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## Signing Up New Customers for Your Hosting Services

This chapter focuses on client accounts that you will create for your customers.

If you need to create a domain administrator's account for a site, assign permissions and allocate resources, see the section Setting Up Hosting Account for a Web Site.

If you need to create an e-mail user account, see the section Creating Mailboxes.

To accommodate a new customer:

1. Go to Home > Clients group title menu > Create Client Account.
2. Specify the contact and billing information. Contact name, login name and password are mandatory fields.
3. If you have predefined user account templates, you can select the template you need from the Create user account based on a template menu. If you did not create any custom template, then the default template will be used.
4. Click Next >>.
5. Specify the following items:
   - Overuse policy. Specify what should be done when disk space and monthly bandwidth (traffic) allotments are exceeded. We recommend setting this option to Overuse is allowed. Otherwise, the user account and user's sites will be blocked when the resource limits are exceeded. Also, leave the option Notify the client about reaching the resource limits selected. When the resource limits are reached, Parallels Plesk Panel will send a notice by e-mail.

     Note: The overuse policy does not apply to the limits set on size of mailboxes (mailbox quota). Therefore, even if you enable overuse, be sure to allocate enough disk space to mailboxes.

   - Disk space. Specify the total amount of disk space in megabytes that is allocated to the customer. It includes disk space occupied by all files related to user's domains (Web sites): Web site contents, databases, applications, mailboxes, log files and backup files.
   - Traffic. Specify the amount of data in megabytes that can be transferred from the customer's Web sites during a month.
   - Domains. Specify the total number of domain names (Web sites) your customer 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 customer will be able to host.
   - Domain aliases. Specify the total number of additional alternative domain names that the customer will be able to use for his or her Web sites.
   - Web users. Specify the total number of personal Web pages that your customer 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.
   - Microsoft FrontPage accounts (available only for Windows hosting). Specify the maximum number of additional Microsoft FrontPage accounts that the customer can create on his or her domains.
   - FTP accounts (available only for Windows hosting). Specify the maximum number of additional FTP accounts that the customer can create on his or her domains.
   - Mailboxes. Specify the total number of mailboxes that the customer 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.
   - Total mailboxes quota. Specify the maximum amount of disk space in megabytes that can be allocated to all mailboxes in a domain.
   - Mail forwarders (also referred to as redirects). Specify the total number of mail forwarders to a single recipient that the customer can set up.
   - Mail groups. Specify the total number of mail forwarders to multiple recipients that the customer can set up.
   - Autoresponders. Specify the total number of automatic responses that the customer can set up.
   - Mailing lists. Specify the total number of mailing lists that you customer can host on the server. To provide users with mailing lists, you should install the GNU Mailman software.
   - MySQL databases and Microsoft SQL server databases. Specify the maximum number of MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server databases respectively that the customer can host under his or her domains.
   - MySQL databases quota and Microsoft SQL databases quota. Specify the maximum disk space amount in megabytes that MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server databases respectively can occupy on a domains belonging to the customer.
   - ODBC connections (available only for Windows hosting). Specify the total number of ODBC connections that the customer 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 customer 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 customer can allocate among his or her domains.
   - Shared SSL links (available only for Windows hosting). Specify the total number of shared SSL links that the customer can use on his or her domains.
   - Expiration date. Specify the term for a hosting account. At the end of the term, all customer's domains (Web sites) will be suspended, its Web, FTP and mail services will no longer be accessible to the Internet users, and the user 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: Click the Clients shortcut in the navigation pane, click the client name you need, click the Resource Usage icon (in the Statistics group), specify another term in the Expiration date box, click OK, then click the Unsuspend shortcut (Clients > client name > Unsuspend).
6. Click Next >>.
7. Specify the operations that the customer will be able to perform through his or her control panel:
   - Access to control panel. Specify whether the customer will be able to access the control panel for managing his or her account and sites.
   - Domain creation. Specify whether the customer will be able to set up hosting accounts for new sites.
   - Physical hosting management. Specify whether the customer will be able to set up hosting accounts, modify hosting account features and switch on or off support for programming and scripting languages.
   - Hosting performance settings management. Specify whether the customer 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 customer 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 access to the server over SSH or Remote Desktop. Specify whether the customer will be able to access the server shell through Secure Shell (for Linux hosting) or Remote Desktop (for Windows hosting) protocols.
   - Hard disk quota assignment. Specify whether the customer will be able to assign hard quotas on disk space for his or her Web sites.
   - Subdomains management. Specify whether the customer will be able to set up additional sites under his or her domains.
   - Domain aliases management. Specify whether the customer will be able to set up additional alternative domain names for his or her Web sites.
   - Log rotation management. