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### Simplifying Setup of Domains and Web Sites

If you are going to serve numerous users with a sizeable number of domains, you may want to create hosting configuration presets, referred to as domain templates, that will that will simplify setting up hosting accounts for new domains and web sites. The templates cover all resource usage allotments, permissions and limits that you can define for a hosting account, plus mail bounce and Web statistics retention settings.

To create a domain template:

1. Go to Domains > Domain Templates.
2. Click Add Domain Template.
3. Specify the template name in the Template name field.

   During setup of a new hosting account, you will be prompted to select the required template by its name. Therefore, we recommend that you choose a meaningful name that corresponds to one of your hosting plans or describes the amount of allotted resources. For example, Mail hosting, 1GB disk space, 500 mailboxes.

4. Specify the domain-wide mail bounce options in the Mail section:

   When somebody sends an e-mail message to an e-mail address that does not exist under your domain, the mail server on your domain accepts mails, processes it, and when it finds out that there is no such a recipient under your domain, it returns the mail back to sender with the "this address no longer accepts mail" notice. You can choose to:

   - change the default notice if you do not like it (leave the Bounce option selected and type another message into the input box),
   - forward undelivered mail to another e-mail address (select the Catch to address option and specify the e-mail address you need), or
   - reject mail without accepting it (select the Discard option). This setting can decrease mail server load caused by a large amount of spam, which is often directed at randomly generated user names. However, for spammers this can somewhat speed up scanning your mail server for valid e-mail addresses.
5. Choose the required WebMail client software in the WebMail menu to enable the ability to read mail through a browser-based WebMail application for users of mailboxes in this domain. If you don't want to provide this ability, select None.
6. Specify the limits for the template in the Limits section:
   - Maximum number of domain aliases. Specify the number of domain aliases that can be used for this domain.
   - Maximum number of subdomains. Specify the number of subdomains that can be hosted under this domain.
   - Disk space. Specify the total amount of disk space allocated to a hosting account associated with the domain. This amount is measured in megabytes. It includes disk space occupied by all files related to this domain/web site: web site contents, databases, applications, mailboxes, log files and backup files. This is the so-called soft quota: when it is exceeded, domain names and web sites are not suspended automatically, only the appropriate notices are sent to your and your provider's e-mail addresses and the resource overage is indicated by the icon shown in the control panel to the left of the domain name (see the list of domain names on your Home page). And then it is up to you to decide what to do with the domain. You can notify the domain owner and suspend the domain/web site after a grace period until you receive the payment or upgrade the hosting plan for your customer (see the Managing User Accounts section for more information).
   - MySQL databases quota and Microsoft SQL databases quota. Specify the maximum disk space amount that MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server databases respectively can occupy on a domain.
   - Maximum amount of traffic. Specify the amount of data in megabytes that can be transferred from the web site during a month. Once the limit is reached, the appropriate notices are sent to your and your provider's e-mail addresses and the resource overage is indicated by a corresponding icon shown in the control panel to the left of the domain name (see the list of domain names on your Home page). When a web site starts attracting more visitors and requires more bandwidth, consider upgrading a hosting plan (see the instructions on upgrading hosting plan below).
   - Maximum number of web users. Specify the number of personal web pages that the domain owner can host for other users under his or her domain. 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.
   - Maximum number of additional Microsoft FrontPage accounts. Speficy the maximum number of additional Microsoft FrontPage accounts that can be created on a domain.
   - Maximum number of additional FTP accounts. Speficy the maximum number of additional FTP accounts that can be created on a domain.
   - Maximum number of MySQL databases and Maximum number of Microsoft SQL Server databases. Specify the maximum number of MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server databases respectively that can be hosted on a domain.
   - Maximum number of mailboxes. Specify the number of mailboxes that can be hosted in a domain.
   - Mailbox quota. Specify the amount of disk space in kilobytes that is allocated to each mailbox in a domain.
   - Total mailboxes quota. Specify the total amount of disk space available for all mailboxes on a domain.
   - Maximum number of mail redirects. Specify the number of mail redirects that can be used in a domain.
   - Maximum number of mail groups. Specify the maximum number of mail groups that can be used in a domain.
   - Maximum number of mail autoresponders. Specify the number of automatic responses that can be set up in a domain.
   - Maximum number of mailing lists. Specify the number of mailing lists that the domain owner can run in a domain. To allow the use of mailing lists, you should also put a check mark into the Mailing lists check box under the Preferences group.
   - Maximum number of Java applications. Specify the maximum number of Tomcat Java applications and applets that the domain owner can install in a domain.
   - Maximum number of shared SSL links. Specify the maximum number of subdomains (including their parent domain) that can link to the Master SSL domain defined by the server administrator.
   - Maximum number of ODBC connections. Specify the maximum number of ODBC connections that can be set up on a domain.
   - Validity period. Specify the term for a hosting account. At the end of the term, the domain/web site will be suspended, its Web, FTP and mail services will no longer be accessible to the Internet users, and domain owner will not be able to log in to the control panel. Hosting accounts cannot be automatically renewed, therefore, in order to bring the hosted domain name/web site back to operation, you will need to manually renew the hosting account: on your Home page, click the domain name your need, click Limits, specify another term in the Validity period box, click OK, then click Switch On in the Domain group (Home > domain name).
7. Select the required log rotation options in the Switch on log rotation section.

