Parallels Plesk Panel 9.5 Quick start guide

Revision 1.2

Parallels

®

Plesk Panel

Parallels Plesk Panel 9.5 Quick Start

Guide

Copyright Notice

ISBN: N/A

Parallels

660 SW 39th Street

Suite 205

Renton, Washington 98057

USA

Phone: +1 (425) 282 6400

Fax: +1 (425) 282 6444

Parallels, Inc.

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

permission is obtained from the copyright holder.

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

7,076,633.

Patents pending in the U.S.

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

Contents

Preface 4

Typographical Conventions ........................................................................................................... 4

Feedback ....................................................................................................................................... 5

About This Guide 6

Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel 7

Setting Up the Server 13

Simplifying Setup of User Accounts 34

Simplifying Setup of Domains and Web Sites 43

Creating User Accounts 48

Adding Reseller Accounts for Hosting Resellers ......................................................................... 49

Adding Client Accounts for End Users of Hosting Services ........................................................ 54

Hosting Web Sites 59

Setting Up a Hosting Account for a Web Site ............................................................................. 60

Allowing a Site Owner to Log In to Control Panel ............................................................. 66

Creating and Publishing a Site .................................................................................................... 68

Creating and Publishing Web Sites Using Sitebuilder ...................................................... 68

Publishing Sites Through FTP .......................................................................................... 69

Publishing Sites Through Parallels Plesk Panel File Manager ......................................... 69

Publishing Sites Through SSH Connection ...................................................................... 70

Publishing Sites with Microsoft FrontPage ........................................................................ 70

Publishing Sites with Adobe Dreamweaver ...................................................................... 74

4 Preface

Preface

In this section:

Typographical Conventions ................................................................................. 4

Feedback ............................................................................................................. 5

Typographical Conventions

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

Formatting convention Type of Information Example

Special Bold

Items you must select, such as

menu options, command

buttons, or items in a list.

Go to the QoS tab.

Titles of chapters, sections,

and subsections.

Read the Basic Administration

chapter.

Italics

Used to emphasize the

importance of a point, to

introduce a term or to

designate a command line

placeholder, which is to be

replaced with a real name or

value.

The system supports the so

called wildcard character

search.

Monospace

The names of style sheet

selectors, files and directories,

and CSS fragments.

The license file is called

license.key.

Preface 5

Preformatted Bol

d

What you type, contrasted with

on-screen computer output.

Unix/Linux:

# cd /root/rpms/php

Windows:

>cd %myfolder%

Preformatted

On-screen computer output in

your command-line sessions;

source code in XML, C++, or

other programming languages.

Unix/Linux:

# ls –al /files

total 14470

Windows:

>ping localhost

Reply from 127.0.0.1:

bytes=32 time<1ms

TTL=128

Feedback

If you have found an error in this guide, or if you have suggestions or ideas on how to

improve this guide, please send your feedback using the online form at

http://www.parallels.com/en/support/usersdoc/

. Please include in your report the guide's title,

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

C HAPTER 1

About This Guide

This guide is intended to give administrators a practical introduction to Parallels Plesk

Panel™ by explaining how to perform basic administrative tasks and configure your

control panel for further use. It covers a straightforward Parallels Plesk Panel scenario

to help you start working with the control panel immediately after the installation.

For more information about Parallels Plesk Panel's functions, refer to Parallels Plesk

Panel Administrator's Guide at Parallels Web site available in HTML and printable PDF

formats: http://www.parallels.com/en/products/plesk/docs/

The Parallels Plesk Panel Administrator's Guide is also accessible from your control

panel as context-sensitive help: to open it, log in to control panel and click the Help

shortcut in the left navigation pane.

For information about installing Parallels Plesk Panel components, see the Parallels

Plesk Panel Installation Guide at Parallels Web site available in HTML and printable

PDF formats: http://www.parallels.com/en/products/plesk/docs/

.

For frequently asked questions related to Parallels Plesk Panel and other Parallels

products, visit the Parallels online knowledge base at http://kb.parallels.com

.

C HAPTER 2

Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk

Panel

Parallels Plesk Panel is a hosting automation solution that gives you full control over

the managed Web hosting servers and simplifies setup and management of user

accounts, Web sites, and e-mail accounts.

Parallels Plesk Panel effectively lowers the threshold for non-technical users to log in

and self administer their virtual host account on your Web server.

User accounts hierarchy of Parallels Plesk Panel is limited to five user levels:

 Server administrator account.

 Reseller accounts. These accounts are created for the customers who need to

resell hosting services and host their own Web sites.

 Client accounts. These accounts are created for the customers who do not need to

resell hosting services, but need to host Web sites.

 Domain administrator accounts. These accounts can be created to allow access to

the Parallels Plesk Panel for site administrators. One domain administrator account

per one site.

 E-mail user accounts. These accounts can be created to allow access to the

Parallels Plesk Panel for e-mail users.

Parallels Plesk Panel also allows site owners to host personal Web pages or small

sites called Web users' personal pages. However, these accounts are considered sub

accounts and are not given access to the control panel.

¾ Now let's log in to the control panel and perform initial configuration

steps:

1. Log in to the Parallels Plesk Panel as administrator.

Open your Web browser, and in the address bar, type your server's IP address.

Parallels Plesk Panel requires that you access the control panel using a secure

SSL connection, so you need to use the https prefix and specify the port 8443 to

access the user interface. For example, https://192.168.10.10:8443, where

192.168.10.10 is your server's IP address.

Note: After you set up a host name for your server, you will be able to access your

Parallels Plesk Panel by host name instead of IP address.

Click through the SSL warning and type the user name "admin" and the default

password "setup" into the Username and Password boxes, respectively. If this is your

first login to the control panel, use the default password "setup". Click Log In.

8 Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel

2. Accept the license agreement. Note that if you run Parallels Plesk

Panel inside a Virtuozzo container, and the Offline management mode

is switched off in the Virtuozzo Power Panel, then this license

agreement is not shown.

Read the terms of the License Agreement and, if you agree to all the terms, select

the I agree to the terms of this license agreement and Do not show it again check boxes.

Click Accept.

3. Specify the following:

a Under Preferences, specify the full host name for your server. This is a three-part

name without WWW prefix, for example, host.example.com.

b Under Default IP Address, select the primary IP address that you would like to use

on your server.

c Under Shared IP Addresses, specify which of the available IP addresses should be

used for hosting Web sites. Select an IP address and click Shared >>.

You can skip this step and define the type of IP addresses later (Home > IP

Addresses).

d Under Administrator's Preferences, enter the new password and confirm it in the

New password and Confirm password boxes. The password can have up to 14

symbols. Note that the password is case sensitive.

4. Click OK.

5. Fill in administrator’s contact information.

6. Click OK.

The control panel opens and you see the administrator's Home page. It provides

shortcuts to the most frequently performed operations.

Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel 9

The top banner area provides access to the following functions:

 My account. This is where you can select a language and theme for your control

panel and change your contact information.

 Switch user. This is where you can switch between user accounts. This shortcut is

shown only when single sign-on technology is enabled on the server.

 Log out. This is where you close your session when you have finished working with

control panel.

The navigation pane on the left provides access to the following sets of functions:

 Search area. Use it when you need to find user accounts and domains hosted on

your server.

 Home. This is where you start working with the control panel. Most of the operations

you might need to perform are accessible from this area.

 Resellers. This is where you perform operations on reseller accounts. Resellers can

use hosting services and resell the services to end users. Resellers cannot create

reseller accounts for other users. You can accomplish the following tasks from this

area of the control panel:

 Create, modify, remove user accounts for resellers and their customers (referred

to as clients).

 Create, modify, remove reseller account templates.

 View traffic usage reports.

 Clients. This is where you perform operations on user accounts. Clients are end

users of hosting services; they cannot resell hosting services. You can accomplish

the following tasks from this area of the control panel:

 Create, modify, remove user accounts.

 Create, modify, remove user account templates (referred to as client account

templates).

 View traffic usage reports.

 Domains. This is where you perform operations on Web sites. You can accomplish

the following tasks from this area of the control panel:

 Add Web sites (set up DNS zones, configure Web hosting settings and resource

usage limits), modify Web hosting settings, remove Web sites.

 Create, modify, remove Web site hosting templates (referred to as domain

templates).

 Applications. This is where you select which applications will be available for

installation on users' sites.

 Settings. This is where you configure and manage the server and program

components used by Parallels Plesk Panel.

