Parallels Presence Builder 12.0 Standalone User guide

Last updated: 22 May 2014

Parallels Presence Builder 12.0

Standalone

Installation and Administration Guide

Contents

About This Guide 4

Feedback ....................................................................................................................................... 4

About Parallels Presence Builder Standalone 5

Preparing for Installation 6

Requirements for the Core Server ................................................................................................ 7

Requirements for Publishing Servers ............................................................................................ 8

Supported Web Browsers ............................................................................................................. 8

Installing Parallels Presence Builder Standalone 9

Installing on CentOS.................................................................................................................... 10

Installing on Debian ..................................................................................................................... 11

Troubleshooting Installation Issues ............................................................................................. 12

Setting the Administrator’s Password and Installing a License Key ........................................... 13

Upgrading to Parallels Presence Builder 12 Standalone from Previous Versions 15

Upgrading on CentOS ................................................................................................................. 16

Upgrading on Debian .................................................................................................................. 17

Troubleshooting Upgrade Issues ................................................................................................ 17

Integrating Parallels Presence Builder Standalone with Your Hosting Software 18

Checking if Your Hosting Platform Is Compatible with Presence Builder ................................... 20

Providing Site Owners with Access to the Editor ........................................................................ 20

Initializing the API Library .................................................................................................. 21

Adding the Create Site Button........................................................................................... 21

Adding the Edit Site Button ............................................................................................... 24

Deleting Sites from Presence Builder.......................................................................................... 26

Upselling Hosting Services 27

Upselling Hosting Services with Restricted Functionality Techniques ........................................ 28

Restricting Resources by Means of the API ..................................................................... 31

Configuring the Buy and Publish Dialog Window .............................................................. 35

Upselling Hosting Services with Automated Site Creation .......................................................... 38

Configuring the Promotional Footer ............................................................................................ 41

Retrieving the Current Content of the Promotional Footer ............................................... 43

Changing the Default Content of the Promotional Footer ................................................. 45

Showing the Promotional Footer on Websites .................................................................. 47

Removing the Promotional Footer from Websites ............................................................ 49

Configuring the Trial Mode 51

About This Guide 3

Placeholders Used in Trial Mode Messages ............................................................................... 54

Locale Strings Shown in Trial Mode ............................................................................................ 56

Customizing the Information Box ................................................................................................ 57

Customizing Text in E-mail Notices ............................................................................................. 61

Customizing the Pop-Up Message .............................................................................................. 63

Rebranding Presence Builder 66

Changing the Editor’s Name ....................................................................................................... 69

Changing the Product and Company Logos, Hyperlinks, and Copyright Notice ........................ 70

Changing the Link to the User’s Guide ....................................................................................... 71

Changing the Links to the Getting Started Video ........................................................................ 72

Customizing the Functionality of Presence Builder 73

Redirecting Users to the Login Page........................................................................................... 74

Prohibiting Users from Removing Their Sites ............................................................................. 75

Making Modules Unavailable in the Editor .................................................................................. 75

Making the Site Import Functionality Unavailable ....................................................................... 76

Adding Custom Banner Images .................................................................................................. 77

Adding Custom Design Templates .............................................................................................. 79

Adding the Support Button .......................................................................................................... 80

Adding the Link for Sending Feedback ....................................................................................... 81

Adding the Button to Return Users to Control Panel ................................................................... 82

Removing the Option to Add a Site Copy to Facebook............................................................... 83

Disabling Access to the Google Services from Presence Builder ............................................... 84

Removing Sites from Hosting Accounts ...................................................................................... 85

Viewing Service Logs 86

Removing Parallels Presence Builder Standalone 88

Appendix A. API Reference: Methods, Operations, and Resources 89

Request Format ........................................................................................................................... 90

Response Format ........................................................................................................................ 95

Operations on Resources ............................................................................................................ 96

Retrieving the Software Version........................................................................................ 97

Creating a Site................................................................................................................... 98

Generating a Security Token for Accessing a Site ......................................................... 102

