Adding User Accounts
This chapter focuses on client level accounts that you will create for your customers or resellers.
If you need to create a domain administrator's account for your reseller's customer, assign permissions and allocate resources, see the Setting Up Hosting Account for a Web Site section.
If you need to create an e-mail user account, see the Creating Mailboxes section.
To accommodate a new customer or reseller:
- Click the Clients shortcut in the navigation pane.
- Click the Add New Client Account icon in the Tools group.
- Specify the contact and billing information. Contact name, login name and password are mandatory fields.
- If you have predefined user account templates, you can select the template you need from the Select template drop-down box.
- Leave the Proceed to configuring client's IP pool check box selected because you should assign at least one IP address to the user—otherwise the customer will not be able to host sites. Click OK.
- Allocate IP addresses to the customer. Select the addresses you need from the Vacant IPs box and click Add >>. Keep in mind that e-commerce site hosting customers need dedicated (exclusive) IP addresses: one dedicated IP address per one site.
- Click OK. You are now taken to the client account management screen.
This is the first screen with which your customer starts working when he or she is logged in to his or her control panel account. For this reason, this screen is referred to as Client Home page. To take a tour of the customer's control panel environment, you may want to log in to control panel under customer's credentials or you can read the Plesk Client's Guide to get more details.
- Next, to provision your customer with resources, if you created the user account without using a template, click the Limits icon in the Tools group.
- Specify the following items:
- Maximum number of domains. Specify the total number of domain names/web sites your customer will be able to host on the server. This includes web sites hosted on this server, and domain forwarders that point to web sites hosted on other servers. Domain aliases (additional domain names for a site hosted on this server) and subdomains are counted separately and are not limited by this resource type.
- Maximum number of subdomains. Specify the total number of subdomains that the customer will be able to host.
- Maximum number of domain aliases. Specify the total number of additional alternative domain names that the customer will be able to use for his or her web sites.
- Disk space. Specify the total amount of disk space in megabytes that is allocated to the customer. It includes disk space occupied by all files related to user's domains/web sites: web site contents, databases, applications, mailboxes, log files and backup files. This is the so-called soft quota: when it is exceeded, the user account and domain names/web sites are not suspended automatically, only the appropriate notices are sent to your and your customer's e-mail addresses and the resource overage is indicated by the icon
shown in your and your customer's control panels to the left of the user name (see the list of clients that opens when you click the Clients shortcut in the navigation pane) or domain name (see the list of domain names that opens when you click the Domains shortcut in the navigation pane). - Maximum amount of traffic. Specify the amount of data in megabytes that can be transferred from the customer's web sites during a month. Once the limit is reached, the appropriate notices are sent to your and your customer's e-mail addresses and the resource overage is indicated by the corresponding icon
shown in the control panel to the left of the user name (see the list of clients that opens when you click the Clients shortcut in the navigation pane) or domain name (see the list of domain names that opens when you click the Domains shortcut in the navigation pane). - Maximum number of web users. Specify the total number of personal web pages that your customer can host for other users under his or her domains. 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. See the Hosting Personal Web Pages section for details.
- Maximum number of databases. Specify the total number of databases that the customer can host on the server.
- Maximum number of mailboxes. Specify the total number of mailboxes that the customer can host on 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 in a domain.
- Maximum number of mail redirects. Specify the total number of mail forwarders to a single recipient that the customer can set up.
- Maximum number of mail groups. Specify the total number of mail forwarders to multiple recipients that the customer can set up.
- Maximum number of mail autoresponders. Specify the total number of automatic responses that the customer can set up.
- Maximum number of mailing lists. Specify the total number of mailing lists that you customer can host on the server. To provide users with mailing lists, you should install the GNU Mailman software.
- Maximum number of Java applications. Specify the total number of Java applications or applets that can be hosted on the server.