   All connections to the Web server and requests for files that were not found on the server are registered in log files. These log files are analyzed by the statistical utilities running on the server, which then present graphical reports on demand. If you need to view the contents of these raw log files for debugging purposes, on your Home page, click the domain name you need, click Log Manager, and then click the log file name you need. To prevent these log files from growing too large, you should enable automatic cleanup and recycling of log files:

   1. Select the Switch on log rotation check box.
   2. Specify when to recycle log files.
   3. Specify how many instances of each log file to store on the server.
   4. Specify whether they should be compressed.
   5. Specify whether they should be sent to an e-mail address after processing.
8. Specify additional settings in the Preferences section.
   1. Mailing lists. Select this checkbox to enable the ability to create and manage mailing lists on the domain.
   2. Traffic statistics retention. Specify the number of months during which the bandwidth usage statistics should be kept on the server.
9. In the DNS field specify whether the DNS server on your Web host should act as a master (primary) or slave (secondary) name server for the domain name zone. A primary name server stores locally the zone file it serves, while a secondary server only retrieves a copy of this file from the primary. You would normally leave the Master option selected.
10. If you are going to host not only domain names, but also web sites, select the Physical hosting check box and specify the hosting features:
    - Hard disk quota. In addition to the soft quota, you can specify the so-called hard quota that will not allow writing more files to the web space when the limit is reached. At attempt to write files, users will get "Out of disk space" error.
    - SSL support. Secure Sockets Layer encryption is generally used for protecting transfer of sensitive data during online transactions on e-commerce Web sites that run on dedicated IP addresses. SSL certificates that participate in the encryption process are usually applied to a single domain name on a single IP address, therefore, each site that needs SSL protection must be hosted on a dedicated IP address. An exception to this is subdomains, which you can protect with a wildcard certificate. Installing an SSL certificate on a Web server that hosts several web sites with different domain names on a single IP address (shared or name-based hosting) is technically possible, however, it is not recommended: the encryption will be provided, but users will get warning messages on attempt to connect to the secure site. To allow SSL encryption for Web sites, select the SSL support check box.
    - SiteBuilder support. SiteBuilder is an efficient and user-friendly WYSIWYG web site editor running through the web interface. Leave the Publish site with SiteBuilder checkbox selected to give domain administrator the ability to access SiteBuilder and build web site through their Plesk control panel interface by clicking SiteBuilder Wizard on the domain management page or clicking the Desktop shortcut in the SiteBuilder Admin navigation pane group. The version of SiteBuilder coming in the standard Plesk distribution is fully functional and its use is not limited in any way by the manufacturer (but you can be restricted from accessing it by your service provider).
    - Microsoft FrontPage support. Microsoft FrontPage is a popular web site authoring tool. To enable publishing and modifying the site through Microsoft FrontPage, select the Microsoft FrontPage support and Microsoft FrontPage over SSL support check boxes, and set the Remote Microsoft FrontPage authoring option to allowed.

