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Simplifying Setup of Domains and Web Sites

If you are going to serve numerous users with a great number of domains, you may want to create hosting configuration presets, referred to as domain templates, that will simplify setting up hosting accounts for new domains and web sites. The templates cover all resource usage allotments, permissions and limits that you can define for a hosting account, plus mail bounce and Web statistics retention settings.

To create a domain template:

  1. Click the Domains shortcut in the navigation pane.
  2. Click the Domain Templates icon in the Tools group.
  3. Click Add Domain Template.
  4. Specify the template properties:
    1. Template name. Specify a name for this template. During setup of a new hosting account, you will be prompted to select the required template by its name. Therefore, we recommend that you choose a meaningful name that corresponds to one of your hosting plans or describes the amount of allotted resources. For example, Mail hosting, 1GB disk space, 500 mailboxes.
    2. Mail to nonexistent users. Specify the domain-wide mail bounce options: When somebody sends an e-mail message to an e-mail address that does not exist under your domain, the mail server on your domain accepts mails, processes it, and when it finds out that there is no such a recipient under your domain, it returns the mail back to sender with the "this address no longer accepts mail" notice. You can choose to:
    1. WebMail. Specify whether the users of mailboxes in this domain should be able to read their mail through a browser based WebMail application.
    2. Maximum number of subdomains. Specify the number of subdomains that can be hosted under this domain.
    3. Disk space. Specify the total amount of disk space allocated to a hosting account associated with the domain. This amount is measured in megabytes. It includes disk space occupied by all files related to this domain/web site: web site contents, databases, applications, mailboxes, log files and backup files. This is the so-called soft quota: when it is exceeded, domain names and web sites are not suspended automatically, only the appropriate notices are sent to your and your client's e-mail addresses and the resource overage is indicated by the icon shown in the control panel to the left of the domain name (see the list of domain names by clicking the Domains shortcut in the navigation pane).
    4. Maximum amount of traffic. Specify the amount of data in megabytes that can be transferred from the web site during a month. Once the limit is reached, the appropriate notices are sent to your and your client's e-mail addresses and the resource overage is indicated by a corresponding icon shown in the control panel to the left of the domain name (see the list of domain names by clicking the Domains shortcut in the navigation pane).
    5. Maximum number of web users. Specify the number of personal web pages that the domain owner can host for other users under his or her domain. This service is mostly used in educational institutions that host non-commercial personal pages of their students and staff. These pages usually have web addresses like http://your-domain.com/~username. If you wish to allow execution of scripts embedded in personal web pages, select also the Allow the web users scripting check box. See the Hosting Personal Web Pages section for details.
    6. Maximum number of databases. Specify the number of databases that can be hosted in a domain.
    7. Maximum number of mailboxes. Specify the number of mailboxes that can be hosted in a domain.
    8. Mailbox quota. Specify the amount of disk space in kilobytes that is allocated to each mailbox in a domain.
    9. Maximum number of mail forwarders. Specify the number of mail forwarders that can be used in a domain.
    10. Maximum number of mail autoresponders. Specify the number of automatic responses that can be set up in a domain.
    11. Maximum number of mailing lists. Specify the number of mailing lists that the domain owner can run in a domain. The mailing lists are served by the GNU Mailman software, which may or may not be installed on the server. If it is not installed and your customers would like to use it, you may want to to install it. To allow the use of mailing lists, you should also put a check mark into the Mailing lists check box under the Preferences group.
    12. Maximum number of Java applications. Specify the maximum number of Java applications or applets that the domain owner can install in a domain.
    13. Validity period. Specify the term for a hosting account. At the end of the term, the domain/web site will be suspended, its Web, FTP and mail services will no longer be accessible to the Internet users, and domain owner will not be able to log in to the control panel. Hosting accounts cannot be automatically renewed, therefore, in order to bring the hosted domain name/web site back to operation, you will need to manually renew the hosting account: click the Domains shortcut in the navigation pane, click the domain name your need, click the Limits icon, specify another term in the Validity period box, click OK, then click the Enable icon in the Domain group (Domains > domain name).
    14. Log rotation. All connections to the Web server and requests for files that were not found on the server are registered in log files. These log files are analyzed by the statistical utilities running on the server, which then present graphical reports on demand. If you need to view the contents of these raw log files for debugging purposes, on your Home page, click the domain name you need, click Log Manager, and then click the log file name you need. To prevent these log files from growing too large, you should enable automatic cleanup and recycling of log files:
    1. Traffic statistics retention. Specify the number of months during which the bandwidth usage statistics should be kept on the server.
    2. DNS. Specify whether the DNS server on your Web host should act as a master (primary) or slave (secondary) name server for the domain name zone. A primary name server stores locally the zone file it serves, while a secondary server only retrieves a copy of this file from the primary. You would normally leave the Master option selected.
    3. Physical hosting account. If you are going to host not only domain names, but also web sites, select the Physical hosting check box and specify the hosting features:
  5. Click OK to complete creation of a template.

    During setup of a hosting account for a new domain/web site, you will select the required template and the hosting account will be created and allocated the resources and hosting services you defined.

To modify settings for a single domain or Web site:

  1. Click the Domains shortcut in the navigation pane.
  2. Click the domain name you need.
  3. To allocate more disk space, bandwidth and other resources, click the Limits icon in the Domain group, adjust the settings as required, and click OK.
  4. To add hosting features, such as support for programming languages and scripts, click the Setup icon in the Hosting group, adjust the settings as required and click OK.

To modify settings for a number of domains or Web sites:

  1. Click the Domains shortcut in the navigation pane.
  2. Select the checkboxes corresponding to the domain names you need.
  3. Click the Group Operations icon located above the list of domains.
  4. Modify the settings as required and click OK.

To reflect the changes in your domain templates that will apply to the newly created accounts:

  1. Click the Domains shortcut in the navigation pane.
  2. Click the Domain Templates icon in the Tools group.
  3. Click the template name corresponding to the domain template you wish to update.
  4. Modify the settings as required and click OK.

    Note that modifying templates does not affect the existing domains and web sites.

To remove a template that you no longer need:

  1. Click the Domains shortcut in the navigation pane.
  2. Click the Domain Templates icon in the Tools group.
  3. Select a check box corresponding to the template you no longer need.
  4. Click Remove Selected. Confirm removal and click OK.