Parallels Plesk Panel Versions

The currently supported Parallels Plesk Panel versions are:

• Parallels Plesk Panel 11
• Parallels Plesk Panel 10
• Parallels Plesk Panel 9

Lifecycle Policy:

• A major version is defined as any change in the first number of the version number. For example, Plesk 9 and Plesk 10 are different major versions whereas Plesk 10.2 and 10.3 are not different major versions.
• Parallels will always provide software patches and accept technical support requests for the latest Parallels Plesk Panel major version and the immediately preceding major version.
• Each major version will be fully supported for at least a period of four (4) years after release.
  • Extended Support: After this 4 year period, the product will no longer be available for new purchases and will continue to receive patches only for critical issues. This will last for a period of six (6) months.
  • End-of-Life: Once the Extended Support period is over, the product will no longer receive further development and technical support requests will no longer be accepted.
• In order to ensure stable operation, it is required to be on the latest update / patch within a major version. For example, this means the latest 9.5.x version in the Plesk 9 series, the latest 10.4.x in the Plesk 10 series, or the latest 11.0.x in the Plesk 11 series.
• Support for a particular instance is also dependent on using a currently supported operating system. This policy is described in the relevant section below.
• Even for unsupported instances, Parallels will continue to accept technical support requests that are related to updating to a supported version or environment.

The below tables describe when specific versions of Parallels Plesk Panel will enter the Extended Support phase and when patches / support will no longer be available for them. If affected by one of the below dates, customers are encouraged to upgrade to a supported Parallels Plesk Panel version.

Version Lifecycle Dates:

How to Create a Great Website

If you want your business to be a success you must have a website, otherwise you’re missing out on a huge audience.

However any old website won’t do – it must be a usable one. So with that in mind, here are some practical tips to get you started.

1. Don’t delay.

Don’t hang around: buy your domain name now if you haven’t already and put up a holding page to let people know you’re developing the site. Get the basic bones of the site up and running and then develop it as you go along. This way you’ll build an audience right from the very beginning.

2. Focus on appealing to your ideal customers.

Do you know who your customer is? All successful websites are built on this knowledge. Keep it simple and focus on providing them with exactly what they need. Know who you are aiming to connect with before you start building the site so you are heading in the right direction.

3. Invest in a web designer to create your website.

It might be tempting to do everything yourself, but expert designers are experts for a reason. They know how to appeal to your target audience and build the website so it is easy to navigate and use. You’ll also get a much better quality website in a shorter amount of time than it would take you to create one yourself.

4. Minimise your use of images.

Images and graphics do have a place on a website. However they shouldn’t dominate the text, because ultimately people will visit your website for information rather than images. Using too many of them can also lead to a much slower loading website, and that could send some people elsewhere when they want their information quickly.

5. Make sure the site works with all browsers and screen sizes.

If you hire a web designer they’ll do this for you – taking another headache out of your list of things to do. Your site might look great for someone using Firefox but it may not appear properly for someone using another browser. You want it to look its best at all times so people don’t give up and go elsewhere.

6. Make sure you are easy to get in touch with.

A key part of developing your website is to make sure all your contact details are included. It is incredible how many people forget to do this. Make sure the information is easy to access from all parts of the website too. If someone wants to get in touch but can’t find the required information, they’ll go elsewhere.

7. Entice people to come back by letting them know what’s coming in the near future.

This is another good way to pique people’s interest. Perhaps you have a new product or service coming soon. Promote it and get people to come back for a closer look in the near future. Announce a forthcoming blog post or a new web page focusing on a new area of your business for example.

8. Link to and from your website.

You don’t want to link to competitor’s sites, but you can link to sites that provide more information on your work or business. Furthermore it is a good idea to create quality links from other sites back to your own. This can be done through promoting your website as positively and consistently as you can.

9. Submit your website to web directories.

This is one of the best ways to get indexed in the search engines as quickly as you can. While the search engines will find your site eventually, you want them to know where you are without delay. The sooner your site can be found, the sooner you will start getting traffic. Don’t forget to contact web indexers either, to ensure the URL of your website is listed in all the right places.

10. Provide strong navigation and a good linking structure.

Have you ever found yourself on a website and lost track of where you are? If you have you’ll know how important good navigation is. Make sure you provide a good linking structure between pages. Again, this is something a good quality web designer can help you with. Ensure your visitors can always find their way back to the home page or to other parts of the website.

As you can see, there are a number of techniques you can use to make sure your website is strong, easy to navigate and welcoming to your visitors. The better your website is, the more likely it is people will come back and visit again and again.

Re: How we deal with SPAM for email forwarding

We have changed the way we deal with spam for all emails managed by our parked domain services. External services such as Google/Gmail, Hotmail, AOL are constantly tightening their incoming email requirements and so in an effort to minimise false positives further, we have applied the following features:

1) We have modified the score for Spam Assassin to eliminate false positives.

2) We have activated Spam Assassin for all emails. This includes incoming mail for mailboxes, out going mail for mail boxes and emails forwarded to external destinations.

3) Email determined to be SPAM by Spam Assassin is no longer quarantined but will continue to be forwarded (or delivered if you have a Mailbox) with the addition of the text “[SPAM]” added to the subject header.

4) The Spam Assassin headers will remain intact for all forwarded email. This will show the receiving mail server that we have already evaluated the email and marked the score. The receiving mail server may perform additional checks.

5) Google’s Gmail policy states that even if email arrives that they determine is spam, it will still be delivered as long as the text “SPAM” is included in the email subject header. See Best practices when forwarding to Gmail for more information.

6) These changes are only relevant to parked domain services (microlite1) and are not relevant to our Plesk hosting services.

If you see an email with [SPAM] in the subject header this just means that this MAY be spam, it is down to you to decide as it is impossible to know for sure on an automated basis. Other than the subject header change the email will be treated normally as with any other email. The modification of the subject header will ensure that all emails are delivered to your external services.

As always, if you have any questions do not hesitate to contact the support teams.

Re: Use BASH to delete files older than so many minutes

When working with temporary files it is often good housekeeping to clear (delete) files older than a specific number of minutes. Use the following in bash command to achieve this goal:

# find /tmp/file* -type f -mmin +65 -delete

The above command will delete all files older than 65 minutes. Modify as appropriate.

Re: ImageMagick on a Plesk Server

ImageMagick is not installed on your Plesk server by default. However, the installation is quite simple using the yum repositories and packages.

# yum install gcc
# yum install ImageMagick
# yum install ImageMagick-devel
# yum install php-pear
# yum install php-devel
# pecl install imagick
# echo "extension=imagick.so" > /etc/php.d/imagick.ini
# service httpd restart

To test it is working, try the following:

# php -i | grep imagick
imagick
imagick module => enabled
imagick module version => 3.0.1
imagick classes => Imagick, ImagickDraw, ImagickPixel, ImagickPixelIterator
imagick.locale_fix => 0 => 0
imagick.progress_monitor => 0 => 0

This output confirms that the imagick.so module is operating and active. That completes this ImageMagick installation tutorial, we hope you found it useful.

Re: Forwarded emails not arriving, no bounce message

Many free email services such as Gmail, AOL, Hotmail (and ISPs) are constantly tightening up their spam systems and are being increasingly particular about which emails they allow in to their system.

If you find that forwarding email to one of these addresses is simply ‘disappearing’, ie. no bounce message then you can be safe in assuming that your email alias (address) is temporarily blocked from the target mail system.

Why does this happen?

Let’s assume you are doing all the right things. ie Your SPF record is correctly set, your MX records are correct.

When forwarding emails from your parked domain name, you are also forwarding SPAM to your destination email address. If you send enough SPAM messages then you will block your own alias. Often the block is only in place for a limited time, for example 24 hours. Then it will start working again and once you have forwarded enough SPAM the block is re-applied. Does this sound like the problem you are experiencing?

What can you do?

• If you are receiving SPAM to your forwarding alias then try a new alias. This will be a suitable solution until you again start receiving SPAM to this new alias.
• Try to keep your alias names as unexposed as possible to reduce the SPAM sent to them.
• Create a Mailbox for your alias. The Mailbox will receive 100% of emails sent to it.
• Do not use forwarding aliases for important or mission critical applications, use a Mailbox.

Re: Backup Manager Not Working in Plesk

If you get the following message when trying to run a backup in Plesk using the Backup Manager then it is likely that a previous upgrade or installation of the Backup Manager did not complete and so there will be some missing tables.

