
Once a customer is subscribed to a service plan, you can perform operations with their
subscription. In order to perform operations on a subscription, you should first find it
among other subscriptions. Naturally the information you have about a subscription in
question is not full, for example, it may be only the domain name hosted on your
server. Even in this situation, it is easy to find the required subscription using the
Domains page in Server Administration Panel. The page provides facilities to find a
domain, a subdomain, a domain alias, a customer account, or a company by name. On
this page, you can find relations between domain names and subscriptions and also
get the following valuable information:


The hosting type associated with a domain name.



The indication if a domain name is an alias.

Moreover, you can instantly view the content of each website from the list.
The following operations with subscriptions are available.

Changing Subscription's Hosting Settings
These include: the IP address on which the subscription's websites are hosted,
database servers that the websites use by default, and credentials of a system user
account linked with the subscription (used to manage files and folders of websites
within the subscription, and to access the server via SSH or Remote Desktop).

 To change a subscription's hosting settings:
1. Go to Subscriptions, and click the in the list.
2. Click Change Hosting Settings.
3. Update the information, and click OK.

Transferring Subscriptions to Another User
This means that you change owner of subscriptions, or, in other words, reassign
subscriptions to another user: another customer, reseller, or yourself. In this case, the
subscriptions are automatically unbound from their plans and become custom.
Note: Since Panel 10.4, customers can restrict auxiliary users to accessing only a
specified subscription within their hosting account. For this purpose, user roles have
the corresponding permission. When you transfer the subscription that has such an
attached user role, the role with all its users is also transferred to the new subscriber.

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Customers and Resellers

 To transfer a subscription to another user:
1. Go to Subscriptions, and click the in the list.
2. Click Change Subscriber.
3. Select a new subscriber and click Next >>.
4. Review the information about the changes to be made to the
subscription settings and click OK.

 To transfer several subscriptions to another user:
1. Go to Subscriptions.
2. Select the subscriptions you want to reassign.
3. Click Change Subscriber.
4. Select a new subscriber and click Next >>.
5. Review the information about the changes to be made to the
subscription settings and click OK.

Suspending Subscriptions
Panel suspends subscriptions automatically if their expiration date passes. In addition,
you can suspend a subscription manually. This may be useful, for example, in case a
website hosted within the subscription gets attacked.
The behavior of websites in suspended subscriptions is defined by one of the statuses
(active, suspended, disabled) that you select in a service plan or subscription settings
(Hosting Parameters > Status of websites in suspended subscriptions). Websites, FTP and
mail services of suspended subscriptions are no longer available to the Internet users,
unless the Active status for websites was selected. For more information about
websites in suspended subscriptions, see Hosting Parameters (on page 568) of service
plans and subscriptions.

 To suspend a subscription:
1. Go to Subscriptions, and click the in the list.
2. Click Suspend.

Customers and Resellers

 To suspend several subscriptions at once:
1. Go to Subscriptions.
2. (Optional) Filter out active subscriptions:
a. Click the

button next to the search field above the list.

This will open the list filter.

b. Under the Status filter, select Active.
3. Select target subscriptions in the list.
4. Click Suspend.

Activating Manually Suspended Subscriptions
Once a subscription is activated, all the services provided with it start working.
Note: Activating a subscription manually is good only for the subscriptions that were
suspended manually. If you activate in such a way an expired subscription, it will be
automatically suspended the next day. In such cases, renew the subscription as
described further in this section.

 To activate a subscription:
1. Go to Subscriptions, and click the in the list.
2. Click Activate.

 To activate several subscriptions at once:
1. Go to Subscriptions.
2. (Optional) Filter out suspended subscriptions:
a. Click the

button next to the search field above the list.

This will open the list filter.

b. Under the Status filter, select Suspended.
3. Select target subscriptions in the list.
4. Click Activate.

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Renewing Expired Subscriptions
The Panel does not renew subscriptions automatically, so it suspends a subscription
when the subscription expiration date comes.

 To renew an expired subscription:
1. Go to Subscriptions, and click the in the list.
2. Click Activate.
3. Click Customize.
4. On the Resources tab, set up a new expiration date, or select Unlimited.
5. Click Update & Lock.
Note: After this step, the system will not apply further changes of the plan settings
to this subscription. If you try to sync this subscription with the plan, the subscription
will expire again unless you set the Unlimited validity period for this plan.

Removing Subscriptions
 To remove subscriptions:
1. Go to Subscriptions, and select the ones you want to remove.
2. Click Remove.
3. Click Yes at the confirmation box.

Managing Subscriptions in Business Manager
If you installed the Customer and Business Manager component and configured it to
work with your Panel, then the following additional links are available in the Panel:


Business Manager.



Billing Details.



Upgrade.




Downgrade.
Add-ons

Use these links for managing subscriptions in Business Manager. Learn how to
manage subscriptions in Business Manager in the section Managing Subscriptions.

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321

Serving Non-Technical Customers
Some of your customers may lack technical background in system administration, so it
is natural for them to feel uncomfortable when they see the full set of tools that Control
Panel offers. Even worse, they may corrupt configuration files and complicate
troubleshooting if they attempt to use the tools. To avoid these situations and present
your customers with a simple and lightweight Control Panel, we recommend that you
subscribe them to the Default Simple hosting plan available in Service Plans > the
Hosting Plans tab.
This plan allows customers to self service only simple routine operations leaving more
complex tasks to your support service. Though it already contains only the most
frequently used and popular tools, you are free to fine-grain the plan settings.
If you do not intend to create special plans for such audience, it is possible to limit the
number of tools and settings on the per-subscription basis using the instructions we
provide in this section. The instructions below explain how to achieve the successful
user interface simplification: Practically, you should hide resources and tools your
customers are not going to use.

Hiding Redundant Resources
The idea of this modification is straightforward: In hosting plan or subscription settings,
the Resources tab, set all unused limits to 0. According to Visibility of Hosting Features in
the Control Panel (on page 560), this will hide such resources in Control Panel.
For example, if you set the mailboxes limit to 0, the Mail tab will not be shown in Control
Panel. Read more about the resources in the Resources section.

Hiding Redundant Tools
The set of tools available to customers in Control Panel is defined by the subscription
or plan settings, the Permissions tab. For example, if you clear the DNS zone management
option, the tools to manage DNS will not be shown in Control Panel. Read more about
the permissions in the Permissions section.

Resources and Tools of Default Simple
Initially, the Default Simple hosting plan includes the following tools:


Web Hosting Access




Presence Builder
File Manager



Website Statistics



Secure Your Site with SSL




Applications
Databases

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Customers and Resellers

Reseller Plans
If your business model employs resellers, plans and subscriptions work in almost the
same way as for hosting service customers (on page 306). The differences are as
follows:


In this case, we use the terms reseller plans and reseller subscriptions.



Reseller add-on plans are not implemented.



A reseller subscription is not linked to a domain; a reseller subscription provides a
set of resources and services that the subscribed resellers redistribute by means of
service subscriptions belonging to their customers or to themselves.

Note that the Panel business model has some limitations. It is not possible to:


Convert customer accounts into reseller accounts.



Move customer accounts from one reseller to another. You can perform this
operation indirectly by moving the customer subscription from one account to
another. For more details on how to change a subscription owner, refer to the
section Managing Customers and Subscriptions.

This section will guide you through the process of creating a reseller plan and starting
to serve resellers.

Next in this section:
Setting Up Reseller Plans.................................................................................. 323
Subscribing Resellers to Plans .......................................................................... 323

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Setting Up Reseller Plans
Serving resellers is quite similar to serving hosting customers.
If you use Panel without any automation solution, then to start serving resellers, you
should:
1. Create a reseller plan by running the Service Plans > Reseller Plans > Add New Plan
wizard in the Server Administration Panel or clone an existing reseller plan by
clicking Clone Plans.
2. Define plan properties. Learn more about reseller plan properties in Appendix B:
Properties of Reseller Plans and Subscriptions (on page 575).
3. When a reseller is ready to subscribe to the plan, create the reseller account and
subscription. Learn more in the section Subscribing Resellers to Plans (on page 323).

Subscribing Resellers to Plans
If you do not use billing automation, then to start serving a reseller in Panel, you should
create a reseller account and subscribe them to a reseller plan.

 To subscribe a new reseller to a reseller plan:
1. Go to Resellers, and click Add New Reseller.
2. Specify the reseller contact/billing information, user name and
password.
3. Select a reseller plan with which the subscription should be associated.
4. Leave the Proceed to customizing the subscription... checkbox cleared.
5. Click OK.

CHAPTER 15

Website Management
As described in the chapter How Panel Works, one of the Panel's main functions is
simplified administration of hosted websites, mailboxes, and other network resources.
You can use hosting resources on your server for your own needs as well as for selling
these resources to customers: For example, you can set up your corporate website or
mailbox on the Panel server.
Setting Up Your Own Subscriptions (Webspaces)
To set up your own hosting account, create a webspace in the Server Administration
Panel, Home > My Webspaces group. A webspace is a subscription to the Unlimited
service plan (a plan with unlimited resources). During webspace creation, you will be
prompted to specify a domain name for the webspace and access credentials. The
webspace will appear in the list on the Subscription page together with your customers'
subscriptions. To start creating your website or editing the subscription settings, click
the Open in Control Panel link next to the subscription name. A list of operations available
to you in the Control Panel is provided in the table below.
Each webspace opens in the Power User view. This view combines management of
own hosting accounts and server administration capabilities. In turn, actions related to
hosting plans, resellers, and customers are still performed in the Server Administration
Panel.
To switch back to serving hosting customers and resellers, click Go back to Server
Administration Panel at the top of Control Panel pages.
For more information about Power User view, see the section The Panel GUI (on page 20).
Helping Customers Manage Their Subscriptions
Your customers have different levels of technical expertise and, therefore, may have
problems with managing certain settings of their subscriptions. To assist your
customers, you can log in to the Control Panel under a customer's account and edit
their websites and subscription properties as your own ones. To start managing a
customer's subscription in the Control Panel, find this subscription in the list on the
Subscriptions page and click Open in Control Panel.
Operating in Control Panel
Operations related to managing hosting accounts, such as managing websites content,
adding and removing mailboxes, changing hosting settings, and so on, are available to
you in a separate interface called the Control Panel.

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The sections of this chapter explain how to perform hosting operations in the Control
Panel. The instructions are applicable to your own subscriptions and subscriptions of
your customers. This means that when we say your website, your subscription, and so
on, we imply both your own and your customers' websites or subscriptions. The table
below lists the sections of this chapter and briefly describes what you can learn from
them.
Section

Description

Quick Start with Parallels Panel

Explains the workflow of setting up a website and a mail
account in the Control Panel.

Customer Account Administration

Explains how to view and manage account settings,
subscriptions, invoices, and resources in the Control Panel.

Websites and Domains

Explains how to create websites, fill them with content, add
applications, and configure subscriptions' properties related
to websites and domain names.

Building Websites with Presence Builder

Provides instructions on creating websites using Presence
Builder - a visual website editor coming in a bundle with
Panel.

FTP Access to Your Websites

Explains how to set up access to websites over the FTP for
subscribers and auxiliary users.

Mail

Describes how to set up mail accounts and configure mail
settings under subscriptions.

Scheduling Tasks

Provides instructions on configuring Panel to automatically
run scripts at specific time.

Website Databases

Explains how to use databases under subscriptions: create
new databases, import existing ones, or access external
databases.

Backing Up and Recovering Websites

Provides instructions on backing up and restoring data of
certain customer subscriptions on behalf of subscribers.

In this chapter:
Quick Start with Parallels Panel......................................................................... 326
Customer Account Administration ..................................................................... 350
Websites and Domains ..................................................................................... 377
Creating Sites with Presence Builder ................................................................ 467
FTP Access to Your Websites ........................................................................... 521
Mail Accounts .................................................................................................... 526
Scheduling Tasks .............................................................................................. 537
Website Databases ........................................................................................... 542
Backing Up and Recovering Websites............................................................... 547

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Quick Start with Parallels Panel
According to the latest studies, the Internet has become the most popular source of
information in the world, leaving far behind all traditional media such as TV or
newspapers. Nowadays, the first thing people do when trying to find services is to
searching for them on the web. Thus, a proper web presence is vital for every
business. There are a number of ways you can present your company on the Web. A
web presence may be as simple as a contacts page, or as complex as a large
company website with access to an ERP system. In both cases, you should perform
the same steps to get your business online.
Before proceeding any further, you will need to take the following two essential steps:


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



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

These two elements - an account for web hosting management and a domain name
make up your website.
In this chapter, we will explain how to create your first website, fill it with content, create
mailboxes for users of the site, and, finally, view the site visits statistics.

Advanced Hosting Features
Once you are comfortable with basic Panel capabilities, try out some advanced hosting
features: Expand website functionality by installing web applications (on page 421),
secure your sites with SSL certificates (on page 430), employ databases, and much
more.
Note: Hosting providers can turn off some of the advanced features to make your
Control Panel look simple and user friendly. We have used the (Advanced) prefix to
designate the sections about features that may be turned off. If you require one of the
advanced options, contact your hosting provider.

Next in this section:
Set Up Your First Website ................................................................................. 327
Set Up Mail Accounts ........................................................................................ 331
View Site Visit Statistics .................................................................................... 350

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Set Up Your First Website
Now that you have a customer account and a domain name, the first thing you will want to do
is create a website. The information about the possible ways to do it is provided in the
section 1. Create Your Site (on page 327)
When your site is ready, you may want to take a look at the result in your browser. Learn
how to do it in the section 2. Preview your Site (on page 330).

Next in this section:
1. Create Your Site ............................................................................................ 327
2. Preview Your Site .......................................................................................... 330

1. Create Your Site
There are three general ways to create a website:


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



Create a site by yourself using Presence Builder - the powerful tool that allows you to
create professional-looking websites in a few mouse clicks. Learn more in the section
Presence Builder (on page 328).



Create your website in a third-party Content Management System - an editor that allows
you to easily create and edit website content such as pages, scripts, applications, and so
on. To learn more about creating sites in third-party content management systems, see
the section Content Management Systems (on page 328).

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

Using FTP. Learn more in the section Uploading Content Using FTP (on page 330).



Using an integrated File Manager. Learn more in the section Uploading Content with File
Manager (on page 330).

Next in this section:
Presence Builder............................................................................................... 328
Content Management Systems ......................................................................... 328
Uploading Content ............................................................................................ 329

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Presence Builder
Presence Builder is a tool that enables users with no knowledge of HTML markup or graphic
design skills to create professional-looking sites. This tool provides a simple visual editor and
a huge set of templates for different websites. The editor allows you to create web pages,
add content of different types (text, images, video, scripts), and edit website settings such as
website name, keywords, icons, and so on.
To create websites in Presence Builder, ensure that your hosting subscription includes this
option. If it does not, choose another way or upgrade your subscription.

 To create a website with Presence Builder:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click your domain name.
2. Click the link Launch Presence Builder.
3. Select a topic that best suits your website.
4. Edit the website:
a. Structure: add more pages, remove the predefined pages that you do
not need.
b. Content: change the predefined content to your own, add text,
images, videos, scripts, and other required elements.
c. Design: change the layout and color scheme.
5. Publish the website.
Find more information about creating websites with Presence Builder in the section Building
Websites with Presence Builder (on page 467).

Content Management Systems
Content Management Systems (or CMS) are applications that provide a graphical user
interface for adding and editing website content: pages, scripts, files, multimedia content, and
so on.
Before you can create a website in a third-party CMS, you should install the CMS on your
hosting account. Note that you can install the CMS only if your hosting subscription allows it.

 To create a website using a CMS:
1. Go to the Applications tab.
2. Find the CMS you need in the list of available applications, and install it as
described in the section Using Website Applications (on page 421).
3. Create your website in the CMS. For information about creating websites
with your CMS, refer to the relevant documentation.

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329

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

Using FTP. This way is better when several people manage a website's content because
it does not require access to your customer account. You can just create FTP users for
them. Learn more about this method in the section Uploading Content Using FTP (on page
330).



Using Control Panel File Manager. This way is more convenient since it uses the Control
Panel GUI and provides a set of useful features, for example, a visual HTML editor and a
file permissions manager. Find more information on the features of File Manager in the
section Uploading Content with File Manager (on page 330).

Next in this section:
Uploading Content Using FTP........................................................................... 330
Uploading Content with File Manager ............................................................... 330

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Website Management

Uploading Content Using FTP
 To publish a website using FTP:
1. Connect to your webspace on the server with an FTP client program, using
your FTP account username and password.
You can change your username and password in the Panel at the Websites & Domains tab
> Web Hosting Access.
The FTP address should be ftp://your-domain-name.com, where your-domain-name.com
is your site's Internet address.
Enable the passive mode if you are behind a firewall.

2. Upload the files and directories of your site to the httpdocs directory. If you
use CGI scripts, place them in the cgi-bin directory.
3. Close your FTP session.
You can also set up additional FTP accounts if you need to collaborate on website content
with other users. For more information, see the section Adding FTP Accounts (on page 522).

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

Edit HTML files in the visual editor.




Preview website pages.
Edit files in the text editor.



Manage the files' access permissions.

Learn more about uploading and editing website files and folders with File Manager in the
section Managing Website Content (on page 413).

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

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

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331

2. Go the Websites & Domains tab.
3. Click Preview below the domain name of the website that you want to preview.
You site will open in a new browser window.
Note: The contents of password-protected directories might be inaccessible in the Preview
mode.
Sometimes, you may need to show your site to someone when your domain name is not
registered yet. There are several ways to do it without giving a person access to your
customer account. Learn more in the section Previewing Websites (on page 420).

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

Next in this section:
1. Create Mail Account ...................................................................................... 332
2. Access Your Mailbox ..................................................................................... 333

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Website Management

1. Create Mail Account
 To create an e-mail address:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Click the Mail tab.
3. Click Create E-mail Address.
4. Type the left part of the e-mail address before the @ sign, and, if you have
several domain names on your account, select the domain name under
which the e-mail address will be created.
5. Leave the Mailbox checkbox selected.
Clearing this checkbox makes sense only if you want to use this address as a mail
forwarder, which will forward all incoming mail to another address.

6. Specify the mailbox size or use the default size defined by the provider's
policy or your service plan.
7. Specify a password consisting of five or more Latin characters.
8. Click OK.

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2. Access Your Mailbox
There are two ways to access a mailbox for sending and receiving e-mail messages:


Set up and use an e-mail client program on your computer. Typically, in such programs
you should specify the following settings:


Username. In this field, specify your full e-mail address. For example,
johndoe@example.com.



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



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



Incoming mail server (POP3/IMAP). Type your domain name. For example,
example.com. The POP3 port is 110. The IMAP port is 143.



Outgoing mail server (SMTP). Type your domain name. For example, example.com.
The SMTP port is 25. This server requires authentication.

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

Use a web browser to connect to the webmail interface.

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

Next in this section:
Access from Webmail ........................................................................................ 333
Access from Microsoft Office Outlook ................................................................ 334
Access from Microsoft Outlook Express ............................................................ 338
Access from Mozilla Thunderbird ...................................................................... 342
Access from Apple Mail ..................................................................................... 345

Access from Webmail
 To access your mailbox through webmail, do any of the following:


In a Web browser, visit the URL webmail.example.com, where example.com is the
Internet address of your website. When prompted, specify your full e-mail address as the
username (for example, mail@example.com), and specify the password that you use
for logging in to the Panel.



When logged in to the Panel, click the Mail tab, and in the list of e-mail addresses, click
an icon
corresponding to the e-mail address you need.

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Access from Microsoft Office Outlook
 To set up Microsoft Office Outlook 2010:
1. Open Microsoft Office Outlook.
2. Go to File > Info > Add Account.
3. Select the checkbox Manually configure server settings or additional server types.
Click Next.

Website Management

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

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5. Specify the following:


Your name.



Your e-mail address.



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



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



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



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



Password. Most likely, this password coincides with the password you use for logging
in to Panel.



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

Website Management

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

7. Click Next.
8. Click Finish.

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

 To set up Microsoft Outlook Express:
1. Open Microsoft Outlook Express.
2. Go to Tools > Accounts.
3. Click the Add button and select the Mail item.
4. Enter your name as you want it to appear in any messages you send, and
click Next.

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

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6. Specify the following settings:


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



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



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

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7. Click Next.
8. Specify the following:


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



Your password. Most likely, this password coincides with the password you use for
logging in to the Panel.



Remember password checkbox. Leave it selected if you do not want to be prompted to
enter password each time your e-mail program connects to the mail server to check
for new mail, and click Next.

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

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

 To set up Mozilla Thunderbird:
1. Open Mozilla Thunderbird.
2. Go to Tools > Account Settings > Account Actions > Add Mail Account.
3. Specify the following:


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



Your e-mail address and password.

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4. Click Continue.
5. If Thunderbird fails to find the settings automatically, specify the following:


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Website Management

6. Click Create Account.

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

Connection security: STARTTLS



Authentication method: Encrypted password
On Windows, IMAP:



Connection security: None



Authentication method: Encrypted password
On Windows, POP3:



Connection security: None

Authentication method: Password, transmitted insecurely Other parameters that you may need
when configuring your account manually:



POP3 port: 110
IMAP port: 143



SMTP port: 25



Username. Your full e-mail address. For example: johndoe@example.com.



Incoming server address (POP3/IMAP). Specify your website's Internet address. Example:
example.com
Outgoing server address. Specify your website's Internet address. Example: example.com



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

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

2. Open the Adding Mail Account wizard:
a. Click Mail > Preferences....
b. Select the Accounts tab.
c. Click the + button at the bottom left corner.
3. Enter the account information:


Your full name



Your full e-mail address



The password you use to log in to the Panel.

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4. Click Continue.
5. Fill in the following incoming mail server information:


Account Type: select whether you want to use IMAP or POP protocol.
We recommend selecting IMAP if you use SpamAssassin as a spam filtering solution:
IMAP account is a requirement for SpamAssassin learning which messages are spam
and which are not.



Incoming Mail Server: type in the name of domain which serves your mail (which follows
the @ sign in your e-mail address).



User Name: enter your full e-mail address.



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

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6. Click Continue.
7. (Optional) Specify the incoming mail security options:
a. Select the Use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) checkbox.
b. Select the authentication method.
Keep the default method if you are not sure which to select.
Apple Mail displays this setup screen only if a mail server bundled with Panel supports
SSL for the selected account type (POP or IMAP).

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8. Click Continue.
9. Fill in the following outgoing mail server information:


Outgoing Mail Server: type in the name of domain which serves your mail (which follows
the @ sign in your e-mail address).



Use only this server: selected.



Use Authentication: selected.



User Name: enter your full e-mail address.



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

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

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

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

 To find out how many people visited a site, from what countries, and what
pages of the site they viewed:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name for which you
want to view the statictics
3. Click Web Statistics.
The site visitor statistics will show in a new browser window.

4. To view statistics for web pages viewed from the SSL-secured area of your
site, select SSL Web Statistics in the menu.
5. To view statistics for files downloaded over the file transfer protocol (FTP),
select FTP Statistics in the menu.
Alternately, you can view the visits statistics for a site by visiting the following URL:
https://your-domain.com/plesk-stat/webstat. When prompted for username and password,
specify your FTP account username and password.
You have successfully completed the quick start part of the guide. Feel free to read about
other features that are available to you in the Control Panel.

Customer Account Administration
As described in the section Quick Start with Parallels Panel, the first step in establishing your
company's web presence is signing up to the services provided by a hosting company
(hosting provider). After you subscribe to a hosting plan, a customer account in Panel is
created to enable you to log in to Panel and use the hosting services and resources like
mailboxes, disk space, and bandwidth.

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

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Another reason for using multiple subscriptions is that subscription is limited to only one IPv4
and one IPv6 address. Thus, all domains within a subscription share the same IP address
(v4 or v6). If you need to host sites on different IP addresses, you should additionally order
the same plan for as many IP addresses as you need. This can be useful, for example, if you
want to secure connections to each of your sites with a separate SSL certificate. For
information on how to purchase an additional subscription, refer to the section Ordering More
Resources (on page 366).
If you have multiple subscriptions under a single customer account, you can easily switch
among them from the Account tab. To be more specific, the Account tab provides access to
operations that apply to all your subscriptions. All other tabs (like Mail, Users, or Domains &
Websites) are, on the contrary, subscription-wide. This means that to change mail settings on
a particular subscription, you should first switch to it before clicking Mail.

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

Adding Resources to a Subscription
Purchasing a new subscription for extending hosting resources is not always necessary. You
can always improve just one of your subscriptions. For example, add extra disk space or SSL
support. This can be done by switching to another hosting plan or by purchasing hosting plan
add-ons. Learn more in the section Ordering More Resources (on page 366).

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

Change an account password and personal information. Learn more in the section
Changing Your Password and Contact Information (on page 354).



View the list of services and resources provided by subscription on the Account tab. For
detailed information about all subscription features, refer to the section Viewing
Subscription Summary (on page 355).



Make payments to renew your subscription. Learn more in the section Managing Account
Balance and Invoices (on page 362).



View statistics on your account: For example, disk space or traffic usage. Learn more in
the section Viewing Statistics (on page 368).

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Allowing Other Users to Access Your Account
If the number of hosting maintenance operations is too large to be handled by one person,
you can delegate some of them to other people. For this purpose, you can create auxiliary
user accounts grouped by means of user roles. For example, you can create a group that is
allowed to only upload content to websites. Users in this group will not be able to perform
any operations except for managing website content. For more information about auxiliary
users, refer to the section (Advanced) Managing Auxiliary User Accounts (on page 370).

Next in this section:
Changing Your Password and Contact Information ........................................... 354
Viewing Subscription Summary ......................................................................... 355
Managing Account Balance and Invoices .......................................................... 362
Ordering More Resources ................................................................................. 366
Viewing Statistics .............................................................................................. 368
(Advanced) Managing Auxiliary User Accounts ................................................. 370

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Changing Your Password and Contact Information
 To change your password for access to the Control Panel:
1. Click a link with your name at the top of the screen.
2. Type a new password, and click OK.

 To change a username or password that you use for connecting to your
subscription over FTP or SSH:
1. Click the Websites & Domains tab.
2. Click Web Hosting Access.
3. Type the new username or password, and click OK.

 To change your contact information:
1. Click a link with your name at the top of the screen.
2. Click the Contact Details tab.
3. Update your contact information and click OK.

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Viewing Subscription Summary
When you subscribe to hosting services, a user account is created in the Panel to allow you
to manage your websites and mailboxes on your own.
You can view the following information about your account:


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



Allocated and consumed resources.



Hosting features available for your websites.



Operations you can perform in your Panel.



Account balance, unpaid invoices, and monthly fee for your hosting package.

 To view the information about your account and your current subscriptions:
1. Click the Account tab.
A list of your current subscriptions is shown.

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

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



Due invoices balance. This is how much money you owe to your provider. Here, you can
pay all invoices at once by clicking Pay All Outstanding Invoices, or pay one of invoices
by clicking a Pay Now link in the list titled Latest Outstanding Invoices. You can also view
all invoices by clicking the link Show all invoices, or print an invoice by clicking an
invoice number and then clicking Print.



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



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

View subscription properties by clicking a link with subscription name.



Select a subscription that you want to manage through the Control Panel by
clicking the corresponding link Switch to Subscription.



Order an SSL certificate for a site by clicking Request SSL Certificate. This operation
is described in the section Ordering SSL Certificates.



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



View or change domain information, contact information, and DNS settings
specified at a registrar's site, by clicking Show Domain Info. These operations are
described in the section Registrar's DNS Settings in Panel (on page 392).

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3. To view detailed information about resource allotments, available hosting
options, and permissions for operations, click a subscription's name.
4. Do any of the following:


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



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



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

Next in this section:
Allocated and Consumed Resources................................................................. 357
Hosting Features Available for Your Websites ................................................... 359

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

Disk space. This is the total amount of disk space allocated to your account with
subscription. This amount includes all data related to your websites, e-mail accounts,
applications, backups, and log files.



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



Domains. This is the number of websites that can have separate second-level domain
names, such as, for example, example.com.
For information about setting up websites, refer to the sections Set Up Your First Website
(on page 327) and Adding Domains (on page 379).



Subdomains. This is the number of additional websites that can have third-level domain
names, such as, for example, news.example.com.
For information about setting up subdomains, refer to the section Adding Subdomains (on
page 381).



Domain aliases. This is the number of additional domain names that can be set up to point
to one of your sites. For example, example.fr and example.de can both point to
example.com.
For information about setting up domain aliases, refer to the section Adding Domain Aliases
(on page 383).



Mailboxes. This is the number of mailboxes that can be created under all your websites.
For information about creating mailboxes, refer to the chapter Mail.



Mailbox size. This is the amount of disk space that can be occupied by a mailbox.



Total mailboxes quota. This is the total amount of disk space that can be used by all
mailboxes under all your domains. This option is available only on Windows-based
customer accounts.



Mailing lists. This is the total number of mailing lists that can be set up under all your
websites. Note that there are mailing lists and mail groups, which serve the same
purpose, but are slightly different in functionality. Mailing lists support archiving and premoderation of messages, while mail groups can only be used for sending one message to
a number of recipients at once.
For information about setting up and using mailing lists, refer to the section Using Mailing
Lists (on page 536).



Additional FTP accounts. This is the number of FTP accounts that can be set up for
accessing the webspace, in addition to the main FTP account that was created when your
subscription was activated.
For information about setting up FTP accounts, refer to the sections Changing FTP Access
Credentials (on page 521) and Adding FTP Accounts (on page 522).



Databases (Linux). This is the number of databases that can be hosted for all your
websites. Databases are a standard means of organizing data storage that allows
dynamic websites, web applications, and their users to store, search, and retrieve
information.
For information about working with databases, refer to the chapter (Advanced) Using
Databases.

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

MySQL databases and Microsoft SQL Server databases (Windows). This is the maximum
number of MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server databases respectively that can be created
on the Panel database servers and used by the subscription's websites.



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



Java applications. This is the number of Java applications packaged in WAR format that
you can install on your sites.



Sites published with Presence Builder. This is the number of sites that you can create and
publish using Presence Builder, if Presence Builder option is included in your hosting
package.



Mobile sites.This is the total number of websites that you can host with the UNITY Mobile
online service, which optimizes sites for viewing on mobile devices.



Web users. This is the number of user accounts that you can create for hosting web pages
for other users under your domains.



FrontPage accounts. This is the number of Microsoft FrontPage user accounts that you can
create for collaboration on site content using FrontPage. This option is available only for
Windows-based customer accounts.



Shared SSL links. This is the number of websites that you can secure with an SSL
certificate shared by your provider. This option is available only for Windows-based
customer accounts.



ODBC DSN connections. This is the number of connections to external databases that you
can create for web applications running on your customer account. This option is
available only for Windows-based customer accounts.



ColdFusion DSN connections. This is the number of connections to external databases that
you can create for web applications written in Adobe ColdFusion, which are running on
your customer account. This option is available only for Windows-based customer
accounts.

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

SSL support. This allows you to secure connections to websites with SSL encryption.
For information about securing sites with SSL, refer to the section Securing Connections
with SSL Certificates (on page 430).



Web statistics. This allows you to view website visits statistics presented in diagrams and
charts.
For information about viewing website visits statistics, refer to the section Viewing Statistics
(on page 368).



Custom error documents. This allows you to create custom HTML pages and configure web
server to show them instead of typical error messages, such as 404 Not Found.
For information about setting up custom error documents, refer to the section Setting Up
Custom Error Pages (on page 439).



Support for programming and scripting languages, such as PHP, CGI, Perl, Python, Microsoft
ASP, ASP.NET, Adobe ColdFusion, SSI.



Microsoft FrontPage support and Microsoft FrontPage over SSL support. These allow you to use
Microsoft FrontPage to create and edit website content. These options are available only
for Windows-based customer accounts.



Remote Microsoft FrontPage authoring (Windows). This allows you to use Microsoft
FrontPage to create and edit website content directly on the server. This option is
available only for Windows-based customer accounts.



Dedicated IIS application pool (Windows). This provides isolation and improved stability for
web applications working on sites.



Additional write/modify permissions (Windows). This option allows the web applications to
use a file-based database (like Jet) located in the root of httpdocs folder.



Allow web users to use scripts. This allows scripting at web pages available at URLs like
http://example.com/~/, where refers to a web user.
Web users are individuals who do not need their own domain names. This service is
popular with educational institutions that host non-commercial personal pages of their
students and staff.

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

DNS zone management. Manage resource records in the DNS zones of websites. DNS
stands for Domain Name System. It is a service that enables web browsers to locate
websites by domain names.
For information about configuring DNS settings for your websites, refer to the section
(Advanced) Configuring DNS for a Domain (on page 386).



Hosting settings management. Manage web hosting settings, such as custom web server
settings or support for scripting languages.

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

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



Management of access to the server over SSH and Management of access to the server over Remote
Desktop. Securely upload web content to the server through Secure Shell (Linux) or a
Remote Desktop connection (Windows).



Anonymous FTP management. Set up a folder on the server which should be accessible to
the Internet users over FTP protocol. This folder can have an address like, for example,
ftp://downloads.example.com. This feature is called anonymous FTP because the users
will not need to specify a username and password to browse, download, or upload files.
For information about setting up FTP folder with unrestricted access, refer to the section
Setting Up Anonymous FTP Access (on page 524).



Scheduler management. Schedule execution of programs or scripts in the server's operating
system.
For information about scheduling tasks, refer to the chapter Scheduling Tasks.



Spam filter management. Set custom settings for protection from unsolicited commercial email, also known as spam.
For information about setting up spam filtering, refer to the section Protecting Mailboxes
from Spam.



Antivirus management. Set custom settings for protection from viruses and other malicious
software that spreads itself through e-mail.
For information about setting up virus protection, refer to the section Protecting Mailboxes
from Viruses.



Data backup and restoration using the server repository. Use the backup and restore functions
of the Panel to back up and restore websites, mail accounts, settings, and keep your
backup files on the server.
For information about backing up and restoring data, refer to the chapter (Advanced) Back
Up and Restore Data.



Data backup and restoration using a personal FTP repository. Use the backup and restore
functions of the Panel to back up and restore websites, mail accounts, settings, and save
your backup files to an FTP folder on another server.
For information about backing up and restoring data, refer to the chapter (Advanced) Back
Up and Restore Data.



Web statistics management. Set custom preferences for visitor statistics reports.
For information about configuring and viewing website visitor statistics, refer to the
section Viewing Statistics (on page 368).



Log rotation management. Set custom preferences for recycling (rotation) of web server
logs. Web server records information about connections to your sites and errors occurred
on attempts to retrieve missing files. You can use these log files for website debugging
purposes.
For information about working with web server access logs, refer to the section Log Files
(on page 369).



Access to Application Catalog. View and install applications on websites. For information
about applications, refer to the section Employing Website Applications (on page 421).



Setup of potentially insecure web scripting options that override provider's policy. This allows you
to override the hosting security policy, if it is applied by the provider.

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

Domain creation. Set up and manage new websites.
For information about setting up websites, refer to the sections Set Up Your First Website
(on page 327) and Adding Domains (on page 379).



Subdomains management. Set up and manage new websites with addresses like
forum.example.com.
For information about setting up subdomains, refer to the section Adding Subdomains (on
page 381).



Domain aliases management. Set up and manage additional domain names for a site.
For information about setting up domain aliases, refer to the chapter Adding Domain Aliases
(on page 383).



Additional FTP accounts management. Set up and manage additional FTP accounts. To
enable collaboration on website content, you can set up FTP accounts for other users
and specify which directories of the site should be accessible to them.
For information about setting up FTP accounts, refer to the section Adding FTP Accounts
(on page 522).



Java applications management. Install and manage Java applications distributed in WAR
archives and obtained separately from third-party vendors or application developers.
For information about installing Java applications, refer to the section Installing Java
Applications.



Mailing lists management. Set up and manage mailing lists.
For information about setting up and using mailing lists, refer to the section Using Mailing
Lists (on page 536).



Hosting performance settings management. Limit the bandwidth and number of connections to
websites.
For information about restricting bandwidth usage for sites, refer to the section Limiting
Bandwidth and Number of Connections to Websites (on page 446).



IIS application pool management. Set custom preferences for IIS application pool (available
only on Windows-based customer accounts).
For information about setting up IIS application pool, refer to the section Setting Up IIS
Application Pool (Windows) (on page 465).



Additional write/modify permissions management. Set additional write/modify permissions for
websites that use file-based databases (available only on Windows-based customer
accounts).



Shared SSL management. Secure connections to your sites with SSL protection by using an
SSL certificate shared by your provider.
For more information, refer to the section Using Shared SSL Certificates (Windows) (on page
434).



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



Database server selection. Select a database server for creating databases, if multiple
database servers are available.

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

 To view your account balance and pay for hosting services:
1. Click the Account tab.
2. The following information is shown:


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



(Optional) Usage charge. If your subscription allows consuming hosting resources
over the plan limit, this number shows how much money you should pay for these
resources in addition to your subscription price. To view the detailed information about
how much resources you used over limits, click the link See details below the charge
amount. To learn how the system calculates usage charges, see the section
Calculating Usage Charges (on page 364).



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



(Optional) Affiliate programs. Your provider may let you earn money for promoting
their plans. To start earning, you should join their affiliate programs. Here you can find
the link to join affiliate programs or the info about your money you earn if you already
joined the programs. To learn how to get profit from affiliate programs, see the section
Earning Money by Promoting a Provider's Plans (on page 364).



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

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



To select a subscription that you want to manage through the Control Panel, click
the corresponding link Switch to Subscription.



To order an SSL certificate for a site, click Order a Certificate. For more information
about this operation, see the section Ordering SSL Certificates.



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



To view or change domain information, contact information, and DNS settings
specified at a registrar's site, click Show Domain Info. For more information about
these operations, see the section Registrar's DNS Settings in Panel (on page 392).

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 To choose a payment method that you would like to use for paying for
services:
1. Go to the Account tab > Billing Accounts.
A record about the payment method that you used for purchasing the services for the first
time is shown.

2. Do any of the following:


To view or change settings for a billing account, click the corresponding link in the
Billing account name column, specify the information about your bank card or account,
and select the subscriptions that should be paid by it. Click OK.



To add a new billing account, click Add New Billing Account, select the payment method,
and click Next. Then choose the account owner (you or an auxiliary user that will be
able to use this account), specify the required information about your bank card or
account, and select the subscriptions for which you will pay with it. Click OK.