      Note. Microsoft FrontPage over SSL support is available only when SSL support is enabled on a domain.

    - Support for programming and scripting languages widely used in development of dynamic Web sites and server-side Web applications. Specify which of the following programming and scripting languages should be interpreted, executed or otherwise processed by the web server: Active Server Pages (ASP), Active Server Pages on .NET framework (ASP.NET), Server Side Includes (SSI), PHP hypertext preprocessor (PHP), Common Gateway Interface (CGI), Fast Common Gateway Interface (FastCGI), Internet Server Application Programming Interface (ISAPI), Perl, Python, ColdFusion and Miva scripting required for running Miva e-commerce solutions.

      Note. You can change the version of ASP.NET and PHP you want to use in the corresponding drop-down menu. You can also specify the mode for running PHP applications - CGI, FastCGI or ISAPI.

    - Web statistics. To allow you to view the information on the number of people visited the site and the pages of the site they viewed, select a module in Web statistics drop-down menu and select the accessible via password protected directory /plesk-stat/ checkbox, if required. This will install the selected statistical software module, which will generate reports and place them into the password protected directory. The domain administrator will then be able to access Web statistics at the URL: https://your-domain.com/plesk-stat/ using their FTP account login and password.

      Note. If domain administrator changes the FTP credentials, web statistics access credentials do not change. The original login and password specified upon the domain creation should always be used for accessing password-protected web statistics directory.

    - Custom error documents. When visitors coming to site request pages that the web server cannot find, web server generates and displays a standard HTML page with an error message. To give domain owner the ability to create their own error pages and use them on a web server, select the Custom error documents checkbox.

      Note. You can enable the support for all programming and scripting languages, web statistics and custom error documents at once by selecting All services checkbox in the Services group.

    - Additional write/modify permissions. This option is required if customer's web applications are using a file-based database (like Jet) located in the root of `httpdocs` or `httpsdocs` folders. Please note that selecting this option might seriously compromise the web site security.
    - Use dedicated IIS application pool. This option enables the use of dedicated IIS application pool for web applications on a domain. Using dedicated IIS application pool dramatically improves the stability of domain web applications due to worker process isolation mode. This mode gives each web site hosted on the server the possibility to allocate a separate process pool for execution of its web applications. This way, malfunction in one application will not cause stopping of all the others. This is especially useful when you are using shared hosting package.
    - Maximum CPU use. To limit the amount of CPU resources that domain's IIS application pool can use, clear the Unlimited checkbox and provide a number (in percents) in the field.
11. Performance. To avoid excessive usage of bandwidth, which can lead to resources overage, you can set various performance limitations for a domain.
    - Maximum network use. To limit the maximum speed (measured in KB per second) that a domain can share between all its connections, clear the Unlimited checkbox and provide a number (in kilobytes) in the field.
    - Connections limiting. To limit the maximum number of simultaneous connections to a domain, clear the Unlimited checkbox and provide a number in the field
12. Click OK to complete creation of a template.

    During setup of a hosting account for a new domain/web site, you will select the required template and the hosting account will be created and allocated the resources and hosting services you defined.

To reflect the changes in your domain templates that will apply to the newly created accounts:

1. Go to Domains > Domain Templates.
2. Click the template name corresponding to the domain template you wish to update.
3. Modify the settings as required and click OK.

   Note that modifying templates does not affect the existing domains and web sites.

To remove a template that you no longer need:

1. Go to Domains > Domain Templates.
2. Select a check box corresponding to the template you no longer need.
3. Click Remove Selected. Confirm removal and click OK.