 Modules. This is where you manage the additional modules that extend Parallels

Plesk Panel capabilities, such as Firewall, Game Server, VPN, and others.

 Master. This shortcut gives you access to centralized management of Parallels Plesk

Panel-enabled servers.

10 Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel

 Global Account. This shortcut appears in your Parallels Plesk Panel when the single

sign-on capabilities are switched on on the hosting server. Single sign-on

technology allows you to log in to different Parallels products using a single global

login name and password. This shortcut is used for changing the global login

settings.

 Help Desk. This is the help desk system integrated with your control panel. You can

use it to view and solve the problems reported to you by your customers.

 Help. Provides context sensitive help with search function.

To see information about a tool or an item on the page, hover the cursor over an item,

without clicking it, and a small hover box appears with supplementary information

regarding the item being hovered over.

If you install the Sitebuilder component and configure it as described in the Parallels

Plesk Panel 9.5 Administrator's Guide, section Enabling Integration with Sitebuilder, the

following shortcuts are also shown in your control panel's navigation pane under the

Sitebuilder Administration group:

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

any operations on your account and Web sites through the Sitebuilder system. For

more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.5.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/using_des

ktop_interface.htm.

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

customers. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.5.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/signing_u

p_customers.htm.

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

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.5.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/managing

_sites.htm.

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

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

prospective customers. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.5.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/setting

_up_sitebuilder_wizard_for_anonymous_visits.htm

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

customers. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.5.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/setting

_up_logo_and_title_bar_text.htm

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

to your users. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.5.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/config

uring_email_message_sent_at_trial_site_publishing_attempt.htm.

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

see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.5.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/viewin

g_and_configuring_sitebuilder_wizard_presets_and_modules.htm.

Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel 11

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

information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.5.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/viewin

g_and_configuring_sitebuilder_wizard_presets_and_modules.htm.

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

design templates and page sets. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.5.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/viewin

g_and_configuring_sitebuilder_wizard_presets_and_modules.htm.

The main working area on the right provides access to the tools available for the

current section of the control panel selected in the navigation pane. Additional

operations are accessible from drop-down menus that open when you click group titles.

To navigate through Parallels Plesk Panel, you can use a path bar: a chain of links that

appears in the right part of the screen, below the banner area.

To the right of the path bar, there are Favorites and Visited Pages menus. The Visited

Pages menu keeps the shortcuts to the recently visited control panel screens. These

shortcuts are added automatically. The Favorites menu keeps the shortcuts to the

screens that you manually add to favorites. For information about working with

shortcuts in the Favorites menu, see the Parallels Plesk Panel 9.5 Administrator's

Guide, section Customizing Your Home Page.

To return to a previous screen, use the shortcuts in the path bar, or the Up Level icon in

the upper-right corner of the screen.

When changing settings for a user account, domain name, or e-mail account, you can

quickly select another user account, domain name, or e-mail account whose settings

you also want to change. To do this, click a small arrow icon located to the right of the

user name, domain name, or e-mail address.

This will open a list of user accounts, domain names or e-mail addresses that you can

select.

12 Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel

To sort a list by a certain parameter in ascending or descending order, click on the

parameter's title in the column heading. The order of sorting will be indicated by a small

triangle displayed next to the parameter's title.

Now proceed to the following chapter and set up your server.

C HAPTER 3

Setting Up the Server

¾ To set the global settings for a Linux-based hosting server:

1. On your Home page, open the Server group title menu, and select Server

Settings.

2. Specify the following:

 Button label length. To prevent lengthy button captions in languages other than

English from overlapping in the control panel, you may want to specify a limit

here. Any button caption longer than the defined limit will be shortened and

ended with ellipsis (...).

 Prevent users from working with the control panel until interface screens are completely

loaded. Leave this selected to avoid errors that might occur when users try to

interact with control panel before is it ready.

 Administrator's interface language. Select the language for your control panel.

 Administrator's interface skin. Select the skin (theme) for your control panel.

 Home page preset. Once you customize the Home page and save the settings in a

template as described in Parallels Plesk Panel 9.5 Administrator's Guide,

section Customizing Your Home Page, you will be able to select your template

here. For now, leave the default value selected.

