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Plesk: an overview of its features

This article is 5 years old — prices and terms may have changed.

Plesk: an overview of its features

For the Host4Biz team it matters that clients can administer their sites conveniently and as simply as possible. That calls for a capable hosting control panel, and we settled on Plesk. In this article we go through what this tool can do, what it offers, and the functionality available to all our clients.

What is a hosting control panel and why does it matter?

Hosting can be managed over FTP, over SSH, or through a panel. The third option is the simplest and most convenient. The most popular panels are:

  1. ISPmanager,
  2. cPanel,
  3. Plesk.

What is a hosting control panel for?

What are the main functions of a hosting control panel? With it a webmaster can:

  1. create mail addresses for the site;
  2. manage domains and subdomains;
  3. configure DNS records;
  4. upload the files the site needs;
  5. set up databases and FTP accounts;
  6. install and configure the scripts required.

Plesk: convenient management of hosting and sites

The first version of Plesk reached the market in the USA back in 2001. Since then the rights to it have changed hands many times, and today Plesk is a Swiss company with offices in several countries.

Plesk has been updated many times. The most recent build is called Plesk Obsidian and came out in 2020.

A huge advantage of the panel is that it is multilingual. During installation and setup you can pick whichever language suits your users, or several.

The technical parameters and capabilities of Plesk Obsidian

  1. The software is written using PHP, C and C++.
  2. It supports different versions of PHP, NodeJS, Python and Git.
  3. Integration with Docker is available.
  4. There is a built-in toolkit for SEO tasks.
  5. It works with Linux and Windows.

The main system requirements are in the official Plesk documentation.

Plesk for Host4Biz clients: getting started and the main capabilities

Let us go through the main capabilities of the Plesk interface and how to work with it.

To reach the panel, go to the Shared hosting section and choose the site you want to work on through Plesk.

You can also sign in to Plesk with the separate login and password you receive by email when you register on our site.

This is what the main Plesk menu looks like:

It holds everything needed to administer a site:

  1. data on the websites and domains being managed (how many depends on the plan you chose);
  2. the mail account;
  3. add-ons and extensions;
  4. the file manager;
  5. a tab for working with databases;
  6. traffic and disk space statistics;
  7. account settings;
  8. tools for working with WordPress;
  9. SEO services.

We have made sure you can get started quickly. The panel is already installed and configured for everyone who has ordered WordPress hosting or ordinary shared hosting.

Websites and domains

This section holds most of the functions and information you will be working with. Here you can:

  1. Open a website or see its preview. Some tasks call for going back to the site quickly to check that it renders correctly.
  2. Track how much disk space has been used.
  3. Track the site's traffic statistics.
  4. Manage the files on the site.

You will find every main directory of the chosen site straight away. There is also a handy way to search files by name, and buttons for the standard file operations. In other respects the file manager is a standard one, and anyone who has worked with hosting before will find their way around it easily.

5. Databases

This section holds the functionality for creating and managing databases and for exporting and importing data. The same tab also sets up database backups.

6. SSL certificates

7. The antivirus menu

For scanning sites we chose the Imunify antivirus. It detects most known kinds of threat and lets you remove them.

8. The firewall

Functionality for protecting a site against DDoS attacks. Here you can set one of three modes:

  1. off;
  2. alert only;
  3. alert and block.

This part of the menu also lets you create the security rules the firewall will work by.

9. PHP settings and version

This shows which PHP version the site runs on. If the PHP build is out of date it can be updated. Other site settings are made here too — but it is better to change them only if you are an advanced user.

10. Site logs

Here you will find a full breakdown of the site's logs. They show the main events and the visits of search bots to your pages. Analysing the logs will reveal the site's problems: if search bots are not reaching your priority pages, for instance, you will see it and can put the situation right.

11. WordPress Toolkit

This gathers the tools for working with WordPress. In this window you can set up automatic updates for plugins and the theme. Server-side caching and several other useful functions are switched on and off here as well. The same place will create a backup and restore the site from one if you need to.

11. SEO Toolkit

A very useful addition to Plesk. It has tools for:

  1. auditing the technical state of a site;
  2. monitoring positions for chosen keywords;
  3. tracking competitors.

Plesk's own course on using the SEO Toolkit is available here too.

Conclusions

We have introduced you to all the main functions of the Plesk hosting control panel. Among its advantages people single out how capable it is and how easy it is to learn. If you are used to other interfaces, adapting to Plesk will not take long. You can also install add-ons yourself if you wish — but we recommend doing so only with some experience behind you, and after consulting our support specialists, who are always ready to help.