Installing Applications
To enhance your web site with valuable features, such as guest books, forums, hit counters, photo galleries, and e-commerce solutions, you can install the respective applications from Plesk Application Vault (Home > Application Vault). The number and variety of available applications depend on your provider's policy and your hosting plan.
To install an application on your site:
- On your home page, click Application Vault in the Hosting group.
A list of applications installed on your site will be displayed.
- Click Add New Application in the Tools group.
- In the left menu, select a category to which the application you need belongs.
- Select the required application in the list, and then click
Install. - Some applications will display a license agreement. Read the license agreement carefully, and if you agree with it, select the I agree check box and click Next >>.
- Specify whether you wish to create a hyperlink to the application and place it in the control panel.
- Specify the installation preferences and other information that may be required by the application (the requirements may vary among applications). Click Install.
- If you have chosen to create a hyperlink button inside your Plesk control panel, specify its properties:
- Type the text that will show on your button in the Button label box.
- Choose the location for your button. To place it in the right frame of your Home page, select the Domain Administration page value as the location. To place it in the left frame (navigation pane) of your control panel, select the Navigation pane value.
- Specify the priority of the button. Plesk will arrange your custom buttons on the control panel in accordance with the priority you define: the lower the number – the higher is priority. Buttons are placed in the left-to-right order.
- To use an image for a button background, type the path to its location or click Browse to browse for the desired file. It is recommended that you use a 16x16 pixels GIF or JPEG image for a button to be placed in the navigation pane, and 32x32 pixels GIF or JPEG image for buttons placed in the main frame.
- Type the hyperlink to be attached to the button into the URL box.
- Using the checkboxes, specify whether to include the data, such as domain id and domain name to be transferred within the URL. These data can be used for processing by external web applications.
- In the Context help tip contents input field, type in the help tip that will be displayed when you hover the mouse pointer over the button.
- Select the Open URL in the Control Panel checkbox if you wish the destination URL to be opened in the control panel's right frame, otherwise leave this checkbox unchecked to open the URL in a separate browser window.
- If you wish to make this button visible to the e-mail users who you granted access to control panel, select the Visible to all sub-logins checkbox.
- Click OK to complete creation.
Now the application is installed and you can insert a link to this application into the web pages of your site, for example, on your home page. Otherwise, you and your users will have to access this application by typing its URL, which can be long enough to remember.
To access the web interface of an application, do any of the following:
- Type the URL in your browser. For example: http://your-domain.com/forum/.
- Go to Home > Application Vault, and click an icon
, corresponding to the application. - If you chose to add a hyperlink button to your Plesk control panel during installation of an application, then on your Home page, click the respective button in the Custom buttons group or navigation pane.
To reconfigure an application, change the application administrator's password, or to install a license key for a commercial application:
- Go to Home > Web Applications.
- Click an icon
corresponding to the application.
To upgrade an application to a newer version (if it is available on the server):
- Go to Home > Web Applications.
- Click a corresponding shortcut in the U column.
To uninstall an application:
- Go to Home > Application Vault, and select a check box corresponding to the application that you no longer need.
- Click
Remove Selected. The application will be uninstalled and its databases removed from the server.
If you want a certain Web-application to be started when someone tries to enter a domain, it can be done by creating a default domain application.
To set an application as default for a domain:
- On your home page, click Application Vault in the Hosting group. A list of applications installed on the site will be displayed.
- Select a check box corresponding to the Site Application name you want to set as default, then click
Default. Click OK to confirm the creation of the default Site Application.
Now, when a user enters an URL in the address field of his browser (e.g. http://example.com), he is taken to the default Web-application.