0: common_func.php3:206
db_query(string 'select `value` from `BackupsSettings` WHERE `param` = 'backup_ftp_settinghost' AND `id` = 6 AND `type` = 'domain'')
1: common_func.php3:253
db_query_ex(string 'select `value` from `BackupsSettings` WHERE `param` = '?(paramName)' AND `id` = ?(objectId) AND `type` = '?(objectType)'', array)
2: BackupFTPRepositorySettings.php:205
BackupFTPRepositorySettings->getRepositorySettingsValue(string 'backup_ftp_settinghost')
3: BackupFTPRepositorySettings.php:43
BackupFTPRepositorySettings->init()
4: BackupFTPRepositorySettings.php:25
BackupFTPRepositorySettings->__construct()
5: BackupFTPRepositorySettings.php:283
BackupFTPRepositorySettingsDomain->__construct(integer '6')
6: client.domain.backup.php:8
plesk__client__domain__backup->getBackupFTPRepositorySettings()
7: backup.ftp-repository.php:35
__backup__ftp_repository->getDumpsStorageCredentials()
8: backup.ftp-repository.php:29
__backup__ftp_repository->getRepositoryList()
9: backup.abstract-repository.php:44
__backup__abstract_repository->accessItemsList(string 'GET', NULL null)
10: backup.abstract-repository.php:26
__backup__abstract_repository->accessItem(string 'GET', NULL null)
11: UIPointer.php:596
UIPointer->access(string 'GET')
12: plesk.php:38

The Plesk Backup Manager needs the following tables in the PSA database:

• BackupsSettings
• BackupsScheduled
• BackupsRunning

Execute the following SQL in phpMyAdmin to create the missing tables:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `BackupsSettings` (
`id` int(10) unsigned default NULL,
`type` enum('domain','client','server') NOT NULL default 'domain',
`param` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
`value` varchar(255) character set utf8 default NULL,
UNIQUE KEY `index1` (`id`,`type`,`param`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `BackupsScheduled` (
`id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
`obj_id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
`obj_type` enum('server','reseller','client','domain') NOT NULL,
`repository` enum('local','ftp') NOT NULL default 'local',
`last` datetime default NULL,
`period` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
`active` enum('true','false') NOT NULL,
`processed` enum('true','false') NOT NULL,
`rotation` int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
`prefix` varchar(255) character set utf8 default NULL,
`email` varchar(255) character set utf8 default NULL,
`split_size` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
`suspend` enum('true','false') NOT NULL default 'false',
`with_content` enum('true','false') NOT NULL default 'true',
`backup_day` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
`backup_time` time NOT NULL default '00:00:00',
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=17 ;

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `BackupsRunning` (
`sessionId` varbinary(250) NOT NULL,
`param` varchar(250) character set ascii NOT NULL,
`val` varbinary(255) default NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`sessionId`,`param`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

This will resolve the problem, the Backup Manager will now work correctly!

Re: Site Blacklisted in Google because of Malware

Ok, so you have cleaned up the malware on your website but find that your site is still blacklisted by Google and you are too impatient to wait for Google to automatically re-scan your website. Then it’s time for you to request a review directly to Google.

This is required if you want to quickly remove your site from Google’s blacklist. Once you submit the request, it’ll take just a few hours to complete the review and remove the warning if your site is clean. Without the request, it may take

The request does two important things:several days before your site’s status is cleared.

1) It tells Google that the owner of the site is aware of the problem and has already taken action to remove malicious content. This shifts the odds in your favour when they make decisions after ambiguous results of scans.

2) It puts the site on a priority list (it should be scanned within 24 hours)

Don’t be afraid to request the review even if you are not sure that your site is completely clean. If any security issues are detected during the review, they will be reported in your Webmaster Tools account. Then you can fix them and request another review.

Blacklisted sites are not removed from search results (they are just labeled as potentially harmful), so you only need to remove the warning.

You can request a review of your site using Google Webmaster Tools:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

More information about the review process is available in Google’s Webmaster Help Center.

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=45432

Re: Blank page or 500 Internal Server error

The problems are caused by your code failing. A blank page is usually a PHP error so checking your PHP error_log within your Plesk panel will provide causes as to what the problem is. Usually the best course of action is to re-upload your website or restore from a recent backup.

A 500 internal server error is usually related to a scripting issue using CGI or Perl scripts. Again, this means the script is unable to execute and this generic error which does not give much away means you need to check your scripts or simply upload / restore to your last working copy.

Both of these errors means a quick call to your web designer or just restore from your latest backup in the Backup manager (You do take backups right?!)

Re: Plesk SSL Location, Where does Plesk store the SSL cert files?

The Plesk Migration Manager does not migrate any stored SSL certificates, you will need to perform this task manually.

/usr/local/psa/var/certificates

In the event of server failure or migration, you can backup the SSL certificates in their raw format and transfer them to the new server.

Still waiting for DNS propagation after 24 hours? It might help to clear your local DNS cache.

Google Chrome:

Navigate to chrome://net-internals/#dns and press the “Clear host cache” button

Internet Explorer:

1) Launch Internet Explorer.
2) Click “Tools” then “Delete Browsing History.”
3) Uncheck “Preserve Favorites website data,” and ensure that “Cookies,” “History” and “Temporary Internet Files” are checked, and then click “Delete.”

Flush your DNS cache on Windows PCs:

Click “Start,” “Run,” type “cmd” into the run text box and then click “OK.”
Type “ipconfig /flushdns” into the command prompt and press “Enter.”

All domain names parked with UK Cheapest have free access to many resources such as email forwarding, web redirection, DNS management and much more. So there are many reasons why you should park your domain names with us.

Which domains are automatically parked?

If you register a domain name and have not purchased a web hosting service for that domain name during the checkout process then your domain name is considered parked.

What does this mean? It means that your domain name has not been pointed to any specific hosting server and so it is connected to the domain parking server MICROLITE1.COM thus enabling all the services that we provide with all customer parked domain names.

Troubleshooting non-working parked domains

There are situations where your parked domain name may have stopped working or where your domain name was previously hosted and now you want it parked. In these cases there are a number of steps to the process to ensure that your domain name is parked properly.

Has your domain name expired?

If you domain name has suddenly stopped working and you have not made any changes to the domain name servers or DNS records recently then your domain name may have expired. Check the expiry date in the Public WHOIS or contact Live Support and ask them to check for you. Renew your domain if necessary.

Is your domain name connected to the parking server?

For your domain name to be parked it must be pointing to the parking name server using the correct name servers. Again, view your name server settings by viewing the the Public WHOIS record, you should see the name servers set as follows:

Name servers:
ns.microlite1.com
ns2.microlite1.com

If your name servers are not set to MICROLITE1.COM as above then your domain name is not pointing to the parking server. Login to your Domain Control Panel or ask Live Support to modify your name servers accordingly. Note that any name server change that you make are subject to a 24 hours propagation delay.

Has your domain name been registered for more than 24 hours?

If you domain name is a recent registration then you must allow time for the domain to register and for the new DNS zone to fully propagate the global internet. For .uk domain names you can expect results within 24 hours however for global .tlds such as .com you need to allow up to 72 hours.

Is your DNS zone present and active?

The fact that you have reached this far means that it probably is not active. There are a few reasons that this may be the case. The most common is that you have pointed your domain name to the parking name servers but the DNS zone has not been created for this domain.

To confirm whetjer your DNS Zone is active visit IntoDNS and run a report on your  domain name.

Ask Live Support to create/recreate your domain DNS zone. The only other problem is that your DNS zone is not valid – possibly after a recent change to your records. Again, ask Live Support to reset your DNS zone as new and re-apply your DNS record modifications carefully. 24 hour Propagation delay rules apply.

DNS can be tricky – let us help you

Remember you can ask Live Support to apply your DNS changes, simply copy+paste the instructions you received from your new host and our support teams will assist with the modifications.

To parse PHP code inside a .html file you will need to a create a .htaccess file in your document root directory /httpdocs and insert the following code:

RemoveHandler .html .htm
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .htm .html

You will need to ensure that PHP is running as Apache, to check  this in Plesk you will need to login to your client account, select the domain name and go to Web hosting settings.

Re: validity period of domain, validity period is prolonged, extend the validity period

If you get this message then do not worry about the expiry of your domain name or hosting account. This message relates to the period you applied when you added the domain name to your Plesk panel.

The messages usually contain:

• validity period of domain
• validity period is prolonged
• extend the validity period

This problem occurs if you missed out Step 12 in “How to add a domain to multi-domain hosting“.

To resolve, simply log in to your Plesk control panel, select the appropriate domain name, go to Resource Usage and ensure that the “Expiration date” is set to “Never Expires“.

Re: Search doesn’t work in AtMail, AtMail search returns no results

AtMail is a great webmail application that has a high level of functionality, an attractive looking interface and many useful integrated features.

One of these feature includes a bug that causes the “Search” function to return no results for any search!

To fix it, you need SSH Root access to your dedicated server console. If you want to get down and dirty, edit the following two lines:

Change Line 364: $before = "$BeforeDay-$BeforeMonth-$BeforeYear";
Change Line 369: $after = "$AfterDay-$AfterMonth-$AfterYear";


Alternatively, run the following two SED commands and the lines containing the bugs will be automatically fixed.

# sed 's/20$BeforeYear/$BeforeYear/g' /var/www/atmail/search.php > /var/www/atmail/search.php.new
# sed 's/20$AfterYear/$AfterYear/g' /var/www/atmail/search.php.new > /var/www/atmail/search.php
# rm -f /var/www/atmail/search.php.new


Happy searching!