- Validity period. Specify the term for a hosting account. At the end of the term, all customer's domains/web sites will be suspended, its Web, FTP and mail services will no longer be accessible to the Internet users, and the reseller and his or her customers (domain owners) will not be able to log in to the control panel. Accounts cannot be automatically renewed, therefore, in order to bring the hosted domain names/web sites back to operation, you will need to manually renew the user account: Click the Clients shortcut in the navigation pane, click the client name you need, click the Limits icon, specify another term in the Validity period box, click OK, then click the Switch On icon in the Tools group (Clients > client name).
- Click OK.
- To specify the operations that the customer will be able to perform through his or her control panel, if you created this user account without using a predefined user account template, click the Permissions icon in the Tools group.
- Grant the required permissions to the customer:
- Access to control panel. Specify whether the customer will be able to access the control panel for managing his or her account and sites.
- Domain creation. Specify whether the customer will be able to set up hosting accounts for new sites.
- Physical hosting management. Specify whether the customer will be able to set up hosting accounts, modify hosting account features and switch on or off support for programming and scripting languages.
- Hosting performance management. Specify whether the customer will be able to limit bandwidth usage and number of connections to his or her Web sites.
- PHP safe mode management. Specify whether the customer will be able to switch the PHP safe mode off for his or her sites. 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 a 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 > Setup icon in the Hosting group).
- Management of shell access to server. Specify whether the customer will be able to access the server shell through Secure Shell protocol and allow his or her own customers to do so.
- Hard disk quota assignment. Specify whether the customer will be able to assign hard quotas on disk space for his or her own web sites and for web sites of his or her customers.
- Subdomains management. Specify whether the customer will be able to set up additional sites under his or her domains and allow his or her customers to do so.
- Domain aliases management. Specify whether the customer will be able to set up additional alternative domain names for his or her web sites and allow his or her users to do so.
- Log rotation management. Specify whether the customer will be able to adjust the cleanup and recycling of processed log files for his or her sites.
- Anonymous FTP management. Specify whether the customer will be able to 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.
- Task scheduling. Specify whether the customer will be able to schedule tasks in the system. Scheduled tasks can be used for running scripts or utilities on schedule.
- Domain limits adjustment. Specify whether the customer will be able to change resource allotments (described at the step 9 of this procedure) for his or her own account.
- DNS zone management. Specify whether the customer will be able to manage the DNS zones of his or her domains.
- Java applications management. Specify whether the customer will be able to install Java applications and applets on web sites through the control panel.
- Mailing lists management. Specify whether the customer will be able to use mailing lists provided by the GNU Mailman software.
- Spam filter management. Specify whether the customer will be able to use spam filter provided by the SpamAssassin software.
- Antivirus management. Specify whether the customer will be able to use server-side antivirus protection for filtering incoming and outgoing mail.
- Allow backup/restore. Specify whether the customer will be able to use the control panel's facilities to back up and restore his or her sites. To allow storing backup files on the server, select the local repository check box, to allow the customer to use an arbitrary FTP server for storing backups, select the remote (FTP) repository check box.
- Ability to use remote XML interface. Specify whether the customer will be able to remotely manage his or her Web sites through custom applications. The XML interface can be used for developing custom applications integrated with Web sites, which could be used, for instance, for automating setup of hosting accounts and provisioning of services for customers purchasing hosting services from your reseller's site. To learn more about using Plesk control panel's XML interface (also referred to as Plesk API RPC), please visit http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/Plesk8.1/Doc/plesk-8.1-api-rpc/index.htm.
- User interface. Specify the type of user interface the customer will be able to use - standard, desktop, or both.
- Desktop management. Specify whether the customer will be able to customize his or her desktop.
- Ability to select a database server. Specify whether the customer will be able to select a database server of each type for creating his or her databases, not only use the default database server.
- Click OK.
- To allow the customer to create and manage Web sites using Sitebuilder, click the Preferences icon in the Tools group, select the Create a corresponding user account in the Sitebuilder system check box, and click OK.
You can now tell your customer the URL to control panel and login credentials.