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

Next in this section:
Calculating Usage Charges ............................................................................... 364
Earning Money by Promoting a Provider's Plans ............................................... 364

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Calculating Usage Charges
If the pay-as-you-go web hosting is allowed for a plan, Business Manager calculates usage
charges - total costs of hosting resources overage - for the plan's subscribers basing on
resource usage statistics that Business Manager collects from the connected Panels on a
daily basis. No matter what billing mode and billing cycles you use, this happen on the first
day of each month: The system finds the average daily overage of each resource except
traffic and multiplies it by the month length and the monthly usage price of this resource.

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

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

Calculating Usage with Add-ons
If a customer purchases additional resources in the middle of a month, then the system
subtracts the resource amount provided by the add-on from the daily resource usage of each
day starting from the add-on purchasing day.
For example, if a customer uses 500 MB of disk space over the plan limit for a whole month
and purchases the add-on that provides an additional 1 GB of disk space on the 7th day of
the month, then the usage charge will include the payment for only 7 days of 500 MB of disk
space overage.

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

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

Initial rate - a percentage that the affiliate earns from the price of each order placed using
the affiliate's link.



Recurrent rate - a percentage that the affiliate earns from each invoice issued for
subscriptions that were ordered using the affiliate's link.

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

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

Tracking Your Earnings
To see your current affiliate balance, go to the Account tab and find the balance in the Affiliate
Programs group. If you want to see detailed information about your earnings, click the link
Revenue from Referrals.
To request a payout after exceeding a payment threshold, go to the Affiliate Programs page,
select the programs and click Request Payout.
Note: If none of your affiliate balances exceed the corresponding thresholds, you will not see
the Request Payout button.

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

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

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

 To add more resources to your subscription or upgrade to another service
plan:
1. Click the Account tab.
2. In the list of subscriptions, locate the subscription that you want to upgrade
to another service plan, and click a link with the currently used plan's name.
3. Click Upgrade.
If there is no Upgrade link, then it means that you cannot upgrade to another hosting plan
from your Control Panel, and you need to contact your provider.

4. Do any of the following:


To add resources to your subscription without upgrading to another plan, select the
options you would like to add and click Adjust Add-ons.



To upgrade to another service plan, click Order Upgrade.

 To reduce the amounts of resources or downgrade to another service plan:
1. Click the Account tab.
2. In the list of subscriptions, locate the subscription that you want to
downgrade to another service plan, and click a link with the currently used
plan's name.

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

4. Do any of the following:


To reduce the amounts of allocated resources without downgrading to another plan,
select the options you would like to reduce and click Adjust Add-ons.



To downgrade to another service plan, click Order Downgrade.

 To subscribe to a hosting plan in addition to your main plan:
1. Go to the Account tab and click the Add Subscription link.
2. Select the hosting plan to which you want to subscribe, and click Buy Now.
Follow the instructions on the screen to complete the order.

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Viewing Statistics
 To view the reports on disk space and traffic usage by your account:
1. If you have several subscriptions associated with your account, in the
Subscription menu at the top of the screen, select the required subscription.
2. Click the Statistics tab.
The following information is presented in charts:




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

Websites



Mail accounts



Databases



Logs



Backups



Chroot directories



Configuration files



Anonymous FTP directory

Traffic used by FTP, web, and mail services during the current month.
FTP field shows the information about the total size of files transferred to and from the
webspace over the file transfer protocol.
HTTP field shows the information about the total amount of data transferred from all of
your websites over HTTP protocol, that is, retrieved by web browsers.
POP3/IMAP field shows the total amount of data received by all mail accounts under
your domains.
SMTP field shows the total amount of data sent by all mail accounts under your
domains.

3. Do any of the following:


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



To view a report on the amount of data transferred to and from your FTP directory,
which is accessed without authorization, click Anonymous FTP statistics.



To view a report on the amount of traffic used by services during a certain month, click
Data Transfer Statistics, and select the required month from the menu.

Next in this section:
Log Files ........................................................................................................... 369

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

 To prevent these log files from growing too large, you should enable automatic
cleanup and recycling of log files:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab > Logs > Log Rotation.
3. Click Switch On. If you see only the Switch Off button there, this means that log
recycling is already switched on.
4. Specify when to recycle log files and how many copies of each log file to
store on the server. Also specify whether they should be compressed and
sent to an e-mail address after processing.
5. Click OK.

 To view the contents of a log file or download it to your computer:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab > Logs. A list of log files opens.
3. Do any of the following:


To view all entries in a log file, click the log file name. If you want to view only a few
last lines from the log file, type the number of lines into the input box under the Settings
group, and then click the log file name.



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



To remove a processed log file from the server, select the corresponding checkbox
and click Remove. Confirm removal and click OK.

 To download log files to your computer via FTP:
1. Connect to the Panel server via FTP.
2. Go to the /var/www/vhosts//logs directory and copy
the log files to you computer.

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

Auxiliary Users and User Roles
Auxiliary user accounts are created based on user roles. The roles include privileges to
access certain areas of the Panel and perform operations in the Panel. There are several
predefined user roles, namely: Accountant, Application User, Owner, and Webmaster. You
can review and modify the Accountant, Application User, and Webmaster roles to suit your
needs, or you can create your own custom roles. For more information on user roles and
user account creation, refer to the sections User Roles (on page 371) and Auxiliary User
Accounts (on page 373) correspondingly.
After auxiliary user accounts are created, the users will be able to log in to their accounts in
Panel and use shortcuts in their Panels to access their mailboxes and work with applications.
In addition, you can extend the list of links available to your auxiliary users with your custom
links. These can be links to corporate resources, sites on the web, and so on. Learn more in
Custom Links (on page 375).

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

Next in this section:
User Roles ........................................................................................................ 371
Auxiliary User Accounts..................................................................................... 373
Custom Links .................................................................................................... 375

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371

User Roles
 To create a user role:
1. Go to the Users tab > User Roles tab > Create User Role.
2. Specify the following:


User role name.



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

Manage users and roles. Add, modify, and remove user accounts and roles. Note that
even if this permission is not granted to a user, the user will be able to browse
contact information of other users after logging in to the Panel.



Create and manage sites. Set up, modify, remove domain names and subdomains,
host websites and change web hosting settings.



Configure log rotation. Manage settings for recycling of web server access and error
log files. View, download, and remove log files.



Configure anonymous FTP service. Set up a directory accessible to all Internet users
over FTP without authorization.



Create and manage scheduled tasks. Schedule execution of scripts or programs on
your customer account.



Configure spam filter. Set up spam protection for mailboxes.



Configure antivirus. Set up virus protection for mailboxes.



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



Configure and perform data backup and restoration. Back up and restore data related to
your customer account, websites, and mailboxes under your domains.



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



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



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



Upload and manage files. Manage files and directories located in the webspace by
using the Panel's file manager.



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



Manage DNS settings. Manage DNS settings for domains.



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



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



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

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

Access to apps. Select the applications that the user should be able to access and use.
All web applications installed on the server are listed in this area.
For more information about installing applications and providing access to users, refer
to the section Granting Auxiliary Users Access to Apps (on page 423).



Access to the billing operations. Grant these permissions if you want users of this role to
view and pay invoices for your subscriptions.

3. Click OK.

 To modify user role properties:
1. Go to the Users tab > User Roles tab.
2. Click a link with the role name that you want to change.
3. Change the role properties as required and click OK.

 To remove a user role:
1. Go to the Users tab > User Roles tab.
2. Select a checkbox corresponding to the role you want to remove and click
Remove. Note that it is impossible to remove the Owner role and other roles
that are assigned to one or more users.
3. Click Yes to confirm the removal.

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Auxiliary User Accounts
 To create a user account:
1. Go to the Users tab > Create User Account.
2. Specify the following:


Contact name.



E-mail address. The e-mail address will be used as a user name for logging in to Panel,
unless you specify another name in the Username box.


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



To associate with this user account an external e-mail address, select the option
Use an external e-mail address, and specify an existing external e-mail address.



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



Access to subscriptions. Allow a user to access only a specified subscription. The All
value grants them access to all subscriptions within your customer account.



Username. The user name for access to Panel.



Password. The password for access to Panel.

3. Leave the User is active checkbox selected. Otherwise, the user will not be
able to access the Panel and use applications on your customer account.
4. Click OK.
5. Now, if you want to add contact information for the user, click a link with the
user's name, and then click the Contact Details tab, and specify the user's
contact information.
6. Click OK.
Now you can notify the user about creation of his or her account and ability to access Panel.
Provide the user with the address to open in his or her browser, the username (which is the
user's e-mail address), and the password that you specified in the account settings.

 To change user account properties:
1. Click the Users tab.
2. Click a link with the user's name.
3. Make the required changes and click OK.

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 To suspend or activate a user account:
1. Click the Users tab.
2. Click a link with the user's name.
3. Do any of the following:


To suspend a user account, clear the User is active checkbox. The user will no longer
be able to log in to the Panel and access applications.



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

4. Click OK.

 To remove a user account:
1. Click the Users tab.
2. Select a checkbox corresponding to the user account you want to remove,
and click Remove. Note that you cannot remove your own account.
3. Click Yes to confirm the removal.

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375

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

Subscription ID.



Primary domain name associated with a subscription.



FTP account username and password.



Customer's account ID, name, e-mail, and company name.

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

On the Websites & Domains page in the Control Panel, visible only to you. This is achieved
by selecting the Customer's Home page option in the link properties.



On the Websites & Domains page in the Control Panel, visible to you and your users who
are allowed to log in to the Control Panel. This is achieved by selecting the Common
access option in the link properties.



On the Websites & Domains tab in the Control Panel, visible to you and your users who are
allowed to log in to the Control Panel. This is achieved by selecting the Websites & Domains
page of Subscription option in the link properties.

 To add a custom hyperlink to the Control Panel:
1. Go to the Account tab > Additional Services, and click Add Link to Service.
2. Specify the following settings:


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



Choose the location for your button.



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



Using the checkboxes, specify whether you want the customer information and other
data to be transferred within the URL. These data can be used for processing by
external web applications.



In the Tooltip text input field, type in the help tip that will be displayed when the users
place the mouse pointer over the button.

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

Select the Open URL in Parallels Panel checkbox if you want the destination URL to be
opened in the main frame of the Panel, otherwise, leave this checkbox cleared to
open the URL in a separate browser window or tab.



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

3. Click Finish to complete creation.

 To remove a hyperlink button from the Panel:
1. Go to the Account tab > Additional Services.
2. Select a checkbox corresponding to the link that you want to remove and
click Remove.

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Websites and Domains
As described in the chapter Quick Start with Parallels Panel, creating your web presence always
starts with purchasing a domain name. The domain name (or simply, domain) is the name
people use to access your site from their browsers, for example, www.example.com. The
domain registration is carried out by authorized companies - domain name registrars.
Hosting providers often carry out this function. For detailed information about how to manage
domains in Panel, refer to the section Domains and DNS (on page 378).
However, a domain is not a website. To make it accessible from the web and fill it with
content, you should subscribe to hosting services (obtain a customer account). That is to
supplement your domain with Internet connectivity, some disk space to store your content,
mail services, and so on. Thus, a website is a domain with provided hosting services.
Panel provides a full range of operations in regard to domains and websites:



Adding and removing domains, subdomains, and aliases.
Managing the content of your websites.



Installing various web apps.



Securing connections to your websites and much more.

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

Next in this section:
Domains and DNS............................................................................................. 378
Hosting Settings ................................................................................................ 395
Website Content ................................................................................................ 413
(Advanced) Restricting Access to Content......................................................... 418
Previewing Websites ......................................................................................... 420
Web Applications............................................................................................... 421
(Advanced) Website Security ............................................................................ 429
(Advanced) Extended Website Management..................................................... 435

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Domains and DNS
As described above, a domain name is the name that people type in their browsers to access
your website.
A domain name is hierarchical and can consist of a number of parts called labels:


The label furthest to the right is called the top-level domain. For example, com is the toplevel domain of www.example.com. The number of top-level domains is limited and all of
them are managed by separate international authorities.



The second-level domain is the label that we mainly use to imply the purpose of our
website. In www.example.com it is the example part. The combination of the secondlevel and top-level domain names specifies the exact location of your website.



Each label to the left is a subdomain of the domain to the right. For example, www is the
subdomain of example.com. Subdomains can be convenient when you want to isolate
some content from the main site, e.g. you can organize your personal blog on
myblog.example.com. For information on how to add subdomains in Panel, refer to the
section Adding Subdomains (on page 381).

If you want to host more than one website under your subscription, you can register more
domains and add them to your subscription. Registering new domains may be available to
you in the Control Panel if your hosting provider allows this. For information on how to
purchase and add domains in Panel, refer to the section Adding Domains (on page 379).
In fact, domain names exist only for convenience; the real communication between browser
and web servers uses IP addresses - the numerical host identifiers. For example, the real
address of www.example.com may be 192.0.2.12 (IPv4). To resolve domain names into IP
addresses, web hosts use DNS technology. For more details about how DNS is implemented
in Panel, refer to the section (Advanced) Configuring DNS for a Domain (on page 386).
DNS allows several domains to be resolved into one IP address. Such additional names are
called domain aliases. This is convenient when you have purchased several domains that
you want to point to the same website. For information on how to add aliases to existing
domains, refer to the section Adding Domain Aliases (on page 383).

Next in this section:
Adding Domains ................................................................................................ 379
Adding Subdomains .......................................................................................... 381
Adding Domain Aliases ..................................................................................... 383
Adding Wildcard Subdomains (Linux) ................................................................ 384
Adding a Domain Forwarder .............................................................................. 385
(Advanced) Configuring DNS for a Domain ....................................................... 386

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379

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



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

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



Additional domain names (domain aliases).



Subdomains - divisions of a site accessible by easy-to-remember addresses that are
added to the main site, like mail.example.com.



Separate FTP accounts for collaboration on the site content. For every FTP account,
you can specify which directories can be accessed.



Creating content using Presence Builder.



Simplified deployment of applications, such as content management systems, photo
galleries, shopping carts, blogging platforms, and many more.



Secure data exchange implemented by SSL protocol. This requires that a site be
hosted on a dedicated IP address, which is not shared among other users and sites.



Mailboxes and mailing lists.



Viewing statistics on site visits.

Website or a division of a website addressed by a third-level domain name (subdomain). This is
usually a division of an existing site. It has an Internet address comprising of three parts
separated by dots. The following services are available for subdomains:


Separate document root from the main site. Document root is a directory on the server
where web pages of a site are stored.



Access over FTP for content management.



Creating content using Presence Builder.



Simplified deployment of applications.



Secure data exchange implemented by SSL protocol.



Viewing statistics on site visits.

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Adding More Domains
 To host a new website with a second-level domain name:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, select the required
webspace in the Subscription menu at the top of the screen.
2. Click the Websites & Domains tab, click Add New Domain and follow on-screen
instructions.
Note: If you select the recommended option, you should connect the DNS settings
related and your domain name with the domain name at the registrar's side. To achieve
this, enter the Panel name server IP address into the respective NS record of the
registrar. The instruction on how to obtain the IP is as follows: go to Websites & Domains >
> DNS Settings, find the NS record, and then find the A record
corresponding to the NS record value.
For example, if your NS record is
example.com.
NS
ns.example.com,
find the A record with ns.example.com, for example,
ns.example.com. A
192.0.2.12
The resulting value, 192.0.2.12, is the Panel name server IP you need.

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

4. If the operation of changing hosting settings is available for your account,
then you can click the domain name of the new website to view or change
the hosting settings, as described in the section Changing Hosting Settings (on
page 395).
You can now start creating your website with Presence Builder or upload your web content to
the webspace of the new website, as described in the section Managing Website Content (on
page 413).

Registering Domains
If your service provider offers the domain name registration service as well as web hosting,
you can initiate a domain registration directly from Panel. To register a domain name, add it
as described above and then click the link register it now beside the new domain name on the
Websites & Domains tab. This will redirect you to the provider's online store where you can
complete the registration.
After you register a domain name, it appears in the Registered domain names list on the
Websites & Domains tab. To get information about a domain name registration, for example,
the registration price and next renewal date, click the domain name in this list.

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

 To remove a domain:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, select the required
webspace in the Subscription menu at the top of the screen.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the name of the domain or
subdomain you want to remove.
3. Click Remove Website or Remove Subdomain.
4. Confirm removal and click OK.
Note: Removing domain names from the Control Panel does not cancel the registration of
these names. If you registered these domains name, you still can use them for your
websites.

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

Organize logically the structure of your site.



Host additional websites or parts of a website on the same server without the need to pay
for registration of additional domain names.

An example of using subdomains:
You have a website your-product.com dedicated to promoting and selling your product. For
publishing information related to customer service and online order tracking, you can
organize the subdomain "orders" so that your users will be able to access this information
directly by visiting the Internet address "orders.your-product.com".
As subdomains have the same status with the additional domains, you can use the same set
of tools and services for working with subdomains. For example, SSL protection, Presence
Builder, web statistics, and so on.

 To set up a subdomain for a site division or a separate site:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, select the required
webspace in the Subscription menu at the top of the screen.
2. Click the Websites & Domains tab.
3. Click Add New Subdomain.

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4. Specify the following:
a. In the Subdomain name box, type the portion of address that will be
added to the domain name of your main site.
b. In the Document root box, type the desired location of the directory
where all files and subdirectories of this site will be kept. You can
use the default directory of the main site, called httpdocs, or specify
another directory.
5. Click OK.
The new subdomain name is now shown in the list at the bottom of the screen.
You can now upload your web content to the subdomains webspace (directory on the
server), as described in the section Uploading Content over FTP.

Wildcard Subdomains
If you enter the asterisk (*) symbol as a subdomain name, Panel will create a so-called
wildcard subdomain.When site visitors enter any subdomain name that is not registered in
Panel, they will be redirected to this wildcard subdomain. You can create wildcard
subdomains on any domain name level. For example, you can create the
*.mystore.example.com subdomain. Learn more about wildcard subdomains in the section
Adding Wildcard Subdomains (Linux) (on page 384).

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

 To set up a domain alias in Panel:
1. Run the Add New Domain Alias wizard in the Websites & Domains tab.
2. Specify the domain for which you are creating an alias (the primary domain)
and the alias’s domain name, for example alias.tld, and set up the
following:


Synchronization of DNS zone with the primary domain
If this option is enabled, the DNS zone of the domain alias will be in sync with the zone of
the primary domain. Any changes made in the DNS zone of the primary domain will be
automatically applied to the DNS zone of the alias. For example, if you create the
CNAME record like blog.primary_domain.tld, the corresponding
blog.alias.tld record will be added to the zone of the alias.
Note: If a domain alias’s DNS zone is synced with the primary domain, you cannot modify
resource records in the alias's DNS zone.



Mail service
Panel does not allow creating mailboxes under domain aliases. Instead, the mailboxes of
the primary domain are used. If you select the Mail service option, the mailboxes created
under the primary domain will also be available under the alias. To enable users to read
mail sent to mailboxes under the alias, Panel redirects it to the corresponding mailboxes
under the primary domain.
For example:
You have an email address mail@domain.tld. Then you set up an alias for
domain.tld, for example, alias.tld. If you select the Mail service option, all mail sent
to mail@alias.tld will be available at mail@domain.tld. Otherwise, the mailbox
mail@domain.tld will not receive mail sent to mail@alias.tld.



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



Redirect with the HTTP 301 code
By default, Panel uses web server internal redirection for aliases. In this case, the alias
appears to be a separate website for visitors and for web search engines. This causes
the problem because search engines index the content of the alias separately, so your
primary domain loses search engine rankings.
To avoid this, you can use redirection with the HTTP 301 code (Moved permanently) by
selecting Redirect with the HTTP 301 code. In this case, only the primary domain will rank in
search engines. Learn more at
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93633

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

Adding Wildcard Subdomains (Linux)
Use wildcard subdomains to redirect visitors from non-existent subdomains to one of your
websites, commonly, to your main website. The typical use cases of this feature are:


Improve website organization and run marketing campaigns.
For example, you do not have the vps-limited-offer subdomain but wish to forward users
from limited-vps-offer.example.com to example.com.



Help users reach your website even if they mistyped a subdomain name.
It is a widespread mistake to mistype a website name if it has the leading www prefix (for
example, typing ww.example.com).



Finally, some website applications (WordPress) use wildcard subdomains to create
dynamic subdomains for convenience and better user experience.

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

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

Limitations of Wildcard Subdomains
Wildcard subdomains act like typical subdomains with the following exceptions:


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



Renaming is not available. It is not possible to rename such subdomains.



No DNS zone. This type of subdomains does not have own zone record in the Panel's
DNS server. Instead, they have the A record that points to the IP address associated with
a corresponding domain name.



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



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

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Adding a Domain Forwarder
 To create a domain forwarder in Panel:
Start creating a new domain in Websites & Domains > Add New Domain and specify the following:




In the Domain name box, type the domain name that you have registered with your service
provider or a domain name registration company and from which you want to redirect
visitors.
Under DNS server configuration, select the option Use our DNS settings.
Under Hosting type, select the Forwarding option.



In the Destination address box, type the URL address to which you want to redirect visitors.



Under Forwarding type, select standard or frame forwarding. To learn more about
forwarding types, see Forwarding. (on page 399)



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

Under Hosting type, select the Forwarding option.



In the Destination address box, type the URL address to which you want to redirect visitors.



Under Forwarding type, select standard or frame forwarding. To learn more about
forwarding types, see Forwarding. (on page 399)

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(Advanced) Configuring DNS for a Domain
The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical naming system that translates
understandable domain names into the numerical identifiers (IP addresses) associated with
web hosts. Such translation is called resolving. When you add a domain name (using
Websites & Domains > Add New Domain), you should choose the role of Panel in resolving your
resources: It can directly process all translation requests, be a backup server, or pass the
translation requests to a remote server. This role can be changed for existing domain names
(Websites & Domains > domain name > DNS Settings). We discuss details about each of the
roles and provide instructions how to assign them next in this section.
Note: If your Panel does not use its own DNS service and does not allow configuring DNS
settings on a remote DNS server, you can only view the information about your registered
domain name. The link DNS Settings in Websites & Domains will be replaced with Whois
Information.

DNS Name Resolving
DNS is based on a hierarchical tree structure called the domain namespace. This global
namespace contains all possible domain names and is divided into logical parts - domain
zones (see the picture below). A domain zone is a part of the namespace that contains the
addresses of particular domains. Addresses are stored in a file on a separate name server
with authority for that zone. For example, when a browser tries to access
www.example.com, it gets the site's IP address from a server with authority for the
example.com zone. For more information about how DNS works, refer to the respective
documentation. You can find it in numerous sources on the Internet, for example, Microsoft
TechNet.

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When you purchase a domain, a registrar gives you access to the settings for the DNS zone
responsible for your domain and its subdomains. You can either allow the registrar to
manage the zone, or delegate the zone to Panel. The latter option gives you the ability to
manage a zone directly from your customer account. For information about how to delegate
your zone to the Panel, refer to the section Panel as a Master DNS Server (on page 388).
If you are an advanced user and already have a DNS server that you want to give authority
for your zone, you can set up Panel to be a slave (also called secondary) DNS server. In this
case, Panel just stores a copy of your zone and you do not have the option to manage it from
the Control Panel. The Panel DNS server will be used only if your primary name server
becomes inaccessible or inoperable. For information about how to make Panel act as a
secondary DNS server, refer to the section Panel as a Slave DNS Server (on page 392).
If you decide not to use Panel as a DNS server, all zone management should be performed
on a domain registrar's site. Some registrars provide support for remote DNS zone
management. If your hosting provider uses this feature, you will still be able to modify the
DNS zone from the Control Panel regardless of where your authoritative name server is
located. For information about how to switch off the Panel's DNS server and manage your
zone remotely, refer to the section Registrar's DNS Settings in Panel (on page 392).

Next in this section:
Panel as a Master DNS Server.......................................................................... 388
Panel as a Slave DNS Server............................................................................ 392
Registrar's DNS Settings in Panel ..................................................................... 392

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

 To view the resource records in a DNS zone of a domain:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS
settings you want to view.
2. Click DNS Settings.

 To add a new resource record to the zone:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS
settings you want to manage..
2. Click DNS Settings.
3. Click Add Record.
4. Select a resource record type, and specify the appropriate data:


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



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



For a CNAME record, which specifies which subdomains (or domain aliases that look
like subdomains, for example, www) should be associated in the Domain Name
System with the main domain address, you need to type the subdomain name or www
alias, and then, the main domain name.



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



For a PTR record, which is required for reverse DNS lookup (an IP address is
translated to domain name), you need to enter the IP address/mask, and then type
the appropriate domain name for this IP address to be translated to.

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

For a TXT record, which is used for specifying arbitrary human-readable text, you can
type an arbitrary text string, or an SPF record.



For an SRV record, which is used for specifying location of services other than mail,
you will need to enter the service name, protocol name, port number, and target host.
You can also specify the priority of the target host, and relative weight (for records
with the same priority) in the appropriate fields.

4. Click OK, and then click Update.

 To modify the properties of a resource record:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS
settings you want to manage.
2. Click DNS Settings.
3. Click the hyperlink in the Host column corresponding to the resource record
you want to modify.
4. Modify the record as required, click OK, and then click Update.
In addition to the resource records described above, there is also a Start of Authority record.
This record indicates that this DNS name server is responsible for the domain's DNS zone. It
also contains settings that affect propagation of information about the DNS zone in the
Domain Name System.

 To modify the entries in the Start of Authority (SOA) record for a domain:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS
settings you want to manage.
2. Click DNS Settings.
3. Click SOA Record.
4. Specify the required values:


Refresh interval. This is how often the secondary name servers check with the master
name server to see if any changes have been made to the domain's zone file. The
Panel sets the default value of three hours.



Retry interval. This is the time a secondary server waits before retrying a failed zone
transfer. This time is typically less than the refresh interval. The Panel sets the default
value of one hour.



Expire interval. This is the time before a secondary server stops responding to queries,
after a lapsed refresh interval where the zone was not refreshed or updated. The
Panel sets the default value of one week.



Minimum TTL. This is the time a secondary server should cache a negative response.
The Panel sets the default value of three hours.



Default TTL. This is the amount of time that other DNS servers should store the record
in a cache. The Panel sets the default value of one day.

5. Click OK, and then click Update.

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Usage of serial number format recommended by IETF and RIPE is mandatory for many
domains registered in some high-level DNS zones, mostly European ones. If your domain is
registered in one of these zones and your registrar refuses your SOA serial number, using
serial number format recommended by IETF and RIPE should resolve this issue.
The Panel-managed servers use UNIX timestamp syntax for configuring DNS zones. UNIX
timestamp is the number of seconds since January 1, 1970 (Unix Epoch). The 32-bit
timestamp will overflow by July 8, 2038.
RIPE recommends using YYYYMMDDNN format, where YYYY is year (four digits), MM is
month (two digits), DD is day of month (two digits) and NN is version per day (two digits).
The YYYYMMDDNN format will not overflow until the year 4294.

 To change the Start of Authority (SOA) serial number format to YYYYMMDDNN
for a domain:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS
settings you want to manage.
2. Click DNS Settings.
3. Click SOA Record.
4. Select the Use serial number format recommended by IETF and RIPE checkbox.
Note: See the sample of SOA serial number generated with the selected format. If the
resulting number is less than the current zone number, the modification may cause
temporary malfunction of DNS for this domain. Zone updates may be invisible to the
Internet users for some time.

5. Click OK, and then click Update.

 To remove a resource record from the zone:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS
settings you want to manage.
2. Click DNS Settings.
3. Select a checkbox corresponding to the record you want to remove.
4. Click Remove.
5. Confirm removal, click OK, and then click Update.

 To restore the original zone configuration in accordance with the default DNS
template settings used on the server:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS
settings you want to manage.
2. Click DNS Settings.
3. Click Restore Defaults.

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4. In the IP address menu, select the IP address to be used for restoring the
zone.
5. Specify whether a www alias is required for the domain.
6. Select the Confirm the restoration of the DNS zone checkbox, and click OK.

 To restore the default Start of Authority (SOA) serial number format (UNIX
timestamp) for a domain:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS
settings you want to manage.
2. Click DNS Settings.
3. Click SOA Record.
4. Clear the Use serial number format recommended by IETF and RIPE
checkbox.
Note: See the sample of SOA serial number generated with the selected format. If the
resulting number is less than the current zone number, the modification may cause
temporary malfunction of DNS for this domain. Zone updates may be invisible to the
Internet users for some time.

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

 If your domain name registrar requires that you allow transfer for all zones you
serve:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS
settings you want to manage.
2. Click DNS Settings.
3. Click Zone Transfers. A screen will show all hosts to which DNS zone transfers
for all zones are allowed.
4. Specify the registrar's IP or network address and click Add Network.

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

 To make the Panel's DNS server act as a secondary name server:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS
settings you want to manage.
2. Click DNS Settings.
3. Click Switch DNS Service Mode.
4. Click Add Record.
5. Specify the IP address of the primary (master) DNS server.
6. Click OK, and then click Update.
7. Repeat steps from 2 to 6 for each website that needs to have a secondary
name server on your server.

 To make the Panel's DNS server act as a primary back:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS
settings you want to manage.
2. Click DNS Settings.
3. Click Switch DNS Service Mode.
The original resource records for the zone will be restored.

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

 To switch off the Panel's DNS service for a site served by external name
servers:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name whose DNS
settings you want to manage.
2. Click DNS Settings.
3. Click Switch Off the DNS Service.

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

4. If you want to validate the configuration of a zone maintained on
authoritative name servers, do the following:
a. Add to the list the entries pointing to the appropriate name servers
that are authoritative for the zone: Click Add Record, specify a name
server, click OK, and then click Update.
b. Repeat the step a for each name server you would like to test. The
records will appear in the list.
c. Click the records that you have just created.
The Panel will retrieve the zone file from remote name servers and will check the resource
records to make sure that domain's resources are properly resolved. The results will be
interpreted and displayed on the screen.
If your Control Panel is integrated with a billing system, then the following operations on
domains might be available from the Panel:


Setting a password for access to domain management panel at a registrar's site.



Locking and unlocking domain name for transferring to another provider.



Changing domain registrant and other contact information.



Changing DNS settings for domain zones served by a domain registrar.



Configure automatic renewal of the domain account at the domain name registration
company.

 To set a new password for access to your domain management control panel at
a registrar's site:
1. Go to the Account tab.
2. Locate the domain name for which you want to change settings, and click the
link Show Domain Info next to it.
3. Click Change Domain Password.
4. Type a new password and click OK.

 To lock or unlock domain name for transferring to another provider:
1. Go to the Account tab.
2. Locate the domain name for which you want to change settings, and click the
link Show Domain Info next to it.
3. Click Change Registrar Lock Setting.
4. To allow domain name transfer, clear the Lock checkbox and click OK.

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 To change domain owner's contact, technical, administrative, or billing
information:
1. Go to the Account tab.
2. Locate the domain name for which you want to change settings, and click the
link Show Domain Info next to it.
3. Click Edit Contact Info.
4. Make the necessary changes and click OK.

 To change DNS settings for a domain:
1. Go to the Account tab.
2. Locate the domain name for which you want to change settings, and click the
link Show Domain Info next to it.
3. Click Edit DNS Settings.
4. Specify the domain name servers that serve the DNS zone for your website
and IP address of the server where the website is hosted.
5. If the DNS zone of your website is served by your domain name registrar,
then you can also specify other resource records that affect how your
website's services are accessible over the Internet.
6. To save your changes, click OK.

 To configure automatic renewal of the domain name:
1. Go to the Account tab.
2. Locate the domain name for which you want to change settings, and click the
link Show Domain Info next to it.
3. Click Automatic Domain Renewal.
4. To allow auto renewal of the domain registration, select the Turn on auto
renewal checkbox and click OK.

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Hosting Settings
The website’s hosting settings are available on the Websites & Domains tab of the Control
Panel. All per-website hosting settings form the following groups:


General.
Hosting type, security, scripting and statistics settings. See General Settings (on page 396).



PHP.
PHP scripting language settings. See PHP Settings (on page 402).



Web Server.
Web server settings (Apache (with nginx) or IIS). Web server type depends on Panel
version: Apache with nginx is used on Panel for Linux, and IIS on Panel for Windows.
See Apache Web Server Settings (on page 408) and IIS Web Server Settings (on page 410)
correspondingly.
Note that in the IIS web server settings you can configure basic website security settings,
such as anonymous access, ssl usage, and directory browsing.

On Windows, you can also set up custom ASP.NET settings in Websites & Domains > select a
domain > ASP.NET Settings. For details, see ASP.NET Settings (Windows) (on page 406).

Next in this section:
General Settings................................................................................................ 396
Web Scripting Settings ...................................................................................... 401
Web Server Settings ......................................................................................... 408

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General Settings
To view a website's general hosting settings, click Hosting Settings beside its name on the
Websites & Domains tab. The general website hosting settings are divided into groups:

Basic Settings


Domain name. The domain name that you register with a domain registrar and will use for
this website.



Hosting type. The hosting type (Website hosting, Forwarding, and No hosting) defines the
website behavior. By default, all webistes belong to the Website hosting type as they are
physically hosted on the server.
To change the hosting type, use the Change link. To learn more about hosting types, see
Hosting Types (on page 397).
To suspend the website with all mailboxes and mailing lists hosted under the website's
domain name use the Suspend option.
Note: Other basic settings depend on the selected hosting type. See Hosting Types (on
page 397).



Website status. The website status defines the site's accessibility in browsers and available
hosting services. Apart from working as usual, the site can be suspended so it will not
open in browsers, and even more, the hosting features of the site (such as the mail
service and DNS service) can be disabled. You should change the status if you want the
site to be temporarily unavailable, for example, for maintenance purposes. See Website
Status (on page 400).



Document root. Displayed for domains with the Website hosting type. See Website Hosting
(on page 398).



Preferred domain. Displayed for domains with the Website hosting type. See Website Hosting
(on page 398).

Security Settings


Enable SSL support. Secure Sockets Layer encryption is generally used for protecting
transfer of sensitive data during online transactions on e-commerce websites that run
on dedicated IP addresses. SSL certificates that participate in the encryption process
are usually applied to a single domain name on a single IP address, therefore, each
site that needs SSL protection must be hosted on a dedicated IP address. An
exception to this is subdomains, which you can protect with a wildcard certificate.
Installing an SSL certificate on a web server that hosts several websites with different
domain names on a single IP address is technically possible, however, it is not
recommended: the encryption will be provided, but users will get warning messages
on attempt to connect to the secure site. To allow SSL encryption for the website,
select the Enable SSL support checkbox.

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Web Scripting and Statistics


Scripting languages. Specify programming and scripting languages you want the
website to support. For PHP, you can also select the custom PHP version and handler
type. More PHP settings are available on the PHP tab. To learn more about PHP
handlers and PHP configuration, see PHP Settings (on page 402).



Microsoft FrontPage settings. Microsoft FrontPage is a popular website authoring tool. To
enable content creation and publishing through Microsoft FrontPage, select the
options Microsoft FrontPage support, Microsoft FrontPage over SSL support, and Remote
FrontPage authoring allowed.



Web statistics. Select the web statistics software that you want to use for viewing
graphical reports and charts on website visitors. Also, select the corresponding
checkbox if you want to be able to access the statistical reports by visiting the
password-protected directory http://your-website/plesk-stat/webstat.



Custom error documents. When visitors coming to a site request pages that the web
server cannot find, the web server generates and displays a standard HTML page
with an error message. If you want to create your own error pages and use them on
the web server, select the Custom error documents checkbox.



Additional write and modify permissions (available only for Windows hosting). This option
is required if web applications on the site will be using a file-based database (like Jet)
located in the root of the httpdocs directory. Note that selecting this option will
seriously compromise the website security.

Next in this section:
Hosting Types ................................................................................................... 397
Website Status .................................................................................................. 400

Hosting Types
The hosting type defines the website's behavior. Panel supports three types of hosting:
Website hosting, Forwarding, and No hosting.

Next in this section:
Website Hosting ................................................................................................ 398
Forwarding ........................................................................................................ 399
Domains Without Web Hosting .......................................................................... 399

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Website Hosting
The Website hosting means that a website is physically located on the server.
For the website hosting type you can specify:


Document root. The location of the directory where all files and subdirectories of the site
will be kept. You can use the default directory httpdocs or specify another directory.



Preferred domain. Typically, any website is available on two URLs: with the www prefix (like
in www.example.com) and without it (like in example.com). We recommend that you
always redirect visitors to one of these URLs (typically to the non-www version). For
example, after you set the Preferred domain to the non-www version (example.com),
site visitors will be redirected to this URL even if they specify www.example.com in their
browsers.
Panel uses the search engine friendly HTTP 301 code for such a redirection. This allows
preserving search engine rankings of your site (preferred domain). If you turn off the
redirection by choosing None, search engines will treat both URL versions (www and nonwww) as URLs of different sites. As a result, rankings will be split between these URLs.

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Forwarding
You can make one or more registered domain names to point to the same physical website,
by using the domain name forwarding. This allows automatic redirection of visitors from the
URL they specify in a browser to a site with a different URL. For example, visitors of the site
www.example.com can be redirected to www.somedomain.tld. There are two types of
forwarding in Panel: the standard and frame forwarding.

Standard Forwarding
With the Standard forwarding, users who have been redirected to another URL can see the
destination URL in the browser address bar.
Depending on how long you intend to use the redirection, you can select the type of
redirection – Moved permanently (code 301) or Moved temporarily (code 302). These are
HTTP response codes which Panel sends to browsers to perform the redirection. From
visitors’ point of view, the response code does not matter: in both cases they will be simply
redirected to the destination URL. For search engines, the code defines how they should
treat the redirected site and affects search engine rankings.


Moved permanently (code 301).
Use this redirection type if you want to keep search engine rankings of your site after
moving it permanently to another address.
For example, if example1.com has been moved permanently to the domain
example2.com, the rankings will not be split between example1.com and
example2.com – search engine crawlers will treat them as a single website.



Moved temporarily (code 302).
Use this redirection type when the destination domain is used temporarily, for example,
when you are testing a new version of your site with real visitors while keeping the old
version intact. If you set this redirection for a newly created destination domain, this
domain will not be indexed by search engines.

Frame Forwarding
With the Frame forwarding, when visitors are redirected to another site, the address bar of their
browsers continues to show the source URL. Thus, visitors remain unaware of the
redirection. This is called frame forwarding as the index page of the source site contains a
frame with the destination site.

Domains Without Web Hosting
You can switch off web service and use only email services under that domain (Websites &
Domains tab > domain name > the Change link > the No web hosting option).

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Website Status
The website status defines whether a website is available over the Internet and what hosting
services are provided for it. The hosting provider may need to change the status of a site if
the client does not pay for the services. Site owners can change the status of their sites if
they want the sites to be temporarily unavailable.
Panel supports three website statuses: Suspended, Disabled, and Active.