Creating a Site Based on a Website Topic ..................................................................... 106

Retrieving Information About a Specific Site ................................................................... 112

Retrieving Information About All Sites ............................................................................ 115

Changing Site Properties and Settings ........................................................................... 118

Publishing a Website ....................................................................................................... 122

Deleting a Site ................................................................................................................. 123

Retrieving the Current Content of the Promotional Footer ............................................. 125

Setting Trial Mode Messages .......................................................................................... 127

Changing the Default Content of the Promotional Footer ............................................... 137

Showing the Promotional Footer on Websites ................................................................ 139

Removing the Promotional Footer from Websites .......................................................... 141

This guide is intended for hosting service providers who want to deploy Parallels

Presence Builder Standalone on servers managed by control panel software other than

Parallels Operations Automation and Parallels Plesk.

In this chapter:

Feedback .......................................................................................................... 4

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 H A P T E R 1

About This Guide

Parallels Presence Builder Standalone is a software suite for hosting providers. It

includes the following components:

 Presence Builder - website design and promotion tool.

 API for integration into a hosting company’s infrastructure.

This solution is ideal for hosting service providers who have their own shared hosting

control panel and a billing system, and who want to offer Presence Builder to their

customers.

Presence Builder can operate in the trial mode. When the trial mode is properly

configured, prospective customers can access the editor, create websites, and publish

them after they sign up to hosting services. To learn more about the trial mode, see the

chapter Configuring the Trial Mode (on page 51).

C H A P T E R 2

About Parallels Presence Builder

Standalone

You can install the core components of the system on the same server on which you

plan to host websites, or have one dedicated server for running the system (let’s call it

the core server) and publish websites on separate hosting servers. The following figure

illustrates a typical deployment scheme and the interaction of the components.

Before installing, make sure that the following requirements for the core server (on

page 7) and publishing servers (on page 8) are met.

In this chapter:

Requirements for the Core Server ..................................................................... 7

Requirements for Publishing Servers ................................................................ 8

Supported Web Browsers.................................................................................. 8

C H A P T E R 3

Preparing for Installation

Preparing for Installation 7

Requirements for the Core Server

Minimum Hardware Requirements

 Intel or AMD CPU, 800 MHz.

 500 megabytes of free disk space for installation of the core components, plus at

least 300 kilobytes for each hosted site.

 8 gigabytes of RAM.

Software Requirements and Prerequisites

Parallels Presence Builder Standalone can be installed on the following operating

systems:

 CentOS 5.10, 6.5 (32-bit and 64-bit).

 Debian 6.0, 7.0 (32-bit and 64-bit).

The following software components, which are not included in the distribution package,

must be additionally installed:

 Apache web server (apache2 package).

After installing Apache on CentOS systems, make sure that the following directive

is not present in the Apache configuration file /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:

Alias /error/ “/var/www/error/”.

If it is present, comment it out and restart the web server.

 MySQL Server version 5.0 or later.

Important: Make sure that the old_passwords value in the MySQL configuration

file is set to “0” (“off”). You can also check the current value of this parameter in the

database by issuing the following SQL query:

~# mysql -u<MYSQL_USER> -p<MYSQL_PASSWORD> -e”show variables

like ‘old_passwords’”

 mod_fcgid.

This is available from the Debian 6 repositories (called libapache2-mod-fcgid), but if

you want to install on CentOS, you will need to obtain it from other third-party

repositories.

Important: On CentOS systems, SELinux must be disabled.

You can check whether SELinux is disabled by issuing the command

/usr/sbin/getenforce. If it is enabled, then do the following to switch it off:

1. Open the file /etc/selinux/config in a text editor and locate the

line SELINUX=<value>.

