Reviewing Your Hosting Package
To review or select the hosting features available for your account (if your provider delegated the permission to manage the hosting options for your account):
- Click the
Setup on your Home page. - View or change your hosting options:
- IP Address. Your domain can be hosted on either exclusive IP address or shared IP address. Choose an address from your service provider's IP addresses pool.
- Certificate. Shows the SSL certificate used by your site.
- SSL support. Secure Sockets Layer encryption is generally used for protecting transfer of sensitive data during online transactions on e-commerce Web sites that run on dedicated IP addresses. SSL certificates that participate in the encryption process are usually applied to a single domain name on a single IP address, therefore, each site that needs SSL protection must be hosted on a dedicated IP address. An exception to this is subdomains, which you can protect with a wildcard certificate. Installing an SSL certificate on a Web server that hosts several web sites with different domain names on a single IP address (shared or name-based hosting) is technically possible, however, it is not recommended: the encryption will be provided, but users will get warning messages on attempt to connect to the secure site. To allow SSL encryption for Web sites, select the SSL support check box.
- Use a single directory for housing SSL and non-SSL content. By default, when users publish their sites through their FTP accounts, they need to upload the web content that should be accessible via secure connections to the
httpsdocs
directory, and the content that should be accessible via plain HTTP, to the httpdocs
directory. For the convenience of publishing all content through a single location – httpdocs
directory, select the Use a single directory for housing SSL and non-SSL content check box. - FTP login and FTP password. Specify the user name and password that will be used for publishing the site to the server through FTP. Retype the password into the Confirm Password box.
- Hard disk quota. Specify the amount of disk space in megabytes allocated to the web space for this site. This is the so-called hard quota that will not allow writing more files to the web space when the limit is reached. At attempt to write files, users will get the "Out of disk space" error. Hard quotas should be enabled in the server's operating system, so if you see the "Hard disk quota is not supported" notice to the right of the Hard disk quota field, but would like to use the hard quotas, contact your provider or the server administrator and ask to enable the hard quotas.
- Shell access to server with FTP user's credentials. This allows you to upload securely web content to the server through a Secure Socket Shell connection, however, allowing shell access also poses a potential threat to the server security, so we recommend that you do not allow shell access. Leave the Forbidden option selected.
- FrontPage support. Microsoft FrontPage is a popular web site authoring tool. To enable users to publish and modify their sites through Microsoft FrontPage, select the FrontPage support and FrontPage over SSL support check boxes, set the FrontPage authoring option to enabled, and specify the FrontPage Administrator's login and password.
- Support for programming and scripting languages supported by your hosting environment. Specify which of the following programming and scripting languages should be interpreted, executed or otherwise processed by the web server: Active Server Pages (ASP), Server Side Includes (SSI), PHP hypertext preprocessor (PHP), Common Gateway Interface (CGI), Perl, Python, and ColdFusion.
- Web statistics. To allow you to view the information on the number of people visited your site and the pages of the site they viewed, select the Web statistics and accessible via password protected directory /plesk-stat/ check boxes. This will install the Webalizer statistical software, which will generate reports and place them into the password protected directory. You will then be able to access Web statistics at the URL: https://your-domain.com/plesk-stat/ using your FTP account login and password.
- Custom error documents. When visitors coming to your site request pages that the web server cannot find, the web server generates and displays a standard HTML page with an error message. If you wish to create your own error pages and use them on your web server, select the Custom error documents check box.
- Click OK.
To view the amounts of resources your Web site and e-mail accounts can consume:
- Click the
Limits icon on your Home page. - The resource allotments are listed as follows:
- Maximum number of subdomains. Displays the number of subdomains that can be hosted under your domain.
- Disk space. Shows the total amount of disk space allocated to your hosting account. 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 provider's e-mail addresses and the resource overage is indicated by a corresponding icon
shown in the control panel to the left of your domain name. When your website starts growing and requires more disk space, consider upgrading your hosting plan. - Maximum amount of traffic. Displays the amount of data in megabytes that can be transferred from your web site during a month. Once the limit is reached, the appropriate notices are sent to your provider's e-mail addresses and the resource overage is indicated by a corresponding icon
shown in the control panel to the left of the domain name. When your web site starts attracting more visitors and requires more bandwidth, consider upgrading your hosting plan. - Maximum number of web users. Shows the number of personal web pages that you can host for other users under your 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 the Allow the web users scripting check box is selected, execution of scripts embedded in personal web pages is allowed. See the Hosting Personal Web Pages on Your Web Server section for details.
- Maximum number of databases. Displays the number of databases that can be hosted in your domain.
- Maximum number of mailboxes. Shows the number of mailboxes that can be hosted in your domain.
- Mailbox quota. Displays the amount of disk space in kilobytes that is allocated to each mailbox in your domain.
- Maximum number of mail forwarders. Shows the number of mail forwarders that can be used in your domain.
- Maximum number of mail autoresponders. Displays the number of automatic responses that can be set up in your domain.
- Maximum number of mailing lists. Shows the number of mailing lists that you can run in a domain. The mailing lists are served by the GNU Mailman software, which may or may not be installed on the server. If it is not installed and you would like to use it, ask your service provider to install it.
- Maximum number of Java applications. Displays the maximum number of Java applications or applets that you can install in a domain.
- Validity period. Shows the term for a hosting account. At the end of the term, your domain/web site will be suspended, its Web, FTP and mail services will no longer be accessible to the Internet users, and you will not be able to log in to the control panel.
- Click OK.
To view the permissions for operations you can perform through your control panel:
- Click the
Domain Administrator icon on your Home page. - The permissions are listed in the Permissions group:
- Physical hosting management. Shows whether you can fully control hosting account for your web site. If it says No, then you can only change FTP password for accessing your web space.
- Manage FTP password. Shows whether you are allowed to change your credentials for access to web space through FTP.
- Management of shell access to the server. Shows whether you can access the server shell.
- Hard disk quota assignment. Shows whether you can set up the hard quota on disk space allocated to your site.
- Subdomains management. Shows whether you can set up, modify and remove subdomains in your domain.
- Domain aliases management. Shows whether you can set up additional alternative domain names for your web sites.
- Log rotation management. Shows whether you can adjust the cleanup and recycling of processed log files for your site.
- Anonymous FTP management. Shows whether you can have an FTP directory where all users could download and upload files without the need to enter login and password. A web site should reside on a dedicated IP address in order to use anonymous FTP service.
- Crontab management. Shows whether you can schedule tasks with the Crontab task scheduler. Scheduled tasks can be used for running scripts or utilities on schedule.
- DNS zone management. Shows whether you can manage the DNS zone of your domain.
- Java applications management. Shows whether you can install Java applications and applets on your web site through the control panel.
- Mailing lists management. Shows whether you can use mailing lists provided by the GNU Mailman software.
- Dr.Web antivirus management. Shows whether you can use server-side antivirus protection for filtering incoming and outgoing mail.
- Backup and restore functions. Shows whether you can use the control panel's facilities to backup and restore your site. Scheduled and on-demand backups are supported.
- User interface. Shows what type of Plesk control panel interface you can use - standard, desktop, or both.
- Desktop management. Shows whether you can customize and manage your desktop interface.
- Click OK.