Suspended Sites
If you want to shut down a site for maintenance and let your visitors know that it is
temporarily unavailable, you can suspend the website so that it will not open in browsers
(Websites & Domains > domain name > the Suspend link). Visitors will be redirected with the
search engine friendly 503 HTTP code (Service Unavailable) to the "503 Service
Unavailable" error page. The site's search engine rankings will not be affected, and the
hosting services such as mail will still be available and manageable by means of Panel.
You can customize the error page using the link Edit maintenance error page in Control Panel >
Websites & Domains > domain name.
Note: The link Edit maintenance error page is displayed only if your hosting plan provides the
option to customize web server error documents (the Custom error documents is On in the
domain settings in Websites & Domains > domain name > Edit).

Disabled Sites
If you stop supporting a website, you can disable it using Websites & Domains > domain name
> the Disable link. Visitors will see the web server's default page set by the hosting provider,
and the site's search engine rankings will drop.
Disabled websites stop being hosted on the server: They are excluded from the web server
configuration. However, the physical directories and files of disabled sites can be accessed
by FTP clients and File Manager. The hosting services such as mail will be unavailable.
Note: In Panel versions earlier than 11.5 this status was called Suspended.

Active sites
To bring the website back online, use Websites & Domains > domain name > the Activate link.
The website will start working as usual.

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Web Scripting Settings
For each website in your subscription you can specify which of the following programming
and scripting languages should be supported by the web server: Active Server Pages (ASP),
Microsoft ASP.NET, Server Side Includes (SSI), PHP hypertext preprocessor (PHP),
Common Gateway Interface (CGI), Fast Common Gateway Interface (FastCGI), Perl and
Python. Since Panel 10.4, you are able to configure PHP settings individually for each
website (or subdomain) in your subscription. This is possible only if your subscription has the
corresponding permissions. To get the details about custom PHP configuration, refer to the
section PHP Settings.

Next in this section:
PHP Settings ..................................................................................................... 402
ASP.NET Settings (Windows) ........................................................................... 406

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PHP Settings
PHP is one of the most popular scripting languages for creating dynamic web pages. The
majority of today's websites and web applications are based on PHP scripts. This is why site
administrators should clearly understand how they can control the execution of PHP scripts.
How PHP scripts are executed for a certain website is fully defined by two aspects: PHP
handler and PHP settings for the site. You can set up these parameters for a certain website
in the Control Panel as described below.

PHP Handler
When a visitor accesses a site based on PHP scripts, a web server interprets site scripts to
generate a page that will be shown to the visitor. PHP handler calls PHP libraries needed for
this interpretation. You can choose from a number of PHP handlers: ISAPI (Windows),
Apache module (Linux), FastCGI, CGI, or PHP-FPM (Linux). The decision on what PHP
handler to choose should depend on a number of factors like security considerations, script
execution speed, and memory consumption.

 To choose a PHP handler for your website:
1. Go to Websites & Domains.
2. Click Hosting Settings near the domain name of a website for which you want
to choose the PHP handler.
3. Choose one of the following PHP handlers as the value of the Run PHP as
parameter (beside the PHP support option):

Run PHP as

Performance

Memory
Usage

Security

Website Management
High.
Apache
module (Linux Runs as a part of
the Apache web
only)

Low

server.

This handler (also known as mod_php)
is the least secure option as all PHP
scripts are executed on behalf of the
apache user. This means that all files
created by PHP scripts of any plan
subscriber have the same owner
(apache) and the same permission
set. Thus, a user has a theoretical
possibility to affect files of another user
or some important system files.

Note: You can evade some
security issues by turning the PHP
safe_mode option on. It disables a
number of PHP functions that bring
potential security risk. Note that this
may lead to inoperability of some
web apps. The safe_mode option is
considered to be obsolete and is
deprecated in PHP 5.3.
ISAPI
extension
(Windows
only, not
supported
since PHP
5.3)

High.

Low

Runs as a part of
the IIS web server.

The ISAPI extension can provide site
isolation in case a dedicated IIS
application pool is switched on for
subscriptions. Site isolation means that
sites of different customers run their
scripts independently. Thus, an error in
one PHP script does not affect the
work of other scripts. In addition, PHP
scripts run on behalf of a system user
associated with a hosting account.

Note: The ISAPI extension handler
is not supported since PHP 5.3.
CGI
application

Low.
Low
Creates a new
process for each
request and closes it
once the request is
processed.

The CGI handler provides PHP script
execution on behalf of a system user
associated with a hosting account. On
Linux, this behavior is possible only
when the suEXEC module of the
Apache web server is on (default
option). Otherwise, all PHP scripts are
executed on behalf of the apache
user.
We recommend that you use the CGI
handler only as a fall-back.

FastCGI
application

High (close to
Apache module and
ISAPI extension).
Keeps the
processes running
to handle further
incoming requests.

High

The FastCGI handler runs PHP scripts
on behalf of a system user associated
with a hosting account.

403

404

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PHP-FPM
application
(Linux only)

High

Low

The PHP-FPM is an advanced version
of FastCGI which offers significant
benefits for highly loaded web
applications.
The PHP-FPM handler is available
only if it was installed by hosting
provider and if the option Process PHP
by nginx in the website’s settings is
turned on (Websites & Domains > select
a domain > Web Server tab).

Note: Switching PHP from Apache module to FastCGI application may break functionality of
existing PHP scripts. Switching to PHP-FPM by selecting Process PHP by nginx in the website’s
web server settings may do the same.

PHP Version
Panel supports different versions of PHP. For each handler, one or more PHP versions can
be available. The list of available versions is defined by your hosting provider and available
to you in the same location where you select the PHP handler: Websites & Domains tab >
> Edit.
Note: Always use PHP 5.x except the cases when you need PHP 4.x to host some old PHP
apps.

PHP Settings
PHP behavior is defined by a number of configuration settings. These settings specify
various script execution aspects, like performance (for example, the amount of memory a
script can use), security (for example, access to file system and services), and so on. You
may adjust these settings for a number of reasons:


Preventing a memory leak or server hang-up by poorly written scripts.



Protecting data from malicious scripts.



Meeting the requirements of a certain web app.



Testing own scripts and other.

PHP settings are located in the Control Panel, Websites & Domains > select a website > PHP
Settings. For convenience, all PHP settings are divided into two groups:


Performance settings.
These settings define how scripts work with system resources. For example: Use the
memory_limit parameter to limit the amount of memory for a script to prevent a
memory leak. In addition, you can prevent scripts from tying up the server by limiting the
maximum time scripts are allowed to run using max_execution_time.



Common settings.
This group contains other commonly used PHP settings. Generally, these are: Security
settings (for example, the PHP safe mode toggle or the permission to register global
variables), error reporting settings (for example, the directive to log errors), and others.

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You can set the value of each parameter in PHP Settings either by selecting a value from a
preset, typing a custom value, or leaving the Default value. In the latter case, Panel uses the
values defined by the server-wide php.ini file. For information about certain PHP settings,
refer to the respective documentation. For example, http://php.net/manual/en/ini.list.php.
It is possible to use three placeholders in parameter values:


{DOCROOT} for the document root directory of a domain that gets custom PHP
configuration.



{WEBSPACEROOT} for the root directory of a subscription (webspace).



{TMP} for the directory which stores temporary files.

Note: Default values of PHP settings in Panel differ from the ones suggested by the official
PHP documentation at http://php.net/manual/en/ini.list.php.
Note: Custom PHP configuration of a website acts as a preset for all subdomains of this site.
You can perform further per-subdomain PHP configuration in the same way as for the
websites.

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ASP.NET Settings (Windows)
 To configure ASP.NET Settings for a site:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click your website's domain name.
3. Click ASP.NET Settings.
4. Set up the strings that determine database connection data for ASP.NET
applications that use databases. This option is available only for ASP.NET
2.0.x.
When you open the ASP.NET configuration screen for the first time, sample
connection parameters with common constructions are displayed. You can delete
them and specify your own strings.


To add a string, enter the required data into the Name and Connection Parameters input
fields and click
next to them.



To remove a string, click

next to it.

5. Set up custom error messages that will be returned by ASP.NET applications
in the Custom Error Settings field:




To set the custom error messages mode, select an appropriate option from the Custom
error mode menu:


On - custom error messages are enabled.



Off - custom error messages are disabled and detailed errors are to be shown.



RemoteOnly - custom error messages are displayed only to remote clients, and
ASP.NET errors are shown to the local host users.

To add a new custom error message (which will be applied unless the Off mode was
selected), enter the values in the Status Code and Redirect URL fields, and click .


Status Code defines the HTTP status code resulting in redirection to the error page.



Redirect URL defines the web address of the error page presenting information
about the error to the client.

Due to possible conflicts, you cannot add a new custom error message with an error
code that already exists, but you can redefine the URL for the existing code.


To remove a custom error message from the list, click

next to it.

6. Configure compilation settings in the Compilation and Debugging field:


To determine the programming language to be used as default in dynamic compilation
files, choose an entry from Default web page language list.



To enable compiling retail binaries, leave the Switch on debugging checkbox empty.

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To enable compiling debug binaries, select the Switch on debugging checkbox. In this
case, the source code fragments containing error will be shown in a diagnostic page
message.

Note. When running applications in debug mode, a memory and/or performance
overhead occurs. It is recommended to use debugging when testing an application and to
disable it before deploying the application into production scenario.

7. Configure encoding settings for ASP.NET applications in the Globalization
Settings section:


To set an adopted encoding of all incoming requests, enter an encoding value into the
Request encoding field (default is utf-8).



To set an adopted encoding of all responses, enter an encoding value into the
Response encoding field (default is utf-8).



To set an encoding which must be used by default for parsing of .aspx, .asmx, and
.asax files, enter an encoding value into the File encoding field (default is Windows1252).



To set a culture which must be used by default for processing incoming web requests,
select an appropriate item from the Culture list.



To set a culture which must be used by default when processing searches for a
locale-dependent resource, select an appropriate item from the UI Culture list.

8. Set a code access security trust level for ASP.NET applications in the Code
Access Security field.
CAS trust level is a security zone to which applications execution is assigned, defining
what server resources the applications will have access to.
Important: When an assembly is assigned a trust level that is too low, it does not
function correctly. For more information on the permissions levels see
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/enus/dnnetsec/html/THCMCh09.asp?frame=true#c09618429_010.

9. Enable the usage of the auxiliary scripts in the Script Library Settings field.
Specifying the script library settings is necessary if the validation web
controls are used on your web site. This option is available only for ASP.NET
1.1.x.


If you need to use auxiliary scripts (specifically, scripts implementing objects for
validating input data), provide the settings for .NET framework script library. To do so,
enter the path beginning with the domain root directory preceded by the forward slash
into the Path to Microsoft script library field, or click the folder icon next to the Path to
Microsoft script library field and browse for the required location.



To initiate the auto-installation of files containing the scripts to the specified location,
select the Install checkbox. If the files already exist there, they will be rewritten.

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10. Set client session parameters in the Session Settings field:


To set up the default authentication mode for applications, select an appropriate item
from the Authentication mode list. Windows authentication mode should be selected if
any form of IIS authentication is used.



To set up time that a session can remain idle, type the number of minutes into the
Session timeout box.

11. Click OK to apply all changes.

Web Server Settings
Web server type depends on Panel version: Apache (with nginx) is used on Panel for Linux,
and IIS on Panel for Windows. Depending on your Panel version, refer to Apache Web Server
Settings (on page 408) or IIS Web Server Settings (on page 410).

Next in this section:
Apache Web Server Settings............................................................................. 408
IIS Web Server Settings .................................................................................... 410

Apache Web Server Settings
Panel uses the Apache web server (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_HTTP_Server) to
deliver the pages of your website to clients (such as browsers through which visitors access
your website). By default, to achieve better performance, Apache is supplemented with
another web server - nginx. For details about how Apache is integrated with nginx in Panel,
see Apache with nginx (on page 30) in the Administrator’s Guide.
Default web server settings are specified by the server administrator (hosting provider). For
example, these settings can determine how web servers process different types of files, how
they use SSL, where they store log files, and so on.
However, you (as a website owner) can set up custom web server settings for your website.
For example, add a new type of the index file, restrict access to the site, and so on.
Note: You can adjust web server settings for your websites only if your hosting subscription
provides the corresponding permission.

Next in this section:
Adjusting Apache Web Server Settings ............................................................. 409

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Adjusting Apache Web Server Settings
All customizable web server settings are located on the Websites & Domains >
> Web Server Settings page. Custom settings work only for the selected website. The settings
are divided into two groups:


Common Apache settings.
These settings are typically changed by site owners, who may want to add a new type of
index files (Index files), or a MIME type for files with a certain extension (MIME types), to
restrict access to the site (Deny access to the site), or specify Apache handlers for a certain
file type (Handlers).



nginx settings.
These settings define how the processing of web requests is divided between the Apache
and nginx web servers to achieve better performance for a specific site.
Important: nginx settings are for advanced users only. To learn more about nginx
settings, see Adjusting nginx Settings for Virtual Hosts (on page 35) in the Administrator’s
Guide.


Smart static files processing.
Caution: Turn off this option only to troubleshoot nginx related issues.
Turning this option off will limit the role of nginx: It will only pass requests and
responses without modification. Except for troubleshooting the nginx related issues,
we recommend that you leave this option turned on.



Serve static files directly by nginx.
For sites with a lot of static content (like image or video files) and high load, better
performance can be achieved by delegating serving static files to nginx. Apache will
not take any part in processing the requests for the files with the specified extensions.

For example, to exclude Apache from delivering jpg and gif files, you should turn on
the option Serve static files directly by nginx and specify file extensions like this
gif jpg
or
gif|jpg
Caution: Because requests for static files never reach Apache, they do not pass
through Apache handlers. This means, for example, that rewrite rules or .htaccess
directives will not be applied.


Process PHP by nginx.
When the Process PHP by nginx option is on, Apache does not take any part in
processing the requests for PHP files. All requests for PHP files are processed by
nginx using the PHP-FPM handler. The handlers used by Apache are not available on
nginx. The PHP-FPM is an advanced version of FastCGI which offers significant
benefits for highly loaded web applications. To learn more about PHP-FPM, see
http://php-fpm.org/about/.
Caution: Because requests for PHP files do not reach Apache they do not pass
through its handlers (CGI, FastCGI, or an Apache module), so some web apps
may not work as expected.

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Note that subdomains have their own web server settings, therefore, when you change web
server settings for a site that has subdomains, the subdomains will not receive these
changes.
If you do not find the necessary setting, contact your server administrator (hosting provider),
who can set up more custom settings for websites.

The Default Value of Server Settings
You can set the value of each parameter either by typing a custom value, or leaving the
Default value. In the latter case, Panel uses the values from the default web server
configuration defined by the server administrator (hosting provider).
Your values override the default ones. The only exception is the Deny access to the site
setting - IP addresses from the default configuration, as well as the IP addresses specified
by you, will all be applied to your website. In case of a conflict (for example, when you allow
the IP address that is denied in the default configuration), Apache uses your settings.

IIS Web Server Settings
Panel uses the IIS web server (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Information_Services) to
deliver the pages of your website to clients (such as browsers through which visitors access
your website). The behavior of IIS is defined by variety of settings.
Default web server settings are specified by the server administrator (hosting provider). For
example, these settings can determine how IIS process different types of files, how it uses
SSL, and so on.
However, you (as a website owner) can set up custom web server settings for your website.
For example, add a new type of the index file, restrict access to the site, and so on.
Note: You can adjust web server settings for your websites only if your hosting subscription
provides the corresponding permission.

Next in this section:
Adjusting IIS Web Server Settings ..................................................................... 411

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Adjusting IIS Web Server Settings
All customizable web server settings are located in Websites & Domains > select a website >
Web Server Settings. Custom settings work only for the selected website. The settings are
divided into groups:

Common Settings
These settings are typically changed by site owners, who may want to:


Allow site visitors to view the listing of files and subdirectories of the site’s directory in
their browsers (Directory browsing). The directory listing will be displayed if there are no
matches for default index pages in the site’s root directory.



Add a new type of default index pages (Default documents).



Add a new MIME type for files with a certain extension (MIME types).

Directory Security Settings
These settings allow site owners to:


Restrict access to the site by username and password – only system users will be able to
access the site (Anonymous access). Denying anonymous access may be useful if your site
is not intended for any visitor, for example, it is a web application for internal use. Note
that FTP users and additional FTP users created in Panel will have access to such a site
if they were granted access to the site’s directory.



Force all clients (such as browsers or FTP clients) to use the secure HTTPS protocol to
access their site (Require SSL). You need this option, for example, if the site contains and
transmits personal information.

Access Restriction Settings
These settings allow site owners to restrict access to the site by IP address of the visitor
(Deny access to the site) by denting and allowing access from certain IP addresses.
Note: Subdomains have their own web server settings, therefore, when you change web
server settings for a site that has subdomains, the subdomains will not receive these
changes.
If you do not find the necessary setting, contact your server administrator (hosting provider),
who can set up more custom settings for websites.

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The Default Value of Server Settings
You can set the value of each parameter either by typing a custom value, or leaving the
Default value. In the latter case, Panel uses the values from the default web server
configuration defined by the server administrator (hosting provider).
Your values override the default ones. The only exception is the Deny access to the site setting
- IP addresses from the default configuration, as well as the IP addresses specified by you,
will all be applied to your website. In case of a conflict (for example, when you allow the IP
address that is denied in the default configuration), IIS uses your settings.

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Website Content
To create your website and fill it with the content you need (text, images, videos, and so on),
use one of the methods provided by the Panel:




Using website creation and management tools. If you do not have a website yet, consider
setting one up by yourself with a tool for creating, editing, and publishing websites. You
can do this even if you do not possess the necessary web programming and design skills.
The best tools of this sort are the following:


Presence Builder - a website editor integrated with the Control Panel.



Third-party Content Management Systems (CMS) - web applications for creating and
editing websites.

Uploading existing websites to your hosting account using one the following methods:


FTP client program. You can obtain a free FTP client from the Internet, or, if you are
using Windows, use Windows Explorer. This enables you to access your directory on
the hosting server and manage your files. If you collaborate with other people when
managing your website (such as programmers or designers), you can provide them
with access to your directory using FTP to let them edit the website by themselves.



File Manager. A tool for uploading and managing website files and directories through
the Panel web interface.

Note: if you have a website created in Microsoft FrontPage editor, refer to the section Working
with Microsoft Frontpage Websites (Windows) (on page 447) for details on managing this site in
Panel.
Below you will find detailed descriptions of the ways to manage your content.

Presence Builder
Presence Builder is a great tool that enables users with no knowledge of HTML markup or
graphic design skills to create professional-looking sites. Just pick a suitable page design
and content template, add your text to the pages, and publish the site.
You can create and publish websites using Presence Builder if your hosting subscription
provides this option. If it does not, or if you have already created and published the allowed
number of sites, you still can create a new website with Presence Builder and edit it.
However, to publish this website, you will need to upgrade your hosting plan.
To start creating a website using Presence Builder or edit an existing Presence Builder site,
go the Websites & Domains tab, click you domain name, and click Launch Presence Builder. Find
more information on creating and editing websites in Presence Builder in the chapter Building
Websites with Parallels Presence Builder (on page 467).

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Third-Party Content Management Systems
To create and maintain a website, you can use third-party Content Management Systems
(CMS) - web applications that let you easily edit a website's structure and content with a
graphical user interface. Examples of such systems are Drupal and Joomla.
CMS are usually server applications, so to start using one of them you should install it on
your hosting account. Hence, if you plan to use a CMS, ensure that your hosting subscription
allows such applications to be installed.

 To create a website using a CMS:
1. Go to the Applications tab.
2. Find the CMS you need in the list of available applications, and install it as
described in the section Employing Website Applications (on page 421).
3. Create and edit your website in the CMS. For information on how to create
websites with your CMS, refer to the relevant documentation.

Uploading Using FTP
If you already have all your website files and directories, consider uploading them to your
hosting account using FTP. This is the quickest way for simple uploading of files when you
do not need to edit or manage them on the server.

 To upload files using FTP:
1. Connect to your site's domain name with an FTP client program using your
FTP access credentials. Learn how to configure these credentials in the
section Adding FTP Accounts (on page 522).
2. Copy the website files and directories to your directory on the server.

File Manager
Another way to publish a website created outside the Panel is File Manager - a tool that
provides a set of file management functions through the web interface. File Manager is
located on the Files tab of the Control Panel.
To upload a website from your computer to Panel server with File Manager, open the Files
tab of the Control Panel and drag the website folder to the central area of this tab. If your
website is compressed to a ZIP file, you can upload this file to the server and then extract it
by clicking Extract Files in the More menu.
If you want to edit pages of your website, you can do it in File Manager. It provides an HTML
editor that allows visual editing of HTML pages (without needing to manually type HTML
tags). To edit a file in the HTML editor, place the mouse pointer over the file, click the link
to open the file's context menu, and select Edit in HTML Editor.

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You can also edit files in File Manager's text editor if you like. To open a file in the text editor,
open the file's context menu and select the Edit in Text Editor.
If you have files or web pages that you want to make inaccessible on the Internet, change
these files' access permissions in File Manager. To edit access permissions for a file or a
directory, click the corresponding link in the Permissions column. To learn how to review and
edit the permissions, refer to the sections Setting File and Directory Access Permissions (on page
416).

Next in this section:
Setting File and Directory Access Permissions .................................................. 416

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Setting File and Directory Access Permissions
 To review or change the permissions set for files and directories on Linux
systems:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, select the required
webspace in the Subscription menu at the top of the screen.
2. Go to the Files tab.
The permissions set for files and directories are shown in the Permissions column. They
are represented as three sets of symbols, for example, 'rwx rwx r--'. The first set tells
what the owner of the file or directory can do with it; the second tells what the user group,
the file or directory belongs to, can do with the file or directory; the third set indicates what
other users (the rest of the world, that is, Internet users visiting a site) can do with the file
or directory. R means the permission to read the file or directory, W means the
permission to write to the file or directory, and X means the permission to execute the file
or look inside the directory.

3. Locate the file or directory for which you want to modify permissions and
click a hyperlink in the Permissions column.
4. Modify the permissions as desired and click OK.

 To set access permissions for a file or directory on Windows systems:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Files tab.
3. Locate the file or directory for which you want to set access permissions, and
click the corresponding icon .
4. Do the following:


To make the file or folder inherit permissions from a parent folder (if it does not),
select the checkbox Allow inheritable permissions from the parent to propagate to this object
and all child objects. Include these with entries explicitly defined here.



To make the files and folders, which are contained in this folder, inherit the folder
permissions you define, select the checkbox Replace permission entries on all child objects
with entries shown here that apply to child objects.



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To allow or deny permissions to a selected group/user, select the Allow or Deny
checkboxes corresponding to permissions listed under Permissions for . If the checkboxes in the Allow or Deny columns are shown in grey, it means that
the corresponding permissions are inherited from a parent folder.


To deny the permissions, which are inherited from a parent object as allowed, select
the required checkboxes under Deny. This will override inherited permissions for this
file/folder.



To allow the permissions, which are inherited from a parent object as denied, clear the
Allow inheritable permissions from the parent to propagate to this object and all child objects.
Include these with entries explicitly defined here checkbox: this removes the inherited
permissions. Then select the required checkboxes under Allow and Deny.



To remove access permissions from a group or user, select the required name in the
Group or user names list and click the icon
next to it.

5. If you need advanced fine-tuning of permissions, click the Advanced button,
and do the following:


To create a permission entry for a group or user, select the required name from the
Group or user names list and click .



To set or change file/folder permissions for a group or user, select the required name
from the Group or user names list, select the required Allow and Deny checkboxes
corresponding to permissions listed under Permissions for .



To remove a permission entry for a group or user, select the required name from the
Group or user names list and click .



To make child objects of a folder inherit its permissions defined under Permissions for
, select the Replace permission entries on all child objects with entries
shown here that apply to child objects checkbox, and select checkboxes in the Apply to list
which correspond to the objects that must inherit the permissions.

6. Click OK.

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(Advanced) Restricting Access to Content
If you have directories in a site that only authorized users should see, restrict access to these
directories with password protection.

 To protect a directory in your site with a password and to specify authorized
users:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the site's domain name.
3. Click Password-protected Directories.
4. Click Add Protected Directory.
5. In the Directory name box, specify the path to the directory that you want to
protect with a password.
This can be any directory existing in the site, for example: /private. If the directory that
you would like to protect has not yet been created, specify the path and the directory
name – the Panel will create it for you.

6. If you are using a Linux-based account, you can also protect your CGI
scripts stored in the cgi-bin directory. To do this, leave '/' in the Directory
name box and select the cgi-bin checkbox.
7. In the Title of the protected area box, type a resource description or a welcoming
message that your users will see when they visit the protected area.
8. Click OK. The directory you specified will be protected.
9. To add authorized users, click Add New User.
10. Specify the username and password that will be used for accessing the
protected area. The password should be from 5 to 14 symbols in length.
Click OK.

 To add an authorized user of a protected directory:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the site's domain name.
3. Click Password-protected Directories.
4. Click on the name of the directory you need.
5. Click the Add New User icon.

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6. Specify the username and password that will be used for accessing the
protected area. The password should be from 5 to 14 symbols in length.
7. Click OK.

 To change password for an authorized user of a protected directory:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the site's domain name.
3. Click Password-protected Directories.
4. Click on the name of the directory you need. A list of authorized users will
open.
5. Click on the user’s name.
6. Specify the new password and re-type it for confirmation.
7. Click OK.

 To revoke a permission to access the protected directory from a user:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the site's domain name.
3. Click Password-protected Directories.
4. Click on the name of the directory you need. A list of authorized users will
open.
5. Select a checkbox corresponding to the user’s name.
6. Click Remove. Confirm the operation and click OK.

 To remove password protection and make the resource available to the public:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the site's domain name.
3. Click Password-protected Directories.
4. Select a checkbox corresponding to the name of the directory, from which
you want to remove protection.
5. Click Remove Protection. The protection will be removed and the contents of
the directory will be accessible to the public without restrictions.

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Previewing Websites
After you purchase a domain, its registration can require some time. The reason for the delay
is that name servers update their zone information periodically. Thus, until all name servers
have received information about your zone, you will not be able to access your site by its
domain name. Nevertheless, you can always access your site during domain name
propagation using the Preview button on the Websites & Domains tab.
During domain name propagation other people can access your site too. For this purpose,
Panel registers your website as a subdomain of one of the provider's sites. For example, if
your website is my-domain.tld and a provider has configured the preview service on providerdomain.tld, you can access your site on my-domain.tld.192-0-2-12.provider-domain.tld. Here
192-0-2-12 is the site's IP address where dots are replaced with dashes.
Notes:
The contents of password-protected directories might be inaccessible in the Preview mode.
If you do not have the site preview button on the Websites & Domains page, contact your
hosting provider.

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Web Applications
You can significantly increase your website functionality by using different web apps. Apps
installed on a website can perform a number of tasks. If you are an individual, you can, for
example, present yourself with a blog or organize an online storage of your media files.
Companies can move their business online using the e-commerce or CRM web apps. All
these apps are available for installation from the Applications tab of the Control Panel.
The list of available apps is governed by your hosting plan. For example, it might include only
free apps or no apps at all. For more information on available apps, contact your hosting
provider.

App Types
There are two types of web apps:


Apps installed directly on your website (for example, the WordPress blogging platform or
the Joomla! content management system).



Apps installed on external servers and provided by third-parties.

Regardless of the installation type, apps can be either free or commercial. Commercial apps
require you to obtain a license key to start working with them. You can recognize commercial
apps in the catalog on the Application tab by the button Buy now (instead of Install for free
apps). If you decide to use commercial apps, read the Managing Commercial App Licenses
section to learn more about acquiring and managing app licenses.

App Installation and Maintenance
The process of installation is fully automated and does not require any specific skills. To
learn how to install web apps from the Control Panel, refer to the section Installing Apps.
Further app management is also facilitated as you can update or remove apps directly in
Panel. Moreover, you can access some functions that apps reveal to the Control Panel
(without the need to log in to an app). For example, you can add SugarCRM user account
right from your Control Panel. Such app functionality is a service provided by the app.
After you install an app, grant other auxiliary user accounts access to it if you want them to
be able to use the app. To get started with managing apps, see the section Managing Apps (on
page 423).

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App Databases
If an app requires a database, Panel creates it automatically during installation of the app. To
create a database, Panel uses app database settings, which you can change in the Main
configuration section (Show All Settings link) when installing an app:


A database name and a database server where the app will store the database.



Database user credentials, which Panel will use to access the app database. It may be
convenient to employ a single database user with access to all databases. In this case,
you can create a universal user account and specify it when installing apps. To learn
more, refer to the section Managing Database User Accounts (on page 545).

Note that if you exceed the maximum number of databases allowed for your subscription, a
new app does not create a new database. Instead, it adds tables to one of the existing
databases, and adds prefixes to table names. Prefixes make it easier to distinguish tables of
different apps from each other. For example, the Wordpress app will add the “wpress_” prefix
to the names of its tables.

Access to Apps
By default, after you install an app, it is available only for users with the Owner role. You can
make your apps available to certain auxiliary users by adjusting their permissions. For details
on setting up access to apps for auxiliary users, refer to the section Granting Auxiliary Users
Access to Apps (on page 423).

Apps and Auxiliary User Accounts
Some apps let you create and manage user accounts directly in Panel. For example, the
SugarCRM app allows you to add SugarCRM users without logging in to the app. All apps
with such "account services" can associate their accounts with users of a Panel subscription
(auxiliary users). To perform such an association, you should grant the auxiliary users
access to that account service (in the same way as you grant access to apps). For details on
account association, refer to the section Linking Apps and Auxiliary (on page 424)User Accounts.

Next in this section:
Managing Apps ................................................................................................. 423
Granting Auxiliary Users Access to Apps .......................................................... 423
Linking Apps and Auxiliary User Accounts......................................................... 424
Updating Apps ................................................................................................... 425
Managing Commercial App Licenses ................................................................ 425

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Managing Apps
Generally, all apps allow the configuration of their main parameters directly in the Control
Panel. You can access app settings by selecting the app from the list in Applications > Manage
My Applications. After you select an app, you can configure the following:


General settings.
These are basic settings (for example, the app administrator password) that can be
changed with Change Settings.



Service settings.
If an app provides a part of its functionality to Panel by means of services, you have the
option to configure them. For example, the SugarCRM app allows the creation of user
accounts and provides this ability as a service in the Control Panel. After you select this
service in Provided services, you can view all app user accounts and create new ones.
For some apps, you can associate the app accounts with auxiliary user accounts. Learn
more about account association in the section Linking App and Auxiliary (on page 424)User
Accounts.

Granting Auxiliary Users Access to Apps
By default, after you install an app, only users with the Owner role can access it. To allow
other subscription users to access the app:


Grant permission to access the app to a certain user group in Users > User Roles.



Be sure to add users of your choice to the group.

Once you allow users to access the app, a link to the app appears on their Websites &
Domains page under the name of the corresponding website. Note that you can control app
access only for user groups, so you should either modify the permissions of an existing
group or create a new one, and then assign users to it.
By default, the app administrator is a subscription user with the Owner role. As well as
accessing the apps from the Websites & Domains page, this user can also install and manage
apps within a subscription. For these purposes, their interface has the additional Applications
tab. You can provide the same administrative privileges to other subscription users by
granting the Install and manage applications permission to their role in Users > User Roles. This
gives users full administrative access to all apps within a subscription. As well as the
administrator, the users with this permission can install, configure, update, and remove apps
through the Applications tab in their Control Panel.

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Linking Apps and Auxiliary User Accounts
Some apps let you create and manage user accounts without logging in to the app. If an app
provides such an account service, you can link users of a Panel subscription with accounts in
the app. To perform such an association:
1. Organize the users into a certain group (Users > User Roles).
2. Grant one of these group permissions:


Public access.
If granted, all users in the group will have access to the app through the link on the
Websites & Domains page.



Personal access.
If granted, the app will automatically create accounts for all users in the group. After
that, the users' Websites & Domains page will contain an additional link that allows
logging in to a personal account in the app. Note that if you deny the Personal access
permission, the app will automatically remove all accounts associated with this group.

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Updating Apps
Automatic Updates
By default, Panel installs the latest available app versions and updates apps immediately
once the newer versions are available. However, updating an app can significantly change its
functionality: For example, plug-ins or extensions developed for a particular app version may
be incompatible with newer versions. Therefore, you might want to turn off automatic updates
for a certain app.

 To turn automatic updates on or off:
1. Go to Applications > Manage My Applications and click the app's name.
2. Click Change Settings.
3. Select or deselect the option Automatically update this app when updates are
available.

Manual Updates
If you prohibit automatic updates for an app, Panel will inform you about the availability of
newer versions by adding the link Update available under the app name in Applications > Manage
My Applications. Click this link to review the changes available in the new version and decide
whether to update the app or continue with the current version.

Managing Commercial App Licenses
If you decide to buy an application license in the Control Panel and click the corresponding
button on the Applications tab, you will be forwarded to Storefront, the online store where you
complete your order. Actually it is not only a store, it also includes its own web interface to
help you perform various operations with the licenses you own. For example, from this web
interface you can renew a license, cancel it, change your payment methods and so on. This
section explains how to carry out these operations.
Storefront Basics
When you order a first license in Storefront, it creates an account for you. This account
contains your personal and financial information; if you log in to Storefront under this
account, you will be able to do various operations with your licenses.
Each time you successfully check out in Storefront, a purchase order is generated. It is a
document that lists the cart items you ordered. Storefront assigns different statuses to
orders. These statuses explain the current state of your purchase - whether it is unpaid,
canceled, or successfully delivered.
Storefront and Panel share the service plans business model. In Storefront, each application
is presented by a separate service plan, and when you order an application license you
subscribe to one of the service plans. In other words, each license you purchase is shown as
a subscription in the web interface. For instance, if you would like to view a license price,
terms, or an expiration date, you should open the corresponding subscription.

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Note: If your Panel license comes in a bundle with licenses for certain commercial apps, you
will be able to install such apps without proceeding to Storefront. These apps will be
accompanied by the Install Now button instead of Buy Now as they are considered purchased.
The pool of used and unused app license keys is available in Tools & Settings > License
Management > Additional License Keys.
How to Get a License File or Key
After you order a license and pay for it, Storefront sends you an e-mail with your license file
or key. We recommend that you keep the information in a safe place because there is no
way to request it again or view it from the web interface. If you did not receive the e-mail with
a license file or key, contact us at https://support.parallels.com/.
Available Operations
The operations you can carry out in Storefront fall into three groups:


Operations with your user account. These operations include viewing and modifying your
personal information and preferences and changing the password to your user account.



Operations with payments and payment methods. This group comprises operations with
your credit cards, payments, and orders.



Operations with subscriptions. Use them to acquire new licenses, obtain information
about your existing licenses, and check the subscription renewal method for a particular
subscription.

Learn more about these operations in the subsections of this section.

Next in this section:
User Account..................................................................................................... 427
Payments and Payment Methods ...................................................................... 428
Subscriptions..................................................................................................... 429

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User Account
You can do the following operations with your user account.

View and Change Your Account Information
The system uses your account information to add your personal and financial details into
invoices. If you see that you need to update your details, open the My Contact Info submenu
on the Navigation menu and select Account Info.

View and Change Your Personal Information
Your personal information mostly duplicates the account information. It does not appear in
financial documents, but some services use this information as technical contact details. For
example, it is possible to order a domain name through Storefront, and if you do so,
Storefront will send your personal information (as the technical contact) to a domain name
registrar.
To view user personal information, open the My Contact Info > Personal Info menu on the left
panel. Here you can also edit your personal information and change password to your
Storefront account.

Configure e-mail notifications
E-mail notifications are sent on different events to your account contact e-mail address. They
fall into a number of categories. For example, subscription renewal and expiration, your
credit card(s) expiration, etc. You can select messages format for every group of messages
and decide whether to send certain messages or not. To configure messages types to
receive, open My Contact Info > Notification Methods.

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Payments and Payment Methods
This section describes operations with payments and credit cards available to you in
Storefront.

Registering a Credit Card
Before a credit card becomes available for making online payments, it is necessary to
register it in Storefront. To register a credit card, open Billing Manager > My Financial Info >
Payment Methods and click the appropriate button.

Configuring Automatic Payments
You can assign one of the registered credit cards to be used for paying orders automatically.
In this case, you will not need to pay each order manually. If you assign a payment method
to be used for automatic payments, the previous default one is unselected automatically.
Thus, only one payment method can be used for automated payments.
To turn on automatic payments from a card, go to Billing Manager > My Financial Info > Payment
Methods, select the card by clicking on its ID or Type, and, finally, enable automatic payments
on the card properties screen.

Making a Payment
To add new payment, open the Billing Manager > New Payment link on the dashboard. The
adding new payment wizard starts. The list of pending documents appears on the screen. If
there are no pending documents, click Cancel to finish the wizard. Otherwise, walk through
the wizard by providing the payment settings.

Viewing Open Orders
Your open orders are available in the Billing Manager > My Financial Info > Open Orders
submenu.

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Subscriptions
Storefront offers you a powerful and comprehensive mechanism of subscriptions (licenses)
management, allowing you to perform the following operations.

Buying a Subscription
If you want to purchase one more app license or another service offered by Storefront, there
is no need for you to go to the Control Panel. The Storefront web interface provides all
facilities for making the purchase. To start the subscription ordering wizard, open Billing
Manager > Subscription Management and click Buy New Subscription.

Renewing a Subscription Manually
If you did not configure the auto renewal feature, your subscription will expire unless you do
not renew it manually. The auto renewal setup instructions are given later in this section. To
renew a subscription manually, open Billing Manager > Subscription Management > Renew
Subscription and follow the wizard steps.

Renewing Subscriptions Automatically
Configuring a subscription for auto renewal helps renewing your subscriptions in time. To
allow the auto renewal, open Billing Manager > Subscription Management > Renew Subscription,
click a subscription for which you want to turn the option on, and click Turn On AutoRenew
Option. Clear the option to cancel the auto renewal.

Canceling a Subscription
A subscription cancelation results in termination of the subscription services and money
refund. To cancel a subscription, open Billing Manager > Subscription Management > Renew
Subscription, click a subscription you want to cancel, and start the cancelation wizard by
clicking Cancel Subscription.