2. Change it to SELINUX=disabled.

8 Preparing for Installation

3. If you cannot find this file, open the file /boot/grub/grub.conf in a

text editor and add the parameter selinux=0 to the Grub Boot Loader:

title SE-Linux Test System

root (hd0,0)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-selinux-XXXXXXXXXX ro

root=/dev/hda1 nousb selinux=0

#initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.20-selinux-XXXXXXXXXX.img

4. Restart the server to apply the changes.

5. If you do not want to restart, issue the command setenforce 0.

Note: The default values of the PHP settings memory_limit and

max_execution_time allow comfortable working with sites that have fewer than 500

pages. For this reason, the maximum number of pages that a site can have is set to

500 by default. If you want to support sites with a greater number of pages, configure

the PHP settings memory_limit and max_execution_time accordingly, and set a

greater value in the file /usr/local/sb/config, in the line maxPagesNumber =

500.

Requirements for Publishing Servers

Regardless of whether you plan to host customers’ sites on the same core server or

separate servers, ensure that the following additional requirements are met:

 The servers are resolvable on the Internet: DNS settings are properly configured.

 PHP version 5.2 or later is installed.

 PHP supports multibyte string functions (mbstring extension).

 In php.ini, the following directive is set: default_charset = “UTF-8”

Supported Web Browsers

Parallels Presence Builder Standalone supports the following browsers:

 Internet Explorer 10 and 11.

 Mozilla Firefox 19 or later.

 Safari 6 for Mac.

 Google Chrome 25 or later.

This chapter describes how to deploy Parallels Presence Builder Standalone.

In this chapter:

Installing on CentOS ......................................................................................... 10

Installing on Debian ........................................................................................... 11

Troubleshooting Installation Issues ................................................................... 11

Setting the Administrator’s Password and Installing a License Key ................... 13

C H A P T E R 4

Installing Parallels Presence Builder

Standalone

10 Installing Parallels Presence Builder Standalone

Installing on CentOS

The following instructions describe how to install Parallels Presence Builder

Standalone by using the yum software management tool on CentOS 5.x-6.x.

 To install Parallels Presence Builder Standalone on CentOS, do the

following:

1. In /etc/yum.repos.d/, create a file with the name wpb.repo.

2. Add the following text to the file.

[wpb-dist]

name=wpb

baseurl=http://download1.parallels.com/WPB/Standalone/12.0/di

st-rpm-CentOS-$releasever-$basearch/

gpgcheck=0

priority=10

enabled=1

[wpb-third]

name=wpb-third

baseurl=http://download1.parallels.com/WPB/Standalone/12.0/th

irdparty-rpm-CentOS-$releasever-$basearch/

gpgcheck=0

priority=10

enabled=1

3. Issue the following command:

# yum install wpb

After installation is finished, set the administrator’s password and install a license key

as described in Setting the Administrator’s Password and Installing a License Key (on

page 13).

If you want to make sure that the installation completed successfully, visit the editor in

the trial mode and create a trial site by accessing a URL very similar to this:

http://sitebuilder.<host name>/Try. You can find out the exact host name

and IP address by issuing the command apachectl -S.

Additionally, to ensure that the Presence Builder Standalone installation is accessible

by the domain name sitebuilder.<host name>, check and correct the DNS zone settings.

Important: If you plan to host websites on separate servers, make sure that these

servers are properly resolved from the core server and are accessible over HTTP and

FTP. You might need to manually configure DNS zones to ensure that the publishing

servers are resolved.

Installing Parallels Presence Builder Standalone 11

Installing on Debian

The following instructions describe how to install Parallels Presence Builder

Standalone by using the APT tools on Debian.

 To install Parallels Presence Builder Standalone on Debian 6.0:

1. Add the following lines to the file /etc/apt/sources.list:

 On 32-bit operating systems:

deb http://download1.parallels.com/WPB/Standalone/12.0/dist-

deb-Debian-6.0-i386 /

deb

http://download1.parallels.com/WPB/Standalone/12.0/thirdparty

-deb-Debian-6.0-i386 /

 On 64-bit operating systems:

deb http://download1.parallels.com/WPB/Standalone/12.0/dist-

deb-Debian-6.0-x86_64 /

deb

http://download1.parallels.com/WPB/Standalone/12.0/thirdparty

-deb-Debian-6.0-x86_64 /

2. Issue the following command:

# apt-get update

3. Issue the following command:

# apt-get install wpb

After installation is finished, set the administrator’s password and install a license key

as described in Setting the Administrator’s Password and Installing a License Key (on

page 13).

