Becoming Familiar with Parallels Plesk Panel

Parallels Plesk Panel is a hosting automation solution that gives you full control over the managed Web hosting servers and simplifies setup and management of user accounts, Web sites, and e-mail accounts.

Parallels Plesk Panel effectively lowers the threshold for non-technical users to log in and self administer their virtual host account on your Web server.

User accounts hierarchy of Parallels Plesk Panel is limited to five user levels:

• Server administrator account.
• Reseller accounts. These accounts are created for the customers who need to resell hosting services and host their own Web sites.
• Client accounts. These accounts are created for the customers who do not need to resell hosting services, but need to host Web sites.
• Domain administrator accounts. These accounts can be created to allow access to the Parallels Plesk Panel for site administrators. One domain administrator account per one site.
• E-mail user accounts. These accounts can be created to allow access to the Parallels Plesk Panel for e-mail users.

Parallels Plesk Panel also allows site owners to host personal Web pages or small sites called Web users' personal pages. However, these accounts are considered sub accounts and are not given access to the control panel.

Now let's log in to the control panel and perform initial configuration steps:

1. Log in to the Parallels Plesk Panel as administrator.

   Open your Web browser, and in the address bar, type your server's IP address. Parallels Plesk Panel requires that you access the control panel using a secure SSL connection, so you need to use the https prefix and specify the port 8443 to access the user interface. For example, https://192.168.10.10:8443, where 192.168.10.10 is your server's IP address.

   Note: After you set up a host name for your server, you will be able to access your Parallels Plesk Panel by host name instead of IP address.

   Click through the SSL warning and type the user name "admin" and the default password "setup" into the Username and Password boxes, respectively. If this is your first login to the control panel, use the default password "setup". Click Log In.

2. Accept the license agreement. Note that if you run Parallels Plesk Panel inside a Virtuozzo container, and the Offline management mode is switched off in the Virtuozzo Power Panel, then this license agreement is not shown.

   Read the terms of the License Agreement and, if you agree to all the terms, select the I agree to the terms of this license agreement and Do not show it again check boxes. Click Accept.

3. Specify the following:
   1. Under Preferences, specify the full host name for your server. This is a three-part name without WWW prefix, for example, host.example.com.
   2. Under Default IP Address, select the primary IP address that you would like to use on your server.
   3. Under Shared IP Addresses, specify which of the available IP addresses should be used for hosting Web sites. Select an IP address and click Shared >>.

      You can skip this step and define the type of IP addresses later (Home > IP Addresses).

   4. Under Administrator's Preferences, enter the new password and confirm it in the New password and Confirm password boxes. The password can have up to 14 symbols. Note that the password is case sensitive.
4. Click OK.
5. Fill in administrator's contact information.
6. Click OK.

The control panel opens and you see the administrator's Home page. It provides shortcuts to the most frequently performed operations.

The top banner area provides access to the following functions:

• My account. This is where you can select a language and theme for your control panel and change your contact information.
• Switch user. This is where you can switch between user accounts. This shortcut is shown only when single sign-on technology is enabled on the server.
• Log out. This is where you close your session when you have finished working with control panel.

The navigation pane on the left provides access to the following sets of functions:

• Search area. Use it when you need to find user accounts and domains hosted on your server.
• Home. This is where you start working with the control panel. Most of the operations you might need to perform are accessible from this area.
• Resellers. This is where you perform operations on reseller accounts. Resellers can use hosting services and resell the services to end users. Resellers cannot create reseller accounts for other users. You can accomplish the following tasks from this area of the control panel:
  • Create, modify, remove user accounts for resellers and their customers (referred to as clients).
  • Create, modify, remove reseller account templates.
  • View traffic usage reports.
• Clients. This is where you perform operations on user accounts. Clients are end users of hosting services; they cannot resell hosting services. You can accomplish the following tasks from this area of the control panel:
  • Create, modify, remove user accounts.
  • Create, modify, remove user account templates (referred to as client account templates).
  • View traffic usage reports.
• Domains. This is where you perform operations on Web sites. You can accomplish the following tasks from this area of the control panel:
  • Add Web sites (set up DNS zones, configure Web hosting settings and resource usage limits), modify Web hosting settings, remove Web sites.
  • Create, modify, remove Web site hosting templates (referred to as domain templates).
• Applications. This is where you select which applications will be available for installation on users' sites.
• Settings. This is where you configure and manage the server and program components used by Parallels Plesk Panel.
• Modules. This is where you manage the additional modules that extend Parallels Plesk Panel capabilities, such as Firewall, Game Server, VPN, and others.
• Master. This shortcut gives you access to centralized management of Parallels Plesk Panel-enabled servers.
• Global Account. This shortcut appears in your Parallels Plesk Panel when the single sign-on capabilities are switched on on the hosting server. Single sign-on technology allows you to log in to different Parallels products using a single global login name and password. This shortcut is used for changing the global login settings.
• Help Desk. This is the help desk system integrated with your control panel. You can use it to view and solve the problems reported to you by your customers.
• Help. Provides context sensitive help with search function.

To see information about a tool or an item on the page, hover the cursor over an item, without clicking it, and a small hover box appears with supplementary information regarding the item being hovered over.

If you install the Sitebuilder component and configure it as described in the Parallels Plesk Panel 9 Administrator's Guide, section Enabling Integration with Sitebuilder, the following shortcuts are also shown in your control panel's navigation pane under the Sitebuilder Administration group:

• Desktop. This provides shortcuts to the task-oriented wizards. Here you can perform any operations on your account and Web sites through the Sitebuilder system. For more information, see http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.5.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/using_desktop_interface.htm.
• Users. Here you can add and manage user accounts and service plans for your customers. For more information, see http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.5.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/signing_up_customers.htm.
• Sites. Here you can add and manage sites. For more information, see http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.5.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/managing_sites.htm.
• Server. Here you can view and manage the following system settings:
  • Trial Sites Settings. Here you can configure settings for trial sites created by your prospective customers. For more information, see http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.5.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/setting_up_sitebuilder_wizard_for_anonymous_visits.htm
  • Branding. Here you can configure the logo and title setting for your prospective customers. For more information, see http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.5.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/setting_up_logo_and_title_bar_text.htm
  • Notifications. Here you can configure settings for notifications sent by Sitebuilder to your users. For more information, see http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.5.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/configuring_email_message_sent_at_trial_site_publishing_attempt.htm.
  • Modules. Here you can view the list of available modules. For more information, see http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.5.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/viewing_and_configuring_sitebuilder_wizard_presets_and_modules.htm.
  • Page Sets. Here you can view the list of available page sets. For more information, see http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.5.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/viewing_and_configuring_sitebuilder_wizard_presets_and_modules.htm.
  • Site Families. Here you can view the list of available templates that combine design templates and page sets. For more information, see http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.5.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/viewing_and_configuring_sitebuilder_wizard_presets_and_modules.htm.

The main working area on the right provides access to the tools available for the current section of the control panel selected in the navigation pane. Additional operations are accessible from drop-down menus that open when you click group titles.

To navigate through Parallels Plesk Panel, you can use a path bar: a chain of links that appears in the right part of the screen, below the banner area.

To the right of the path bar, there are Favorites and Visited Pages menus. The Visited Pages menu keeps the shortcuts to the recently visited control panel screens. These shortcuts are added automatically. The Favorites menu keeps the shortcuts to the screens that you manually add to favorites. For information about working with shortcuts in the Favorites menu, see the Parallels Plesk Panel 9 Administrator's Guide, section Customizing Your Home Page.

To return to a previous screen, use the shortcuts in the path bar, or the Up Level icon in the upper-right corner of the screen.

When changing settings for a user account, domain name, or e-mail account, you can quickly select another user account, domain name, or e-mail account whose settings you also want to change. To do this, click a small arrow icon located to the right of the user name, domain name, or e-mail address.

This will open a list of user accounts, domain names or e-mail addresses that you can select.

To sort a list by a certain parameter in ascending or descending order, click on the parameter's title in the column heading. The order of sorting will be indicated by a small triangle displayed next to the parameter's title.

Now proceed to the following chapter and set up your server.