Prepackaging Applications Your Customers Can Use

Plesk comes with a number of free site applications that you can choose to provide to your customers or remove from the control panel script library (referred to as application vault). You can also obtain and install commercially available applications from third-party vendors through the application portal www.apsstandard.com.

You can set usage rules for any site application you add to the vault. For example, you can make a certain free application a commercial one that will be available to your customers only if you add it to their application pools under your conditions (for instance, after you received payment). When you change a free site application into a commercial one, it is withdrawn from the application pools of all clients. Now only you can add this application to your clients' application pools when needed. When you change a commercial application into a free one, it becomes free of charge for all clients.

The following table lists applications shipped with the Plesk application vault.

Application name

Description

Link to application developer's site

AdvancedPoll

Poll management system.

http://www.proxy2.de

AnyInventory

Inventory management program.

http://anyinventory.sourceforge.net/

AutoIndex

Web site directory indexing system.

http://autoindex.sourceforge.net

b2evolution

Blog.

http://b2evolution.net

bbclone

Counter.

http://www.bbclone.de

Brim

Personal online organizer.

http://www.brim-project.org/

Coppermine

Photogallery.

http://coppermine.sourceforge.net

CSLH

Customer support.

http://www.proxy2.de

Docbase

Knowledge base management system.

http://docbase.sourceforge.net/

Drupal

Content management system and blogging engine.

http://drupal.org/

eGroupWare

Application for coordination of group activities.

http://www.egroupware.org/

gallery

Photo gallery.

http://gallery.menalto.com

geeklog

Weblog.

http://www.geeklog.net/

gtchat

Chat.

http://www.gtchat.de

ilohamail

Webmail program.

http://ilohamail.org/

Joomla!

Content management system and Web application framework.

http://joomla.org/

Miva Merchant

Online store.

http://smallbusiness.miva.com/products/merchant/mm5/

Miva Fasttrack

Online store.

http://smallbusiness.miva.com/products/merchant/ft/

Mambo

Content management system.

http://www.mamboserver.com

Mantis

Issue tracking system.

http://www.mantisbt.org/

MediaWiki

Knowledgebase and content management system.

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki

Moodle

Program for creating online education sites.

http://moodle.org/

MyOrgBook

Online organizer.

http://www.myorgbook.com

Noah's Classifieds

Classifieds system.

http://classifieds.phpoutsourcing.com/

openbiblio

Library.

http://obiblio.sourceforge.net

osCommerce

E-commerce system.

http://www.oscommerce.com

Owl

Knowledge base and documentation storage system.

http://owl.sourceforge.net

phpAdsNew (Openads)

Banner rotation management and tracking system for gathering statistics.

http://phpadsnew.com

phpBB

Forum.

http://www.phpbb.com

phpBook

Guestbook.

http://www.smartisoft.com

phpBugTracker

Bug tracking system.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpbt

phpDig

Search system.

http://www.phpdig.net

phpMyFamily

Genealogic system.

http://www.phpmyfamily.net

phpMyVisites

Web site statistics.

http://www.phpmyvisites.us/

MyPhpMoney

Personal finance management.

http://myphppmoney.sourceforge.net

PHProjekt

Application for coordination of group activities.

http://www.phprojekt.com/

PHP Surveyor

PHP Surveyor is a set of PHP scripts that interact with MySQL to develop surveys, publish surveys and collect responses to surveys.

http://phpsurveyor.sourceforge.net

phpWebsite

Content management system.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpwebsite/

phpWiki

Documentation storage and retrieval system where anyone can edit published pages.

http://phpwiki.sourceforge.net

pLog

Blog.

http://www.plogworld.net

pmachinefree

Web publishing platform.

http://pmachinepro.com/

PostNuke

Content management system.

http://www.postnuke.com

PPWSE

Plesk Professional Web Site Editor is a content management system developed by SWsoft. It is a predecessor of SWsoft Sitebuilder.

http://www.swsoft.com/en/products/plesk75reloaded/addons/ppwse/

Serendipity

Content management system and blogging.

http://www.s9y.org/

Sitebar

Bookmark server.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/sitebar

Siteframe

Content management system.

http://siteframe.org/

SMF

Online forum.

http://www.simplemachines.org/

Tellme

Network services (whois, traceroute).

http://kimihia.org.nz/projects/tellme/

TikiWiki

Content management system.

http://tikiwiki.org/

TUTOS

Work process organization tool. Includes a calendar, address manager, bug tracking system, project task management, timetracking, etc.

http://www.tutos.org/homepage/index.html

Typo 3

Content management system.

http://typo3.org

UebiMiau

Web mail client.

http://www.uebimiau.org/

WebCalendar

Calendar and schedule management system.

http://www.k5n.us/webcalendar.php

WebShopManager

The WebShopManager allows you to manage a fully functional online store from a centralized web-based administration system.

http://webshopmanager.com/

WordPress

Publishing platform (blog).

http://www.wordpress.org

XOOPS

Content management system.

http://www.xoops.org/

XRMS

Customer relations management.

http://xrms.sourceforge.net

All these packages (except for PPWSE, Miva Merchant and Miva Fasttrack) are free of charge open source applications. They are automatically added to application pools of all clients after installation of Plesk.