If you want to make sure that the installation completed successfully, visit the editor in

the trial mode and create a trial site by accessing a URL very similar to this:

http://sitebuilder.<host name>/Try. You can find out the exact host name

and IP address by issuing the command apachectl -S.

Additionally, to ensure that the Presence Builder Standalone installation is accessible

by the domain name sitebuilder.<host name>, check and correct the DNS zone settings.

Important: If you plan to host websites on separate servers, make sure that these

servers are properly resolved from the core server and are accessible over HTTP and

FTP. You might need to manually configure DNS zones to ensure that the publishing

servers are resolved.

12 Installing Parallels Presence Builder Standalone

Troubleshooting Installation Issues

Issue

Installation has finished successfully, but Parallels Presence Builder Standalone does

not start. The following error message can be seen in /var/log/httpd/error.log:

Failed loading /usr/lib/php/modules/sw-

engine/ioncube_loader_lin_5.3.so: /usr/lib/php/modules/sw-

engine/ioncube_loader_lin_5.3.so: cannot restore segment prot

after reloc: Permission denied

DEBUGGER DETECTED... Bye!

Resolution

This error may occur when SELinux is switched on.

To check whether SELinux is switched on, issue the command

/usr/sbin/getenforce. If it is switched on (enabled), then do the following to

switch it off:

1. Open the file /etc/selinux/config in a text editor and locate the

line SELINUX=<value>.

2. Change it to SELINUX=disabled.

3. If you cannot find this file, open the file /boot/grub/grub.conf in a

text editor and add the parameter selinux=0 to the Grub Boot Loader:

title SE-Linux Test System

root (hd0,0)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-selinux-XXXXXXXXXX ro

root=/dev/hda1 nousb selinux=0

#initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.20-selinux-XXXXXXXXXX.img

4. Restart the server to apply the changes.

5. If you do not want to restart, issue the command setenforce 0.

Installing Parallels Presence Builder Standalone 13

Issue

During installation, the following error message is shown in the console:

[ERROR] Unable to connect to database. System message:

SQLSTATE[HY000] [2000] mysqlnd cannot connect to MySQL 4.1+

using the old insecure authentication. Please use an

administration tool to reset your password with the command SET

PASSWORD = PASSWORD(‘your_existing_password’). This will store a

new, and more secure, hash value in mysql.user. If this user is

used in other scripts executed by PHP 5.2 or earlier you might

need to remove the old-passwords flag from your my.cnf file

Resolution

Before installing Presence Builder, verify that the old_passwords option is switched

off in the MySQL configuration file. You can use the following command to verify the

value set for this option:

~# mysql -u<MYSQL_USER> -p<MYSQL_PASSWORD> -e”show variables

like ‘old_passwords’”

To switch off this option, add the line “old_passwords=0” into the file /etc/my.cnf,

section [mysqld].

Restart mysqld to apply the new settings:

~# /etc/init.d/mysqld restart

If, after restarting MySQL, you cannot access the editor in the trial mode (at

http://sitebuilder.<Presence Builder host name>/Try), and an error

message is shown in the browser, then you need to run the post-install configuration:

~# sw-engine /usr/local/sb/utils/post_configure.php

Setting the Administrator’s Password and

Installing a License Key

Before you can start using Presence Builder, you need to do the following:

 Set the administrator’s password. There is only one administrator account. The

username is admin, and it cannot be changed.

 Install a license key. To obtain a license key for the product, contact your vendor or

Parallels sales representatives. For contact information, refer to

www.parallels.com/contact.

 To install a license key:

1. Set the administrator’s password by issuing the following command:

14 Installing Parallels Presence Builder Standalone

# sb_config—sb_passwd <new_password_here>

2. In a web browser, visit

https://sitebuilder.<host_name>/License/.

3. Click through the SSL warnings.

4. When prompted for a username and a password, provide the username

admin and the password that you specified in step 1.

5. Click Upload Key.

6. Browse to the license key file and click OK.

After the license key is uploaded, you can integrate Presence Builder with your control

panel or billing software by means of the API. For information about using the API,

refer to the chapters Integrating Parallels Presence Builder Standalone with Your Hosting

Software (on page 18) and Appendix A. API Reference: Methods, Operations, and Resources

(on page 89).

You can also set Presence Builder to notify you when the number of published

websites allowed by your license has reached 90 percent. To do this:

1. On the Presence Builder server, open the configuration file

/usr/local/sb/config.

2. Add the following line after the line [general]:

admin_email = <your e-mail address>

3. Save the file.

Notices will be sent once a week.

To verify that the installation has been successfully completed, you can log in to the

editor in the trial mode by visiting http://sitebuilder.<host_name>/Try.

This chapter describes how to upgrade to Parallels Presence Builder 11 Standalone

from the previous versions, 10.3, 10.4, 11.0, and 11.5.

What happens during an upgrade:

 The product packages that are installed in the system are upgraded by using the

native means of package managers (apt or yum).

 The product’s database and websites are upgraded to match the new product

version; however, all website content remains intact.

 The contents of the configuration file /usr/local/sb/config are overwritten.

This means that all customizations made by editing the configuration file are

discarded.

In this chapter:

Upgrading on CentOS ....................................................................................... 16

Upgrading on Debian ........................................................................................ 17

Troubleshooting Upgrade Issues ....................................................................... 17

C H A P T E R 5

Upgrading to Parallels Presence Builder

12 Standalone from Previous Versions

16 Upgrading to Parallels Presence Builder 12 Standalone from Previous Versions

Upgrading on CentOS

The following instructions describe how to upgrade Parallels Presence Builder

Standalone by using the yum software management tool on CentOS 5.x-6.x or later.

 To upgrade Parallels Presence Builder Standalone on CentOS, do the

following:

1. In /etc/yum.repos.d/, open the pa4wp.repo file for editing.

2. In the baseurl values specified under the sections titled

[sitebuilder-dist] and [sitebuilder-third], replace the old

addresses of the product repository with the following new addresses.

[wpb-dist]

baseurl=http://download1.parallels.com/WPB/Standalone/12.0/di

st-rpm-CentOS-$releasever-$basearch/

[wpb-third]

baseurl=http://download1.parallels.com/WPB/Standalone/12.0/th

irdparty-rpm-CentOS-$releasever-$basearch/

3. Issue the following command:

# yum install wpb

If you want to make sure that the upgrade has completed successfully, visit

http://sitebuilder.<host_name>/Try.

Upgrading to Parallels Presence Builder 12 Standalone from Previous Versions 17

Upgrading on Debian

The following instructions describe how to upgrade Parallels Presence Builder

Standalone by using the APT tools on Debian.

 To upgrade Parallels Presence Builder Standalone on Debian 6.0:

1. Edit the file /etc/apt/sources.list to point the package manager to the

new repositories:

 On 32-bit operating systems:

deb http://download1.parallels.com/WPB/Standalone/12.0/dist-

deb-Debian-6.0-i386 /

deb

http://download1.parallels.com/WPB/Standalone/12.0/thirdparty

-deb-Debian-6.0-i386 /

 On 64-bit operating systems:

deb http://download1.parallels.com/WPB/Standalone/12.0/dist-

deb-Debian-6.0-x86_64 /

deb

http://download1.parallels.com/WPB/Standalone/12.0/thirdparty

-deb-Debian-6.0-x86_64 /

2. Issue the following command:

# apt-get update

3. Issue the following command:

# apt-get install wpb

If you want to make sure that the upgrade has completed successfully, visit

http://sitebuilder.<host_name>/Try.