 Allow multiple sessions under administrator's login. By default Parallels Plesk Panel

allows multiple simultaneous sessions for several users logged in to the control

panel using the same login and password combination. This can be useful when

delegating management functions to other users or in case if you accidentally

close your browser without logging out, thus becoming unable to log in again

until your session expires. You may want to switch off this capability if you do

not need it.

 Full host name.

 Apache restart interval. Any changes to hosting account settings made through

control panel take effect only when Web server is restarted. By default, Web

server is set to restart not more than once in every 15 minutes. This value is

optimal for most cases, and we recommend leaving this default setting. Note

that when there are no changes in hosting account settings, the Web server is

not forced to restart.

 Web statistics and traffic usage statistics retention period. Specify how long the

statistics should be kept on the server.

 Items that statistical utilities should count when calculating disk space and bandwidth

usage.

14 Setting Up the Server

 The option to forbid users from creating DNS subzones in other users' DNS superzones.

We recommend that you select this option, otherwise, users will be able to

create subdomains under domains belonging to other users, and set up Web

sites and e-mail accounts which could be used for spamming or even phishing

or identity theft.

3. Click OK.

¾ To set the global settings for a Windows-based hosting server:

1. On your Home page, open the Server group title menu, and select Server

Settings.

2. Specify the following:

 Full host name.

 Web statistics and traffic usage statistics retention period. Specify how long the

statistics should be kept on the server.

 Items that statistical utilities should count when calculating disk space and bandwidth

usage.

 The option to forbid users from creating DNS subzones in other users' DNS superzones.

We recommend that you select this option, otherwise, users will be able to

create subdomains under domains belonging to other users, and set up Web

sites and e-mail accounts which could be used for spamming or even phishing

or identity theft.

3. Click OK.

Now, let's set up the DNS service for serving your own domains. Setup of DNS zones

for newly added domains is automated: When you add a new domain name to control

panel, a zone file is automatically generated for it in accordance with the server-wide

DNS zone template and your server is instructed to act as a primary (master) DNS

server for the zone. If the DNS service on your Parallels Plesk Panel server will be

authoritative for Web sites that you host for your customers, and you do not want to set

up your own domain at this moment, skip this procedure and move on to the next

procedure for configuring the mail service. However, if you are going to set up in

Parallels Plesk Panel a domain name for hosting a Web site for your own organization

(let's call this domain "example.com"), follow these steps:

1. Register your domain name example.com with a domain name registrar

(domain name registration authority) of your choice. Provide the

registrar with the following information: nameservers ns1.example.com

and ns2 example.com, and two IP addresses assigned to your server

by your provider.

2. Log in to Parallels Plesk Panel, and click the Domains shortcut in the

navigation pane.

3. Click Create Domain.

Setting Up the Server 15

4. In the Domain name field, leave the WWW box selected, and type your

domain name example.com. Having the www alias preceding a domain

name will allow users to get to the site no matter what they type in their

browsers: www.example.com and example.com will both point to the

same site.

5. From the Assign IP address menu, select the required IP address. You

should select a dedicated IP address (not shared among other sites),

or, in terms of Parallels Plesk Panel, exclusive IP address to be able to

install an authentic digital SSL certificate for securing customers'

communications to your hosting server.

6. In the Use domain template settings menu, leave the default domain value

selected. To facilitate setup of new Web sites, the control panel uses

settings inherited from domain templates. After your Web site is set up,

you can replace the default settings with other settings that suit your

needs better.

7. Under Switch on service, leave the Mail and DNS check boxes selected if

e-mail accounts and DNS zones will be served by the mail and DNS

services running on this server.

8. Under Hosting type, select the Web site hosting option to host the Web

site on this machine.

9. Specify the username and password that will be used for uploading site

content over FTP.

10. Click Next >>.

11. Specify the following settings:

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

transfer of sensitive data during online transactions on e-commerce Web sites

that run on dedicated IP addresses. SSL certificates that participate in the

encryption process are usually applied to a single domain name on a single IP

address, therefore, each site that needs SSL protection must be hosted on a

dedicated IP address. An exception to this is subdomains, which you can

protect with a wildcard certificate. Installing an SSL certificate on a Web server

that hosts several Web sites with different domain names on a single IP address

(shared or name-based hosting) is technically possible, however, it is not

recommended: the encryption will be provided, but users will get warning

messages on attempt to connect to the secure site. To allow SSL encryption for

this Web site, select the SSL support check box.