(Advanced) Website Security
Next in this section:
Securing Connections with SSL Certificates ...................................................... 430
Protecting Sites from Hotlinking (Windows) ....................................................... 435

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Securing Connections with SSL Certificates
If your website transfers private data, for example, visitors' credit card numbers, we
recommend that you use the SSL secure channel for this website. To set up such a channel,
you should purchase an SSL certificate for your website.
SSL certificates are used not only for establishing secure communication channels on the
Internet but also for verifying a website's identity as well. When users visit your secure online
store, they are notified that your website is really what it claims to be and that all sensitive
data, such as credit card numbers, will be transferred over a secure channel.
SSL certificates are issued by specific organizations - SSL certificate providers. However,
some hosting providers allow customers to purchase SSL certificates directly from Panel.

Purchasing SSL Certificates
Depending on your hosting provider, you can have the following ways of purchasing SSL
certificates:


Order an SSL certificate from Panel. This way is available to you if your provider
configures the corresponding Panel settings. The links for purchasing SSL certificates
from Panel may let your purchase certificates either from your provider in their online
store or from Parallels in the MyPlesk outlet. To learn how to order an SSL certificate
through Panel, see the section Purchasing SSL Certificates through Panel (on page 431).



Order an SSL certificate from the SSL certificate provider you like. In this case, you
should create a certificate signing request (CSR) for your website in Panel and submit it
to an SSL certificate provider. To learn how to create such request and purchase a
certificate with it, refer to the section Generating Certificate Signing Requests (on page 432).

Securing Websites
After you obtain a certificate for your website, you should secure the connection to the
website with the certificate. The section Securing Websites (on page 433) explains how to do
this.

Securing Websites with Shared SSL Certificates
On Windows systems, you may be able to secure your websites without purchasing your
own SSL certificates. This feature is available to you if your hosting provider offers shared
SSL certificates. The section Using Shared SSL Certificates (Windows) (on page 434) explains
how to secure a website with a shared SSL certificate.

Next in this section:
Purchasing SSL Certificates Through Panel ...................................................... 431
Generating Certificate Signing Requests ........................................................... 432
Securing Websites ............................................................................................ 433
Using Shared SSL Certificates (Windows)......................................................... 434

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Purchasing SSL Certificates Through Panel
The links for purchasing SSL certificates in Panel let you purchase either certificates from
your provider if they offer their own certificates, or certificates from Parallels in the MyPlesk
outlet. These links may also be unavailable to you if your provider decides so.

 To purchase an SSL certificate through Panel:
1. Open the corresponding subscription in the Control Panel
2. Go to the Websites & Domains and select the website you want to protect with
an SSL certificate.
3. Click Secure Your Sites.
4. Click Add SSL Certificate.
5. Specify the following certificate parameters:


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.



Your location and organization name. The values you enter should not exceed the
length of 64 symbols.



The domain name for which you want to purchase an SSL certificate. This should be a
fully qualified domain name. Example: your-domain.com.



The website administrator's e-mail address.

6. Make sure that all the provided information is correct and accurate, as it will
be used to generate your private key.
7. Click Buy SSL Certificate.
8. Complete all steps of an SSL certificate purchase in the online store and you
will receive your SSL certificate by e-mail.

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Generating Certificate Signing Requests
If your hosting provider does not allow purchasing SSL certificates through Panel, you can
create a certificate signing request and submit it to an SSL certificate provider. The provider
will generate an SSL certificate for your website basing on this request.

 To generate a certificate signing request:
1. Open the corresponding subscription on the Control Panel
2. Go to the Websites & Domains and select the website you want to protect with
an SSL certificate.
3. Click Secure Your Sites.
4. Click Add SSL Certificate.
5. Specify the following certificate parameters:


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.



Your location and organization name. The values you enter should not exceed the
length of 64 symbols.



The domain name for which you want to purchase an SSL certificate. This should be a
fully qualified domain name. Example: your-domain.com.



The website administrator's e-mail address.

6. Make sure that all the provided information is correct and accurate, as it will
be used to generate your private key.
7. Click Request. Panel will generate your private key and certificate signing
request and add them to your certificates repository (Websites & Domains >
Secure Your Sites).
8. In the list of certificates, click the name of the certificate yo u need.
9. Locate the CSR section on the page, and copy the text that starts with the line
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- and ends with the line -----END CERTIFICATE
REQUEST----- to the clipboard.
10. Visit the website of the certification authority from which you want to
purchase an SSL certificate, and follow the links on their site to start a
certificate ordering procedure. When you are prompted to specify CSR text,
paste the data from the clipboard into the online form and click Continue. The
certification authority will create an SSL certificate in accordance with the
information you supplied.

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Securing Websites
After you receive an SSL certificate for your website, secure the website with this certificate.

 To secure a website with an SSL certificate:
1. Log in to the Control Panel and select the subscription that contains the
website you want to secure in the Subscriptions menu at the top of the screen.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains and select the website you want to protect with
an SSL certificate.
3. Click Secure Your Sites.
Upload the SSL certificate: Click Browse in the middle of the screen 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.

1. To install the certificate on a site, return to the Websites & Domains tab, and
click the domain name of the website that you want to secure.
2. To switch on SSL protection, select the Enable SSL support checkbox.
3. From the SSL certificate menu, select your SSL certificate and click OK.

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Using Shared SSL Certificates (Windows)
If your hosting service provider offers shared SSL for securing access to sites, then you can
switch on SSL encryption without purchasing your own SSL certificate.

 To secure connections to a site by using an SSL certificate shared by your
provider:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains and select the website you want to protect with
an SSL certificate.
3. Click Shared SSL.
4. Select the domain name of the site that you want to secure.
5. Select the Switch on shared SSL checkbox.
6. Specify the virtual directory name in the corresponding input field. The virtual
directory with the supplied name will be created under the domain whose
SSL certificate is shared (called master SSL domain). This directory will be
used for accessing your site through SSL.
For example, let us suppose that you have a domain named mydomain.com, the master
SSL domain is defined as master_ssl_domain.com, and the virtual directory name you
supplied is my_virtual_dir. In this case, to access your site through SSL, you need to
use the following address: https://master_ssl_domain.com/my_virtual_dir.
Note: You cannot use your domain name (for example, mydomain.com) to access your
site via SSL if you are using shared SSL.

7. Select the directory where protected content is located under your websi te.
The documents within the specified directory will be accessible only through
SSL.
8. To make your domain accessible via SSL only, select the checkbox Make this
website accessible only through secure connections.
9. Click OK.

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Protecting Sites from Hotlinking (Windows)
Hotlinking (also called file leeching, remote linking, direct linking, bandwidth stealing or
bandwidth banditism) is a term used for describing a situation when a web page of one
domain owner is directly linking to images (or other multimedia files) on the web pages of
another domain owner, usually using an tag. If your domains are hotlinked, you may
face the problem of excessive bandwidth usage.

 To protect a website from hotlinking:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the website's domain name.
3. Click Hotlink Protection.
4. Click Switch On to enable the protection from hotlinking.
5. Specify the extensions of files that you want to protect from hotlinking (for
example, jpg, bmp, and so on) in the Protected files extensions field. When
listing several file extensions, separate them with white spaces.
6. If you want to allow direct linking to your files from certain sites, type the
website addresses into the Addresses of friendly websites field, and click Add.
7. Click OK.

(Advanced) Extended Website Management
Panel provides a number of operations on websites and domains for advanced users:
Working with third-party applications and services, fine tuning of some system services, and
much more. This section contains the detailed instructions on all these operations.

Next in this section:
Working with a Staging Site ............................................................................... 436
Setting Up Mobile Sites ..................................................................................... 438
Setting Up Custom Error Pages ........................................................................ 439
Using Google Services ...................................................................................... 441
Hosting Personal Web Pages Under Your Domains .......................................... 443
Limiting Bandwidth and Number of Connections to Websites ............................ 446
Working with Microsoft FrontPage Websites (Windows) .................................... 447
Using Virtual Directories (Windows) .................................................................. 452
Setting Up IIS Application Pool (Windows) ........................................................ 465
Web Publishing with Web Deploy (Windows) .................................................... 466

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Working with a Staging Site
If you have a production website and are planning major site changes, consider setting up a
staging site — a separate location on the server where you can conveniently update and test
a copy of the site before putting it into production.
We recommend that you work with a staging site in the following way:
1. Decide where you want to host the development copy and prepare the development
environment. You can choose to host it in the same webspace, in a separate webspace
on the same server, or upload it to an FTP account on another server.
If you choose the same webspace, then you first need to set up a new website by adding
a domain or a subdomain.
2. (Optional step.) If you set up your development environment under your account in the
Panel and your production site has APS applications installed via the Panel (at the
Applications tab), install the desired site applications in your development environment in
the same subdirectory as you have on your production site. This step is optional;
however, it will help you avoid changing manually database connection settings in the
application scripts.
3. Make a copy of the website and place it in the staging environment.
4. Make copies of the databases used by the site and deploy them in the staging
environment.
5. Change database connection settings in the scripts to point at the databases in the
staging environment.
6. (Optional step.) Complete APS applications setup. Go to the Applications tab for your
development site, locate the application in the list of installed applications, open its
Settings screen and re-save the parameters. With this operation, the APS scripts should
stop pointing at the production database and reconnect the application to the database
copy. This step is needed if your production site has APS apps installed via the Panel
and you performed Step 2 of the current instruction.
7. Make the required changes to the site copy in the staging environment, and test them to
make sure everything works as intended.
8. Publish the updated site. This is done by pointing the document root of the production
site to the staging site location.

 To set up a site for staging purposes:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab.
2. Click either Add New Domain or Add New Subdomain.
We recommend that you use a subdomain for staging purposes.

3. Proceed as described in Adding Domains (on page 379) or Adding Subdomains
(on page 381).
If you do not want your staging site to be accessible to the Internet users, do not register the
newly added domain or subdomain name with a domain name registrar, or use an
.htaccess file (on Linux hosting) to restrict access to it.

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 To make a copy of website files:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the name of the website you want
to copy.
2. Click Website Copying.
3. To copy website files to the document root of an existing site:
a. Select the option Website in the Panel.
b. Select the destination site from the Site name menu.
c. Specify what to do with the files that might already be present in the
destination directory.
4. To copy website files to an FTP account on this or another server:
a. Select the option FTP storage.
b. Specify the server's host name and credentials for connecting to the
FTP account.
c. In the FTP connection method field, leave the Active mode option selected.
If the Panel fails to connect to the external FTP account, select the
Passive mode option here.
5. Click OK.
If the site uses scripts that work with a database, copy the database to the staging
environment:


If the database is hosted on the same server managed by Panel 10, use the procedure
below to copy it.



If the database is hosted on a server which is not managed by Panel 10, use the
mysqldump utility to export the database, move the resulting data dump file to the
staging environment and deploy it there. Modify the site's scripts in the staging
environment so that they connect to the copied database.

 To make a copy of a database from the Panel-managed server:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab > Databases.
2. Click Copy in the databases list for the database you want to copy.
3. Specify the following:


Destination database server. You can select the same Panel-managed database server,
or a database server located elsewhere. For an external database server, specify the
host name or IP address, and access credentials: the username and password of a
database management system user authorized to create new databases and
database tables.



Destination database. You can choose to create a new database or copy the data to an
existing database.



Create a full copy. Leave this option selected to copy the database structure and all
data.

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4. Click OK.
The copy of the database will be deployed on the destination server.

5. Modify the site's scripts in the staging environment so that they connect to
the copied database.
When the site copy in the staging environment is updated and ready to go live, publish it as
described in the following steps.

 To publish the updated site to the production environment:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab.
2. In the list of domain names, locate the address of your production site and
click it.
3. In the Document root box, specify the document root directory of the staging
site.
4. Click OK.
This will make the updated site copy in the staging site location accessible to visitors of your
production site address.

Setting Up Mobile Sites
Your service plan may include the option to create website copies optimized for viewing on
mobile devices. The copies are hosted with external UNITY Mobile online service.
Important: In Panel 10.4, if a customer ordered the Unity Express offering from the
Applications tab, the system could confuse the offering with Unity One. If you faced this
problem, we recommend that you remove the site created with Unity One and create the
new one in order to get Unity Express.

 To create a copy of your website optimized for viewing on mobile devices, or
set up a new mobile website:
1. Go to Websites & Domains tab and click the site's domain name.
2. Click Mobile Websites.
3. Click the corresponding Create Mobile Site link.
4. Specify an address for the mobile site.
If your site is accessible, for example, by domain name example.com, you can type a
prefix like mobile, and then the optimized copy of your website will be accessible by the
address mobile.example.com.

5. Click OK.
6. Click Edit Site Content. A UNITY Mobile site opens in a new browser window or
tab, and you are logged on under your account.

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7. In the Import from the web section showing your main website’s domain name,
click the button

8. Complete the website import wizard by following instructions presented on
the screen.
After the mobile site is created, you can add a link to it to your main site.
You can now perform the following operations on the mobile site using links in Control Panel:


Open site editor.



Remove mobile site.

Setting Up Custom Error Pages
When visitors coming to a site request pages that the web server cannot find, the web server
generates and displays a standard HTML page with an error message. You may want to
create your own error pages and use them for your sites or individual virtual directories. The
following error messages are the ones customized most often:


400 Bad File Request. Usually means the syntax used in the URL is incorrect (for
example, uppercase letter should be lowercase letter; wrong punctuation marks).



401 Unauthorized. Server is looking for some encryption key from the client and is not
getting it. Also, wrong password may have been entered.



403 Forbidden/Access denied. Similar to 401; a special permission is needed to access
the site – a password 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.



503 Service Temporarily Unavailable. The site is temporarily unavailable due to
maintenance.

Next in this section:
Setting Up Custom Error Pages on Windows Servers ....................................... 440
Setting Up Custom Error Pages on Linux Servers ............................................. 441

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Setting Up Custom Error Pages on Windows Servers
 To configure the web server to show custom error pages for a site or a
directory within a site:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Switch on support for custom error documents.
a. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the Hosting Settings button
beside domain name you need.
b. Select the Custom error documents checkbox.
c. Click OK.
3. Go to the Websites & Domains tab.
4. Click the domain name you need.
5. Click Virtual Directories to see the list of error documents for the root web
directory. Error documents located here are used for all web pages of the
selected site. If you want to customize error pages for a specific virtual
directory, navigate to that directory.
6. Click Error Documents tab and click the required error document in the list.


To use the default document provided by IIS for this error page, select Default in the
Type menu.



To use a custom HTML document already located in the error_docs directory in the
virtual host directory of the domain, select File in the Type menu and specify the file
name in the Location field.



To use a custom HTML document located in a directory other than error_docs on
a domain, select URL in the Type menu and enter the path to your document in the
Location field. The path should be relative to the virtual host root (that is,
\\httpdocs).
For example, you have created a file forbidden_403_1.html and saved it in the
my_errors directory located in the httpdocs. To use this file as an error document,
you need to type the following path into the Location field:
/my_errors/forbidden_403_1.html.

Note: You can use a connection over FTP or File Manager in the Panel to upload your
custom error document to the server. By default, all error documents are stored in the
/vhosts/your-domain.com/error_docs/ directory (located in C:\InetPub by
default).

7. Once the web server is restarted, it will start using your error documents.

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Setting Up Custom Error Pages on Linux Servers
 To configure the web server to show custom error pages for a site:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Switch on support for custom error documents.
a. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the Hosting Settings button
beside domain name you need.
b. Select the Custom error documents checkbox.
c. Click OK.
3. Connect to your FTP account, and go to the error_docs directory.
4. Edit or replace the respective files. Be sure to preserve the correct file
names:


400 Bad File Request - bad_request.html



401 Unauthorized - unauthorized.html



403 Forbidden/Access denied - forbidden.html



404 Not Found - not_found.html



405 Method Not Allowed - method_not_allowed.html



406 Not Acceptable - not_acceptable.html



407 Proxy Authentication Required - proxy_authentication_required.html



412 Precondition Failed - precondition_failed.html



414 Request-URI Too Long - request-uri_too_long.html



415 Unsupported Media Type - unsupported_media_type.html



500 Internal Server Error - internal_server_error.html



501 Not Implemented - not_implemented.html



502 Bad Gateway - bad_gateway.html



503 Service Temporarily Unavailable - maintenance.html

The web server will start using your error documents in a few hours, after it is restarted.

Using Google Services
Using links in the Panel, you can generate code for inserting a custom Google search engine
into your site, submit your website to Google through Webmaster Tools area, enroll in the
AdSense program, embed YouTube videos, Google Translate service, or other Google
products into your site.

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Google Custom Search is a search engine provided by Google. It adds search functions to
your site and allows you to apply your website's look and feel to the search results page. It
can be used for free on websites of individuals and non-profit organizations. Websites related
to for-profit businesses can either use a Custom Search Engine that will show
advertisements from Google, or purchase a subscription to Google Site Search service,
which starts from $100 per year. To learn more about Google Site Search and current prices,
visit http://www.google.com/sitesearch.
Google Webmaster Tools allow webmasters to submit a website to Google and view search
statistics. To learn more about Webmaster Tools, visit
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/?hl=en.
Google AdSense allows webmasters to earn money for displaying targeted Google ads on
their websites. To learn more about AdSense, visit
https://www.google.com/adsense/login/en/.
Google Web Elements allows webmasters to easily add their favorite Google products to
websites. Embed content, such as news, maps, YouTube videos, and social conversations
from Google Friend Connect to Web pages with simple cut-n-paste. To learn more about
Google Web Elements, visit http://www.google.com/webelements/.
Before you start using Google services, you need to confirm acceptance of Google Terms of
Services, and then confirm ownership for your sites.

 To confirm acceptance of Google terms of service and then confirm ownership
of your sites:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab, and click the Google Services for Websites link.
2. Click the appropriate links in the Panel to open and read the Terms of
Service documents.
3. To confirm that you accept the Terms of Service, select the checkbox and
click Confirm.
Now you can do the following:


Submit your site to Google and improve site visibility in search results by clicking Google
Webmaster Tools.




Add search functions to a site by clicking Add New Custom Search Engine.
Enroll in the AdSense program by clicking Google AdSense.



Embed Google products into your site by clicking Google Web Elements.

 To submit a site to Google:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the site's domain name.
2. Click the Google Services for Websites link.

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3. Click Google Webmaster Tools.
The Google Webmaster Tools area opens in a new browser window or tab.

4. Create a Sitemap and submit it to Google by following instructions at
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1
56184.

 To add a custom search engine to a site:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the site's domain name.
2. Click the Google Services for Websites link.
3. Click Custom Site Search.
4. Click Add New Custom Search Engine.
5. Type a search engine name and select the website you need.
6. Select the checkbox to confirm your acceptance of Terms of Service, and
click OK.
The record corresponding to the new search engine is added to the Panel.

7. Click the corresponding Get Code link, copy the generated code to the
clipboard and paste it into the source code of your website pages.
The other links in the list of Custom Search Engines will help you perform the following
operations:



Make Money. Connect your Custom Search Engine to a Google AdSense account. You
make money when users click on an ad they see in your search results. If you have more
than one Custom Search engine, all of your search engines will automatically be
associated with the same AdSense account.
Manage. Manage your Custom Search Engines.



Look and Feel. Adjust the appearance of search box and search results page.




Upgrade. Upgrade a Custom Search Engine to ads-free Google Site Search.
Statistics. Review site search reports.



Delete. Delete a Custom Search Engine.



 To participate in the Google AdSense program:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the site's domain name.
2. Click the Google Services for Websites link.
3. Click Google AdSense.
4. Click Google AdSense account.
5. Fill in all the required fields to create a new AdSense account, or select an
existing account, and click OK.
A confirmation e-mail with further instructions will be sent to your e-mail address.

Hosting Personal Web Pages Under Your Domains

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You can host on your web server personal web pages for users who do not need their own
domain names. These pages usually have web addresses like http://yourdomain.com/~username.

 To accommodate a personal web page under your domain and set up an FTP
account for publishing:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name under which you
want to create a personal web page.
3. Click Web Users.
4. Click Settings.
5. If you want to allow execution of scripts embedded in personal web pages,
select the Allow web users to use scripts checkbox.
6. Click OK.
The settings you have defined at the step 4 are common for all personal web pages you
might host on your account. Therefore, you will not need to perform the steps from 3 to 5
next time you set up a new web user account.

7. Click Add New Web User.
8. Specify a username and a password that will be used for accessing the
webspace through FTP and publishing the web pages.
You can use only lower-case alphanumeric, hyphen and underscore symbols in the
username. The username should begin with an alphabet character. It cannot contain
white spaces. The password cannot contain quotation marks, white space, username,
and should be between 5 and 14 characters in length.

9. If you want 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 webspace.

10. 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 checkbox.

11. If you use a Windows-based hosting account and this personal web page's
applications need to use a file-based database (like Jet) located in the root
of httpdocs directory, select the Additional write/modify permissions option. Note
that selecting this option might seriously compromise the website sec urity.
12. Click OK.
Now you can tell your user the FTP account credentials, so that he or she can publish their
web page.

Website Management

 To change FTP password for a web page owner:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the name of the domain that
contains the personal page.
2. Click Web Users.
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:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the name of the domain that
contains the personal page.
2. Click Web Users.
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:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the name of the domain that
contains the personal page.
2. Click Web Users.
3. Select a checkbox corresponding to the user account you want to remove
and click Remove.
4. Confirm removal and click OK.

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Limiting Bandwidth and Number of Connections to Websites
To avoid excessive usage of bandwidth, and protect your site from Denial Of Service attacks,
you can limit bandwidth usage for a site and number of simultaneous connections.

 To limit bandwidth usage and number of connections to a site:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the site's domain name.
3. Click Bandwidth Limiting.
4. Select the Switch on bandwidth limiting checkbox.
5. In the Maximum bandwidth usage (KB/S) box, specify the maximum speed,
measured in kilobytes per second, that a website can share among all its
connections.
6. Select the Switch on connections limiting checkbox.
7. In the Connections limited to box, specify the maximum number of simultaneous
connections to the site.
8. Click OK.

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Working with Microsoft FrontPage Websites (Windows)
Microsoft FrontPage deals with two kinds of websites: disk-based and server-based. In short,
a disk-based site is a FrontPage website you create on your local hard disk and then later
publish to the server. A server-based site is one you create and work with directly on the
server, without the extra step of publishing. This section provides you with instructions on
publishing only disk-based websites.
You can publish disk-based websites either through FTP or HTTP. If your hosting server is
running FrontPage Server Extensions, you would publish your site over HTTP. For example:
http://your-domain.com/MyWebSite. If your hosting 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. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Click the Websites & Domains tab and click the name of the website you want to
manage in Frontpage.
3. Click FrontPage.
4. Do either of the following:


To manage a site over HTTP connection, click Frontpage Webadmin.



To manage a site over a secure SSL connection, if SSL support is enabled for the
site, click Frontpage SSL Webadmin.

5. Type your FrontPage administrator’s username and password, and click OK.
For instructions on using FrontPage server extensions, see online help (Frontpage Webadmin >
Help) or visit Microsoft website.
The following FrontPage settings are changeable through the Panel:


The use of Microsoft FrontPage IIS Index Server for building the full-text index of your
website.



SMTP mail server and sender's e-mail address. These options are applicable if you
use FrontPage forms that submit information from your site by e-mail. By default,
SMTP server specified in the domain's DNS zone is used for sending mail. If no
SMTP server is specified in the zone, then FrontPage uses the mail service running
on the server where the domain (site) is hosted.

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 To change any of these settings:
1. Click the Websites & Domains tab and click the name of the website you want to
manage in Frontpage.
2. Go to FrontPage > Settings.
3. Make the required changes and click OK.

Next in this section:
Publishing FrontPage Websites ......................................................................... 449
Adding FrontPage Accounts .............................................................................. 451

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449

Publishing FrontPage Websites
 To publish files through FTP:
1. Open your FrontPage program.
2. Open a FrontPage website: 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 (for example, ftp://ftp.yourdomain.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.

 To publish files through HTTP on a server that supports FrontPage Server
Extensions:
1. Open your FrontPage program.
2. Open a FrontPage website: 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 website that you want to publish folders and files to,
for example, http://www.your-domain.com, or click Browse to locate the site.

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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 website.



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.

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Adding FrontPage Accounts
If you are using Microsoft FrontPage for collaborating on website content with other users,
then you need to create additional Microsoft FrontPage accounts.

 To create an additional Microsoft FrontPage account:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name of the website for
which you create the account.
3. Click FrontPage.
4. Click Add New FrontPage Account.
5. Specify the following:


Username and password for the account.



Limit on disk space. If you wish to limit the amount of disk space that can be used by
this account, clear the Unlimited check box and type the desired value in megabytes
into the Hard disk quota box.
When the specified limit is exceeded, the user will not be able to upload more files to
the webspace.

6. Click OK.

 To change settings for an additional Microsoft FrontPage account:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name of the website
that contains the account.
2. Click FrontPage.
3. Click the required account name in the list.
4. Adjust the settings as necessary and click OK to save changes.

 To remove an additional Microsoft FrontPage account:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the domain name of the website
that contains the account.
2. Click FrontPage.
3. Select the checkbox corresponding to the account you want to remove.
4. Click Remove.
5. Confirm the removal and click OK.

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Using Virtual Directories (Windows)
A virtual directory is a link to an existing physical directory that is present on the server's hard
disk. Virtual directories can have a number of specific settings like custom ASP.NET
configuration, access permissions, and protection with a password.
Because any virtual directory can have its own settings, including customized ASP.NET
configuration, virtual directories are very useful in setting up your web applications, especially
those written in ASP.NET. For example, if you have three web applications that use
ASP.NET version 1.1, and you need to install one web application that uses ASP.NET
version 2.0, you can create a virtual directory for the ASP.NET 2.0 application, configure
ASP.NET settings for this directory so as to enable support for version 2.0, and then
successfully install the required application.
Virtual directories can also be used as aliases. For example, you have a web application
installed on your domain "example.com" in the physical directory
"/my_data/web_apps/forum". To access this web application, users need to type
"example.com/my_data/web_apps/forum", which is hard to remember and too long to
type. You can create virtual directory called forum in the root of your virtual host, and link
this virtual directory to "/my_data/web_apps/forum", so the users who want to access
the web application will need to type "example.com/forum", which is much shorter and
easier to remember.

Next in this section:
Creating Virtual Directories ................................................................................ 453
Configuring ASP.NET for Virtual Directories ...................................................... 455
Configuring PHP for Virtual Directories .............................................................. 457
Setting Up Access to Virtual Directories ............................................................ 458
Changing Virtual Directory Settings ................................................................... 461
Adding and Removing MIME Types .................................................................. 463

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Creating Virtual Directories
 To create a virtual directory within a website:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the website's domain name.
3. Click Virtual Directories. You are in your web site root now.
4. Navigate to the directory in which you want to create a new virtual directory.
5. Click Create Virtual Directory.
Note: To create a physical directory instead of virtual directory, click Create Directory,
specify the name of the directory and click OK.

6. Specify the required parameters:


Name - specify the virtual directory name.



Path - specify the virtual directory path:


Select the Create physical directory with the same name as virtual directory checkbox to
automatically create a physical directory with the same name as the virtual
directory you are creating.



Clear the Create physical directory with the same name as virtual directory checkbox and
specify the path in the field to select a physical directory that already exists.



Script source access - select this checkbox to allow users to access source code if
either Read or Write permissions are set. Source code includes scripts in ASP
applications.



Read permission - select this checkbox to allow users to read files or directories and
their associated properties.



Write permission - select this checkbox to allow users to upload files and their
associated properties to the virtual directory or to change content in a write-enabled
file. Write access is allowed only if browser supports the PUT feature of the HTTP 1.1
protocol.



Directory browsing - select this checkbox to allow users to see a hypertext listing of the
files and subdirectories in the virtual directory.



Log visits - select this checkbox if you want to store the information about visits of the
virtual directory.



Create application - select this checkbox to make the directory an IIS application. The
directory becomes logically independent from the rest of the website.



Execute permissions - select the appropriate program execution level allowed for the
virtual directory.


None - allow access only to static files such as HTML or image files.



Scripts only - allow running scripts only, not executables.

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


Scripts and Executables - remove all restrictions so that all file types can be
executed.

ASP Settings - set specific settings for ASP-based web applications.


If you are using ASP-based applications that cannot operate correctly under data
transfer restrictions currently set by IIS, clear the Defined by parent directory
checkbox corresponding to the field you want to change and type in the required
number.



If you want to enable debugging of ASP applications on the server side, clear the
corresponding Defined by parent directory checkbox and select the Enable ASP serverside script debugging checkbox.



If you want to enable debugging of ASP applications on the client side, clear the
corresponding Defined by parent directory checkbox and select the Enable ASP clientside script debugging checkbox.

Note that if you are trying to change ASP Settings for the root virtual directory, the
default checkbox names will be Defined by IIS instead of Defined by parent directory.

7. Click OK.

 To remove a virtual directory from a website:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the website's domain name.
3. Click Virtual Directories.
4. Select the checkbox corresponding to the directory you want to remove.
5. Click Remove.
6. Confirm the removal and click OK.

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Configuring ASP.NET for Virtual Directories
 To configure ASP.NET settings for a virtual directory within a website:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the website's domain name.
3. Click Virtual Directories.
4. Browse to the required directory and click a link with its name.
5. Click ASP.NET Settings.
6. Set up the strings that determine database connection data for ASP.NET
applications that use databases. This option is available only for ASP.NET
2.0.x.
When you open the ASP.NET configuration page for the first time, sample connection
parameters with common constructions are displayed. You can delete them and
specify your own strings.


To add a string, enter the required data into the Name and Connection Parameters input
fields and click
next to them.



To remove a string, click

next to it.

7. Set up custom error messages that will be returned by ASP.NET
applications:




To set the custom error messages mode, select an appropriate option from the Custom
error mode menu:


On - custom error messages are enabled.



Off - custom error messages are disabled and detailed errors are to be shown.



RemoteOnly - custom error messages are displayed only to remote clients, and
ASP.NET errors are shown to the local host.

To add a new custom error message (which will be applied unless the Off mode was
selected), enter the values in the Status Code and Redirect URL fields, and click .


Status Code defines the HTTP status code resulting in redirection to the error page.



Redirect URL defines the web address of the error page presenting information
about the error to the client.

Due to possible conflicts, you cannot add a new custom error message with an error
code that already exists, but you can redefine the URL for the existing code.


To remove a custom error message from the list, click

next to it.

8. Configure compilation settings in the Compilation and Debugging field:


To determine the programming language to be used as default in dynamic compilation
files, choose an entry from the Default web page language menu.



To enable compiling of retail binaries, leave the Switch on debugging checkbox empty.

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

To enable compiling of debug binaries, select the Switch on debugging checkbox. In this
case, the source code fragments containing error will be shown in a diagnostic
message.

Note: When running applications in debug mode, a memory and performance overhead
occurs. We recommended that you use debugging when testing an application, and
disable it before deploying the application into production scenario.

9. Configure encoding settings for ASP.NET applications in the Globalization
Settings section:


To set an adopted encoding of all incoming requests, enter an encoding value into the
Request encoding field (default is utf-8).



To set an adopted encoding of all responses, enter an encoding value into the
Response encoding field (default is utf-8).



To set an encoding which must be used by default for parsing of .aspx, .asmx, and
.asax files, enter an encoding value into the File encoding field (default is Windows1252).



To set a culture which must be used by default for processing incoming web requests,
select an appropriate item from the Culture list.



To set a culture which must be used by default when processing searches for a
locale-dependent resource, select an appropriate item from the UI Culture list.

10. Set a code access security trust level for ASP.NET applications in the Code
Access Security field.
CAS trust level is a security zone to which applications execution is assigned, defining
what server resources the applications will have access to.
Important: When an assembly is assigned a trust level that is too low, it does not
function correctly. For more information on the permission levels, see
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/enus/dnnetsec/html/THCMCh09.asp?frame=true#c09618429_010.

11. If you are using ASP.NET 1.1.x, then you can enable the usage of the
auxiliary scripts in the Script Library Settings field. Specifying the script library
settings is necessary if the validation web controls are used on your web
site.




To initiate installation of files containing the scripts to the specified location, select the
Install checkbox. If the files already exist there, they will be rewritten.

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12. Set client session parameters in the Session Settings field:


To set up the default authentication mode for applications, select an appropriate item
from the Authentication mode list. Windows authentication mode should be selected if
any form of IIS authentication is used.



To set up the allowed session idle time, enter appropriate number minutes into the
Session timeout field.

13. Click OK to apply all changes.

Configuring PHP for Virtual Directories
To be able to use web applications that require PHP4 or PHP5, you can select the required
PHP version for individual virtual directories.

 To select PHP version for a virtual directory within a website:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the website's domain name.
3. Click Virtual Directories.
4. Browse to the required directory and click a link with its name.
5. In the Tools group, click PHP Settings.
6. Select the required version of PHP and click OK.

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Setting Up Access to Virtual Directories
 To set access permissions for a virtual directory within a website:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the website's domain name.
3. Click Virtual Directories.
4. To set access permissions for the current virtual directory, in the Tools group,
click Directory Access Permissions. If you want to set permissions for a
subdirectory located within the current directory, click the corresponding icon
.
5. Do the following:


To make the file/folder inherit permissions from a parent folder (if it does not), select
the checkbox Allow inheritable permissions from the parent to propagate to this object and all
child objects. Include these with entries explicitly defined here.



To change or remove permissions from a group or a user, click the required name in
the Group or user names list. If the group or user is not listed in the Group or user names
list, select the required user or group name from the menu located above the list and
click : the user/group appears in the list. Select it.
To allow or deny permissions to a selected group/user, select the Allow or Deny
checkboxes corresponding to permissions listed under Permissions for . If the checkboxes in Allow or Deny columns are shown in grey, it means that the
corresponding permissions are inherited from a parent folder.



To deny the permissions, which are inherited from a parent object as allowed, select
the required checkboxes under Deny. This will override inherited permissions for this
file/folder.



To remove access permissions from a group or user, select the required name in the
Group or user names list and click the icon
next to it.

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6. If you need advanced fine-tuning of permissions, click the Advanced button,
and do the following:


To create a permission entry for a group or user, select the required name from the
Group or user names list and click .



To remove a permission entry for a group or user, select the required name from the
Group or user names list and click .



7. Click OK.

 To restrict access to files and directories located within a virtual directory:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the website's domain name.
3. Click Virtual Directories.
4. Navigate to the directory you want to protect and click the Protection tab.
5. Click Protect.
6. To specify users who will be able to access the directory, click Add User,
specify username and password, and click OK.
7. If you want to specify a title for the protected area that will be shown to users
when they attempt to access the directory, click Settings, specify a title, and
click OK.

 To revoke a permission to access a directory from a user:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the website's domain name.
2. Go to the Virtual Directories > Protection tab.
3. Select the checkbox corresponding to the user's name and click Remove.

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 To remove protection from a directory and allow the general public to see the
directory contents without restrictions:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the website's domain name.
2. Go to the Virtual Directories > Protection tab.
3. Click Remove Protection.
4. Click OK to confirm removal.

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Changing Virtual Directory Settings
 To change settings of a virtual directory within a website:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the website's domain name.
3. Click Virtual Directories.
4. Browse to the directory whose preferences you want to change, and click the
corresponding icon , or click Directory Properties when inside the required
directory.
5. Change the settings as required:


Name - specify virtual directory name.



Path - specify the path to the physical directory to which the virtual directory is linked.



Script source access - select this checkbox to allow users to access source code if
either Read or Write permissions are set. Source code includes scripts in ASP
applications.



Read permission - select this checkbox to allow users to read files or directories and
their associated properties.



Directory browsing - select this checkbox to allow users to see a hypertext listing of the
files and subdirectories in the virtual directory.



Log visits - select this checkbox if you want to store the information about visits to the
virtual directory.



Create application - select this checkbox to make the web directory an IIS application.
The directory becomes logically independent from the rest of the website.



Execute permissions - select the appropriate program execution level allowed for the
virtual directory.



None - allow access only to static files such as HTML or image files.



Scripts only - allow running scripts only, not executables.



Scripts and Executables - remove all restrictions so that all file types can be
executed.

Allow to use parent paths - select this checkbox to allow using double period in the path
name when referring to a folder above the current directory. This enables users to
move up the folder tree without knowing the folder name or the whereabouts in the
hierarchy. If the option is selected, parent path directories should not have the Execute
permission checkbox selected in their properties, so that applications do not have the
ability of unauthorized running of programs in the parent paths.

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

Allow application execution in MTA (multi-threaded apartment) mode - select this checkbox to
allow the application execution in multi-threaded apartment (MTA) mode. Otherwise,
the application will run in a single-threaded apartment (STA) mode. Using STA, each
application pool is executed in a dedicated process. With MTA, several concurrent
application pools are executed in one thread which can increase performance in some
cases.



Use default documents - select this checkbox to allow the use of default documents for
the current directory. The default document is sent when users access the directory
on the web without a specific file name (for example, using http://www.example.com
as opposed to http://www.example.com/index.html). If this checkbox is cleared and
the Directory browsing checkbox is selected, the web server returns a folder listing. If
this checkbox is cleared and the Directory browsing checkbox is cleared as well, the
web server returns an "Access Forbidden" error message.



Default documents search order - specifies the order in which IIS searches for the default
document, sending user the first available file it finds. If no match is found, IIS
behaves as in the cases when the default content page is disabled.



Allow anonymous access - select this checkbox if you want to make the directory public
so that the Internet users could access it without authentication.



Require SSL - select this checkbox to enable access to the folder only via SSLencrypted connections.



ASP Settings - set specific settings for ASP-based web applications.


If you are using ASP-based applications that cannot operate correctly under data
transfer restrictions set by IIS, clear the Defined by parent directory checkbox
corresponding to the field you want to change and type in the required number.



If you want to enable debugging of ASP applications on the server side, clear the
corresponding Defined by parent directory checkbox and select the Enable ASP serverside script debugging checkbox.



If you want to enable debugging of ASP applications on the client side, clear the
corresponding Defined by parent directory checkbox and select the Enable ASP clientside script debugging checkbox.
Note that if you are trying to change ASP Settings for the root directory, the default
checkbox names will be Defined by IIS instead of Defined by parent directory.

6. Click OK to save changes.

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Adding and Removing MIME Types
Multipurpose Internet Mail Exchange (MIME) types instruct a web browser or mail application
how to handle files received from a server. For example, when a web browser requests an
item on a server, it also requests the MIME type of the object. Some MIME types, like
graphics, can be displayed inside the browser. Others, such as word processing documents,
require an external application to be displayed.
When a web server delivers a web page to a client web browser, it also sends the MIME type
of the data it is sending. If there is an attached or embedded file in a specific format, IIS also
tells the client application the MIME type of the embedded or attached file. The client
application then knows how to process or display the data being received from IIS.
IIS can only operate files of registered MIME types. These types could be defined both on
the global IIS level and on the website or virtual directory level. Globally-defined MIME types
are inherited by all websites and virtual directories while ones defined on the website main or
virtual directory level are used only for the area where they are defined. Otherwise, if the web
server receives request for a file with unregistered MIME type, it returns the 404.3 (Not
Found) error.