Troubleshooting Upgrade Issues

Issue

On Debian Linux, upgrade of Presence Builder may fail with a “fatal error” message.

This could happen if some services required by Presence Builder, such as MySQL,

were not running when the upgrade was attempted.

Resolution

Start the MySQL database server and run the upgrade process again. Alternatively,

you can resume the upgrade by issuing the command dpkg—configure wpb-core.

This chapter provides general information about how you can integrate Parallels

Presence Builder Standalone with your existing hosting software.

If your hosting software uses service plans, and the customer’s control panel

functionality is governed by plan options, you can customize the plans to include

access to the editor as an option. For information about adding custom plan options to

your hosting software, please consult the relevant documentation.

If your hosting software does not use service plans, or if you want to provide all hosting

customers with access to the editor regardless of the plans, then you need to do the

following:

1. Prepare scripts that will perform the necessary operations in the editor over the

API. The scripts will create sites in Presence Builder and redirect the user’s

browser to the editor.

2. Add a button leading to Presence Builder to the customers’ control panel area. The

button could be labeled, for example, Launch Presence Builder, or its caption could be

changed from Create Site to Edit Site, depending on whether a site for a given user

account or domain name is already present in Presence Builder.

 When a user clicks Create Site, a new site should be created in Presence Builder

and the user’s browser should be redirected to the site creation wizard.

 When a user clicks Edit Site, the control panel or a custom integration script must

redirect the user’s browser to the editor window containing the user’s site, ready

for editing.

After successful integration, your hosting customers will be able to access the

Presence Builder editor, create and edit sites, and publish them to their webspaces

over FTP.

Contents of this chapter:

 Checking If Your Hosting Platform Is Compatible with Presence Builder. This section

describes how to check whether your hosting platform meets the hosting

requirements for publishing sites created with Presence Builder.

 Providing Site Owners with Access to the Editor. This section describes how to

implement scripts for the Create Site and Edit Site buttons.

 Deleting Sites from Presence Builder. This section describes how to implement

removal of sites from Presence Builder by means of the API.

C H A P T E R 6

Integrating Parallels Presence Builder

Standalone with Your Hosting Software

Integrating Parallels Presence Builder Standalone with Your Hosting Software 19

In this chapter:

Checking if Your Hosting Platform Is Compatible with Presence Builder ........... 20

Providing Site Owners with Access to the Editor ............................................... 20

Deleting Sites from Presence Builder ................................................................ 26

20 Integrating Parallels Presence Builder Standalone with Your Hosting Software

Checking if Your Hosting Platform Is

Compatible with Presence Builder

Before you start preparing for the integration of Presence Builder with your hosting

platform, make sure that the latter meets Presence Builder’s hosting requirements. You

can do this by using a special script called check.php, which is shipped with

Presence Builder installations.

 To check whether your hosting platform meets the hosting requirements

of Presence Builder:

1. Set up a web hosting account on your hosting platform. For example,

let’s assume that the hosting account will be associated with the

domain name example.com.

2. On the server where Presence Builder is installed, go to the directory

/usr/local/sb/resources/publish/.

3. Copy the script check.php from that directory to the hosting account’s

document root to make that script accessible by HTTP.

4. Using a web browser, visit http://example.com/check.php.

The script will show a report on the availability of the necessary hosting features.

Providing Site Owners with Access to the

Editor

To provide domain administrators (or site owners) with access to the Presence Builder

editor and enable them to create and edit websites, you need to add custom buttons or

hyperlinks labeled Create Site and Edit Site to the appropriate locations of your hosting

control panel. These locations might be a user’s home page, account profile, or

account dashboard page - whatever is present in your system. To learn how to add

custom buttons, consult the documentation for your hosting software.

Next in this section:

Initializing the API Library .................................................................................. 21

Adding the Create Site Button ........................................................................... 21

Adding the Edit Site Button ................................................................................ 24

Page is loading ...

Parallels Presence Builder 12.0 Standalone User guide

Related papers

Other documents