 Use a single directory for housing SSL and non-SSL content (available only for Linux

hosting). By default, when you publish a site through your FTP account, you

need to upload the Web content that should be accessible through secure

connections to the httpsdocs directory, and the content that should be

accessible via plain HTTP, to the httpdocs directory. For the convenience of

publishing all content through a single location – httpdocs directory on your

FTP account, select the Use a single directory for housing SSL and non-SSL content

check box.

16 Setting Up the Server

 FTP login and FTP password. Specify the username and password that will be

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

the Confirm Password box.

 Hard disk quota (available only for Linux hosting). Specify the amount of disk

space in megabytes allocated to the Web space for this site. This is the so-

called hard quota that will not allow writing more files to the Web space when

the limit is reached. At attempt to write files, an error message will show. Hard

quotas should be enabled in the server's operating system, so if you see the

"Hard disk quota is not supported" notice to the right of the Hard disk quota field,

but would like to use the hard quotas on your server, log in to the server shell

and run the quotaon -a command to enable the hard quotas.

 Access to server over SSH (available only for Linux hosting) or Access to server over

Remote Desktop (available only for Windows hosting). This allows you to upload

securely Web content to the server through a Secure Socket Shell or Remote

Desktop connection, however, allowing access to the server also poses a

potential threat to the server security, so we recommend that you leave the

Forbidden option selected.

 Support for hosting services and scripting languages. Specify which of the following

programming and scripting languages should be supported by the Web server:

Active Server Pages (ASP), ASP.NET (on Windows-based hosting), Server Side

Includes (SSI), PHP hypertext preprocessor (PHP), Common Gateway Interface

(CGI), Fast Common Gateway Interface (FastCGI), Perl, Python, ColdFusion,

and Miva scripting required for running Miva e-commerce solutions. By default,

PHP is configured to operate in safe mode with functional restrictions. To learn

more about PHP safe mode, refer to http://php.net/features.safe-mode

. Some

web applications may not work properly with safe mode enabled: If an

application on your site fails due to safe mode, switch the safe mode off by

clearing the PHP 'safe_mode' on check box in the hosting account properties

(Domains > domain name > Web Hosting Settings).

 Web statistics. To allow the Web site owner to view the information on the

number of people visited his or her site and the pages of the site they viewed,

select the statistics program from the Web statistics menu, and select the

accessible via password protected directory /plesk-stat/webstat check box. This will

install the statistics software of your choice, which will generate reports and

place them into the password protected directory. The domain/web site owner

will then be able to access Web statistics at the URL: https://your-

domain.com/plesk-stat/webstat using his or her FTP account login and

password.

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

created by the previously used statistics program are deleted and new

reports are created in accordance with the information read from log files

kept on the server. This means that if you configured the system (at Domains

> domain name > Log Manager > Log Rotation) so as to keep log files only for the

last month, then Web statistics will be available only for the last month.

 Custom error documents. When visitors coming to the site request pages that the

Web server cannot find, the Web server generates and displays a standard

HTML page with an error message. If you wish to create your own error pages

and use them on your Web server, select the Custom error documents check box.

Setting Up the Server 17

 Additional write/modify permissions (available only for Windows hosting). This

option is required if Web applications under a domain will be using a file-based

database (like Jet) located in the root of httpdocs or httpsdocs folders.

Please note that selecting this option might seriously compromise the Web site

security.

 Use dedicated IIS application pool (available only for Windows hosting). This option

enables the use of dedicated IIS application pool for Web applications on a

domain. Using dedicated IIS application pool dramatically improves the stability

of domain Web applications due to worker process isolation mode. This mode

gives each Web site hosted on the server the possibility to allocate a separate

process pool for execution of its Web applications. This way, malfunction in one

application will not cause stopping of all the others. This is especially useful

when you are using shared hosting package.

12. Click Next >>.

13. Specify the following settings:

 Overuse policy. Specify what should be done to the site when disk space and

traffic limits are exceeded: To block the site, select the Overuse is not allowed

option. To allow the site to operate, select the Overuse is allowed option. Leave

the check box Notify the domain owner about reaching the resource limit selected if

you want the control panel to notify you when the resource usage limit is

reached.