To view the information about the application distribution packages you have in the vault:

  1. Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane.
  2. Click the Application Vault icon in the Services group.

    All distribution packages stored in the vault are listed in the Site Application Packages group.

  3. To view the properties of a distribution package and the properties of application packages (containing application files and a suitable license key, if required) based on it, click the Expand (+) button next to the application name.

    An icon in the left column indicates whether this application is shown in the list of applications available for addition to a client's application pool:

    - the application is shown in the list of applications available for installation.

    - the application is hidden from the list of applications available for installation.

    When you no longer want to provide your customers with an application, you can choose to either remove the corresponding package from the server, or temporarily hide it from the lists of available applications without removing it from the server.

    An icon in the right column indicates the site application usage rules you defined:

    - free of charge, automatically added to the application pools of all clients.

    - commercial application, can be added to a client application pool only by you under certain conditions.

    To the right of the icon, a license key description is shown if the application requires that you purchase and install a license key. "No license key is required" means that you can use the application on your server without purchasing and installing a license key.

    The Name column displays the name of the site application.

    The Version column displays site application version.

    The Release column shows the site application release number.

    The Application packages column shows the number of created application packages (offerings containing an application and an attached license key).

    The Clients column shows the number of users using the site application.

    The Categories column shows the category to which the application belongs.

    The Description column gives a brief description for each site application.

To add a new application to the application vault and to make it available to all customers free of charge:

  1. Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane.
  2. Click the Application Vault icon in the Services group.
  3. Click Add New Application Distribution Package.
  4. Click Browse and locate your application package in .rpm, .deb, .sh or .zip format, then click OK.

    The new distribution package was added to the server application vault and the corresponding application package without a license key was created. The application is now available to all customers free of charge.

To obtain and install a commercially available application with a license key to the application vault:

  1. Visit the Application Portal at www.apsstandard.com and obtain the required applications. Obtain the license keys (or license key activation codes) from the application vendors. Save the application packages and license key files on your computer.
  2. Log in to Plesk, and go to Server > Application Vault > Add New Application Distribution Package.
  3. Click Browse and locate your application package in .rpm, .deb, .sh or .zip format, then click OK.

    The new distribution package was added to the application vault. Now you need to install a license key for the application to the license keys repository and then create an application package which will include the necessary program files and a license key.

  4. Go to Server > Application Vault > Repository of License Keys > Install a License Key.
  5. Click Browse, select a license key file in XML format or a ZIP archive containing license key files and click OK. If you received a license key activation code from the application vendor, then, to retrieve the license key by the code and to install it on the server, select the retrieve by the activation code option, type in the code, and click OK.
  6. Now return to the Server > Application Vault screen and click Create New Application Package.
  7. Select the application you need and click Next >>.
  8. Specify how this application should be provided to your customers:
  9. Select the license key you need, and click Finish.

To make a certain free application a commercial one and to add it to application pools of selected customers:

  1. Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane.
  2. Click the Application Vault icon in the Services group.
  3. Click the Expand (+) button next to the application name.
  4. Click the icon.

    Now the application was removed from application pools of all clients, and you can manually add this application to the pools of selected clients, as described in the following steps.

  5. Go to Clients > client name > Application Pool.
  6. Click Add an Application Package to Client's Pool.
  7. Select a check box corresponding to the application you need and click OK.

To upgrade an application package:

  1. Go to Server > Application Vault > Add New Application Distribution Package.
  2. Click Browse and locate the updated distribution package in .rpm, .deb, .sh or .zip format, then click OK.
  3. Go to Domains > domain name > Web Applications.
  4. Click the corresponding shortcut in the U column.
  5. Select the application version to which you want to upgrade, read the terms of the license agreement, and then click Upgrade.
  6. Repeat the steps 3 to 6 for every domain/Web site hosted on your server, or inform your customers (site owners) who use this application that they can upgrade this application to the new version. To do so, they will need to click the Web Applications icon on their home pages in Plesk, and then click a corresponding shortcut in the U column.

To remove from the application vault the applications that you do not want to provide to your customers:

  1. Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane.
  2. Click the Application Vault icon in the Services group.
  3. Select a check box corresponding to the application you want to remove and click Remove Selected.
  4. Confirm removal and click OK.

    The application distribution package was removed from the server application vault. Note that the applications already installed on users' sites are not removed.

For information about managing the repository of license keys for applications, refer to the section Managing License Keys for Applications.

If you need to install an application on a site, refer to the section Installing Applications.

In this section:

Managing License Keys for Applications