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## Becoming Familiar with Plesk's Interface

When you log in to the Plesk Control Panel, it shows your Home page with shortcuts to the operations you frequently perform.

<Home page screenshot>

The right part of the Home page, your working area, shows the following sections:

- Tools. This group shows shortcuts to the operations that you can perform through the control panel. You can freely add and remove these shortcuts, as described in Customizing Your Control Panel's Home Page.
- Statistics. This shows the number of domains you have under your account, disk space and monthly bandwidth usage, and number of mailboxes on your hosted domains.
- Favorites. This group shows four types of shortcuts sorted by type and placed on the respective tabs. The Clients tab shows shortcuts to your favorite clients.The Domains tab shows shortcuts to your favorite domains. The Mail Accounts tab shows shortcuts to the favorite e-mail accounts. The Shortcuts tab shows all other types of shortcuts that do not relate to domains and e-mail user accounts. The Recent tab shows last ten control panel screens you have been on. The Favorites group also provides search tool for finding domains and e-mail accounts. To use the search tool, type the search criteria (this can be any combination of symbols, search is case insensitive) and click Search.

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

- 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.
- 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, configure hosting settings and resource usage limits), modify hosting settings, remove Web sites
  - Create, modify, remove Web site hosting templates (referred to as Domain templates)
- Sessions. This is where you can monitor and close connections to the Control Panel and FTP accounts.
- Global Account. This shortcut appears in your Plesk Control 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.
- Log out. Use this to close your sessions when you have finished working with the Control Panel.
- Help Desk. This is the help desk system integrated with your Control Panel. If you see this shortcut in the navigation pane, then it is likely that your provider uses it; so you can use it to report your problems to provider's technical support staff.
- Help. Provides context sensitive help.

Below the Help shortcut, there is a context help tip area. It provides a brief description of the current screen or available operations. When you place the mouse pointer over a system element or status icon, it displays additional information.

If your hosting plan includes the Web site creation and management service using Parallels Plesk 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/4.0.0/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/4.0.0/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/4.0.0/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/4.0.0/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/4.0.0/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/4.0.0/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/4.0.0/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/4.0.0/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/4.0.0/doc/reseller/en_US/html/viewing_and_configuring_sitebuilder_wizard_presets_and_modules.htm.

Also, on every domain management screen of your Plesk control panel, the Sitebuilder Wizard button is shown (Home > domain name > Sitebuilder Wizard). You should use it for accessing the Sitebuilder Web site creation and management wizard. For more information, refer to the section Creating and Publishing Web Sites Using Sitebuilder.

To navigate through Plesk, you can also use a path bar: a chain of links that appears in the right part of the screen, below the banner area. To return to a previous screen, use the Up Level icon in the upper-right corner of the screen.

To find items in lengthy lists, use search boxes located above every list of items: type a search criterion into the input box, and click Search. A list will show the items matching the search criteria. To return back to viewing all items, click Show All.

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.