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

associated with the domain. This amount is measured in megabytes. It includes

disk space occupied by all files related to the domain/Web site: Web site

contents, databases, applications, mailboxes, log files and backup files.

 Traffic. Specify the amount of data in megabytes that can be transferred from the

Web site during a month.

 Subdomains. Specify the number of subdomains that can be hosted under this

domain.

 Domain aliases. Specify the total number of additional alternative domain names

that can be used for this site.

 Web users. Specify the number of personal Web pages that can be hosted for

other users under his or her domain. This service is mostly used in educational

institutions that host non-commercial personal pages of their students and staff.

These pages usually have web addresses like http://your-

domain.com/~username. If you wish to allow execution of scripts embedded in

personal Web pages, select also the Allow the web users scripting check box. For

more information, refer to Parallels Plesk Panel 9.5 Administrator's Guide,

section Hosting Personal Web Pages.

 Microsoft FrontPage accounts (only for Windows hosting). Specify the maximum

number of additional Microsoft FrontPage accounts that can be created under

the domain.

 FTP accounts (available only for Windows hosting). Specify the maximum number

of additional FTP accounts that can be created under the domain.

 Mailboxes. Specify the number of mailboxes that can be hosted under this

domain.

18 Setting Up the Server

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

storing e-mail messages and autoresponder attachment files to each mailbox

under this domain.

 Mail redirects. Specify the number of mail forwarders that can be used in a

domain.

 Mail groups. Specify the number of simple mailing lists that can be set up in a

domain.

 Autoresponders. Specify the number of automatic responses that can be set up in

a domain.

 Mailing lists. Specify the number of mailing lists that can run in a domain.

 Databases. Specify the number of databases that can be hosted under this

domain.

 Databases quota (only for Windows hosting). Specify the maximum disk space

amount in megabytes that MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server databases

respectively can occupy under the domain.

 ODBC connections (available only for Windows hosting). Specify the total number

of ODBC connections that can be used under the domain.

 ColdFusion DSN connections (available only for Windows hosting). Specify the total

number of ColdFusion DSN connections that can be used under the domain.

 Java applications. Specify the maximum number of Java applications or applets

that the domain owner can install under a domain.

 Shared SSL links (available only for Windows hosting). Specify the total number of

shared SSL links that can be used under the domain.

 Expiration date. Specify the term for the Web site hosting account. At the end of

the term, the domain (Web site) will be suspended, its Web, FTP and mail

services will no longer be accessible to the Internet users, and domain owner

will not be able to log in to the control panel. Hosting accounts cannot be

automatically renewed, therefore, in order to bring the hosted domain name

(and Web site) back to operation, you will need to manually renew the hosting

account: click the Domains shortcut in the navigation pane, click the domain

name your need, click the Resource Usage icon, specify another expiration date,

click OK, then click the Unsuspend icon (Domains > domain name > Unsuspend).

14. Click Finish. You are taken to the domain management screen.

15. Correct the information in the DNS zone of your domain:

a In the Web Site group, click DNS Settings.

b Locate the records example.com NS ns.example.com and ns.example.com A <IP

address>, select the respective check boxes and click Remove. Now the default

records are removed, and you can specify the name servers that you have

registered with your registrar.

c Click Add Record. In the Record type menu, select the NS value, leave the Enter

domain name box blank, and in the Enter nameserver box, type ns1.example.com,

then click OK.

d Click Add Record. In the Record type menu, select the NS value, leave the Enter

domain name box blank, and in the Enter nameserver box, type ns2.example.com,

then click OK.

Setting Up the Server 19

e Click Add Record. In the Record type menu, select the A value, in the Enter domain

name box, type the ns1 value, and in the Enter IP address box, type the first IP

address of your server that you registered with a registrar, then click OK.

f Click Add Record. In the Record type menu, select the A value, in the Enter domain

name box, type the ns1 value, and in the Enter IP address box, type the second IP

address of your server that you registered with a registrar, then click OK.

16. Specify the correct name servers in the server-wide DNS template:

a Click the Home shortcut in the navigation pane and then click DNS Settings. A list

of record templates opens.

b Locate the records <domain> NS ns.<domain> and ns.<domain> A <IP>, select the

respective check boxes and click Remove. Now the default records are removed,

and you can specify the name servers that you have registered with your

registrar.

c Click Add DNS Record. In the Record type menu, select the NS value, leave the

Enter domain name box blank, and in the Enter nameserver box, type

ns1.example.com, then click OK.