 To add a new MIME type for a virtual directory within a website:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the website's domain name.
3. Click Virtual Directories.
4. Navigate to the required virtual directory and click the corresponding link
with its name.
5. Click the MIME Types tab.
6. Click Add MIME Type.
7. Specify the following:


Type the file name extension in the Extension field. File name extension should begin
with a dot (.), or a wildcard (*) to serve all files regardless of file name extension.



Specify the file content type in the Content field.



You can either select the appropriate value from the list or define a new content type.
To do this, select Custom and enter the content type in the input box provided.

8. Click OK to finish the creation.

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 To edit a MIME type for a virtual directory within a website:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the website's domain name.
3. Click Virtual Directories.
4. Navigate to the required virtual directory and click the corresponding link
with its name.
5. Select the MIME Types tab.
6. Select the required MIME type in the list.


Type the file name extension in the Extension field. File name extension should begin
with a dot (.), or a wildcard (*) to serve all files regardless of file name extension.



Specify the file content type in the Content field.



You can either select the appropriate value from the list or define a new content type.
To do this, select Custom and enter the content type in the input box provided.

7. Click OK to save changes.

 To remove a MIME type for a virtual directory within a website:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the website's domain name.
3. Click Virtual Directories.
4. Navigate to the required virtual directory and click the corresponding link
with its name.
5. Select the MIME Types tab.
6. Select the checkbox corresponding to the MIME type you want to remove.
7. Click Remove.
8. Confirm removal and click OK.

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Setting Up IIS Application Pool (Windows)
IIS Application Pool contains all web applications installed on your sites. If your service
provider allocated a dedicated IIS application pool for your sites, then you can have a level of
isolation between web applications used by your sites and web applications used by other
hosting users who host their websites on the same server. Because each application pool
runs independently, errors in one application pool will not affect the applications running in
other application pools.
Once you switch on the application pool, all web applications on your websites will be using
it.

 To switch on dedicated IIS application pool for your websites:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab > Dedicated IIS Application Pool for Your Websites.
3. Click Switch On.
4. To limit the amount of CPU resources that this application pool can use,
select the Switch on CPU monitoring checkbox and type a number in percents
into the Maximum CPU use (%) box.
5. Click OK.

 To stop all applications running in the application pool:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab > Dedicated IIS Application Pool for Your Websites.
2. Click Stop.

 To start all applications in the application pool:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab > Dedicated IIS Application Pool for Your Websites.
2. Click Start.
If you run applications that are known to have memory leaks or become unstable after
working for a long time, then you might need to restart them from time to time.

 To restart all applications running in the application pool:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab > Dedicated IIS Application Pool for Your Websites.
2. Click Recycle.

 To switch off the dedicated IIS application pool for your websites:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab > Dedicated IIS Application Pool for Your Websites.
2. Click Switch Off.

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Web Publishing with Web Deploy (Windows)
Web Deploy (Web Deployment Tool) is a Microsoft tool that significantly simplifies the
migration, management, and deployment of your websites and web applications. More
precisely, you can write a code in your local environment, for example, in Visual Studio®
(IDE) or WebMatrix® (development tool), and then periodically publish the updates to your
production server by means of Web Deploy.

Differences Between Visual Studio® and WebMatrix®
If you are looking for an environment that allows you to seamlessly publish code updates to
your account, it is likely you will choose between Visual Studio® and WebMatrix®.


Visual Studio® is a classic integrated development environment (IDE) for writing .NET
applications and sites of any scale. It has a variety of plugins that extend its basic
functionality. However, to run and debug your applications in Visual Studio®, you should
perform extra configuration (such as preparing a database and adjusting environment
settings). Thus, this tool is more suitable for advanced users.



With WebMatrix® you have a built-in set of application templates and even working
applications (WordPress, Joomla) right out of the box. If you wish to instantly add an app
to your customer account or run it, you just need to select the app from the list and
WebMatrix® will transparently configure it for you. Moreover, you can promptly find and
subscribe to a hosting plan for your project without leaving WebMatrix®. Summing up,
this tool is suitable even for novice users, and encourages fast development by providing
ready-to-run applications and templates. The details on how to install and use
WebMatrix® are available at http://www.microsoft.com/web/webmatrix/.

It is up to you to decide which is better for your project.

How to Configure Web Publishing in Visual Studio® and WebMatrix®
To set up web publishing in your environment, you should open the publishing settings and
specify the IP address of your customer account and the username and password you use to
log in to the Control Panel.
In WebMatrix®, the publishing settings are found in Home > Publish. You can provide these
settings either manually or as an XML file that Panel automatically generates. To download
the file for a certain website, click on a corresponding Download link in Websites & Domains >
> Web Deploy Publishing Settings. The settings are only available if Web Deploy
is installed on the Panel server and is running. If you do not see these settings, contact your
hosting provider.
For step-by-step instructions on how to set up web publishing in WebMatrix®, see
http://www.microsoft.com/web/post/how-to-publish-a-web-application-using-webmatrix.
To learn more about publication settings in Visual Studio®, see
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/7z83t16a.aspx.

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Note: You can decide whether to transfer updates securely to your customer account by
selecting the corresponding option in the publication settings. If your hosting provider does
not have a valid SSL certificate, you will receive an error message on attempting publication.
To resolve the problem, contact your hosting provider for assistance or avoid using the
secure connection.

Securing WebMatrix® Publishing Settings
An XML file which keeps WebMatrix® publishing settings may include the password to a
customer's account. Administrators have the option to configure Panel so that it excludes
these passwords from the XML files. If the administrators wish to improve the security of the
system and prevent stealing the passwords, they can specify to exclude the password from
the XML file. The customers then will have to enter the password directly in WebMatrix®.
The option is available on the Tools & Settings > Server Settings page.

Creating Sites with Presence Builder
Parallels Presence Builder (also referred to as editor) is a visual editor that lets small
business owners and individuals create their websites quickly and easily. With Presence
Builder, you do not have to write code or configure servers to start a blog, open an online
store, or set up any other form of website. You just add the content blocks that comprise your
site (text, image gallery, online store) by dragging them to pages, fill these blocks with your
content, and publish the result. That’s it!

Start Creating a Website
When you start working on your website, you do not have to write text, search for the
images, and adjust the site look. Just choose a topic that best suits your website, and
Presence Builder will generate a site template that already contains a set of pages, pictures,
and text relevant to the selected topic. Each time Presence Builder generates a website, it
uses a random set of element designs, so you can be sure that your website design is never
repeated.
Once you have selected the topic, you will be prompted to enter some additional information
that Presence Builder will add to the website's pages, for example, your phone number,
which will appear on the Contact Us page.
For more details on how to start creating your website, see the section Creating a Website (on
page 472).

Import Websites Created in SiteBuilder 4.5
If you already have a website created with SiteBuilder 4.5 and hosted elsewhere, you can
import your website to your new customer account. Learn how to move your SiteBuilder 4.5
website to Presence Builder in the section Importing Sites from SiteBuilder 4.5 (on page 473).

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Fill the Site with Content
As soon as Presence Builder creates your website, you can fill it with your content. Your
main editing tool is the Presence Builder's main menu. You can do the following by using the
menu:


Change the structure of your site: Add or remove pages.



Edit the website design: Change colors and layout.



Fill the site with your content: Remove unused predefined content and add your own
elements:



Text



Images and image galleries



Videos



Scripts



Blogs



Search boxes



Other elements

Let your visitors share the information in your website in social media such as Facebook
or Twitter: Add the corresponding buttons to the pages of your site.

To learn more about actions available to you in the editor, refer to the section Getting Familiar
With the Presence Builder Editor (on page 470).
Find instructions on managing website look and content in the section Editing a Website (on
page 474).

Make the Site Available on the Internet
After you finish editing the website, make it available on the Internet. To let people see your
site at your domain name, publish the website by clicking the corresponding button in the
main menu. When you click this link, Presence Builder generates the static pages and scripts
that comprise your website and places them in the appropriate locations on the server so that
people see them when they enter your domain name in their browsers. Learn more about
publishing websites in the section Publishing a Website to the Internet (on page 515).
You can also attract more visitors to your sites by placing a site copy on Facebook - a
popular social network. Refer to the section Publishing a Website Copy to Facebook (on page
516) for detailed instructions on how to do this.

Next in this section:
Getting Familiar With Presence Builder ............................................................. 470
Creating a Website ............................................................................................ 472
Importing Sites from SiteBuilder 4.5 .................................................................. 473
Editing Websites................................................................................................ 474
Saving and Loading Copies of a Website .......................................................... 513
Publishing a Website to the Internet .................................................................. 515

Website Management

Publishing a Website Copy to Facebook ........................................................... 516
Viewing Site Visits Statistics, Comments, and New Orders on the Dashboard .. 518
Deleting Websites ............................................................................................. 520

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Getting Familiar With Presence Builder
The interface of the Presence Builder editor has two main parts: your website and the main
menu.
A website consists of a number of elements, or modules. Each module can be edited
separately. Here we will familiarize you with the basic principles of website module editing.
These are similar for all modules.
When adding a module to a page, you can choose whether it should be shown only on the
current page (page-specific module) or on all pages of the site (site-wide module). The only
exceptions are the Search, Advertisement, Site Logo, Navigation, and Breadcrumbs modules:
when you add them, they are placed on all pages of the website.
To place a module only on the current page, select the module under the Modules tab, and
drag it to any of the areas marked with the text ONLY ON THIS PAGE. Such areas are located
within the main content block and near the top of each sidebar.
To place a module on all pages of the website, select the module under the Modules tab, and
drag it to any of the areas marked with the text ON ALL PAGES. Such areas are located above
and below the main content block, in sidebars, header, and footer.
To locate or edit a website module, hover the mouse pointer over the part of the website you
want to change. A dotted frame will appear around the module. A control panel prompting
you to move, edit, or remove the module will appear next to the dotted frame.
The dotted frame around page-specific modules is green, but around site-wide modules it is
blue.
The editor's main menu offers website editing options grouped under five tabs:


Modules. Here you can choose necessary modules and drag them to any place on the
page to fill your website with content.



Design. Here you can select the layout and general color scheme for your website,
change colors of different elements, and select fonts and border style.



Pages. Here you can add and delete pages, rename them, edit page meta information
such as descriptions and keywords for use by search engines, or mark a page as hidden
so that your visitors cannot access it from the site menu.



Documents. Here you can upload documents, images, and other files in various formats to
your hosting account. You can then easily insert links to these documents into your
website pages. Or, you can just keep the files on the hosting account for your own needs.



Settings. Here you can edit your website name, description and keywords for search
engines, upload a site icon (favicon), optimize the ranking of your website in search
engine results, connect your site to Google Analytics, and add a copy of your site to a
Facebook page.

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From the main menu, you can also do the following:


Access the Dashboard to perform the following operations:


View statistics on website visits. The statistics are provided by Google Analytics.



View new comments left by site visitors on your website pages. The commenting
functionality is provided by Disqus.



View new orders from customers visiting your online stores. The online store
functionality is provided by Ecwid.



Save and load copies of your website by using the Save and Revert options.



Access Presence Builder Getting Started video tutorial, view User’s Guide, or send us your
feedback. To do this, select the corresponding option from the Help menu.
Publish your website by using the Publish button.




Discard any changes made to a site and start creating the site anew by selecting More >
Start Over. This does not delete your already published site copy.



Delete a current website draft from the editor by selecting More > Remove Site. This does
not delete your already published site copy.

You can drag the main menu to any place on the page for your convenience, or minimize it.
You can also access all options of the main menu in the context menu at any place on the
page. To open the context menu, click the right mouse button.

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Creating a Website
To minimize your efforts when creating a website, Presence Builder offers you a set of
predefined website topics. When you start creating a website, choose a topic that is most
appropriate for you, and Presence Builder will generate a website with the content relevant to
this topic. For example, it will include a price list template for a retail store or an image gallery
for an artist's site. If you cannot find a suitable topic, you can contact your service provider to
ask them to create the corresponding template and add it to the list of available topics.
When you start creating a website, Presence Builder also prompts you to provide information
about yourself or your company. Presence Builder will automatically add this information to
certain pages as appropriate, for example, to the About Us and Contact Us pages.
Note: Presence Builder will not store or use the information you provide anywhere except for
your website pages. You can change or remove this information later.

 To start creating a website in Presence Builder:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab and click the desired domain name.
2. Click Launch Presence Builder.
3. Select a website topic.
4. Type the website name and select website language.
5. Provide the information to pre-fill your website.
6. Click Create Site.

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Importing Sites from SiteBuilder 4.5
If you have a site created with SiteBuilder 4.5, you can import it to Presence Builder.
Note: The import of sites from earlier versions of SiteBuilder or other content management
systems is not supported.
If your site was created with an earlier version of SiteBuilder (4.4 or earlier), and you would
like to transfer your site, you can do the following:



Contact your hosting provider and ask them to upgrade your account to the latest version
of Presence Builder.
Transfer your site manually by copying and pasting the content.

During site import, most parts of the site structure and content can be transferred
successfully. However, we cannot guarantee that all content will be transferred.
In most cases, the following elements are imported successfully:


Site map.





Static pages, including links and images in text modules. Note that text blocks exceeding
30 kilobytes may be cut; therefore, some parts of the text may be missing.
Banner (if it is not a custom image).
Slogan, site title.



Logo (if it is not a custom image).



Footer text.



Meta info (keywords, description).

The other modules can be imported only as text widgets with static content, links and
images. Buttons will not work. The image gallery structure can be imported without images.

 To import a site from SiteBuilder 4.5:
1. Open the Presence Builder editor, and on the topic selection screen, click
Import Site from SiteBuilder 4.5.
2. Type the Internet address (domain name) of the site that you want to import.
For example: http://example.com.
3. Select the checkbox to confirm that you are aware of possible import issues,
and click Import Site.
4. After the site is imported, review and edit it as required (on page 474). You
can compare the imported site version with your original site and add the
missing information manually.
5. When finished with editing, publish the site to your customer account (on
page 515).
If you are publishing your new site to the same webspace on which your site created with
SiteBuilder 4.5 was hosted, the old site will be overwritten.

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Editing Websites
In Presence Builder, you can change almost any element of your website. Most of the
elements are changed in place - you open a page where the element is used, edit it and see
the result right away. Site-wide elements, such as Search block and Advertisement block are
changed in one place but the changes are applied to each page of your website.
Note: If you are using Internet Explorer, we strongly recommend that you avoid using
browser zoom to change the size of text displayed in your browser window. Please note that
websites in Presence Builder will perform and look best at normal zoom (100%).

Next in this section:
Structure: Pages and Navigation ....................................................................... 474
Design: Design Templates, Layout, Styles, Color Scheme, and Header ............ 477
Content: Text, Tables, Images, Video, Forms, and Scripts ................................ 485
Settings and Tools for Webmasters ................................................................... 508

Structure: Pages and Navigation
This section describes how to add pages to a site, set their location in the site structure, and
add navigation links.

Next in this section:
Adding and Removing Pages ............................................................................ 475
Adding and Removing Navigation Links ............................................................ 476

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Adding and Removing Pages
Your site can have two levels of nested pages. The total number of pages you can create
depends on your hosting plan. The editor will let you know when you have reached the
allotted number of pages: an icon with the dollar sign ($) will be shown over the Add page
button.

 To add a new page to your website:
1. Go to the Pages tab.
2. Click Add page. The new page appears highlighted in green.
3. Position the new page by dragging it to the right place or by clicking the
arrows.
4. Specify the page title.
5. Give a concise description of the page content that will be displayed on
search engine results pages and the keywords by which the page will be
found by search engines.
Note: Page name and Page link name are required fields. Description and Keywords are
optional fields. If you specify keywords for a page, they should be separated by commas
without white spaces.

6. If you want to make the page invisible to your website visitors, select the
Hidden page checkbox.
7. If you want to restrict access to the page with password authentication,
select the Protected page checkbox and specify a username and a password.
8. Click OK to save changes.

 To change the location or properties of a page:
1. Go to the Pages tab.
2. Select the page you want to edit.
3. Change the page position by dragging it to the right place or by clicking the
arrows.
4. Edit the page title.
5. Edit or remove the concise description of the page content that will be
displayed on search engine results pages and the keywords by which the
page will be found by search engines.
Note: Page name and Page link name are required fields. Description and Keywords are
optional fields. If you specify keywords for a page, they should be separated by commas
without white spaces.

6. If you want to make the page invisible to your website visitors, select the
Hidden page checkbox.

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7. If you want to restrict access to the page with password authentication,
select the Protected page checkbox and specify a username and a password.
8. Click OK to save changes.

 To delete a page from your website:
1. Go to the Pages tab.
2. Select the page you want to delete.
3. Click Delete page.
4. Click OK to save changes.

Adding and Removing Navigation Links
By default, a horizontal navigation bar with links to site pages is inserted below or above the
header of your site. It is automatically updated every time you add, change, move, or remove
pages from the site.
If you use sidebars on the site, then the horizontal bar under the header includes only links to
the first level pages, and the sidebars show the links of the second and third levels.
You can move navigation blocks by dragging them to other areas of the site.
For each navigation block, you can specify what levels of pages should be included in the
menu, change menu alignment (for example, show it in the middle of the page instead of the
default alignment to the left), and change the color, style, and size of the font used for the
links. To change any of these settings, place the mouse pointer over a navigation block and
click Edit.
If you occasionally remove a navigation block, you can re-insert it. To do this, go to the
Modules tab, select Navigation, and drag the block to the area on the page where you want to
add it. The navigation block will be inserted into all pages of the website.
For the convenience of your site visitors, you might also want to add breadcrumb navigation
blocks. Breadcrumb navigation is a chain of links that represents the user's path from the
site's main page to a current page. To add a breadcrumb navigation block, go to the Modules
tab, select Breadcrumbs, and drag the module to the area on the page where you want to add
it. The navigation block will be inserted into all pages of the website.

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Design: Design Templates, Layout, Styles, Color Scheme, and
Header
This section describes how to change the layout, color scheme, and header elements of the
site.

Next in this section:
Selecting a Website Design Template ............................................................... 478
Changing Your Website Layout ......................................................................... 480
Selecting Website Colors, Background Images, Fonts, and Styles for Borders and Corners
Changing the Website Header Elements ........................................................... 484

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Selecting a Website Design Template
When a new website is generated, the editor applies a random design template to the site. A
design template is a combination of website elements (banner, footer, sidebars), page layout
settings, and colors.
The editor provides a selection of 24 design templates, 16 of which are randomly generated,
and 8, created by graphic designers especially for Presence Builder.
You can review the list of design templates and select the design you like the most, or you
can individually adjust the layout and colors of website elements, as described further in this
document.
You can also prepare your own design templates and save them to ZIP archives, upload
them to the editor, and apply to websites.

Selecting and Applying a Design Template
Note: When you apply a design template, all site-wide elements and modules are overwritten
along with the content they might contain.

 To select a design template and apply it to a site:
Go to the Design tab > Templates, select the template you want, and click OK.
Randomly generated designs are listed in the Generated section, and the templates prepared
by designers, in the Special section.

Preparing a Custom Design Template
The following site elements and settings can be saved in a design template:



The website layout: the location and size of the header, footer, content areas, and
sidebars.
The banner image.



All site-wide modules.



The color scheme or individually selected colors.



The fonts.



The information about the borders and shapes of the page elements' corners.



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 To create a custom design template:
1. Adjust the layout and design, as described in Changing Your Website Layout (on
page 480) and Selecting Website Colors, Fonts, and Styles for Borders and Corners (on
page 482).
2. Add the necessary site-wide modules and a banner, as described in the
chapter Content: Text, Tables, Images, Video, Forms, and Scripts (on page
485), and in the section Changing the Website Header Elements (on page
484).
3. Save the design template: Go to the Design tab, and click Export Design.

Importing and Applying a Custom Design Template
Note: When you import and apply a design template, all site-wide elements and modules
contained on the site are overwritten along with the content they might contain.

 To upload and apply a design template:
1. Go to the Design tab, and click Import Design.
2. Select the ZIP archive containing the design template.

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Changing Your Website Layout
The layout of your site can consist of the following elements:




Header. This is the topmost area where a banner image and a company logo are usually
placed. You can do the following to the header:


Move the banner image and logo from the header area to any place on the page.



Reduce the header height to 25 pixels by removing all elements from it.



Change the header width from the default size to 100 percent, so that it is expanded
to fit the page width.

Content area. This is the main part of a webpage where most of the content is placed. You
can do the following to the content area:


Adjust the height of the content area.



Divide the content area into several columns. You can do this by dragging new
modules to the left or right edge of the content area and inserting them.



Change location of the columns in the content area by moving the content to the left
or to the right.

Sidebars. These are vertical columns that can be used for placing all kinds of modules,
site-wide and page-specific. You can do the following to sidebars:


Add one sidebar and place it to the left or to the right of the content area.



Add two sidebars. They will be placed to the left and to the right of the content area.



Adjust the height and width of the sidebars.



Move the sidebars to the top of the page and place them to the left or to the right of
the header area.



Switch places of the sidebars.

Footer. This is the lowest area where the company name, contact information, or a
copyright notice are usually placed. You can do the following to the footer:


Reduce the footer height to 25 pixels by removing all elements from it.



Change the footer width from the default size to 100 percent, so that it is expanded to
fit the page width.

Advertisement block below the footer. Depending on your hosting plan, an additional text
block containing some advertisement from your hosting provider might appear below the
website footer. If that advertisement block appears on your site, you might want to
upgrade to another hosting plan to remove it.

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 To change the layout of your site:
1. Go to the Design tab > Layout tab.
2. Select the number of sidebars: Under Sidebars, select No, One, or Two.
3. Select the locations of sidebars:


To move a sidebar to another side of your website, or to switch places of sidebars (if
you have two sidebars on your site), click Switch sidebars.



To move the sidebars to the top of the page, click them in the layout model.

4. Set the size of page elements:


To set the total width of the website pages, under Website width, select either of the
following:


Fixed layout: your website will be of a specific size regardless of the size of the
browser window viewing the page. In this case, specify your website width in
pixels.



Liquid layout: based on percentages of the current browser window's size. In this
case, specify your website width as a percentage of the browser window's size.



To change the width of the header, footer, and the main content area to fit the page
width, click the corresponding elements in the layout model.



Under Minimal column height in pixels, specify the height of the main content area and
each sidebar, if you have chosen to use them.
This value shows the height of your website elements without content. When you add
content to the main content area and to the sidebars, they will stretch in height to fit
the content.



To ensure that the sidebars and the content area are vertically aligned, select the
checkbox Stretch the sidebars and the content area down to the footer.



If you use one or two sidebars, under Sidebar width in pixels, specify the width of each
sidebar. The size of the main content area will be determined automatically.



Under Margin sizes in pixels, specify the size of vertical and horizontal margins. A
margin is the space between the edges of neighboring elements.

5. Click OK to save changes.

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Selecting Website Colors, Background Images, Fonts, and Styles for Borders and
Corners
The general color scheme, or styleset, of your website comprises four colors. Each color is
used for several website elements at once. You can adjust colors of individual elements on
the Design tab > Colors tab.

 To select the general color scheme for your website:
1. Go to the Design tab > Scheme tab.
2. Select the color scheme, or styleset, of your website in the menu.
You will see the four colors used in the color scheme of your website.

3. To adjust one of the colors of your website color scheme, click the respective
color field and change the hexadecimal color code value or select a color
with the color picker.
Note: These changes will override any previous changes of individual elements' colors
made on the Colors tab.

4. Click OK to save changes.

 To set colors or background images for individual website elements:
1. Go to the Design tab > Colors tab.
2. Select the website element in the Page area menu.
3. Click the arrow in the Color or image menu.
4. Do any of the following:


To fill with a solid color, leave the Solid color option selected, and select a color with
the color picker.



To fill with a gradient, select the Gradient option, and then select a pattern from the
library.



To fill with a background image, select the Image option, select a pattern from the
library or click Upload to upload your own image. Specify where it should be placed
and whether it should be tiled.

5. For an element with text, adjust font colors by clicking the respective color
field and editing the hexadecimal color code value or by selecting a color
with the color picker.
Note: Modifying the styleset on the Scheme tab will override the changes made on the
Color tab.

6. Click OK to save changes.

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 To select fonts for headings and body text of your website:
1. Go to the Design tab > Fonts tab.
2. For each font type, select the font face and size in the menus.
3. For headings, select the font decoration. You can use bold (the B icon) and
italics (the I icon).
Note: The settings made here define only general rules for your website fonts. You can
always adjust fonts of individual elements in place.

4. Click OK to save changes.

 To select the shape of corners (square or rounded) for website elements:
1. Go to the Design tab > Corners tab.
2. In the Page area menu, select the element whose corners you want to change.
3. Do any of the following:


To make rounded corners, select the corresponding checkboxes.



To make square corners, clear the corresponding checkboxes.

4. Click OK to save changes.

 To select borders for website elements:
1. Go to the Design tab > Borders tab.
2. Select the border type for elements inside your website from the Internal
containers border menu.
3. Select the elements that will have the border.
Note: You can select only one internal border type for all elements on your website, but
you can select whether this border will be used for certain elements.

4. Select the external border for your website from the External site border menu.
5. Click OK to save changes.

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Changing the Website Header Elements
The site header consists of the following elements:


Banner. You can do the following to the banner:


Upload your own banner image or a Flash file in SWF format.



Select and apply a banner from the Presence Builder library.



Remove the banner and use a background filled with a color or images.



Remove the banner and all other elements from the header area to reduce its height
to 25 pixels.



Move the banner to the content area and insert it into a specific page or into all pages
of the website.
Note: You can use only one banner per site. If you choose to insert it into a specific
page, you will not be able to add it to other pages of the website. For this reason,
we recommend that you place it into the site-wide areas.






Logo image. You can do the following to the logo:


Upload your own logo image or a Flash file in SWF format.



Move the logo from the header area to other parts of webpages, such as sidebars and
content area.



Insert any number of logo images into the site-wide areas.



Resize the logo by specifying the desired dimensions in pixels, or by dragging the
sides and corners of the image with a mouse pointer.



Remove the logo.

Site name. This usually contains a company name or a brief site description like, for
example, "John Doe's Recipes".
Site slogan. This usually includes a description of your site or a company slogan.

 To change the banner image or other elements of the header (logo, site name,
or slogan):
1. Click the banner image.
2. Select the option Use an image, and then click the image in the Image list menu.
3. Do any of the following:


To use an image from the library, select it. To find relevant images, type a keyword
into the input box.



To use your own image or a Flash file in the SWF format, click Upload, and select the
file that you want to use. Images should be in the GIF, JPEG, and PNG formats,
preferably not wider than 900 pixels.

4. If you want to scale a banner to fit the header area, select the Fit image size
checkbox.
5. Under Show banner elements, select the checkboxes corresponding to the
elements that you want to show in the header.

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6. If you want to remove a logo image or upload your own logo, click the logo
image.
7. If you want to change the site name or slogan, click the corresponding fields
on the header and change them as you want.
To make it easier to see the site name or slogan, select the Outline checkbox. This adds a
black or white outline around text, one pixel in width. If the font color in site title or slogan
is black, then the outline is white, and vice versa.
Note that you can freely move the blocks with website name, description, and logo within
the header area.
If you occasionally remove the banner, you can re-insert it.

 To remove the banner:
Click the banner, select.the option Do not use an image, and specify the height of the header
block in pixels. Click OK.

 To insert a banner:
Go to the Modules tab, select Banner, and drag the module to any of the site-wide areas on the
page where you want to add it.

 To insert a logo:
Go to the Modules tab, select Site Logo, and drag the module to any of the site-wide areas on
the page where you want to add it. You can upload a new logo image or a Flash file in the
SWF format, and align it to the left, center, or right.
You can also resize the logo image by specifying the desired dimensions in pixels, or by
dragging the sides and corners of the image with a mouse pointer.
Note: When you resize the image with a mouse pointer, the option to keep the original aspect
ratio is switched off automatically.

Content: Text, Tables, Images, Video, Forms, and Scripts
This section describes how to fill your site with content and enhance it with useful functions
provided by the editor's modules.
When adding a module to a page, you can choose whether it should be shown only on the
current page (page-specific module) or on all pages of the site (site-wide module). The only
exceptions are the Search, Advertisement, Site Logo, Navigation, and Breadcrumbs modules:
when you add them, they are placed on all pages of the website.


To place a module only on the current page, select the module under the Modules tab,
and drag it to any of the areas marked with the text ONLY ON THIS PAGE. Such areas are
located within the main content block and near the top of each sidebar.
To divide the content area into columns and insert a module into one of them, drag the
module to the left or right edge of the content area and then insert it. Note that sidebar
areas cannot be divided into columns.

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To place a module on all pages of the website, select the module under the Modules tab,
and drag it to any of the areas marked with the text ON ALL PAGES. Such areas are
located above and below the main content block, in sidebars, header, and footer.

The number of modules that you can add to a website depends on your hosting plan. The
editor will let you know when you have used the allotted number of modules: icons with the
dollar sign ($) will be shown over the module icons in the editor's toolbar.

Next in this section:
Text, Tables, Hyperlinks, Flash Files, and Images............................................. 487
Image Gallery .................................................................................................... 492
Image Slider ...................................................................................................... 494
Embedded Video ............................................................................................... 496
Contact Form .................................................................................................... 496
Blog ................................................................................................................... 497
Commenting ...................................................................................................... 500
Documents and Other Downloadable Files........................................................ 502
Buttons for Sharing on Social Networks ............................................................ 503
Site Search........................................................................................................ 503
Online Store ...................................................................................................... 504
Map ................................................................................................................... 505
Custom Scripts .................................................................................................. 507
Advertisements ................................................................................................. 507

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Text, Tables, Hyperlinks, Flash Files, and Images
Before you start working on website content, we suggest that you select the appropriate
website language in Settings tab > Languages > Website language menu.
The website language is a site-wide setting that defines the language in which you will be
adding content to your website. It affects the following:


The language in which certain website elements (in particular those provided by thirdparty services), such as Google Search and navigation buttons in image galleries, will be
shown. Note that not all third-party services and modules provided by the editor support
all available languages.



The direction in which you will type text in the editor (from left to right or from right to left).
If you select a right-to-left language, your website content and design will be RTLenabled.

Note: Changing a website language does not reload the currently selected website topic in a
different language. The topic language will remain unchanged, however, the text orientation
will change.

 To add text, lists, tables, or images to a page:
1. Go to the Modules tab, select Text & Images, and drag the module to the page:


To add a block with text and images to the current page, drag the module to any of
the areas marked with the text ONLY ON THIS PAGE. Such areas are located within the
main content block and near the top of each sidebar.
To divide the content area into columns and insert a block into one of them, drag the
module to the left or right edge of the content area and then insert it. Note that sidebar
areas cannot be divided into columns.



To add a block with text and images to all pages of the site, drag the module to any of
the areas marked with the text ON ALL PAGES. Such areas are located above and
below the main content block, in sidebars, header, and footer.

2. Type the text on the screen and use the icons on the module's toolbar to
format the text, add tables, hyperlinks, and images.
The toolbar of the Text & Images module provides access to the following tools and functions.

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1. Move the text and image block within the webpage.
2. Remove the block with its contents.
3. Save changes.
4. Cancel the changes made.
5. Move the toolbar.
6. Select the paragraph style and font face. Note that the Terminal font is not supported by
Google Chrome.
7. Select the font size.
8. Select the font style: bold, italics, underlined, and strikethrough.
9. Select the text and background colors.
10. Select text alignment: left, center, right, or justified (aligned to both the left and right
margins with added extra spaces between words).
11. Increase and decrease the indent level of the paragraph.
12. Start a numbered or bulleted list.
13. Insert a table and specify the number of rows and columns.
After you insert a table, a number of additional icons become accessible from the toolbar.
Use them to change the properties of the table rows and cells, to insert and remove rows
and columns, or to split and merge table cells.
14. Insert symbols that are not on your keyboard, such as copyright and trade mark signs,
and other Unicode symbols.
15. Insert a horizontal line.
16. Edit the HTML source code of the page.
17. Undo and redo changes.
18. Insert a Flash object in the SWF format.
19. Insert an image, adjust its size, specify a description, and text wrapping.
You can choose to show the description below the image, show it over the image only
when users hover the mouse pointer over it, or to not show it. The description also serves
as alternative text: In browsers that do not support or are configured to not show images,
the description will be shown instead.
If you want to insert many pictures into a single page, consider using the Image Gallery
module instead of the Text & Images module. With Image Gallery, you can upload pictures
from your local computer or use pictures published to the Picasa Web Albums photo
sharing service. To learn more about the Image Gallery module, see the section Image
Gallery (on page 492).
If you want to add a slide show with multiple images, use the Image Slider module. To
learn more about the Image Slider module, see the section Image Slider (on page 494).
20. Insert HTML anchors into particular sections of webpages so that you can link to them
from the same or other pages of your site.
21. Remove hyperlinks from selected text.

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22. Add hyperlinks to pages of your website or external resources.
23. Add a link to an e-mail address.
To learn more about adding hyperlinks, see the section Hyperlinks, Links to E-mail
Addresses, and Anchors (on page 490).

Next in this section:
Hyperlinks, Links to E-mail Addresses, and Anchors ......................................... 490

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Hyperlinks, Links to E-mail Addresses, and Anchors

Creating Links to Other Pages
 To insert a hyperlink into text:
1. Select the text that you want to make a link.
2. On the toolbar of the Text & Images module, click the icon

3. Do any of the following:


To add a link to another webpage on your site, select the option A page of this site. In
the Select page menu, select the target webpage or a webpage section where you have
placed an anchor.



To add a link to a webpage or a file located on another site, select the option A
webpage or file on the Internet, and type the address. For example,
http://example.com.



To add a link to a document or another downloadable file that you have previously
uploaded through the Document Manager (as described in Documents and Other
Downloadable Files (on page 502)), select the option A document on this site, and select
the target file.

4. In the Open link in menu, select where you want to open the target page. You
can choose to open it in the same or in a new browser window or tab.
5. In the Title box, type the description that should appear when users place the
mouse pointer over the link.
6. Click OK.

Creating Links to Different Sections of a Webpage
If you have a lengthy webpage consisting of several sections, consider inserting a table of
contents with links to these sections in the top of the page, to help your site visitors navigate
through the page content. You can do this with the help of so-called anchors.

 To add links to different sections within a webpage:
1. Insert an anchor in the beginning of each section.
a. In the text block, highlight with the mouse pointer a section heading
or, if there is no heading, a first letter at the beginning of a
paragraph.
b. On the Text & Images module's toolbar, click the icon
c. Specify a name for the anchor and click OK.

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Anchor names should begin with a Latin alphabet letter. They can contain Latin
alphabet letters, underscore, and numbers. For example: section_1.

d. Repeat these steps to add as many anchors as needed.
2. Insert a table of contents or a list of sections in the top of the page.
3. Add hyperlinks to the table of contents or the list of sections.
a. Highlight with the mouse pointer a section name.
b. On the Text & Images module's toolbar, click the icon

c. Leave the option Link to a page of this site selected.
d. In the Select page menu, select the required anchor name.
e. Click OK.
f. Repeat these steps to add hyperlinks to all the sections you need.

Creating Links to E-mail Addresses
 To insert a link to an e-mail address into text:
1. Select the text that you want to make a link.
2. On the toolbar of the Text & Images module, click the icon

3. Specify the e-mail address and click OK.

If you want to specify multiple e-mail recipients or predefine the message subject, use the
following alternative method:

1. Select the text that you want to make a link.
2. On the toolbar of the Text & Images module, click the icon

3. Select the option A webpage or file on the Internet, and type
mailto:. For example, mailto:postmaster@example.com.
You can also:


Specify multiple recipients in the To field, separating addresses with a comma (,)
or a semicolon (;). For example:
mailto:postmaster@example.com,mail@example.com.

Note: It is better to separate addresses with a semicolon because users of Microsoft
Office Outlook might experience issues with sending e-mail to recipient addresses
separated with commas. Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 and later versions do not
recognize a comma as an e-mail address separator, unless they are specifically
configured to do so. For details, see the article at
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/820868.


Predefine the message subject line. For example:
mailto:postmaster@example.com?subject=My%20Subject.

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

Add recipients to CC and BCC lists. For example:
mailto:postmaster@example.com?subject=My%20Subject&cc=addres
s1@example.com&bcc=address2@example.com.



Predefine text to put in the message body. For example:
mailto:postmaster@example.com?subject=My%20Subject&body=This
%20is%20sent%20from%20your%20site!

Note: You should replace white spaces with %20.

4. Click OK.

Image Gallery
 To add an image gallery to your site and upload pictures:
1. Go to the Modules tab, select Image Gallery, and drag the module to the page.
2. In module settings, on the Image Storage tab, select where you want to keep
pictures:


If you do not have a Picasa Web Albums account that you would like to use, leave the
Presence Builder option selected. All images you use on your site will be kept on your
customer account.



If you have an account in Picasa Web Albums and want to use pictures that you store
there on your site, do the following:

a. Select the Picasa option, click the link on the Image Storage tab to sign
in to Google, and grant access to your albums from Presence
Builder.
b. Select the album whose pictures you want to use or click Create Album
to create a new album.
c. If you want Presence Builder to remove images from Picasa Web
Albums when you remove them from the gallery, select the checkbox
Delete images when I remove them from gallery.
When you upload images to an image gallery through the Presence Builder editor,
they are automatically copied to your Picasa Web Albums account. When you remove
images from the gallery, they are removed from Picasa Web Albums only if you have
selected the option Delete images when I remove them from gallery.

3. (Optional steps.) If you want to select the size of image thumbnails to be
shown in the image gallery, change the gallery alignment (place it to the left,
in the center, or to the right), or adjust the number of images to be displayed
per page, click the Gallery Properties tab and make the desired changes.
The following thumbnail sizes are available:


Small (95 x 75 pixels).



Normal (140 x 130 pixels). This is the default setting.

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493

Large (170 x 170 pixels).

4. To add images to the gallery, on the Image Storage tab, click the text Click here
to upload your images, select the images that you want to upload, and click OK.
You can select and upload multiple images at once. Only images in GIF, JPEG, and PNG
formats are supported.
We recommend that you use resized images that do not exceed 1024 x 768 pixels.

5. To change image title and description, click the corresponding thumbnail,
click the title or description, and edit the text.
If you delete the default text entirely, it will not be shown on your published site; however,
it will still be shown when you edit the site in the Presence Builder editor.

6. To rearrange images in the gallery, drag them to the desired location.

 To remove an image from the gallery:
Place the mouse pointer over the image thumbnail and click the icon [x].

 To remove an image gallery with all pictures:
Place the mouse pointer over the image gallery block and click Remove.

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Image Slider
The Image Slider module enables you to add a slide show with multiple images and various
transition effects. The following image formats are supported: GIF, JPEG, and PNG.
Images are not resized automatically; for this reason, we recommend that you upload images
of the same dimensions. Otherwise, the slide show will not look good.
When adding images, you can add descriptions to them and link the images to specific
pages of your website.
The following transition effects are supported:


Random



Slice down and to the right



Slice down and to the left



Slice up and to the right



Slice up and to the left




Slice up and down
Slice up and down and to the left



Fold



Fade




Box random
Box rain



Reverse box rain




Growing box rain
Reverse growing box rain

The effect names might tell you little about how the effects look, so it is better to see them in
action. To do this, add the Image Slider module, upload at least two images, go to the
module settings (Settings tab), and select an effect from the Transition effect menu.

 To add Image Slider to your site and upload pictures:
1. Go to the Modules tab, select Image Slider, and drag the module to the page.
2. Click Add Images, select the images that you want to upload, and click OK.
You can select and upload multiple images at once. We recommend that you use resized
images that do not exceed 1024 x 768 pixels.
Once you have uploaded images, you can arrange them in the desired order, and remove
them. To do any of these actions, place the mouse pointer over an image thumbnail, and
use the corresponding icons:

3. To add an image description, select a thumbnail, and type the text into the
Description box.
4. To add a link to a webpage, select a thumbnail, select the option Link to a
webpage, and select the page from the menu below.

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5. Click the Settings tab and select the desired transition effect from the Transition
effect menu.
6. Specify how long each image must be shown.
7. Specify whether the round navigation icons for switching between slides
must be shown.
The option Inside will show the icons over the images, in the upper right corner of Image
Slider, and Below will show the icons below the images.

8. Specify whether the navigation arrows for switching between slides must be
shown.
9. Click OK.

 To remove an image from the slide show:
Click on the slide show block, place the mouse pointer over the image thumbnail, and click
the icon

 To remove a slide show with all pictures:
Place the mouse pointer over the slide show block and click Remove.

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Embedded Video
You can embed into website pages video clips located on popular video sharing sites, such
as YouTube (youtube.com), Vimeo (vimeo.com), MySpace (myspace.com), and Dailymotion
(dailymotion.com).

 To insert a video into a webpage:
1. Go to the Modules tab, select Embedded Video, and drag the module to the
page.
2. Insert a link to the video or select the option Embed code if you have obtained
a code from a file sharing site, and then paste the code.
3. Click OK.

 To remove a video:
Place the mouse pointer over the video and click Remove.

Contact Form
If you want your site visitors to be able to send you messages from your site, you can add a
contact form.

 To add a contact form:
1. Go to the Modules tab, select Contact Form, and drag the module to the page.
2. On the Settings tab, specify the following:


Recipient's e-mail address. You can specify several e-mail addresses separating
them with commas (,) or semicolons (;).



Message subject.



Text to be shown on the button that sends the message.



Protection from automated spam postings. Leave the checkbox Enable the protection
from automated spam postings selected if you want to avoid receiving spam sent by
scripts or spam bots through the contact form.
The protection is based on a highly efficient mechanism, called reCAPTCHA. In the
contact form, it is shown as an input box accompanied by a combination of distorted
words or symbols that can be recognized only by humans. Before a message can be
sent through the contact form, a user is prompted to recognize the symbols and type
them in.

3. If you want to add, move, or remove input fields from the form, or change
their labels, click the Fields tab, and make the required changes.

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4. If you want to change the default message "Your message was sent. Thank
you." which is shown when a message is sent, click the Reply tab and type
the new text.
5. Click OK.

 To remove a contact form:
Place the mouse pointer over the form and click Remove.

Blog
If you want to maintain an online diary on your site, or regularly publish articles on a subject
and automatically present them in a chronological order, then you need a blog.
A blog module can be added only to the first-level pages that do not have subpages. Within
blog posts, you can use text, images, embedded videos and scripts. Each blog post can
have its distinctive page description and meta information to be used by search engines.
Note that blog posts are not listed on the Pages tab (on page 475).
To let your visitors comment on your blog posts, you need to register with Disqus, a free
third-party service that provides commenting functions for your sites and keeps all
comments.

 To add a blog to your webpage:
1. Go to the Modules tab, select Blog, and drag the module to the page.
2. In the module properties, specify the following:


Number of blog posts to show on the page.



Specify whether the site visitors will be able to leave their comments.

3. Click OK.
4. To enable commenting, click the link Click here to add a new blog post.
5. Click within the gray information box at the bottom of the blank blog post .
6. To register with Disqus, click the Register button. A registration form will open
in a new browser window or tab.
7. Specify the following:


Your site's URL, desired name and shortname (unique ID). You will need to specify
this site ID (shortname) later in the Blog module settings to enable commenting.



Comment moderator's username, password, and e-mail address. A confirmation
message will be sent to this e-mail address, so be sure that it is valid.

8. Click Continue.
9. Specify your language and other settings, and click Continue.
10. On the last step of the registration form, no further action is required. Just
log out of the Disqus site.

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11. Check your e-mail inbox for the confirmation message from Disqus. In this
message, click the link to verify your address.
12. Return to the browser window where you have the Presence Builder editor
with the Blog module properties opened.
13. In the box titled Apply here the website ID (shortname) received during registration, type
or paste the site ID that you specified during registration with Disqus in step
7.
14. Click Apply.
15. Click OK.
Now your blog can accept comments from visitors, and you can make the first post.

 To add a blog post:
1. Go to the website page containing a blog module.
2. Click the link Click here to add a new blog post (might also appear as New Post
Title).
3. Type the post title and content.
If you want to change the date of posting, click within the field Posted dd.mm.yy and then
select a date from the calendar.
If your post is lengthy and contains numerous text blocks, images, and embedded videos,
you might want to show only a portion (beginning of the post) to site visitors in your blog's
main page. To do this, while editing a blog post, move the divider element (containing the
line -------- Drag this above modules that should not appear in the list of posts --------) to the desired
area.

4. Click OK.
5. If you want to view, edit, or remove a concise description of the page that will
be displayed on search engines results pages and the keywords by which
the page will be found by search engines, click in a blank area to the right of
the post title, and then click the SEO Settings tab.
Note: Post link name is a required field. Meta description and Meta keywords are optional
fields. If you specify keywords for a page, they should be separated by commas without
white spaces.

6. To return to the blog's main page, click the Back link below the post you have
just created.

 To remove a blog post:
1. Go to the website page containing a blog module.
2. Place the mouse pointer over the post title and click Remove.
3. Click Yes to confirm removal.

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 To edit a blog post:
1. Go to the website page containing a blog module.
2. Click the post title.
3. Make the required changes and click OK.

 To remove a blog with all posted content:
1. Go to the website page containing a blog module.
2. Place the mouse pointer over the link Click here to add a new blog post and click
Remove.
3. Click Yes to confirm removal.

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Commenting
If you want to let your site visitors leave comments on webpages, you need to insert the
Commenting module into those webpages.
The commenting functionality is powered by Disqus, a third-party service that stores and
processes all comments. Before your visitors can leave comments, you need to register an
account with Disqus and then specify a site ID in the Commenting module settings.
You can insert several Commenting modules into a single website. Because all Commenting
modules on the site will use the same site ID, you will only need to specify the site ID once in
the module settings, when inserting the first Commenting module.

 To add commenting functions to a webpage:
1. Go to the Modules tab, select Commenting, and drag the module to the page.
2. If you have not registered an account with Disqus yet, click the Register
button. A registration form will open in a new browser window or tab.
3. Specify the following:


Your site's URL, desired name and shortname (unique ID). You will need to specify
this site ID (shortname) later in the Commenting module settings to enable
commenting.



Comment moderator's username, password, and e-mail address. A confirmation
message will be sent to this e-mail address, so be sure that it is valid.

4. Click Continue.
5. Specify your language and other settings, and click Continue.
6. On the last step of the registration form, no further action is required. Just
log out of the Disqus site.
7. Check your e-mail inbox for the confirmation message from Disqus. In this
message, click the link to verify your address.
8. Return to the browser window where you have the Presence Builder editor
with the Commenting module properties opened.
9. In the box titled Apply here the website ID (shortname) received during registration, type
or paste the site ID that you specified during registration with Disqus in step
3.
10. Click Apply.
11. Click OK.
Now you can publish your website to the customer account and start receiving comments
from your visitors.

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In addition to adding and viewing comments, you can do the following:


Edit comments.




Delete comments.
Mark comments as spam.



Ban users (by e-mail or IP address) from posting comments on your site.



Change the settings, such as appearance of comments, and remove the trackback URL.
You can do this by logging in to your account at www.disqus.com, and going to the
Settings tab.

 To moderate comments:
1. Log in to Disqus as the site administrator. You can do this in either of the
following ways:


Visit the Disqus site at www.disqus.com and log in there.



In the Presence Builder editor, go to the page where you have the Commenting
module and click inside the Add New Comment field. Click the Post as button, click the
Disqus link in the left navigation pane, type your username and password, and click
Login.

2. After you are logged in to Disqus, you can moderate comments in either of
the following ways:


On the Disqus site, use the items in the Dashboard and Admin areas.



In the Presence Builder editor or on the published site, go to the page where you have
the Commenting module, place the mouse pointer over the comment you want to
moderate, and use the Moderate link that will appear next to the comment.

Alternately, you can moderate comments by using links in the notification messages that
Disqus sends you when someone leaves a comment on your site.

 To remove commenting functions from a webpage:
1. In the Presence Builder editor, go to the website page containing the
Commenting module.
2. Place the mouse pointer over the Add New Comment field and click Remove.
3. Click Yes to confirm removal.

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Documents and Other Downloadable Files
The editor now provides a convenient control panel for working with files in your customer
account. You can upload your documents, images, and other files in various formats to the
editor (on the Documents tab), and then insert links to them in your website pages.
Alternatively, you can just keep them in your customer account for your own needs.

 To upload a file to the customer account:
1. Go to the Documents tab.
2. Click Upload.
3. Select the file and click Open.
Now, to let your site visitors download this file, you can insert a link to it in a webpage.

 To insert a link to file:
1. Select the text that you want to make into a link.
2. On the Text & Images module's toolbar, click the icon
3. Select the option A document on this site.
4. Select your file and click OK.

 To remove a file from the customer account:
1. Go to the Documents tab.
2. Select the file and click Remove.
3. Confirm removal and click OK.

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Buttons for Sharing on Social Networks
If you want to let your visitors easily share your content on social networks or online
bookmarking services, you can insert a toolbar with buttons for sharing on Facebook, Twitter,
Myspace, and other popular services.

 To add the Share on Social Media toolbar to a webpage:
1. Go to the Modules tab, select Social Sharing, and drag the module to the page.
2. Select the appearance of the toolbar.
3. If you want to modify the list of social networks and sharing services shown
on the toolbar, place the mouse pointer over the icon [+] and click the Settings
link.
The changes you make to the list of services will be visible after you publish the site.

4. Click OK.
Note: When someone shares your content on Twitter by using the Tweet button, the counter
of tweets is not increased immediately. It can take several hours for the counter to update.

 To remove the Social Media toolbar:
Place the mouse pointer over the toolbar and click Remove.

Site Search
If you want to let your visitors search for information on your website, you can add a search
bar to the site. After inserting the search bar into a webpage, it is automatically added to all
pages of the site.
By default, the search bar is configured to use the Google search engine. If you want to use
another search engine, you can obtain the search script code and insert it into the Search
module.

 To add a search bar to the site:
1. Go to the Modules tab, select Search, and drag the module to the page.
2. Do any of the following:


If you want to use the search service provided by Google, leave the Google option
selected.



If you want to use another search engine, select Other and paste the code that you
have obtained from that service.
Make sure that the code you insert is correct, as Presence Builder does not validate it.

3. Click OK.
The search bar will appear on your site after publishing.

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 To remove a search bar:
Place the mouse pointer over the search bar and click Remove.

Online Store
If you want to sell products or services through your site, you can use the Online Store and
Shopping Cart modules to add a fully functional online store to the site. You can add only one
store per site.
The store functionality is provided by Ecwid - a third-party SaaS solutions provider that
securely stores and processes all your data, including product catalogs, images, orders, and
customers' payments.

 To add an online store to your site:
1. Go to the Modules tab, select Online Store, and drag the module to the page.
2. Create an account with Ecwid if you do not have one yet, or specify the ID of
an existing store if you have previously created a store at Ecwid through
Presence Builder and want to show it on your site.
If you do not have an account with Ecwid yet, do the following:

a. In module settings, on the General tab, select the option Register with
Ecwid.
b. Type your name, e-mail address, and password. You will use the email address and password to sign in to Ecwid and manage your
store.
c. Click Send. A confirmation message from Ecwid will be sent to your email address. You will need to confirm that you own this e-mail
address within three days, otherwise the online store will be
deactivated.
If you already have an account with Ecwid, select the option Enter an ID of an existing shop,
specify the store ID and e-mail address that you specified during account registration,
and click Apply.
Note: If the online store was created directly at the Ecwid website without using Presence
Builder, you can do the following: Create a new Ecwid account through Presence Builder,
log in to the previously existing Ecwid account, export all the goods to a CSV file. After
that, log in to the new account and import the file.

3. (Optional step.) If you want to let your customers add items to the cart by
dragging them to a shopping bag icon, go to the Modules tab, select the
Shopping Cart module, and drag it to the page.
Note that the shopping bag icon will be inserted into all pages of your site. If you do not
want that, do not use the Shopping Cart module. Your customers will still be able to add
items to the cart and proceed to checkout by using the Shopping Bag link that appears at
the top of the product catalog area.

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4. (Optional step.) If you want to change the appearance of the product catalog,
in module settings, go to the View tab.
5. To set up your store, fill the product catalog with items, and remove the
default fruit and vegetable items added by Ecwid, click the Manage link on the
module's toolbar.
The Ecwid control panel will open in a new browser window or tab.

6. After you have finished setting up the store in the Ecwid control panel, return
to the Presence Builder editor and click the Reload link on the Online Store
module's toolbar.
You must use the Reload link to synchronize the content of your online store with online
store at Ecwid.

7. Click OK to finish setting up the store.

 To manage a store:
Place the mouse pointer over the product catalog and click Manage. The Ecwid control panel
will open in a new browser window or tab.
Note: After publishing your site, you can also view information about new orders on the
Dashboard (on page 518).

 To remove a store:
Place the mouse pointer over the product catalog and click Remove.

Map
With the Map module, you can easily add a map with your location to a website. Maps are
provided by the Google Maps service, which is available free of charge.
The following functions are supported:


Searching for an object on a map by address or by latitude and longitude coordinates.



Selecting the mode of map display by switching between Map, Satellite, Satellite with labels,
and Terrain views.



Adjustment of the map scale: zoom in or out on House, Street, or Town.

When you add a map, the module uses the information about your location that you specified
after selecting a website topic. You can specify a new location at any time.

 To add a map to your site:
1. Go to the Modules tab, select Map, and drag the module to the page.
2. Specify the desired location and click Search. You can type an address or
coordinates. For example: 37.754481,-122.383772.

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3. Select the desired map view from the Map mode menu, and the zoom level
from the Zoom level menu. To show your organization's location on the map,
you might want to choose the Map option and the Street zoom level.
4. Select the desired map size from the Map size menu.
5. Click OK.

 To remove a map:
Place the mouse pointer over the map and click Remove.

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Custom Scripts
You can insert custom scripts written in PHP, JavaScript, or VBScript in any page of your
website.

 To insert a script in a webpage:
1. Go to the Modules tab, select Script, and drag the module to the page.
2. Paste the code into the input field.
For PHP, use the opening tag Basic), and specify custom values for specific pages (in Pages tab >
page name > Edit page description and keywords).

 To edit your website name, description, and keywords:
1. Go to the Settings tab > Basic tab.
2. Specify the website name that your visitors will see as the title of their
browser window when they visit your website.
3. To show both your website name and the current page name in the browse r
title window and to increase your website recognition in search engine
results, select the Add website name to page titles checkbox.
4. Add short description (up to 255 symbols) of your website.
5. Provide a list of keywords that describe your website (10-15 keywords are
recommended).
The description and keywords will be used by default for new and existing pages.

6. Click OK to save changes.

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Uploading a Site Icon (Favicon)
A favicon is a small icon displayed in the browser’s address bar when you visit a website,
and also appears next to the website name in the list of favorite bookmarks. You can create
a favicon using a variety of online tools and then upload your favicon through the Presence
Builder editor. All your website visitors will see this favicon.

 To upload a favicon for your website:
1. Go to the Settings tab > Basic tab.
2. Click Browse and select the location of the favicon to upload. The favicon will
be uploaded.
3. Click OK to save changes.

 To remove a favicon from your website:
1. Go to the Settings tab > Basic tab.
2. Click Remove in the Favicon section. The favicon will be removed.
3. Click OK to save changes.

Verifying Website Ownership
Most search engines require you to verify website ownership when you register your website
or sign up for webmaster assistance services. Verification is typically done by uploading or
creating a file with a specific file name.

 To verify website ownership:
1. Go to the Settings tab > Advanced tab.
2. Provide the verification file:


If you know the name of the verification file requested by a search engine, provide the
verification file name in the Create verification file field and click OK. Presence Builder
will create it in the correct place.



If you have already downloaded your verification file from a search engine, upload the
verification file to the Upload verification file field and click OK.

3. After the verification file is created or uploaded and your website is
published, confirm your ownership on the search engine website.
4. Click OK to save changes.

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 To edit the HTML section of your website (for example, to add
ownership verification meta code):
1. Go to the Settings tab of the Presence Builder's main menu, then go to the
Advanced subtab.
2. Click Edit Metadata.
3. Insert the code into the provided field and click Add.
Note: Only valid HTML tags permitted for section by HTML standards are
supported. Metadata changes will be available only after you publish your website.

4. Click OK to save changes.

Embedding Google Analytics Code
Google Analytics is a tool that allows you to obtain information about your visitors. After you
register with Google Analytics and acquire the required code, you can embed Google
Analytics on your website.

 To embed Google Analytics:
1. Register with the Google Analytics service and acquire the code.
2. Go to the Settings tab > Advanced tab.
3. Click Embed Google Analytics.
4. Insert the code you have received from Google Analytics into the provided
field and click Add.
Note: Google Analytics will start working only after you publish your website.

5. Click OK to save changes.

Downloading the Sitemap
Some search engines will ask you to provide your sitemap for analysis and optimization
purposes. You can download your sitemap from the Presence Builder editor.

 To download your website sitemap:
1. Go to the Settings tab > Advanced tab.
2. Click Download Sitemap.
3. Click OK to start downloading the sitemap.xml file.

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Preventing Search Engines from Indexing Certain Pages of Your Site
To prevent search engines from indexing certain pages of your website, you can add the
appropriate directives into the robots.txt file. This file is stored on the customer account
to which your site is published.

 To prevent search engines from indexing certain areas of your website:
1. Go to the Settings tab > Advanced tab.
2. Click the link Edit robots.txt.
3. Type your directives into the input field. Place each directive on a new line.
For example, to prevent all search engine robots and crawlers from indexing the contents
of the directory /private and the file /my_secret.html on your customer account,
add the following lines:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /my_secret.html
For more information about the robots.txt file and directives you can use, refer to
http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html.

Notifying Site Visitors About the Cookie Policy
If you are located in the European Union, your site must inform its visitors about the use of
non-essential cookies and obtain informed consent.
Cookies are small files that web servers save on visitors' computers. Cookies may be used
for a number of purposes, from remembering personal preferences to tracking users'
behavior for presenting targeted advertisements. Non-essential cookies are those that are
not required for websites to function properly. Examples of non-essential cookies include
those from analytics, advertising, and affiliate networks such as Google Analytics and Google
AdSense.
Most likely, your site uses non-essential cookies if it uses the following functions:


Google Analytics



Publishing to Facebook



Embedded video




Image gallery module (with Picasa selected as storage)
Online store module



Map module



Commenting module



Social sharing module



Script module



Site search

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If you choose to show a notice on the site, its visitors will be prompted to confirm that they
accept your policy.

If they accept it, the notice is no longer shown (the icon
is shown instead in the
page corner), and they can continue browsing your site. If they do not accept it, they are
taken to google.com.

 To show a cookie notice on the site:
1. Go to the Settings tab > Advanced tab.
2. Click the link Notify Site Visitors About the Cookie Policy.
3. Select the checkbox Show the cookie notice on the site and click OK.

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Saving and Loading Copies of a Website
While working on the content and design of a website, you can save several copies of each
site to the server and restore sites from the saved copies (also referred to as snapshots).
Saving site copies can be useful in the following cases:


You want to prepare several versions of the same website, so that you can later load
them for review, choose the best designed or the most appropriate version, and publish it
to the Internet.



You want to make significant changes or experiment on the site design or content, but be
sure that you can safely undo the changes should anything go wrong.

Note: Pictures from the Image Gallery modules are not saved in snapshots. Images are stored
on your customer account or Picasa Web Albums (if you use that option).

 To save the current design and content of a site:
1. In the Presence Builder editor's main menu, click the icon
option.

next to the Save

Note: If you click Save, a quick-save site copy will be saved under the name auto-saved
snapshot. You will be able to restore a site from this copy later, by clicking Revert in the
main menu.

2. In the list that opens, select a free saving slot, type a name for the backup
copy, and click Save.

 To restore a site from a saved copy:
1. In the Presence Builder editor's main menu, click the icon
Revert option.

next to the

Note: If you click Revert, a site will be restored from the quick-save copy that was made
the last time you clicked Save.

2. In the list that opens, select a site copy and click Load.
3. Click Yes to confirm you want to restore.

 To download a site copy:
1. In the Presence Builder editor's main menu, click the icon
option.
2. Locate the copy that you want to download and click the

next to the Save
(Download) icon.

3. Select the directory on your computer where you want to save the file and
click OK.

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 To upload a site copy:
1. In the Presence Builder editor's main menu, click the icon
Revert option.
2. Click the
copy.

next to the

(Upload) icon next to the slot to which you want to upload the

3. Browse to the site snapshot file in the SSB format and select it.
4. If you want to restore a site from the uploaded snapshot, select it and click
Load.

 To remove a site copy:
1. In the Presence Builder editor's main menu, click the icon
option.

next to the Save

2. Locate the site copy that you want to remove and click the corresponding
(Remove) icon.

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Publishing a Website to the Internet
When your website design and content are ready to be published to the Internet, click Publish
in the top right corner of the main menu. Presence Builder will publish your website
automatically to the location specified by your hosting provider.

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Publishing a Website Copy to Facebook
After publishing a site on the Internet, you can drive more visitors to it by publishing a site
copy to the popular social network site - Facebook (www.facebook.com).
A site copy on Facebook will show most of the content from your site; however, the following
changes will be applied to its design, layout, and functionality:


Headers, sidebars, and footers will not be shown.



The navigation menu will be shown only at the top of the site pages.



Page width will be limited to 520 pixels. For pages wider than 520 pixels, a horizontal
scrollbar will be shown.



The font face, size, and color will be changed to comply with the Facebook design,
unless these font properties were specifically selected by the site owner in the Presence
Builder editor.



Image galleries, online store, and links for sharing on social media sites will not be
shown.
Any links pointing to other pages on Facebook will not work.



 If you want to add a site copy to Facebook, do the following:
1. In the main menu, click the Settings tab > Social Media tab.
2. Leave the checkbox Show a copy of my site on Facebook selected.
3. Click the link Add your site copy to Facebook. The Facebook home page opens in
a new browser window or tab.
4. To log in to your Facebook account, type your e-mail address and password,
and click Log In.
5. If you do not have a Facebook page where you want to show a site copy,
create one. To do this, click Create It Now, and follow the onscreen guidelines.
After your page is created, return to the Parallels Presence Builder at Facebook
page, which is shown in another browser window or tab.
6. Click Add Parallels Presence Builder Application. This application provides
synchronization between the website on your hosting account and its copy
on Facebook.
7. To confirm that you want to add the application to your page, click Add
Parallels Presence Builder.
Now your site copy is added. To see it, click the Website link in the Facebook navigation pane
on your left.
Whenever you make changes to your site and republish it through the Presence Builder
editor, your site copy on Facebook will be updated accordingly.

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 To remove a site copy from Facebook, do the following:
1. In the Presence Builder editor's main menu, click the Settings tab > Social
Media tab.
2. Clear the checkbox Show a copy of my site on Facebook.
3. Click Yes to confirm.
4. Go to your Facebook page and remove the Presence Builder application
from there.

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Viewing Site Visits Statistics, Comments, and New Orders
on the Dashboard
After publishing a site, you can access the Dashboard from the Presence Builder's main
menu to perform the following tasks:


View statistics on website visits. The statistics are provided by Google Analytics and are
available after you specify the code for Google Analytics in website settings, as described
in the section Settings and Tools for Webmasters (on page 508).



View new comments left by site visitors on your website pages. The comments are visible
on the Dashboard after you set up the commenting functionality, as described in the
sections Blog (on page 497) and Commenting (on page 500).



View new orders from customers visiting your online stores. The new orders are visible
on the Dashboard after you set up an online store, as described in the section Online
Store (on page 504).

 To view website visits statistics:
1. On the main menu, click Dashboard.
2. If you access the dashboard for the first time, confirm association of your site
with your Google Account:
a. Click Log In to Google Analytics.
b. Log in to your Google Account.
c. Confirm that you want to allow access to your account.
3. Under the Website Visits Statistics chart, click the link See more charts, or click the
icon.
The Overview section shows the following statistics for the past 30 days:


A detailed chart for the metric currently selected under Profile report.



The total number of visits during the past 30 days.



The number of new visits.



Average time spent on a site by users.



The total number of page views.



The number of page views per each visit.



The percentage of new visits.

The Traffic sources overview section shows the addresses of websites from which your
visitors were coming during the past 30 days. The (direct) item shows the percentage of
visitors who accessed your site by typing its address directly in their browsers.
The Visitors' locations section shows the geographic locations of the visitors for the past 30
days.

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 To view comments from your site visitors:
1. On the main menu, click Dashboard.
2. Under Comments, click the link See them, or click the

icon.

3. To go to the webpage where the comment was left, click Link to the comment.
4. To go to the Disqus site for moderating the comments, click Manage Comments.

 To view orders submitted by the customers visiting your online stores:
1. On the main menu, click Dashboard.
2. Under Orders, click the link See them, or click the
Orders tab.

icon, and then click the

3. To go to the Ecwid site for processing the orders, click Manage Orders.

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Deleting Websites
When you delete a site from the Presence Builder editor, only the current site draft opened in
the editor and saved site copies (snapshots) are removed.
By default, the site copy published to your hosting account is not removed. However, this
policy might be changed by your hosting provider.

 To delete a current site copy from the editor:
In the Presence Builder editor's main menu, select More > Remove Site.

CHAPTER 16

FTP Access to Your Websites
One of the most convenient ways to update your website content is to upload it through
FTP. FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a standard network protocol that allows
transferring files between two hosts (for example, your computer and a Panel server).
Panel acts as an FTP server, while users should use some FTP client to access the
directories on the server. Panel provides all main FTP features:


Authorized access to the server. Learn more in the section Changing FTP Access
Credentials (on page 521).



Multiple user accounts for collaborative work. Learn more in the section Adding FTP
Accounts (on page 522).



Anonymous FTP access: The access without authorization that may be used, for
example, to share software updates. Learn more in the section Setting Up Anonymous
FTP Access (on page 524).

Note: Your service provider's settings may require that you connect to the server by
FTP using the secure protocol FTPS (or FTP-SSL). Thus, when connecting to the
Panel server over FTP, make sure that your client supports FTPS and the connection
to the Panel server uses this protocol.

In this chapter:
Changing FTP Access Credentials .................................................................... 521
Adding FTP Accounts........................................................................................ 522
Setting Up Anonymous FTP Access .................................................................. 524

Changing FTP Access Credentials
 To change FTP account username or password:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription
menu at the top of the screen, select the webspace where the website
is hosted.
2. Click the Websites & Domains tab.
3. Click Web Hosting Access.
4. Type a new username or password.
5. Click OK.

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Adding FTP Accounts
If you are working on your website together with someone else or host subdomains for
other users, you might want to create separate FTP accounts for them.

 To create an additional FTP account:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription
menu at the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Click the Websites & Domains tab.
3. Click FTP Access.
4. On the Additional FTP Accounts tab, click Create Additional FTP Account.
5. Specify the following:


FTP account name. Type an arbitrary name.



Home directory. Select the directory to which the user will be taken when he or
she connects to the FTP account.



FTP password.



Hard disk quota (on Windows hosting). To limit the amount of disk space on the
server that the FTP user can occupy, clear the Unlimited checkbox next to the
Hard disk quota box, and type the amount of disk space in megabytes.



Read permission (on Windows hosting). To allow the FTP user to view the
contents of the home directory and download files from it, select the Read
permission checkbox.



Write permission (on Windows hosting). To allow the FTP user to create, view,
rename and delete directories in the home directory, select the Write permission
checkbox.
On Window hosting, if you do not grant any permissions, a connection to the
FTP account will be made, but the contents of the home directory will not be
shown to the user.

6. Click OK.

 To change the properties of an additional FTP account:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription
menu at the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Click the Websites & Domains tab.
3. Click FTP Access.

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4. On the Additional FTP Accounts tab, click the required FTP account name
in the list.
5. Make the required changes and click OK.

 To remove an additional FTP account:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription
menu at the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Click the Websites & Domains tab.
3. Click FTP Access.
4. On the Additional FTP Accounts tab, select the checkbox corresponding to
the FTP account you want to remove and click Remove.
5. Confirm removal and click OK.

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Setting Up Anonymous FTP Access
If your site is hosted on a dedicated IP address (not shared by other users or sites),
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 switched
on, the users will be able to log in to the directory at an address like ftp://ftp.yourdomain.com with the "anonymous" username and any password.

 To allow anonymous FTP access:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription
menu at the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Click the Websites & Domains tab.
3. Click FTP Access.
4. Click the Anonymous FTP tab.
5. Do the following:
a. To activate anonymous FTP service, click Switch On.
b. To set up a welcoming message to be displayed when users log
in to FTP site, select the Display login message checkbox and type
the message text in the input field as desired.
Note that not all FTP clients display welcoming messages.

c. To allow visitors to upload files to the /incoming directory,
select the Allow uploading to incoming directory checkbox.
d. To allow users to create subdirectories in the /incoming
directory, select the Allow creation of directories in the incoming
directory checkbox.
e. To allow downloading files from the /incoming directory,
select the Allow downloading from the incoming directory checkbox.
f. To limit the amount of disk space that can be occupied by
uploaded files, clear the Unlimited checkbox 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.

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g. To limit the number of simultaneous connections to the
anonymous FTP server, clear the Unlimited checkbox
corresponding to the Limit number of simultaneous connections option
and specify the number of allowed connections.
h. To limit the bandwidth for anonymous FTP connections, clear
the Unlimited checkbox corresponding to the Limit download
bandwidth for this virtual FTP domain option and enter the maximum
bandwidth in kilobytes per second.
6. Click OK.

 To change settings for anonymous FTP service or switch it off:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription
menu at the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Click the Websites & Domains tab.
3. Click FTP Access.
4. Click the Anonymous FTP tab.
5. Perform the operation you need:


Adjust the settings as required and click OK.



To switch off the anonymous FTP service, click Switch Off.

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Mail Accounts
You can create and remove mail accounts right from the Control Panel, set up mail
forwarding, protection from spam and viruses, and so on.
Panel allows you to configure mail services on two levels:


Configuring mail account settings. These settings affect mail account only. For
example, where to forward received messages or what to do with potential spam.
Learn more about possible operations on mail accounts in the section Configuring
Mail Account (on page 528).



Configuring global mail settings. These are subscription-wide settings that affect all
mailboxes within a subscription. For example, which webmail system Panel should
use, or what to do with mail sent to nonexistent users. These settings may be
unavailable in your hosting plan. To get the details on how to change global mail
settings, refer to the section (Advanced) Configuring Global Mail Settings (on page 535).

If you want to use some of your e-mail addresses to distribute news and promotions, or
set up group discussions, consider setting up mailing lists. These are e-mail addresses
to which a number of users are subscribed. Learn more in the section Using Mailing Lists
(on page 536).

Next in this section:
Adding Mail Accounts ........................................................................................ 527
Configuring Mail Account................................................................................... 528
(Advanced) Configuring Global Mail Settings .................................................... 535
Using Mailing Lists ............................................................................................ 536

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Adding Mail Accounts
 To create an e-mail address:
1. Run the Create E-mail Address wizard from the Mail tab of the Control
Panel.
2. Specify the following mailbox settings:


E-mail address. Type the left part of the e-mail address before the @ sign, and, if
you have several domain names on your account, select the domain name
under which the e-mail address will be created.



Access to the Control Panel. Select this option if you want Panel to create an
auxiliary user for the mail account owner. By default, this user has the role
Application user. However, you can change this role and other user's properties
later. For details, see the section (Advanced) Managing Auxiliary User Accounts (on
page 370).



Password. Set the password for accessing the mailbox. If you leave the option
Access to the Control Panel selected, the same password will be used for logging
the user in to to the Control Panel.



Mailbox. Turning off this option makes sense only if you want to use this address
as a mail forwarder, which will forward all incoming mail to another address.



Mailbox size. If you leave the option Mailbox selected, specify the mailbox size or
use the default size defined by the provider's policy or your service plan.

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Configuring Mail Account
If the provider's policy allows setting up mail accounts and services , then you can set up and
use multiple email services services located on the following tabs of the mail account page:


General. General mail account properties, such as its address, password and size.



Forwarding. Email forwarding service that will send copies of all incoming messages to
another email address.



Email Aliases. Additional email addresses that are associated with a user's primary (or
main) email address. Email aliases can be used as temporary disposable addresses that
can be published on the Internet. When spam starts coming to an address that was set
up as an email alias, you can remove that alias and create another one.



Auto-Reply. Automatic response service that sends a predefined email message in reply to
any incoming message. This is useful for sending "out of office" or "on vacation" notices
when you are away.



Spam Filter. Checking all incoming messages by antispam filter. In addition, you can
specify what to do with messages identified as spam: Remove them, move to a special
folder, or just add some text to the message subject.
Antivirus. Checking all incoming and outgoing mail for viruses.




Additional Services. If you use web apps that provide email-related services, for example,
antispam or webmail, you can define if each of these services is able to access this mail
account.

Next in this section, we will provide instructions on how to configure these services for mail
accounts.

Next in this section:
Setting Up Mail Forwarding ............................................................................... 529
Creating Mail Aliases ......................................................................................... 529
Setting Up Auto-Reply ....................................................................................... 530
Protecting from Spam ........................................................................................ 530
Protecting from Viruses ..................................................................................... 533
Additional Services ............................................................................................ 534

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Setting Up Mail Forwarding
 To set up e-mail forwarding for an e-mail address:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Mail tab > e-mail address > Forwarding tab.
3. Select the Switch on mail forwarding checkbox.
4. Specify one or several e-mail addresses to which e-mail must be forwarded.
When specifying e-mail addresses, separate them with white spaces,
commas, semicolons, or type each of them on a new line.
5. Click OK.
6. If you do not want to keep copies of forwarded messages in the mailbox, go
to the Mail tab > e-mail address, clear the Mailbox checkbox, and click OK.

 To switch off mail forwarding:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Mail tab > e-mail address > Forwarding tab.
3. Clear the Switch on mail forwarding checkbox, and click OK.

Creating Mail Aliases
 To add or remove additional e-mail addresses (e-mail aliases) for a mail
account:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Mail tab > e-mail address > E-mail Aliases tab.
3. Do any of the following:


To add an address, type it into the E-mail alias box, and click OK.



To remove an address, click the Remove link to the right of the address you want to
remove.

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Setting Up Auto-Reply
 To set up automatic reply settings for an e-mail address:
1. Go to the Mail tab > e-mail address > Auto-Reply tab.
2. Select the Switch on auto-reply checkbox, and specify the following settings:


Auto-reply message subject.



Message format. We recommend that you leave the option Plain text selected because
some of your recipients might be unable to see the text formatted with HTML.



Encoding. We recommend that you leave the UTF-8 encoding selected to ensure that
the letters in your message are displayed properly.



Message text.



Forward to. If you want to forward incoming messages to another email address, type
an email address in this box.



Send an automatic response to a unique e-mail address no more than... The default value is "1
time a day", meaning that if your mailbox receives several messages from the same
email address in one day, Panel will send automatic response only to the first
message. If the value is "2", than Panel will send automatic response to the first and
the second messages, and so on.



Attached files. If you want to attach a file to your message, click Browse and select a
file.

3. Click OK.
To switch off automatic reply, deselect the Switch on auto-reply option and click OK.

Protecting from Spam
 To switch on spam filtering for a mailbox:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Mail tab > e-mail address > Spam Filter tab.
3. Select the checkbox Switch on spam filtering for this e-mail address.
4. Specify what to do with messages classified as spam.


If you want to filter mail with the software on your local computer, select the option
Mark spam messages by adding the following text to message subject, 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 add a specific text string to the beginning of the
subject line and to the message body.

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

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 option Delete all spam messages.



If you are accessing your mailbox over IMAP protocol and want the spam filter to
move all messages considered spam to the IMAP folder called Spam, select the
option Move spam to the Spam folder.

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Because all messages are automatically removed from the Spam folder after 30 days,
you will need to review the contents of the Spam folder on a regular basis to make
sure you do not miss any important messages, and move all non-spam messages
back to the Inbox folder.
When the option Move spam to the Spam folder is selected, you can train the spam filter
and improve its accuracy by moving spam messages from Inbox to Spam, and nonspam messages from Spam to Inbox.

5. If you want to adjust spam filter sensitivity, click Show Advanced Settings, and
type a number of points that a message must score to be considered spam.
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 Spam filter sensitivity 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 Spam filter sensitivity box.

Note: To further improve spam filter accuracy, you may want to train your spam filter on
e-mail messages you receive, as described further in this section.

6. If you want to be sure that you will not miss e-mail from specific senders,
type e-mail addresses or domain names into the White list field.
Place each address in one row, or separate addresses with a coma, a colon, or a white
space. You can use an asterisk (*) as a substitute for a number of letters, and question
mark (?) as a substitute for a single letter. For example: address@mycompany.com,
user?@mycompany.com, *@mycompany.com. Specifying *@mycompany.com will add
to the white list all e-mail addresses that are under the mycompany.com mail domain.

