These parameters define the hosting service provided with the plan or subscription. The parameters can be found in:

• Service Plans > select a plan > Hosting Parameters tab

• Subscriptions > select a subscription > click Customize under Account on the right > Hosting Parameters tab. Additionally, some of the below parameters can be found at Websites&Domains > Hosting Settings.

  

Enable hosting

Defines whether the hosting service is actually provided with the plan.

Turn off this option to make up a service plan that provides only mail service. Subscribers of such a plan will be able to have ‘domains without hosting’ which will serve mailboxes.

Status of websites in suspended subscriptions

Defines whether sites in suspended subscriptions should be available over the Internet and which hosting services should be available for these sites.

In Plesk, a website can receive a new status in two ways:

• When the site owner or hosting provider changes the status individually for the site (in Websites & Domains > Hosting Settings of a site > Website status > Change). As long as the subscription stays active, services like mail are available for sites with any status, and these services can be managed by means of Plesk. Learn more in Website Status.

• After the subscription has been suspended. It can be suspended automatically (when its expiration date passes) or manually by the hosting provider (using the Suspend link in the subscription’s settings). The DNS and mail services are available for sites in suspended subscriptions, but cannot be managed by means of Plesk.

  The setting Status of websites in suspended subscriptions enables you to specify the status that websites will receive when their subscription becomes suspended.

Websites in suspended subscriptions can have the following statuses:

• Disabled. Disabled websites have all associated hosting services disabled. Visitors see the web server’s default page defined by the hosting provider.

  Disabled websites are no longer hosted on the server: They are excluded from the web server configuration. However, the physical directories and files of disabled websites can be accessed using FTP clients and File Manager.

• Suspended. Suspended websites do not open in browsers. Visitors are redirected with the search engine friendly 503 HTTP code to the custom maintenance page.

  Note: You can customize the maintenance page by using the Edit error page link in Customer Panel > Websites & Domains > domain name. This link is displayed only if you select the Custom error documents checkbox in the site settings in Websites & Domains > domain name > Hosting Settings. Site owners can edit the maintenance page too.

  Suspended websites remain hosted on the server, which means that the services such as mail are running and web server configuration for these websites is kept on the server.

• Active. The website works as usual.

Hard disk quota

Hard quota imposed on disk space in addition to the soft quota (set with the option Notify upon reaching). Hard disk quota will not allow writing more files to the web space when the limit is reached: users will get an “Out of disk space” error at an attempt to write files.

SSL/TLS support

SSL/TLS encryption on websites hosted within the subscription is enabled by default.

Permanent SEO-safe 301 redirect from HTTP to HTTPS

By default, all visitors to the web sites hosted within the subscription are automatically redirected from HTTP to HTTPS version of the site using the 301 HTTP status code (permanent redirect). This type of redirect is SEO-safe as search engines will index only the HTTPS version of the site, and the ranking power will not be lost (as opposed to the status code 302 - temporary redirect). Learn more about various types of redirects. When you use this option, please make sure that you have a valid SSL/TLS certificate, because browsers cache a site with a 301 redirect permanently, and if a self-signed certificate is used, the site visitors will see warning messages each time they visit the site.

Web statistics

Selects a statistics engine that will create reports on how the subscription’s websites are visited: how many people visited a site, and which web pages they viewed.

The Protect access to your web statistics with your FTP user and password option, if selected, requires the username and password of the corresponding system user to be provided to access the directory containing the web statistics files.

Custom error documents

Allows subscribers to design and use their own error pages that the web server returns with HTTP error codes.

SSH access to server shell under the subscription’s system user (Linux/Unix hosting)

Allows subscribers to upload securely web content to the server through SSH.

Scripting

Support for programming and scripting languages that should be interpreted, executed or otherwise processed by a web server: Microsoft ASP.NET framework, PHP hypertext preprocessor (PHP), Common Gateway Interface (CGI), Perl, Python, Fast Common Gateway Interface (FastCGI), Microsoft or Apache Active Server Pages (ASP), and Server Side Includes (SSI).

To learn more about adjustable PHP settings, see the section PHP Settings.

Additional write/modify permissions (Windows hosting)

This option is required if subscriber’s web applications use a file-based database (like Jet) located in the root of httpdocs or httpsdocs folder. This option grants full access permissions to a corresponding Plesk IIS user and an IIS application pool user. Note that selecting this option might seriously compromise the website’s security.

Allow web users to use scripts

Allows scripting at web pages available at URLs like http://example.com/~ <username>/<webpage>, where <username> refers to a web user.

Web users are individuals who do not need their own domain names. This service is popular with educational institutions that host non-commercial personal pages of their students and staff.

Default Database Server

Specifies default database servers of each supported type to be used within a plan. Customers will be able to create databases only on the default database servers. Note that if you disable a database server for an existing plan or subscription (the None option), the databases already used by customers will still be accessible.