Click Add DNS Record. In the Record type menu, select the NS value, leave the

Enter domain name box blank, and in the Enter nameserver box, type

ns2.example.com, then click OK.

Now the server-wide DNS settings are set up properly, your domain example.com is

hosted on the server, and you can publish the site content. For instructions on

publishing a Web site, refer to the Publishing a Site section of this guide.

Now, let's set up the mail service. Your control panel works in cooperation with mail

server software, which provides mail services for your domains. After installation the

mail server is configured automatically and is ready to serve, however, we recommend

that you review the default settings to ensure that they satisfy your needs:

1. Click the Home shortcut in the navigation pane and then click Mail Server

Settings. The server-wide mail preferences screen will open on the

Preferences tab.

2. If you wish to limit the size of an e-mail message that can be sent

through your server, type the desired value in kilobytes into the

Maximum message size box, otherwise, leave this field blank.

3. If you wish to protect your users from dictionary attacks by not allowing

them to use simple passwords, select the Check the passwords for

mailboxes in the dictionary option.

A dictionary attack is when someone tries to find out a valid user name and

password by running a program that tries different combinations of dictionary words

in different languages. Dictionary attacks can be successful because many users

choose their passwords carelessly.

Note for Windows hosting users: To make this function work properly on

Windows platforms, make sure that the Password must meet complexity requirements

option is switched on in your server's Local Security Policy settings (the option is

located in Start > Administrative Tools > Local Security Policy > Account Policies >

Password policy).

20 Setting Up the Server

4. To protect your server against unauthorized mail relaying or injection of

unsolicited bulk mail, select the Enable message submission check box to

allow your customers to send e-mail messages through the port 587.

Also notify your customers that they need to specify in their e-mail programs'

settings the port 587 for outgoing SMTP connections, and be sure to allow

connections to this port in your firewall settings.

5. Select the mail relay mode.

With closed relay the mail server will accept only e-mail addressed to the users who

have mailboxes on this server. Your customers will not be able to send any mail

through your outgoing SMTP server, therefore, we do not recommend closing mail

relay.

With relay after authorization, only your customers will be able to receive and send

e-mail through your mail server. We recommend that you leave the authorization is

required option selected, and specify allowed authentication methods:

 POP3 authorization. With POP3 authorization, once a user has successfully

authenticated to the POP server, he or she is permitted to receive and send e-

mail through the mail server for the next 20 minutes (default value). You can

adjust this interval by specifying another value in the lock time box.

 SMTP authorization. With SMTP authorization, your mail server requires

authorization if the e-mail message must be sent to an external address.

Note for Windows hosting users: If you do not wish to use relay restrictions

for networks that you trust, specify the network IP and mask in the Use no

relay restrictions for the following networks: field (e.g., 123.123.123.123/16) and

click the

icon. To remove a network from the list, click the icon

corresponding to the network you wish to remove.

The relay hosts on the networks in the list are considered not to be potentially

operated by spammers, open relays, or open proxies. A trusted host could

conceivably relay spam, but will not originate it, and will not forge header

data. DNS blacklist checks will never query for hosts on these networks.

There is also an option to allow open relay without authorization, which, by default,

is hidden from the user interface. Opening mail relay without authorization is not

recommended because it allows spammers to send unsolicited mail through your

server. If you want to set the open relay, log in to the server's file system, locate the

file root.controls.lock in your Parallels Plesk Panel installation directory

(PRODUCT_ROOT_D/var/root.controls.lock on Unix and

PRODUCT_DATA_D/var/root.controls.lock on Windows platforms) and

remove the line /server/mail.php3:relay_open from this file. The open relay

option will show in your control panel.

6. If you are setting up a Linux-based server, select antivirus and webmail

program components that should be available to the users. If you are

setting up a Windows-based server, you can select webmail and

antivirus later: click Settings in the navigation pane, and then click Select

Webmail and Select Antivirus.

7. Select the mail account name format (available only on Linux hosting).

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Parallels Plesk Panel 9.5 Quick start guide

Parallels Plesk Panel 9.5 Quick start guide

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