7. If you do not want to receive e-mail from specific domains or individual
senders, type e-mail addresses or domain names into the Black list field.
Place each address in one row, or separate addresses with a coma, a colon, or a white
space. You can use an asterisk (*) as a substitute for a number of letters, and question
mark (?) as a substitute for a single letter. For example: address@spammers.net,
user?@spammers.net, *@spammers.net. Specifying *@spammers.net will block the
entire mail domain spammers.net.

8. If you use a Windows-based customer account, then you can also specify
trusted languages and character sets. E-mail messages written in the
specified languages and with the defined character sets will pass the spam
filter and will not be marked as spam.

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9. On Windows-based customer accounts, you can also specify IP addresses of
computers or networks from which e-mail must always be accepted. When
specifying network addresses, type an address and add a network mask
after a slash. For example, 192.168.10.10/24.
10. Click OK.
You can improve accuracy of spam detection if SpamAssassin spam filter on the server is
switched on for your account and you are accessing your mailbox over IMAP protocol.

 To improve accuracy of spam detection:
1. Access your mailbox with webmail or a mail client program on your
computer.
2. Review the messages in your Inbox folder. Move all spam messages to the
Spam folder. This will make the SpamAssassin spam filter recognize spam
more efficiently.

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Protecting from Viruses
To defend your system from viruses, do not open suspicious e-mail attachments, enable
antivirus protection on the server side, if this service is provided by your hosting company,
and be sure to have a firewall and antivirus 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 antivirus protection for a mailbox:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Mail tab > e-mail address > Antivirus tab.
3. Select the checkbox Switch on antivirus protection for this e-mail address.
4. Choose the desired mail scanning mode. You can switch on scanning for
incoming mail, outgoing mail, or both.
5. Click OK.
When an infected message comes, you will be notified by e-mail. If Kaspersky Antivirus is
used by your provider, then you might be able to configure it at the Mail tab > e-mail address >
Antivirus tab.

 To switch off antivirus protection for a mailbox:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Mail tab > e-mail address > Antivirus tab.
3. Clear the checkbox Switch on antivirus protection for this e-mail address.
4. Click OK.

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Additional Services
Some email-related web apps (like webmail or antispam) are able to provide a part of their
functionality right in your Control Panel. For example, you can associate a mail account with
an account in the Open-Xchange webmail. In this case, the mail user will see the link to
webmail right in their Control Panel.
To integrate an app in such a way, you should allow these app to access a certain mail
account. You can do this on the mail account settings page during the account creation or
editing.

 To allow certain apps to access an email account:
1. Go to the Mail tab > select an email address > Additional Services tab.
2. In the list of installed apps that provide email-related services, select the
Granted option for the apps that should access this email account.
3. Click OK.

 To deny certain apps to access an email account:
1. Go to the Mail tab > select an email address > Additional Services tab.
2. In the list of installed apps that provide email-related services, select the
Denied option for the apps that should not access this email account.
3. Click OK.

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(Advanced) Configuring Global Mail Settings
You can configure the following mail service settings that apply to all domains created under
a subscription:


Mail service status. You can switch the mail service on or off. If the mail service is
switched off, then e-mail messages cannot be sent or received.



Mail bounce settings. 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 an error message. You can choose to:



Continue returning all such mail back to senders (Bounce with message option),



Forward all such mail to the specified e-mail address (Forward to address option),



Forward all such mail to another mail server with the specified IP address using the
option Redirect to external mail server with IP address (available only for Windows hosting),



Reject such mail without accepting it and without notifying senders (Reject option).

Webmail. If your service plan provides the option to choose which webmail program to
use for your account, then you can select it in the global mail settings.

 To configure the mail service settings:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Mail tab, and then click Change Settings.
3. Select the required options, and click OK.

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Using Mailing Lists
Mailing list is a group e-mail address to which a number of users are subscribed. Mailing lists
are used for sending e-mail messages to multiple recipients at once. E-mail messages sent
to mailing list subscribers can include anything from plain text to colorful newsletters and
promotions with embedded images and links, and attached multimedia and presentation
materials.
How it all works: you create a mailing list e-mail address in the Panel, and subscribe users to
it. Then you send your message to the mailing list address, and all subscribers receive it.

 To set up a mailing list and subscribe users to it:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Mail tab > Mailing Lists tab.
3. Click Create Mailing List.
4. Type the mailing list address and, if you have several websites, select the
website under which the mailing list will be created.
5. To subscribe users to the mailing list, type their e-mail addresses, one
address per line.
6. To notify the mailing list administrator about mailing list creation, select the
checkbox Notify administrator on the mailing list creation.
7. Click OK.

 To subscribe or unsubscribe users:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Mail tab > Mailing Lists tab.
3. Click the mailing list address.
4. Do any of the following:


To subscribe users to the mailing list, type their e-mail addresses into the Subscribers
field, one address per line.



To unsubscribe users, remove their addresses from the Subscribers field.

5. Click OK.

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 To remove a mailing list:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Mail tab > Mailing Lists tab.
3. Select a checkbox corresponding to the mailing list you want to remove and
click Remove.
4. To confirm removal, click Yes.

 To switch off the mailing lists service and all mailing lists created under the
currently selected subscription:
1. Go to the Mail tab > Mailing Lists tab.
2. Click Switch Off the Service.

 To switch on the mailing lists service for the currently selected subscription:
1. Go to the Mail tab > Mailing Lists tab.
2. Click Switch On the Service.

Scheduling Tasks
If you need to run scripts on your hosting account at specific time, use the task scheduler in
the Panel to make the system automatically run the scripts for you.

Next in this section:
Scheduling Tasks (Linux) .................................................................................. 538
Scheduling Tasks (Windows) ............................................................................ 540

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Scheduling Tasks (Linux)
If you need to run scripts on your hosting account at specific time, use the task scheduler in
the Panel to make the system automatically run the scripts for you.
During installation of the Panel, the following tasks are automatically created:


autoreport.php – delivers daily, weekly and monthly reports on domains (three
separate tasks)



backupmng – initiates scheduled backing up of domains once every 30 minutes



statistics – generates statistics on resource usage by domains



mysqldump.sh - creates a backup copy of three MySQL databases: psadump, MySQL,
and Horde databases

As all these tasks are related to statistics, databases, and reports, it is strongly
recommended that you neither change nor remove them.

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 menu.

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 a
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, and so on. However, the contracted names cannot be
separated with commas or used together with numbers.

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6. Specify which command to run. Type it into the Command input box.
For example, if you want to run the backup creation task at the specified time and have
the backup file sent to your e-mail, you need to specify the following command in the
Command input box:
/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/backupmng

7. Click OK.

 To receive notifications when the tacts are started:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab > Scheduled Tasks.
2. Click Settings and specify the notification policy.

 To temporarily suspend execution of a scheduled task:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab > Scheduled Tasks.
3. Locate the task that you want to suspend and click the corresponding link in
the Command column.
4. Clear the Switched on checkbox and click OK.

 To resume execution of a scheduled task:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab > Scheduled Tasks.
3. Locate the task whose execution you want to resume and click the
corresponding link in the Command column.
4. Select the Switched on checkbox and click OK.

 To cancel a task:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab > Scheduled Tasks.
3. Select a checkbox to the left of the task that you want to cancel and click
Remove.
4. Confirm removal and click OK.

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Scheduling Tasks (Windows)
If you need to run scripts on your hosting account at specific time, use the task scheduler in
the Panel to make the system automatically run the scripts for you.
During installation of the Panel, the following tasks are automatically created:


Update antivirus database – updates Parallels Premium Antivirus database.



Statistics calculation - generates statistics on resource usage, such as traffic and disk
space.

As all these tasks are related to site statistics, databases and reports, it is strongly
recommended that you neither change nor remove them.

 To schedule a task:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab > Scheduled Tasks.
3. Click Schedule New Task.
4. Leave the Switched on checkbox selected if you want your scheduled task to
be active immediately after the creation.
5. Type a name for your task in the Description field.
6. In Scheduler notification, specify whether the scheduler should notify you when
it runs this task. The following options are available:


Switched off - do not notify you.



Send to the default e-mail - send the notification to your default e-mail address.



Send to the e-mail I specify - send the notification to the e-mail specified in the
corresponding field. After selecting this option, you need to type the required e-mail
address in the field on the right.

7. Specify which command or executable file to run. Type it into the Path to
executable file input box. If you need to run the command with certain options,
type them in the Arguments field.


For example, if you want to run the statistics calculation task to count disc space and
see more detailed information for the example.com and example.net domains, you
need to specify the following path in the Path to executable file input box:
C:\Program Files\Parallels\Parallels
Panel\admin\bin\statistics.exe
and the following options in the Arguments field:
--disk-usage --process-domains=example.com, example.net –
verbose

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If you want to run your own PHP script using the task scheduler, you need to specify
the following path in the Path to executable file input box:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Parallels\Parallels
Panel\Additional\PleskPHP5\php.exe
and specify the script location in the Arguments field:
C:\Inetpub\vhosts\mydomain.tld\httpdocs\myscript.php

8. Select the appropriate priority in the Task priority field. Task priority can be set
to Low, Normal or High.
9. Specify when to run your command by selecting the appropriate checkboxes
in the Hours, Days of month, Months or Days of week fields.
10. Click OK to schedule the task or click Run Now to schedule the task and
immediately run it.

 To temporarily suspend execution of a scheduled task:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab > Scheduled Tasks.
3. Choose a task that you want to suspend and click the corresponding link in
the Description column.
4. Clear the Switched on checkbox.
5. Click OK.

 To resume execution of scheduled task:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Websites & Domains tab > Scheduled Tasks.
3. Choose a task whose execution you want to resume and click the
corresponding link in the Description column.
4. Select the Switched on checkbox.
5. Click OK.

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3. Select a checkbox to the left of the task that you want to cancel and click
Remove.
4. Confirm removal and click OK.

Website Databases
If your website incorporates custom data processing applications or is designed to generate
web pages dynamically, you will probably need a database for storing and retrieving data.
In Panel, you can manually create a new database (on page 543) for your site, make a
database copy (on page 544) and manage database user accounts (on page 545). These
operations are available in Websites & Domains tab > Databases. In addition, you can use the
third-party database management tools supplied with Panel to edit tables in databases,
export and import data (on page 544), and run SQL queries. These tools are available under
the Webadmin link in Websites & Domains tab > Databases and may vary depending on the
database type. For example, Panel employs phpMyAdmin to manage MySQL databases.
Note that when you install an app from the Application Catalog, all required databases and
database user accounts are created automatically. Alternatively, you can assign a manually
created user account to a database created by a web app. For more information, see the
section Using Website Applications > App Databases.

Accessing Databases with ODBC
If you wish to deploy an application which works with a database through an Open Database
Connectivity (ODBC) driver, you will need to create an appropriate ODBC data source in the
operating system. In Panel for Windows you can add new ODBC data sources for a number
of supported ODBC drivers. For more information, see Accessing Databases with ODBC
(Windows) (on page 546).
For the details on operations with databases and database users, refer to the relevant
sections of this chapter.

Next in this section:
Creating Databases........................................................................................... 543
Accessing Databases ........................................................................................ 543
Copying Databases ........................................................................................... 544
Exporting and Importing Databases................................................................... 544
Managing Database User Accounts .................................................................. 545
Accessing Databases with ODBC (Windows) .................................................... 546

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Creating Databases
Panel allows you to create and remove databases on the Websites & Domains tab > Databases
page.
You can create a database by specifying its name. If your subscription grants you the
corresponding permission, you can choose a database type and the database server on
which the database should be created.
A database must have at least one user account associated with it. Otherwise, it will be
impossible to access the database. You can create a database user while creating a
database by selecting the Create a new database user checkbox. Alternatively, you can clear the
checkbox and select a user later, for example, if you want to use one of the existing user
accounts. For more information, see Database User Accounts (on page 545).
Note that you can only remove the databases and database users that are not used by APS
apps. If the required checkbox appears grayed out, it means that this database is used by an
app and you can remove it only by removing the respective app.

Accessing Databases
After you have created a database and assigned a database user to it, you can access it
from Panel using the Webadmin link on the Websites & Domains tab > Databases page. In this
case, Panel automatically uses the corresponding database user credentials.
If you want to access your database using other tools (like SQL Server Management Studio)
or want to give other applications access to it, you will need to provide these tools and
applications with the following:


To connect to MySQL and PostgreSQL, you will need to provide the host name (or IP
address) and the database user login and password.



To connect to Microsoft SQL Server, you will also need to specify the Microsoft SQL
Server instance. For Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Panel uses the MSSQLSERVER2008
named instance. Therefore, the host can be specified as
mydomain.com\MSSQLSERVER2008 or 123.123.123.123\MSSQLSERVER2008. For
Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Panel uses the default instance (MSSQL 2005), and you do
not need to specify the instance name.

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Copying Databases
Panel allows you to copy databases from one database server registered in Panel to
another, as well as to any remote server, provided that the source and the destination
servers are of the same type, for example, MySQL.
You can copy a database by running Websites & Domains > Databases > Copy for this database
and specifying the destination server, the subscription and the database name. For a remote
server, you should select Other in the Database destination server list and provide the following
additional information:


Host name or IP address of the remote database server.



Username and password of the remote database server’s administrator. For example,
the MySQL administrator’s credentials.

Note: When you choose an existing database as a destination, those tables in the
destination database whose names also appear in the source database will be fully replaced.

Types of Copy
When you copy a database, you can choose whether to create a full database copy including
data in the tables (the Create a full copy option), or to copy only the database structure. In the
latter case, Panel will create tables without data in the destination database.

Exporting and Importing Databases
With Panel, to export a database means to save a source database in a file which can be
used for storage or distribution. To import a database means to restore data from the file to a
destination database. You can import a database to the same or another database server.
The only restriction is that the destination database should be of the same type, for example,
MySQL.
One reason for exporting databases is to back them up. While Panel for Windows offers a
separate functionality for backing up databases (on page 552), on Panel for Linux, exporting
is the only option for creating separate database backup files.
The export and import functionality is provided by the database management tool available
through the Webadmin link in Websites & Domains > Databases.
Note: It is recommended that you import data into a new database.
For the instructions on how to perform import and export with database management tools,
refer to the tools' built-in help sections.

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Managing Database User Accounts
When you work with a database in Panel, the latter accesses the database on behalf of a
user account associated with the database. Therefore, every database should have at least
one associated user account; otherwise, you will be unable to access it.
Any database user can be set as default for a certain database. Panel will always access the
database using this default user even if there are other users associated with it. If a database
has several associated user accounts, none of which are default, the first account from the
list will be used.

Types of Database Users
There are two types of database user accounts in Panel:


User accounts which have access to only one particular database.
If you collaborate with other people on managing a website and wish to give them access
to the database, you should create separate user accounts for them. Each of these
accounts is used to access only one database. In this case, you first create a database
and then user accounts.



Universal user accounts which have access to all databases.
Universal users have access not only to all existing databases, but to all newly created
databases as well.
If you plan to install a number of web apps on your site, it may be convenient to create
one universal user account, so that all the apps can access their databases using this
account. In this case, you first create a user account and then specify it when installing
apps.
Note: A universal user acts only within one database server. If you use several database
servers, create a separate universal user account for each server.

Operations with Database Users
You can create, update or remove a database user by going to Websites & Domains >
Databases, and selecting the Users tab of the required subscription.
When creating a database user, you will be prompted to provide the user credentials for
accessing the database and the name of the database which the specified user will access.
A universal database user can be created by selecting Any for a Database name.
Notes:
1. You can remove a default database user only by removing the database associated with
this user. Alternatively, you can edit the user and clear the Make the user default for this
database option, and then remove the user.
2. If a database user was created by an APS app, you can remove this user only by
removing the respective app.

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Accessing Databases with ODBC (Windows)
If your application needs to access external databases through ODBC, you can create the
necessary ODBC connection in Panel. After you have created the ODBC connection, you
can customize the application to use that ODBC connection to access information in the
database.
Note that the database does not necessarily need to be external; ODBC can be used to
access local databases as well.

Operations with ODBC Connections
You can create, change or remove ODBC connections on the Websites & Domains >
> ODBC Data Sources page.
When you create an ODBC connection, you should provide the connection name and
description as well as the required driver. Depending on the selected driver, you will be
prompted to specify some additional parameters, such as the path to the database, user
credentials, and other connection options.

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Backing Up and Recovering Websites
Panel provides the backing up and restoration facilities that you can use to prevent the loss
of your data.
During the backup operation, Panel saves your account settings and websites' content into a
number of files. You can create a number of backups and restore any of them at any time
later.
This chapter describes how to perform the following operations in Panel:


Backing up all data related to your account and sites. Learn more in the section Backing
Up Account and Websites (on page 550).



Backing up databases (Windows). Learn more in the section Backing Up Databases
(Windows) (on page 552).
Scheduling backups. Learn more in the section Scheduling Backups (on page 553).




Restoring data from backup archives. Learn more in the section Restoring Data (on page
556).

Next in this section:
Backing Up Data ............................................................................................... 548
Managing Backup Files ..................................................................................... 554
Restoring Data .................................................................................................. 556

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Backing Up Data
Depending on your needs, Panel can perform two types of backup:


Customer account configuration. Such backups have small size and are convenient for
restoring account settings in case of configuration problems.



Customer account configuration and websites content. This type of backup requires more
disk space and system resources because the Panel also saves the content of all
websites. Such full backups are the best way to prevent data loss.

You can perform backup manually at any time, or schedule it for a specific time. For
example, make the full backup once a day at night time when the number of site visits is
minimal. To get the details on scheduling backups, refer to the section Scheduling Backups (on
page 553).

Storing Backups
There are two ways of storing backups in Panel:


On the Panel-managed hosting server. All backup files are stored on your Panel server
along with other account content. Note that in this case backup files occupy the disk
space provided by your subscription.



On a remote FTP server. All backup files are stored on a remote FTP repository. In this
case, backup files do not occupy the disk space provided by your subscription. The
instructions on how to configure Panel to save backups to an FTP account are provided
below in this section.

Creating Password-protected Backups
Since Panel 11.0, you are able to secure sensitive data in your backups by protecting them
with a password. Protection makes it impossible for an attacker to reveal backup data if the
security of your external backup storage is compromised.
You can specify a backup password in the following circumstances:


In your FTP repository settings (Websites & Domains > Backup Manager > Personal FTP
Repository Settings).



When downloading a backup file from the Panel internal repository to some external
location.

When uploading these backups back to Panel and restoring them, you will be prompted to
provide the password you used for protection.
Important:
If you forget the password you used for backup protection, it cannot be recovered.
Therefore, it is strongly recommended to keep a list of your passwords and corresponding
backup file names in a safe place.

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Configuring Panel for Working with an FTP Repository
If you are going to use an FTP server for storing backup files, you should specify its settings
in Account tab > Back Up My Account and Websites > Personal FTP Repository Settings:


FTP server's IP address or host name.



Directory on the server where you want to store backup files.



User name and password for access to the FTP account.



Password that Panel will use for protecting backup files.

Next in this section:
Backing Up Account and Websites ................................................................... 550
Backing Up and Restoring Databases (Windows) ............................................. 552
Scheduling Backups ......................................................................................... 553

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Backing Up Account and Websites
 To back up all data related to your account and all your subscriptions:
1. Go to the Account tab > Back Up My Account and Websites > Back Up.
2. Specify the following:


Backup file name prefix and description. You cannot specify an arbitrary file name,
however, you can set the Panel to add a prefix to backup file names. Note that the
Panel automatically adds the date and time of backup file creation (in Universal Time)
to backup file names.



Splitting of the backup file. To create a multivolume backup, select the corresponding
checkbox and specify volume size in megabytes.



Location where to store the backup file. Select the repository where you would like to
store the backup file.



E-mail notification on backup completion. If you want to be notified of the backup
completion, type your e-mail address.



What data to back up. You can back up only the account settings or account settings
and all data (including databases).



Suspend domains until backup task is completed. Select this option to prohibit users from
making changes to content or settings of websites while they are being backed up.
Note: If you select this option, then, after restoring the data from this backup file, you
will need to manually switch on every domain alias for every site that needs to
have domain aliases. This can be done at Websites & Domains tab > domain alias
name > Switch On.

3. Click Back Up.
When backing up is finished, the backup file will be saved to the repository you selected.

 To back up all websites related to a subscription:
1. If you are subscribed to several hosting packages and have access to
several webspaces associated with your account, in the Subscription menu at
the top of the screen, select the required webspace.
2. Go to the Account tab > Back Up Websites > Back Up.
3. Specify the following:




Splitting of the backup file. To create a multivolume backup, select the corresponding
checkbox and specify volume size in megabytes.



Location where to store the backup file. Select the repository where you would like to
store the backup file.

Website Management



E-mail notification on backup completion. If you want to be notified of the backup
completion, type your e-mail address.



What data to back up. You can choose to back up:



Only settings of websites.



All settings and data with or without mail accounts and messages in mailboxes.



Only mail accounts with messages.

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4. Click Back Up.
When backing up is finished, the backup file will be saved to the repository you selected.

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Backing Up and Restoring Databases (Windows)
If you are using a Windows-based customer account, then you can back up and
subsequently restore databases, database user accounts, and data used by your websites.
You can:


Back up your domain databases with all data and user accounts.




Restore databases from backup files.
Download, upload and remove database backup files.



Recover users who became orphaned after the restoration.

Important: Panel does not back up stored procedures, views, and triggers. The backup
utility ignores them and, therefore, they cannot be restored.

 To back up databases:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab > Backup Manager > Database Backup Repository.
2. Using the Database menu, select the databases you want to back up.
3. Click Back Up.
4. Specify the name of the backup file and click OK.
5. If you want to download the resulting backup file, click the file name on the
next page after the backup process was finished. Specify the location where
you want to save the file and click Save.
6. Click OK.

 To restore a database:
1. Log in to Control Panel.
2. Go to Websites & Domains tab > Backup Manager > Database Backup Repository,
select the checkbox corresponding to the backup file you want to restore and
click Restore.
If you do not have the backup file on your server, you can upload the backup file to the
server repository from your local machine.

3. Confirm the restoration by selecting the corresponding checkbox and click
OK.

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 To upload a backup file to a backup repository:
1. Go to Control Panel > Websites & Domains tab > Backup Manager > Database Backup
Repository, and click Upload Backup File.
2. In the Database name menu, select the database in whose repository you want
to upload the backup file.
3. Click Browse... and select the required backup file.
4. Leave the Restore database backup immediately upon uploading check box selected
if you want the database contents to be restored immediately after the
backup file is uploaded.
5. Click OK.
The database backup file will be uploaded to the backup repository of the specified
database.

Scheduling Backups
 To schedule backing up of data:
1. Go to the Account tab > Back Up My Account and Websites > Scheduled Backup
Settings.
2. Select the Activate this backup task checkbox and specify the following:


When and how often to run the backup.



A prefix that should be added to the backup file name.



Splitting of the backup file. To create a multivolume backup, select the respective
checkbox and specify volume size in megabytes. Note that volume size cannot
exceed 4095 megabytes.



Location where to store the backup file. Select the repository where you would like to
store the backup file.



Maximum number of backup files stored in the repository. Type a number if you want
to recycle backup files: When this limit is reached, the oldest backup files are
removed.



E-mail notification on backing up errors. If you want to send an e-mail notice when
something goes wrong during backing up, type the e-mail address you need.



What data to back up. You can back up only account settings, or account settings and
all related data.



Suspend domains until backup task is completed. Select this option to prohibit users from
making changes to content or settings of websites while they are being backed up.

3. Click OK.

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Managing Backup Files
Next in this section:
Uploading and Downloading Backup Files......................................................... 554
Uploading and Downloading Database Backup Files (Windows) ....................... 555

Uploading and Downloading Backup Files
Downloading Backup Files from Panel
To download a backup file from the Panel repository, choose the corresponding backup file
name in Account tab > Back Up My Account and Websites and specify the location for the file.
Before starting the download, Panel will prompt you to enter the backup password.

Uploading Backup Files to Panel
To upload a backup file to the Panel repository, use the Account tab > Back Up My Account and
Websites > Upload Files to Server Repository wizard. Before starting the upload, Panel will prompt
you to enter the following backup parameters:


Backup file location.



Password.
This is the password that you used for protecting the backup data. If you did not use
password-protection, leave the corresponding field blank.
Note: If the password you provide is incorrect, Panel will warn you, but will upload the
backup to the server anyway. During the backup restoration, you will be prompted to
enter the password again.

Removing Backup Files
To remove a backup file from the Panel repository, select a checkbox corresponding to the
backup file you want to remove in Account tab > Back Up My Account and Websites and сlick
Remove.

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Uploading and Downloading Database Backup Files (Windows)
 To upload a backup file to backup repository:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab > Backup Manager > Database Backup Repository
and click Upload Backup File.
2. Select the database in whose repository you want to upload the backup file
to in the Database name menu.
3. Click Browse... and select the required backup file.
4. Leave the Restore database backup immediately upon uploading checkbox selected if
you want the database contents to be restored immediately after the backup
file is uploaded.
5. Click OK.
The database backup file will be uploaded to the backup repository of the specified
database.

 To download a backup file from backup repository:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab > Backup Manager > Database Backup Repository.
2. In the Database menu, select the database whose backup files you want to
browse. Leave All domain databases selected if you want to browse backup files
of all databases on a domain.
3. Click the icon
download.

corresponding to the database backup file you want to

4. Select the location where you want to save the backup file and click Save.
The backup file will be downloaded from the backup repository.

 To remove a backup file from backup repository:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab > Backup Manager > Database Backup Repository.
2. In the Database menu, select the database whose backup files you want to
remove. Leave All domain databases selected if you want to browse backup files
of all databases on a domain.
3. Select a checkbox corresponding to the database backup file you want to
remove. Click Remove, confirm removal and click OK.

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Restoring Data
Next in this section:
Restoring Backups ............................................................................................ 556
Restoring Databases (Windows) ....................................................................... 557

Restoring Backups
You can restore data from backup files kept in:


The Panel internal repository.
To restore backup files from Panel repository, choose the backup file name you want to
restore on the Account tab > Back Up My Account and Websites > Server Repository tab.



An external FTP repository.
To restore backup files from Panel repository, choose the backup file name you want to
restore on the Account tab > Back Up My Account and Websites > Personal FTP Repository tab.

After you choose the backup file, Panel will start the restoration wizard. You will be prompted
to specify the following restoration parameters:


Types of data to be restored.



Suspend website until restoration task is completed. Select this if you want to avoid possible
conflicts that may occur when users modify site content or settings while they are being
restored.



Send an e-mail notice when restoration task is completed. Type your e-mail address if you want
the control panel to notify you when restoring is completed.
Conflicts resolution policy. Specify what to do if any conflicts occur during restoration.




Backup security settings. If the backup was protected with a password, enter the password
into the Password field. Note that Panel is unable to check whether the password you
enter is wrong: The backup will be successfully restored but the data will be corrupted.
If you wish to reset user passwords, clear the Provide the passwords option.

If any errors or conflicts occur during restoration of data, the wizard will prompt you to select
an appropriate resolution. Follow the instructions provided on the screen to complete the
wizard.

Website Management

557

Restoring Databases (Windows)
 If the database already exists and you only need to restore its contents:
1. Go to the Websites & Domains tab > Backup Manager > Database Backup Repository.
2. Select the required backup file from the list and click Restore Selected.
If you do not have the backup file on the server, you can upload the backup file to the
server repository from your local machine. For more information, refer to the section
Uploading, Downloading, and Removing Database Backup Files.

3. Confirm the restoration by selecting the corresponding checkbox and click
OK.
If you are restoring an MS SQL database, there is a possibility that some database users
will be orphaned. In order to provide the ability to access and use the database for these
users, you need to repair them. For more information, refer to the section Recovering
Orphaned Database Users.

Next in this section:
Post-Restoration Database Repair .................................................................... 557

Post-Restoration Database Repair
If you are restoring an MS SQL database, there is a possibility that some database users will
be orphaned. In order to provide the ability to access and use the database for these users,
you need to repair them.

 To check if a database has orphaned users and to repair them:
1. Go to Websites & Domains tab > Databases > database name.
2. If you see a warning saying that there are several orphaned users that
should be repaired in order to function properly, you have orphaned users
who need to be repaired.
3. To repair orphaned users, click the Repair now button corresponding to the
users you want to repair.
4. Provide password for the users and click Repair.
If a user is supposed to be a system user without a password, run repair with empty
password field.

558

Appendix A: Properties of Hosting Plans and Subscriptions

Appendix A: Properties of Hosting Plans
and Subscriptions
Properties of a hosting plan and subscription are grouped as follows:


Resources
These are hosting resources provided with a plan. Includes validity period, policy on
overusing resources, system resources like disk space and traffic, and service resources
like websites, subdomains, mailboxes, databases and so on. For example, the Domains
resources sets the number of domains that a customer can register and manage in
Panel.



Permissions
Includes provided services and privileges.
Note: Some permissions prevent settings of the following services from syncing (on page
306). See the details in the Permissions section.



Hosting Parameters
Includes parameters of the provided hosting service.



PHP Settings
Includes the customizable PHP settings.



Web Server (service plan only)
Includes web server configuration settings that are applied to newly created domains.



Mail (service plan only)
Includes parameters of the provided mail service.



DNS (service plan only)
Specifies if the DNS zones of the subscription's domains should be master or slave.
Note: In case the DNS zone management privilege is provided, this parameter is not synced,
and subscribers can set up this parameter on a per-domain basis.



Performance (service plan only)
Includes parameters that affect performance of all services provided with the plan.



Logs & Statistics (service plan only)
Includes the settings of how statistics and logs of a plan's subscriptions should be stored.
Note that these settings are not synced between a plan and subscriptions. See Logs &
Statistics (on page 574) for details on how to change some of these settings for
subscriptions.



Applications
Lets you select which applications should be available to subscribers.

Appendix A: Properties of Hosting Plans and Subscriptions

Next in this section:
Visibility of Hosting Features in the Control Panel ............................................. 560
Resources ......................................................................................................... 560
Permissions....................................................................................................... 564
Hosting Parameters........................................................................................... 568
Web Server (Apache) ........................................................................................ 571
Mail ................................................................................................................... 572
DNS .................................................................................................................. 573
Performance...................................................................................................... 573
Logs & Statistics ................................................................................................ 574
Applications ....................................................................................................... 574
Additional Services ............................................................................................ 574

559

560

Appendix A: Properties of Hosting Plans and Subscriptions

Visibility of Hosting Features in the Control
Panel
Since version 10.4, Panel hides from customers those hosting features that are not provided
in their subscription. The visibility of GUI elements responsible for a certain feature is
determined by permissions and resource limits of a subscription. Note that when you (as the
administrator) log in to the customer's Control Panel, you see GUI elements regardless of
customer's permissions. The table below explains GUI visibility logic.

Resource Limit > 0

Visible to a
Customer

Visible to the
Administrator

Yes

Permission = True
Resource Limit > 0
Permission = False
Resource Limit = 0
Permission = True
Resource Limit = 0
Permission = False

For example, when the number of Domains in a subscription is 10 and the Domains management
permission is off, a customer does not see the Add New Domain button in the Control Panel.
Nevertheless, this button is available to the administrator that logs in to the customer's
Control Panel.

Resources Without Numerical Limits
If the resource type is logical or in other words, it can be just switched on or off (such as
scripting language support), its visibility is controlled by a certain permission only. For
example, if the Hosting settings management permission is granted, a customer is able to toggle
the support of various scripting languages for their site. If the permission is not granted, the
customer sees the list of languages that are switched on for their site in the read only mode.
The disabled languages are not shown in the list.

Appendix A: Properties of Hosting Plans and Subscriptions

561

Resources
Resources (located at Service Plans > select a plan > Resources tab) define what system
resources are provided with the subscription.
Overuse policy
Defines what happens if the subscription's usage of disk space and traffic reaches limit
values:


Overuse is not allowed will suspend the subscription only if you select the checkbox Suspend
subscription when its disk space or traffic usage goes beyond the limit. If you do not select it,
websites will not be suspended; only a notice will be sent to the subscribers.
You can set up sending of notifications as soon as usage of disk space or traffic reaches
a particular value (the Notify upon reaching options), in order to prevent subscriptions from
suspension. The notifications will be sent according to the server notifications policy.



Overuse is allowed will let the subscription operate properly.
The option When limit on usage of a resource is reached, send e-mail according to the server
notification settings triggers sending notifications according to the server notifications
policy.

Note: The overuse policy does not apply to the limits set on size of mailboxes. Therefore,
even if you enable overuse, be sure to allocate enough disk space to mailboxes.
Disk space
The total amount of disk space allocated to the subscription. It includes disk space occupied
by all files related to the subscription: content of websites, databases, applications,
mailboxes, log files, and backup files.
Traffic
The amount of data that can be transferred from the subscription's websites and FTP/Samba
shares during a month.
Notify upon reaching
Available only if overuse is not allowed. This sets the soft quota for disk space or traffic
usage in order to prevent subscriptions from suspension. When the quota is reached, the
Panel sends notifications to users' e-mail addresses specified in Settings > Notifications:
Resource usage limits exceeded by subscription.
Sites published with Presence Builder
The number of websites that can be published with Presence Builder.
Domains
The total number of domain names that the subscriber will be able to host within the
subscription. This includes websites, web forwarding configurations that point to websites
hosted on other servers, and domain names on which a website or web forwarding is not yet
set up (domains with no hosting).

562

Appendix A: Properties of Hosting Plans and Subscriptions

Mobile sites
The total number of websites that can be hosted with the UNITY Mobile online service, which
optimizes sites for viewing on mobile devices. UNITY Mobile hosts the optimized site copies
on their own servers.
How it works:
1. A user creates a website with the domain name example.com and clicks the link Create
Mobile Site in the Control Panel.
2. The user is prompted to specify a domain name for access to the mobile site copy. The
user specifies mobile.example.com.
3. The Panel connects to the UNITY Mobile hosting servers, sets up an account with UNITY
Mobile for the domain name mobile.example.com.
4. The user’s browser opens the UNITY Mobile website, where the user is automatically
logged in to their account and prompted to import their website from the Panel-managed
server.
5. After the site is imported and optimized for mobile viewing, it becomes accessible by the
address mobile.example.com. The Panel’s DNS server keeps a CNAME record pointing
to the site on a UNITY Mobile server.
The user can now perform the following operations on mobile site using links in the
Control Panel:


Open site editor.



Change mobile site name.



Remove mobile site.

For more information about UNITY Mobile services, visit their website at
http://www.unitymobile.com.
For instructions on managing mobile sites through the Control Panel, refer to the Customer's
Guide, section Setting Up Mobile Sites.
Subdomains
The total number of subdomains that the subscriber will be able to host within the
subscription.
Domain aliases
The total number of additional alternative domain names that the subscriber will be able to
use for their websites.
Mailboxes
The total number of mailboxes that the subscriber can host within the subscription.
Mailbox size
The amount of disk space that is allocated to each mailbox in a subscription for storing e-mail
messages and auto-reply attachment files.

Appendix A: Properties of Hosting Plans and Subscriptions

563

Total mailboxes quota (available only for Windows hosting)
The total amount of disk space in megabytes available for all mailboxes within the
subscription.
Mailing lists
The total number of mailing lists that the subscriber can host within the subscription.
Additional FTP accounts
The maximum number of FTP accounts used to access the files and folders created within a
subscription. This number does not include an account that is always created during the
subscription creation.
Databases (Unix hosting)
The total number of databases that can be created on the Panel database servers and used
by the subscription's websites.
MySQL databases and Microsoft SQL Server databases (Windows hosting)
The maximum number of MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server databases respectively that can
be created on the Panel database servers and used by the subscription's websites.
MySQL databases quota and Microsoft SQL databases quota (Windows hosting)
The maximum amount of disk space (in megabytes) that the subscription's MySQL or
Microsoft SQL Server databases can occupy respectively.
Validity period/Expiration Date
The term for a subscription.
In service plan properties, it is Validity period: it is used only when a subscription is created:
the Panel derives the subscription expiration date from it.
In subscription properties, it is Expiration date: At this date, the subscription will be suspended,
meaning that all sites within the subscription will be suspended, their Web, FTP and mail
services will no longer be accessible to the Internet users, and the subscriber and their users
will not be able to log in to the Control Panel.
Subscriptions are not renewed automatically, so to bring a subscription's services back to
operation, you will need to manually activate the subscription.
Java applications
The total number of Java applications that can be hosted on the subscription's websites.
Web users
The total number of personal Web pages that the subscriber can host for other users under
their websites. This service is mostly used in educational institutions that host noncommercial personal pages of their students and staff. These pages usually have addresses
like http://example.com/~webuser.

564

Appendix A: Properties of Hosting Plans and Subscriptions

FrontPage accounts (Windows hosting)
The maximum number of Microsoft FrontPage accounts that the subscriber can create within
the subscription.
Shared SSL links (Windows hosting)
The total number of shared SSL links that the subscriber can use within the subscription.
ODBC connections (Windows hosting)
The total number of ODBC connections that the subscriber can use within the subscription.
ColdFusion DSN connections (Windows hosting)
The total number of ColdFusion DSN connections that the subscriber can use within the
subscription.

Permissions
Permissions (located at Service Plans > select a plan > Permissions tab) define what privileges
and services are provided with the subscription.
DNS zone management
Allows the subscriber to manage the DNS zones of their domains.
Note: If this permission is granted, then the DNS service settings are not synced.
Hosting settings management
Allows modifying parameters of the hosting service provided with the subscription: changing
hosting account features, setting up custom web server settings, and switching on or off
support for programming and scripting languages, custom error documents, SSL support,
and (Windows only) Microsoft FrontPage support. In addition, it allows you to toggle the
following permissions: Hosting performance settings management and Common PHP settings
management.
Note: If this permission is granted, then the mentioned hosting parameters are not synced.
Common PHP settings management
Allows the subscriber to adjust common PHP settings individually for each website
(subdomain) in their subscription.
Note: If this permission is granted, then the common PHP settings are not synced.
Setup of potentially insecure web scripting options that override provider's policy. Allows the
subscriber to override the hosting security policy, if it is applied by the provider.

