Adding Reseller Accounts for Hosting Resellers
To accommodate a new reseller:
- Go to Home > Accounts group title menu > Create Reseller Account.
- Specify the contact and billing information. Contact name, login name and password are mandatory fields.
- If you have predefined user account templates, you can select the template you need from the Select template menu.
- If the Sitebuilder Web site creation and management service is installed on the server, leave the Create a corresponding user account in Sitebuilder check box selected.
- Click Next >>.
- Specify the following settings:
- Overuse and overselling. Specify whether the reseller will be able to sell more resources to the customers than his or her hosting plan actually provides. Overselling is a marketing strategy based on the following scheme: a reseller, who was allotted, for example, ten gigabytes of disk space, allocates five gigabytes of disk space for each of his or her customers, assuming that none of them will actually use all of their allocated disk space. When the amount of disk space used by reseller's customers exceeds reseller's disk space allotment (ten gigabytes in our example), two things can happen depending on the overuse policy selected for this reseller account. If overuse is allowed for this reseller, then the reseller will have to pay overage charges and upgrade his or her hosting account to accommodate the increased needs of his or her customers. If overuse is not allowed for this reseller, all Web sites and user accounts of this reseller's customers will be suspended which can lead to customer dissatisfaction and complaints since customers did not actually exceed their own limits. Due to this, it is not generally recommended to allow overselling for reseller accounts. If you want to allow overselling for a reseller account, it is recommended to also allow overuse for this account..
- Disk space. Specify the total amount of disk space in megabytes that is allocated to the reseller. It includes disk space occupied by all files related to user accounts and sites: Web site contents, databases, applications, mailboxes, log files and backup files.
- Traffic. Specify the total amount of data in megabytes that can be transferred from the reseller's Web sites during a month.
- Clients. Specify the total number of user accounts that the reseller can create for his or her customers.
- Domains. Specify the total number of domain names (Web sites) that the reseller will be able to host on the server. This includes Web sites hosted on this server, and domain forwarders that point to Web sites hosted on other servers. Domain aliases (additional domain names for a site hosted on this server) and subdomains are counted separately and are not limited by this resource type.
- Subdomains. Specify the total number of subdomains that the reseller will be able to host.
- Domain aliases. Specify the total number of additional alternative domain names that the reseller will be able to use for his or her Web sites.
- Web users. Specify the total number of personal Web pages that the reseller can host for other users under his or her domains. 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. See the Hosting Personal Web Pages section for details.
- FrontPage accounts (available only for Windows hosting). Specify the maximum number of additional Microsoft FrontPage accounts that the reseller can create under his or her domains.
- FTP accounts (available only for Windows hosting). Specify the maximum number of additional FTP accounts that the reseller can create on his or her domains.
- Mailboxes. Specify the total number of mailboxes that the reseller can host on the server.
- Mailbox quota. Specify the amount of disk space in kilobytes that is allocated for storing e-mail messages and autoresponder attachment files to each mailbox in a domain.
- Mail redirects. Specify the total number of mail forwarders that the reseller can set up.
- Mail groups. Specify the total number of mail groups that the reseller can set up.
- Autoresponders. Specify the total number of automatic responses that the reseller can set up.
- Mailing lists. Specify the total number of mailing lists that the reseller can host on the server.
- Total mailboxes quota (available only for Windows hosting). Specify the total amount of disk space in megabytes available for all mailboxes on all domains belonging to the customer.
- Databases (available only for Linux hosting). Specify the total number of databases that the customer can host on the server.
- MySQL databases quota and Microsoft SQL databases quota (available only for Windows hosting). Specify the maximum disk space amount in megabytes that MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server databases respectively can occupy under domains belonging to the reseller.
- MySQL databases and Microsoft SQL server databases (available only for Windows hosting). Specify the maximum number of MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server databases respectively that the reseller can create under his or her domains.
- ODBC connections (available only for Windows hosting). Specify the total number of ODBC connections that the reseller can use on his or her domains.
- ColdFusion DSN connections (available only for Windows hosting). Specify the total number of ColdFusion DSN connections that the reseller can use on his or her domains.
- Java applications. Specify the total number of Java applications or applets that can be hosted on the server.
- IIS application pools (available only for Windows hosting). Specify the total number of dedicated IIS application pools that the reseller can allocate between his or her domains.
- Shared SSL links (available only for Windows hosting). Specify the total number of shared SSL links that the reseller can use on his or her domains.
- Expiration date. Specify the term for a hosting account. At the end of the term, all reseller's sites and sites of the reseller's customers will be suspended, their Web, FTP and mail services will no longer be accessible to the Internet users, and the users will not be able to log in to the control panel. Accounts cannot be automatically renewed, therefore, in order to bring the hosted domain names (Web sites) back to operation, you will need to manually renew the user account: go to Resellers > reseller's name > Resource Limits, specify another term in the Expiration date box, click OK, then click the Switch On icon in the Tools group (Resellers > reseller's name).