Appendix A: Properties of Hosting Plans and Subscriptions

565

Management of access to server over SSH (Linux hosting)
Allows the subscriber to access the server shell over SSH under their system user account.
Also, lets the subscriber set up such hosting parameter as SSH access to server shell under the
subscription's system user.
Note: If this permission is granted, then the mentioned hosting parameter is not synced.
Management of access to server over Remote Desktop (Windows hosting)
Allows the subscriber to access the server via Remote Desktop protocol.
Anonymous FTP management
Provides the anonymous FTP service, which lets the subscriber set up a directory shared
over FTP protocol and available to anonymous users. A subscription should reside on a
dedicated IP address in order to provide this service.
Scheduler management
Allows the subscriber to schedule running of scripts or utilities.
Spam filter management
Lets the subscriber customize filtering settings of the SpamAssassin spam filter.
Antivirus management
Allows the subscriber to change settings of the server-side protection of incoming and
outgoing mail from viruses.
Data backup and restoration using the server repository
Allows the subscriber to back up and restore their websites, and use the storage on the
server for keeping backups.
Data backup and restoration using a personal FTP repository
Allows the subscriber to back up and restore their websites, and use external FTP servers for
storing their backups.
Web statistics management
Allows the subscriber to select which Web statistics engine should be used, and whether
reports should be accessible via a specific password-protected directory.
Note: If this permission is granted, then the mentioned hosting parameter is not synced.
Log rotation management
Allows the subscriber to adjust the cleanup of processed log files for their sites. Also, allows
the subscriber to remove log files.

566

Appendix A: Properties of Hosting Plans and Subscriptions

Note: If this permission is granted, then the Logs & Statistics parameters (on page 574) are
not synced.
Access to Application Catalog
Provides the subscriber with access to prepackaged applications that can be installed on
websites. If you select this option, be sure to select the PHP support checkbox on the Hosting
Parameters tab.
You can view a list of applications available from your provider by doing the following:
1. Set up your own website by using a plan or a custom subscription that grants access to
the Application Catalog.
2. Go to the Server Administration Panel > Subscriptions, and click the Manage Hosting link
corresponding to your domain name. The Control Panel will open in a new browser
window or tab.
3. In the Control Panel, go to the Applications tab > All Available Applications.
There is also a page in the Server Administration Panel, where you can view and update
installed applications, and purchase license keys for commercial applications at Parallels
Online Store: Tools & Utilities > Application Vault.
For instructions on installing applications and license keys, refer to the Customer's Guide,
section Using Website Applications.
Domains management
Allows the subscriber to add domains, create websites and set up web forwarding.
Subdomains management
Allows the subscriber to set up additional websites accessible by .
addresses.
Domain aliases management
Allows the subscriber to set up additional alternative domain names for their websites.
Additional FTP accounts management
Allows the subscriber to manage FTP accounts for accessing the subscription's files and
folders.
Java applications management
Allows the subscriber to install Java applications on their websites.
Mailing lists management
Allows the subscriber to use mailing lists provided by the GNU Mailman software.
Note: If this permission is granted, then the Enable mailing lists parameter (on page 572) is not
synced.

Appendix A: Properties of Hosting Plans and Subscriptions

567

Hosting performance settings management
Allows the subscriber to adjust performance PHP settings individually for each website
(subdomain) in their subscription. In addition, lets the subscriber set up the limits on
bandwidth usage and number of connections to their websites.
Note: If this permission is granted, then the following settings are not synced: PHP
performance settings, performance settings (on page 573) for bandwidth usage and the
number of connections.
IIS application pool management (Windows hosting)
Provides the subscriber with a dedicated IIS application pool and the means to manage it:
enable or disable it, and set up the maximum amount of CPU power that the pool may use.
Note: If this permission is granted, then the Logs & Statistics parameter (on page 574) called
Use dedicated pool is not synced.
Additional write/modify permissions management (Windows hosting)
Allows the subscriber to toggle the hosting parameter Additional write/modify permissions.
These permissions are required if a subscriber's web applications use a file-based database
(like Jet) located in the root of httpdocs folder. Please note that selecting this option might
seriously compromise the websites' security.
Note: If this permission is granted, then the hosting parameter Additional write/modify
permissions is not synced.
Shared SSL management (Windows hosting)
Provides the shared SSL service, and allows the subscriber to set up shared SSL links for
their websites within the subscription.
Hard disk quota assignment
Allows the subscriber to set up the hosting parameter Hard disk quota.
Note: If this permission is granted, then the mentioned hosting parameter is not synced.
Database server selection
Allows subscribers to select a database server for their databases, as opposed to using the
default database server. For details about default database servers, see the section Hosting
Parameters (on page 568).
Access to advanced operations: Website Copying and Website Maintenance Mode
Specifies whether the website copying and maintenance mode are available to the
subscriber in the Control Panel > Websites & Domains > Show Advanced Operations. If denied, the
Website Copying and Website Maintenance Mode links are not available to the subscriber.

568

Appendix A: Properties of Hosting Plans and Subscriptions

Password-protected directories management
Specifies whether the protected directories feature is available to the subscriber in the Control
Panel > Websites & Domains > Show Advanced Operations. If denied, the Password-protected
directories link is not available to the subscriber.
Ability to manage auxiliary user accounts
Specifies whether the subscriber can manage auxiliary user accounts on the Control Panel >
Users tab. If denied, the Users tab is not available to the subscriber.
Allow activating APS apps using license keys from the Panel license pool
If granted, users will be able to install certain APS apps without the need to purchase app
licenses from vendors. In this case, app license keys will be taken from the Panel license
pool. Note that you cannot limit the number of app installations a user is allowed to perform.
This permission is relevant only if your Panel license comes in a bundle with APS app
licenses. Learn more about license bundles (on page 139).

Hosting Parameters
These parameters define the hosting service provided with the plan or subscription. The
parameters can be found in:


Service Plans > select a plan > Hosting Parameters tab



Subscriptions > select a subscription > Customize > Hosting Parameters tab

Note: Unless specifically noted, the parameters are not synced if the Hosting management
permission is granted to a subscription.
Enable hosting
Defines whether the hosting service is actually provided with the plan.
Turn off this option to make up a service plan that provides only mail service. Subscribers of
such a plan will be able to have 'domains without hosting' which will serve mailboxes.
Status of websites in suspended subscriptions
Defines whether sites in suspended subscriptions should be available over the Internet and
which hosting services should be available for these sites.
In Panel, a website can receive a new status in two ways:


When the site owner or hosting provider changes the status individually for the site (in
Websites & Domains > Edit > Change status). As long as the subscription stays active,
services like mail are available for sites with any status, and these services can be
managed by means of Panel. Learn more in Website Status (on page 400).

Appendix A: Properties of Hosting Plans and Subscriptions



569

After the subscription has been suspended. It can be suspended automatically (when its
expiration date passes) or manually by the hosting provider (using the Suspend button in
the subscription's settings). The DNS and mail services are available for sites in
suspended subscriptions, but cannot be managed by means of Panel.
The setting Status of websites in suspended subscriptions enables you to specify the status
that websites will receive when their subscription becomes suspended.

Websites in suspended subscriptions can have the following statuses:


Disabled. Disabled websites have all associated hosting services disabled. Visitors see
the web server's default page defined by the hosting provider.
Disabled websites are no longer hosted on the server: They are excluded from the web
server configuration. However, the physical directories and files of disabled websites can
be accessed using FTP clients and File Manager.
Important: In Panel versions earlier than 11.5 this status was called Suspended. After
upgrading from earlier Panel versions to 11.5, all websites that had the Suspended status
will receive the status Disabled in order to keep their correct behavior.



Suspended. Suspended websites do not open in browsers. Visitors are redirected with the
search engine friendly 503 HTTP code to the custom maintenance page.
Note: You can customize the maintenance page by using the Edit maintenance error page
link in Control Panel > Websites & Domains > domain name. This link is displayed only if you
select the Custom error documents checkbox in the site settings in Websites & Domains >
domain name > Edit. Site owners can edit the maintenance page too.
Suspended websites remain hosted on the server, which means that the services such as
mail are running and web server configuration for these websites is kept on the server.



Active. The website works as usual.

Hard disk quota
Hard quota imposed on disk space in addition to the soft quota (set with the option Notify upon
reaching (on page 560)). Hard disk quota will not allow writing more files to the web space
when the limit is reached: users will get an "Out of disk space" error at an attempt to write
files.
Note: (Linux hosting) Confirm that your operating system supports hard disk quota before
you set any value other than Unlimited. In case you define a hard quota when it is not
supported, you will get a synchronization conflict on all the plan's subscriptions.
SSL support
Allows setting up SSL encryption on websites hosted within the subscription.
Web statistics
Selects a statistics engine that will create reports on how the subscription's websites are
visited: how many people visited a site, and which web pages they viewed.
The accessible via password protected directory /plesk-stat/webstat option allows a subscriber view
website statistics at URLs like https://example.com/plesk-stat/webstat using their system
user account login and password.
Note: This parameter is not synced if the Web statistics management permission is selected.

570

Appendix A: Properties of Hosting Plans and Subscriptions

Custom error documents
Allows subscribers to design and use their own error pages that the web server returns with
HTTP error codes.
SSH access to server shell under the subscription's system user (Linux/Unix hosting)
Allows subscribers to upload securely web content to the server through SSH.
Note: This parameter is not synced if the Management of access to server over SSH permission is
selected.
Scripting
Support for programming and scripting languages that should be interpreted, executed or
otherwise processed by a web server: Microsoft ASP.NET framework, PHP hypertext
preprocessor (PHP), Common Gateway Interface (CGI), Perl, Python, Fast Common
Gateway Interface (FastCGI), Microsoft or Apache Active Server Pages (ASP), Server Side
Includes (SSI), ColdFusion, and Miva scripting required for running Miva e-commerce
solutions.
To learn more about adjustable PHP settings, see the section PHP Settings (on page 571).
Additional write/modify permissions (Windows hosting)
This option is required if subscriber's web applications use a file-based database (like Jet)
located in the root of httpdocs folder. Please note that selecting this option might seriously
compromise the Web site security.
Allow web users to use scripts
Allows scripting at web pages available at URLs like
http://example.com/~/, where refers to a web user.
Web users are individuals who do not need their own domain names. This service is popular
with educational institutions that host non-commercial personal pages of their students and
staff.
FrontPage support (Windows hosting).
The options in the FrontPage support group allow subscribers to connect to the server and
create websites with Microsoft Frontpage.
Default Database Server
Specifies default database servers of each supported type to be used within a plan.
Customers will be able to create databases only on the default database servers. Note that if
you disable a database server for an existing plan or subscription (the None option), the
databases already used by customers will still be accessible.

Next in this section:
PHP Settings ..................................................................................................... 571

Appendix A: Properties of Hosting Plans and Subscriptions

571

PHP Settings
You can adjust the following PHP settings on the Service Plans > select a plan > Hosting
Parameters tab:


PHP handler type.
Learn how to choose the PHP handler that suits you best in the section PHP Handlers (on
page 52).



PHP version.

Since Panel 10.4, you can adjust PHP configuration individually for each hosting plan or
subscription. For this purpose, Panel exposes a number of PHP configuration settings on the
PHP Settings tab. To learn more about custom per-subscription PHP configuration, refer to the
section Custom PHP Configuration (on page 54).

Web Server (Apache)
Web server settings (located at Service Plans > select a plan > Web Server tab) enable you to
predefine web server configuration for all domains that will be created under a certain service
plan.
Note: Web server settings can also be changed for each domain individually. Changes on
the service plan level do not override custom settings of existing domains. Therefore, the
changes you make in Service Plans > select a plan > Web Server take effect only for newly
created domains.
To learn more about web server configuration, see Apache Web Server (Linux) (on page 28).
Directives for HTTP and Directives for HTTPS
To predefine Apache directives that will be used when the website is accessed over HTTP
and HTTPS, use the Directives for HTTP and Directives for HTTPS fields. When editing the fields,
use the syntax as in httpd.conf. For example, if you want to set a custom error page, add
the line:
ErrorDocument 401 /my_error_page.html

nginx directives
To predefine nginx directives, use the nginx directives field. When editing the field, use the
syntax as in nginx.conf. For example, if you want to pack all the proxied requests with
gzip, add the line:
gzip_proxied any;

572

Appendix A: Properties of Hosting Plans and Subscriptions

Mail
These parameters (located at Service Plans > select a plan > Mail tab) define the mail service
provided with the plan.
Webmail
Provides the webmail service, which allows users of mailboxes within the subscription to
work with their mail using a web-based mail application.
Enable mailing lists
Turns on the mailing lists service provided by the GNU Mailman software on the
subscription's websites.
Note: This parameter is not synced if the permission Mailing lists management is selected.
Policy on mail for non-existent users
Defines how mail server should treat e-mail messages sent to e-mail addresses that are
supposed to be registered under the subscription's domains but actually do not exist. The
following options are available:


Bounce with message returns the mail back to sender with a notice.



Forward to address forwards the mail to another e-mail address.



Reject silently rejects the mail without accepting it. This setting can decrease mail server
load caused by a large amount of spam, which is often directed at randomly generated
user names. However, this might be useful to spammers because scanning your mail
server for valid e-mail addresses will speed up in such a case.



Redirect to external mail server with IP address (on Windows hosting), forwards the mail to the
specified mail server.

Appendix A: Properties of Hosting Plans and Subscriptions

573

DNS
These parameters (located at Service Plans > select a plan > DNS tab) define how the DNS
service running on the Panel-managed server will serve DNS zones for websites hosted on
the plan.
Master
A master or primary name server stores locally the zone file it serves, while a secondary
server only retrieves a copy of this file from the primary.
Slave
A slave or secondary server retrieves a copy of the zone file from the primary name server.

Performance
These system parameters (located at Service Plans > select a plan > Performance tab) define
performance of all services provided with the plan.
Use dedicated IIS application pool (Windows hosting)
Enables the use of dedicated IIS application pool for web applications within the subscription.
Using dedicated IIS application pool dramatically improves the stability of web applications
due to worker process isolation mode. This mode gives each site hosted on the server a
possibility to allocate a separate process pool for execution of its web applications. This way,
malfunction in one application will not cause stopping of all the others. This is especially
useful when you are using shared hosting package. The Maximum CPU use (%) option limits the
amount of the server CPU that the pool can use.
Maximum bandwidth usage
Defines the maximum speed (measured in KB per second) that a domain can share between
all its connections.
Connections limited to
Defines the maximum number of simultaneous connections to web server for all websites
within the subscription. This setting is intended for preventing the websites from Denial of
Service (DOS) attacks and excessive usage of bandwidth.

574

Appendix A: Properties of Hosting Plans and Subscriptions

Logs & Statistics
These parameters (located at Service Plans > select a plan > Logs & Statistics tab) define how
statistics and logs of a subscription should be stored.
Note: These settings in subscriptions are not synchronized with service plans.
Retain web and traffic statistics
Sets a period (in months) for which reports on the subscription's web statistics (generated by
the selected web statistics component) and traffic statistics (generated by Panel) should be
available.
Note: The setting Retain web and traffic statistics is not changed in subscriptions when you
update it for a service plan. The only way to update this setting for each domain is changing
it in the Panel database. See http://kb.parallels.com/en/6246 for details.
Log rotation
Enables automatic cleanup and recycling of web server log files. You can also switch on
compression of processed log files and sending them to a specific e-mail address.

Applications
Depending on the service plan, a number of prepackaged applications can be available to
Panel users. You can install the apps on your own sites as well as provision them to your
customers.
When setting up a hosting plan, you can select which of the apps should be provisioned to
customers:


To provide all available applications, on the Permissions tab, select the option Access to
Application Catalog.



To provide only selected applications, on the Permissions tab, select the option Access to
Application Catalog, and then go to the Applications tab and select the option Provide only
applications that I select. Use the button >> to add the selected applications to the plan.

Additional Services
If your provider configured Panel to provide custom additional services, then the Additional
Services tab is shown in hosting plan properties. On this tab, you can select the services that
you want to provide to subscribers.

Appendix B: Properties of Reseller Plans and Subscriptions

575

Appendix B: Properties of Reseller Plans
and Subscriptions
Properties of a reseller plan are grouped as follows:


Resources
Includes policy on overusing and overselling of resources, the number of customer
accounts a reseller can create, system resources like disk space and traffic, and service
resources like websites, subdomains, mailboxes, databases, and so on.



Permissions
Reseller permissions either denote the operations available to a reseller in the Panel, or
define which services and privileges can be enabled in the service subscriptions of the
reseller's customers. If a particular permission in a reseller subscription is Off, then a
service subscription will not provide the corresponding service or a privilege. A disabled
permission also means that a reseller is prohibited to perform the designated action in
Control Panel. For example, if a reseller subscription does not provide a privilege to use
Scheduler (Scheduler management is Off), then none of the reseller's subscribers will be
able to use it, and neither will the reseller themselves when they go to the Control Panel.



IP addresses
Defines IP addresses that will be allocated to resellers. It is important that a reseller has
at least one IP address allocated to them, otherwise, they will not be able to create a
single service subscription.



Applications
Enables you to select the applications that will be available to subscribers.

Next in this section:
Resources......................................................................................................... 576
Permissions ...................................................................................................... 577
IP Addresses .................................................................................................... 577
Applications ...................................................................................................... 578

576

Appendix B: Properties of Reseller Plans and Subscriptions

Resources
Overuse policy
Defines what happens to the reseller subscription if the total disk space and traffic usage by
the reseller's service subscriptions (own reseller's service subscriptions and those belonging
to the reseller's customers) reaches the limit values defined by the reseller plan.


Overuse is not allowed will suspend the reseller subscription and all their customers only if
you select the checkbox Suspend reseller when their disk space or traffic usage goes beyond the
limit. If you do not select it, reseller subscriptions and their customers will not be
suspended; only a notice will be sent to recipients specified in Settings > Notifications:
Resource usage limits exceeded by reseller account option.
You can also set up sending notifications as soon as usage of disk space or traffic
reaches a particular value (the Notify upon reaching options), in order to prevent
subscriptions from suspension. The notifications will be sent to users and/or e-mail
addresses specified at Settings > Notifications: Resource usage limits exceeded by reseller
account option.



Overuse is allowed will let the subscription operate properly.
The option When limit on usage of a resource is reached, send email according to server
notification settings triggers sending notifications to users and/or e-mail addresses
specified at Settings > Notifications: Resource usage limits exceeded by reseller account option.

Note: The overuse policy does not apply to the limits set on size of mailboxes. Therefore,
even if you enable overuse, be sure to allocate enough disk space to mailboxes.
Overselling policy
Defines whether a reseller can sell more resources than allocated to them with the plan.
If overselling is allowed, a reseller is governed by actual resource usage instead of initial
resource allocation. Overselling is a marketing strategy based on the following scheme: a
reseller, who was allotted, for example, ten gigabytes of disk space, allocates five gigabytes
of disk space for each of their customers, assuming that none of them will actually use all of
their allocated disk space.
Customers
Defines the total number of customer accounts that a reseller can create.
Other Resources
Note: Other resources have the same meaning as the ones defined in the hosting plans and
subscriptions. The only difference is that a reseller does not use the provided resources
directly, but redistributes them by means of service subscriptions they create for their
customers or for hosting their own websites.

Appendix B: Properties of Reseller Plans and Subscriptions

577

Permissions
Reseller-specific privileges (the ones that do not affect service subscriptions they create for
their customers) are as follows:
Ability to use remote API
Defines if a reseller can remotely manage websites through custom applications. The remote
API is an interface that can be used for developing custom applications integrated with
websites, which could be used, for instance, for automating setup of hosting accounts and
provisioning of services for customers purchasing hosting services from your site. To learn
more, refer to the Parallels Plesk Panel API documentation available at the PTN portal
(http://www.parallels.com/ptn/documentation/ppp/).
Access to the Panel
Defines if a reseller can use the Panel graphical user interface.
Customer account creation
Defines if a reseller can create user accounts and subscriptions for their customers in the
Panel.
Allow overselling
Defines if a reseller can set up overselling policy, meaning that a reseller can themselves
define if overselling is allowed to them or not.
Other Permissions
Note: Meanings of the other permissions are the same as in the service subscriptions.

IP Addresses
These parameters define IP resources provided with the plan.
Allocate shared IP addresses
Defines shared IP addresses that will be available to a reseller.
Allocate dedicated IPv4 addresses and Allocate dedicated IPv6 addresses
Defines that a specified number of dedicated IP addresses of the corresponding type should
be allocated to a reseller. The IPs are provisioned automatically: the required amount is
taken from the number of free dedicated IP addresses in your IP pool.

578

Appendix B: Properties of Reseller Plans and Subscriptions

Applications
Depending on the hosting plan, a number of prepackaged applications can be available to
Panel users. You can install the apps on your own sites as well as provision them to your
customers.
When setting up a hosting plan, you can select which of the apps should be provisioned to
customers:


To provide all available applications, on the Permissions tab, select the option Access to
Application Catalog.



Appendix C: Event Parameters Passed by Event Handlers

579

Appendix C: Event Parameters Passed
by Event Handlers
This section describes the parameters that can be used with handlers that you set up for
specific Panel events.
Important: All variables used for passing the parameters on Linux systems must be typed in
upper case (for example, NEW_USERNAME), and on Windows systems, in lower case (for
example, new_username).

Next in this section:
Administrator information updated ..................................................................... 581
Service stopped................................................................................................. 581
Service started .................................................................................................. 581
Service restarted ............................................................................................... 581
IP address created ............................................................................................ 581
IP address updated ........................................................................................... 581
IP address deleted ............................................................................................ 581
Session settings updated .................................................................................. 582
Customer account created................................................................................. 582
Customer account updated................................................................................ 582
Customer account deleted ................................................................................. 582
Customer account status updated ..................................................................... 583
Customer's interface preferences updated ........................................................ 583
Customer GUID updated ................................................................................... 583
Reseller account created ................................................................................... 583
Reseller account updated .................................................................................. 584
Reseller account deleted ................................................................................... 584
Reseller account status updated........................................................................ 584
Reseller's interface preferences updated ........................................................... 584
Reseller's IP pool updated ................................................................................. 584
Disk space limit for reseller account reached ..................................................... 584
Traffic limit for reseller account reached ............................................................ 584
Disk space limit for subscription reached ........................................................... 585
Traffic limit for subscription reached .................................................................. 585
Default domain (the first domain added to a subscription/webspace) created .... 585
Default domain (the first domain added to a subscription/webspace) updated ... 586
Default domain (the first domain added to a subscription/webspace) deleted .... 586
Subscription owner changed ............................................................................. 586
Default domain, status updated ......................................................................... 586
Default domain, DNS zone updated .................................................................. 586
Default domain, GUID updated .......................................................................... 586
Subdomain of a default domain created ............................................................ 586
Subdomain of a default domain updated ........................................................... 587

580

Appendix C: Event Parameters Passed by Event Handlers

Subdomain of a default domain deleted............................................................. 587
Default domain, alias created ............................................................................ 587
Default domain, alias updated ........................................................................... 588
Default domain, alias deleted ............................................................................ 588
Default domain, alias DNS zone updated .......................................................... 589
Reseller account limits updated ......................................................................... 589
Subscription limits updated ................................................................................ 589
Panel user logged in .......................................................................................... 589
Panel user logged out........................................................................................ 589
Panel user failed to log in .................................................................................. 589
Panel user failed to log in through API ............................................................... 589
Mail account created ......................................................................................... 590
Mail account updated ........................................................................................ 590
Mail account deleted.......................................................................................... 590
Mailing list created ............................................................................................. 590
Mailing list deleted ............................................................................................. 591
Hosting settings created .................................................................................... 591
Standard or frame forwarding hosting created ................................................... 592
Hosting settings updated ................................................................................... 593
Hosting settings deleted .................................................................................... 593
Standard or frame forwarding hosting updated .................................................. 593
Standard or frame forwarding hosting deleted ................................................... 593
Web user account created ................................................................................. 593
Web user account updated ................................................................................ 594
Web user account deleted ................................................................................. 594
Web application installed ................................................................................... 594
Web application reconfigured ............................................................................ 595
Web application uninstalled ............................................................................... 595
Web application upgraded ................................................................................. 595
License key updated.......................................................................................... 595
License key expired ........................................................................................... 595
Database server created ................................................................................... 596
Database server updated .................................................................................. 596
Database server deleted ................................................................................... 596
Database created .............................................................................................. 596
Database deleted .............................................................................................. 596
Database user account created ......................................................................... 597
Database user account updated ........................................................................ 597
Database user account deleted ......................................................................... 597
Parallels Plesk Panel component updated or added .......................................... 598
Reseller plan created......................................................................................... 598
Reseller plan updated........................................................................................ 598
Reseller plan deleted ......................................................................................... 598
Service plan of reseller created ......................................................................... 598
Service plan of reseller updated ........................................................................ 598
Service plan of reseller deleted ......................................................................... 599
Service plan of administrator created ................................................................ 599
Service plan of administrator updated ............................................................... 599
Service plan of administrator deleted................................................................. 599
Additional FTP account created ......................................................................... 600
Additional FTP account updated ........................................................................ 600
Additional FTP account deleted ......................................................................... 600
Server health status changed ............................................................................ 601
Update available ................................................................................................ 601

Appendix C: Event Parameters Passed by Event Handlers

Update installed................................................................................................. 601

Administrator information updated
Service stopped
Service started
Service restarted
IP address created
IP address updated
IP address deleted
Parameter name and Environment variable name
description

IP address

OLD_IP_ADDRESS

Notes

Require
d

581

582

Appendix C: Event Parameters Passed by Event Handlers

Session settings updated
Customer account created
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

NEW_LOGIN_NAME

Required

Password

NEW_PASSWORD

Contact name

NEW_CONTACT_NAME

Company name

NEW_COMPANY_NAME

Phone

NEW_PHONE

Fax

NEW_FAX

E- mail

NEW_EMAIL

Address

NEW_ADDRESS

City

NEW_CITY

State/province

NEW_STATE_PROVINCE

Postal/zip code

NEW_POSTAL_ZIP_CODE

Country

NEW_COUNTRY

Required

Customer account updated
Customer account deleted
Parameter name and Environment variable name
description

OLD_LOGIN_NAME

Notes

Required

Appendix C: Event Parameters Passed by Event Handlers

Customer account status updated
Customer's interface preferences updated
Customer GUID updated
Reseller account created
Parameter name and Environment variable name
description

Notes

NEW_LOGIN_NAME

Required

Contact name

NEW_CONTACT_NAME

Required

Password

NEW_PASSWORD

Company name

NEW_COMPANY_NAME

Phone

NEW_PHONE

Fax

NEW_FAX

E- mail

NEW_EMAIL

Address

NEW_ADDRESS

City

NEW_CITY

State/province

NEW_STATE_PROVINCE

Postal/zip code

NEW_POSTAL_ZIP_CODE

Country

NEW_COUNTRY

583

584

Appendix C: Event Parameters Passed by Event Handlers

Reseller account updated
Reseller account deleted
Parameter name
and description

Environment variable name

Notes

OLD_LOGIN_NAME

Required

Reseller account status updated
Reseller's interface preferences updated
Reseller's IP pool updated
Disk space limit for reseller account reached
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Contact name

OLD_CONTACT_NAME

Required

Disk space limit

OLD_MAXIMUM_DISK_SPACE

Traffic limit for reseller account reached
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Contact name

OLD_CONTACT_NAME

Required

Traffic usage limit

OLD_MAXIMUM_TRAFFIC

Appendix C: Event Parameters Passed by Event Handlers

Disk space limit for subscription reached
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Subscription's domain
name

OLD_DOMAIN_NAME

Required

Disk space limit

OLD_MAXIMUM_DISK_SPACE

Traffic limit for subscription reached
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Subscription's domain
name

OLD_DOMAIN_NAME

Required

Traffic usage limit

OLD_MAXIMUM_TRAFFIC

Default domain (the first domain added to a
subscription/webspace) created
Parameter name
and description

Environment variable name

Notes

Domain name

NEW_DOMAIN_NAME

Required

585

586

Appendix C: Event Parameters Passed by Event Handlers

Default domain (the first domain added to a
subscription/webspace) updated
Default domain (the first domain added to a
subscription/webspace) deleted
Parameter name
and description

Environment variable name

Notes

Domain name

NEW_DOMAIN_NAME

Required

Subscription owner changed
Default domain, status updated
Default domain, DNS zone updated
Default domain, GUID updated
Subdomain of a default domain created
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Subdomain name

NEW_SUBDOMAIN_NAME

Required

Parent domain name

NEW_DOMAIN_NAME

Required

FTP account login

NEW_SYSTEM_USER_TYPE

Subdomain owner's
login name

NEW_SYSTEM_USER

Appendix C: Event Parameters Passed by Event Handlers
Hard disk quota

NEW_HARD_DISK_QUOTA

SSI support

NEW_SSI_SUPPORT

PHP support

NEW_PHP_SUPPORT

CGI support

NEW_CGI_SUPPORT

Perl support

NEW_MOD_PERL_SUPPORT

Python support

NEW_MOD_PYTHON_SUPPORT

ColdFusion support

NEW_COLDFUSION_SUPPORT

Apache ASP support

NEW_APACHE_ASP_SUPPORT

Only on Linux
platforms.

ASP support

NEW_ASP_SUPPORT

Only on Windows
platforms.

Hard quota on disk
space

NEW_HARD_DISK_QUOTA

Miva scripting support NEW_MIVA_SUPPORT
FastCGI support

NEW_MOD_FASTCGI_SUPPORT

SSL support

NEW_SSL_SUPPORT

Subdomain of a default domain updated
Subdomain of a default domain deleted
Parameter name and Environment variable name
description

Notes

Parent domain
name

OLD_DOMAIN_NAME

Required

Subdomain
name

OLD_SUBDOMAIN_NAME

Required

Default domain, alias created
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Domain alias name

NEW_DOMAIN_ALIAS_NAME

Require
d

587

588

Appendix C: Event Parameters Passed by Event Handlers

Synchronization of DNS NEW_DNS
zone with a primary
domain
Domain alias switched
on or off

NEW_STATUS

Web service for domain NEW_DOMAIN_ALIAS_WEB
alias is on or off
Mail service for domain NEW_DOMAIN_ALIAS_MAIL
alias is on or off
Support for accessing
web applications in
Java for domain alias
visitors (on or off)

NEW_DOMAIN_ALIAS_TOMCAT

Default domain, alias updated
Default domain, alias deleted
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Domain alias name

OLD_DOMAIN_ALIAS_NAME

Require
d

Domain ID number

OLD_DOMAIN_ID

Panel user failed to log in through API

Default domain, alias DNS zone updated
Reseller account limits updated
Subscription limits updated
Panel user logged in
Panel user logged out
Panel user failed to log in
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

User name

COMP_LOGIN_NAME

Notes

Panel user failed to log in through API

589

590

Panel user failed to log in through API

Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

User name

COMP_LOGIN_NAME

Notes

Mail account created
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

E-mail address

NEW_MAILNAME

Required (in the
format
address@example
.com)

Mail account updated
Mail account deleted
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

E-mail address

OLD_MAILNAME

Required (in the
format
address@example
.com)

Mailing list created
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Domain name

NEW_DOMAIN_NAME

Required

Panel user failed to log in through API
Mailing list e-mail
address

NEW_MAIL_LIST_NAME

Mailing list switched on

NEW_MAIL_LIST_ENABLED

Required

Mailing list deleted
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Domain name

OLD_DOMAIN_NAME

Required

Mailing list e-mail
address

OLD_MAIL_LIST_NAME

Required

Mailing list switched on

OLD_MAIL_LIST_ENABLED

Hosting settings created
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Domain name

NEW_DOMAIN_NAME

Require
d

IPv4 address

NEW_IP_ADDRESS

IPv6 address

NEW_IPV6_ADDRESS

IP type

NEW_IP_TYPE

System user's login
name

NEW_SYSTEM_USER

System user's
password

NEW_SYSTEM_USER_PASSWORD

Access to the server
over SSH (on Linux
systems) or Remote
Desktop (on Windows
systems)

NEW_SYSTEM_SHELL

MS FrontPage support NEW_FP_SUPPORT
MS FrontPage over
SSL support

NEW_FPSSL_SUPPORT

MS FrontPage
authoring

NEW_FP_AUTHORING

MS FrontPage admin
login

NEW_FP_ADMIN_LOGIN

591

592

Panel user failed to log in through API

MS FrontPage admin
password

NEW_FP_ADMIN_PASSWORD

SSI support

NEW_SSI_SUPPORT

PHP support

NEW_PHP_SUPPORT

CGI support

NEW_CGI_SUPPORT

Perl support

NEW_MOD_PERL_SUPPORT

Apache ASP support

NEW_APACHE_ASP_SUPPORT

Only on
Linux
systems

ASP support

NEW_ASP_SUPPORT

Only on
Window
s
systems

SSL support

NEW_SSL_SUPPORT

Web statistics program NEW_WEB_STATISTICS
Custom error
documents

NEW_CUSTOM_ERROR_DOCUMENTS

Hard quota on disk
space

NEW_HARD_DISK_QUOTA

Standard or frame forwarding hosting
created
Parameter name and Environment variable name
description
Domain name

NEW_DOMAIN_NAME

IPv4 address

NEW_IP_ADDRESS

IPv6 address

NEW_IPV6_ADDRESS

Forwarding type

NEW_FORWARDING_TYPE

URL

NEW_URL

Notes
Required

Panel user failed to log in through API

Hosting settings updated
Hosting settings deleted
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Domain name

OLD_DOMAIN_NAME

Required

Standard or frame forwarding hosting
updated
Standard or frame forwarding hosting
deleted
Parameter name
and description

Environment variable name

Notes

Domain name

OLD_DOMAIN_NAME

Require
d

Forwarding type

OLD_FORWARDING_TYPE

Web user account created
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Domain name

NEW_DOMAIN_NAME

Required

Web user name

NEW_WEBUSER_NAME

Required

SSI support

NEW_SSI_SUPPORT

PHP support

NEW_PHP_SUPPORT

593

594

Panel user failed to log in through API

CGI support

NEW_CGI_SUPPORT

Perl support

NEW_MOD_PERL_SUPPORT

Python support

NEW_MOD_PYTHON_SUPPORT

Apache ASP support

NEW_APACHE_ASP_SUPPORT

Only on
Linux
systems

ASP support

NEW_ASP_SUPPORT

Only on
Windows
systems

Hard disk quota

NEW_HARD_DISK_QUOTA

Web user account updated
Web user account deleted
Parameter name and Environment variable name
description

Notes

Domain name

OLD_DOMAIN_NAME

Require
d

Web user name

OLD_WEBUSER_NAME

Require
d

Web application installed
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable

Notes

Health monitor
parameter (the same
value for new and old)

NEW_SITEAPP_NAME

Required

Domain or subdomain

NEW_SITEAPP_DOMAIN_TYPE

Required

URL relative to the
domain/subdomain, by
which the application is
accessible on the Web

NEW_SITEAPP_INSTALL_PREFIX

Required

Panel user failed to log in through API

Web application reconfigured
Web application uninstalled
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable

Notes

Health monitor
parameter (the same
value for new and old)

OLD_SITEAPP_NAME

Required

Domain or subdomain

OLD_SITEAPP_DOMAIN_TYPE

Required

URL relative to the
domain/subdomain, by
which the application is
accessible on the Web

OLD_SITEAPP_INSTALL_PREFIX

Required

Web application upgraded
License key updated
License key expired
Parameter name and Environment variable name
description
License key
number

OLD_LICENSE

Notes
Require
d

595

596

Panel user failed to log in through API

Database server created
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Database server's IP NEW_DATABASE_SERVER
address

Notes
Required

Database server updated
Database server deleted
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Database server's IP OLD_DATABASE_SERVER
address

Notes
Required

Database created
Parameter name and description

Environment variable name

Notes

Database server's IP address

NEW_DATABASE_SERVER

Required

Database name

NEW_DATABASE_NAME

Required

Database deleted
Parameter name and description

Environment variable name

Notes

Database server's IP address

OLD_DATABASE_SERVER

Required

Database name

OLD_DATABASE_NAME

Required

Panel user failed to log in through API

Database user account created
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Database server's IP NEW_DATABASE_SERVER
address

Required

NEW_DATABASE_ID
Database
identification number

Required

Database user
name

NEW_DATABASE_USER_NAME

Database user
password

NEW_DATABASE_USER_PASSWORD

Required

Database user account updated
Database user account deleted
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Database server's IP OLD_DATABASE_SERVER
address

Required

OLD_DATABASE_ID
Database
identification number

Required

Database user
name

OLD_DATABASE_USER_NAME

Database user
password

OLD_DATABASE_USER_PASSWORD

Required

597

598

Panel user failed to log in through API

Parallels Plesk Panel component updated or
added
Reseller plan created
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Reseller plan ID

NEW_TEMPLATE_ID

Required

Reseller plan updated
Reseller plan deleted
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Reseller plan ID

OLD_TEMPLATE_ID

Required

Service plan of reseller created
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Plan ID

NEW_DOMAIN_TEMPLATE

Required

Service plan of reseller updated
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Plan ID

OLD_DOMAIN_TEMPLATE

Required

Panel user failed to log in through API

Service plan of reseller deleted
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Plan ID

OLD_DOMAIN_TEMPLATE

Required

Service plan of administrator created
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Plan ID

NEW_ADMIN_TEMPLATE

Required

Service plan of administrator updated
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Plan ID

OLD_ADMIN_TEMPLATE

Required

Service plan of administrator deleted
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Plan ID

OLD_ADMIN_TEMPLATE

Required

599

600

Additional FTP account created

Additional FTP account created
Note: This event is relevant only for additional FTP accounts - the ones that created after the
subscription creation in addition to the main account. If you want to track the creation of the
main FTP account - the one that is created simultaneously with a subscription, you should
use the Hosting settings created (on page 591) event.
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Domain name

NEW_DOMAIN_NAME

Required

Home directory

NEW_HOME_DIRECTORY

Required

System user name

NEW_SYSTEM_USER

System user password NEW_SYSTEM_USER_PASSWORD

Additional FTP account updated
Additional FTP account deleted
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Notes

Domain name

OLD_DOMAIN_NAME

Required

Home directory

OLD_HOME_DIRECTORY

Required

System user name

OLD_SYSTEM_USER

System user password OLD_SYSTEM_USER_PASSWORD

Additional FTP account deleted

Server health status changed
Update available
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Update version

COMP_PATCH_VERSION

Notes

Update installed
Parameter name and
description

Environment variable name

Update version

COMP_PATCH_VERSION

Notes

601

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XMP Toolkit                     : 3.1-701
Producer                        : Microsoft® Office Word 2007
Title                           : Administrator's Guide
Creator                         : Parallels
Description                     : Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5
Creator Tool                    : Microsoft® Office Word 2007
Create Date                     : 2014:04:03 15:43:20+07:00
Modify Date                     : 2014:04:03 15:43:20+07:00
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Conformance                     : B
Author                          : Parallels
Subject                         : Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5

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