- Click Next >>.
- Grant the required permissions to the reseller (if you created this user account without using a reseller account template):
- Access to control panel. Select this to allow the reseller to access the control panel for managing his or her account, users accounts, and sites.
- Client account creation. Select this to allow the reseller to create user accounts.
- Domain creation and Physical hosting management. Select these two options to allow the reseller to set up hosting accounts for new sites, modify hosting account features and switch on or off support for programming and scripting languages.
- Hosting performance management. Specify whether the reseller will be able to limit bandwidth usage and number of connections to his or her Web sites.
- PHP safe mode management (available only for Linux hosting). Specify whether the reseller will be able to switch the PHP safe mode off for his or her sites. By default, PHP is configured to operate in safe mode with functional restrictions. To learn more about PHP safe mode, refer to http://php.net/features.safe-mode. Some Web applications may not work properly with safe mode enabled: If an application on a site fails due to safe mode, switch the safe mode off by clearing the PHP 'safe_mode' on check box in the hosting account properties (Domains > domain name > Web Hosting Settings).
- Management of shell access to server (available only for Linux hosting) or System access management (available only for Windows hosting). Specify whether the reseller will be able to access the server shell through Secure Shell or Remote Desktop protocols, however, allowing access to the server also poses a potential threat to the server security.
- Hard disk quota assignment. Specify whether the reseller will be able to assign hard quotas on disk space for his or her own Web sites and for Web sites of his or her customers.
- Subdomains management. Specify whether the reseller will be able to set up additional sites under his or her domains and allow his or her customers to do so.
- Domain aliases management. Specify whether the reseller will be able to set up additional alternative domain names for his or her Web sites and allow his or her users to do so.
- Log rotation management. Specify whether the reseller will be able to adjust the cleanup and recycling of processed log files for his or her sites.
- Anonymous FTP management. Specify whether the reseller will be able to have an FTP directory where all users could download and upload files without the need to enter login and password. A web site should reside on a dedicated IP address in order to use anonymous FTP service.
- FTP accounts management (only for Windows hosting). Specify whether the reseller will be able to manage additional FTP accounts for Web sites.
- Scheduler management. Specify whether the reseller will be able to schedule tasks in the system. Scheduled tasks can be used for running scripts or utilities on schedule.
- Limits adjustment. Limits adjustment. Specify whether the reseller will be able to adjust resource allotments for his or her Web sites and user accounts. You must select this option, otherwise the reseller will be able to set up new user accounts and Web sites only by means of user account and domain templates predefined by the server administrator.
- DNS zone management. Specify whether the reseller will be able to manage the DNS zones of his or her domains.
- Java applications management. Specify whether the reseller will be able to install Java applications and applets on Web sites through the control panel.
- Mailing lists management. Specify whether the customer will be able to use mailing lists provided by the GNU Mailman software.
- Spam filter management. Specify whether the reseller will be able to use SpamAssassin spam filter and customize filtering settings.
- Antivirus management. Specify whether the reseller will be able to use server-side antivirus protection for filtering incoming and outgoing mail.
- Ability to use remote XML interface. Specify whether the reseller will be able to remotely manage his or her Web sites through custom applications. The XML interface can be used for developing custom applications integrated with Web sites, which could be used, for instance, for automating setup of hosting accounts and provisioning of services for customers purchasing hosting services from a site. To learn more about using Parallels Plesk Panel's XML interface (also referred to as Parallels Plesk Panel API RPC), refer to the documents: http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/Plesk9.0/Doc/en-US/plesk-9.0-api-rpc-guide/index.htm and http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/Plesk9.0/Doc/en-US/plesk-9.0-api-rpc/index.htm.
- Ability to use Sitebuilder. Specify whether the reseller will be able to use Sitebuilder for creating and editing his or her Web sites.
- IIS application pool management (available only for Windows hosting). Specify whether the reseller will be able to manage his or her IIS application pool.
- Web statistics management. Specify whether the reseller will be able to manage Web statistics for his or her Web sites.
- Additional write/modify permissions management (available only for Windows hosting). Specify whether the reseller will be able to manage additional write/modify permissions for their domains. These permissions are 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. - Shared SSL management (available only for Windows hosting). Specify whether the reseller will be able to manage shared SSL for his or her Web sites.
- Home page management. Specify whether the reseller will be able to customize his or her Home page.
- Ability to select a database server. Specify whether the reseller will be able to select a database server of each type for creating his or her databases, not only use the default database server.
- Allow backing up and restoring data and use. Specify whether the reseller will be able to use the control panel's facilities to back up and restore his or her sites. To allow storing backup files on the server, select the Server repository check box. To allow the reseller to use an arbitrary FTP server for storing backups, select the Personal FTP repository check box.
- Click Next >>.
- Allocate IP addresses to the user: select IP addresses and click Add >>.
- Click Finish.
You can now send the URL to control panel and login credentials to the reseller.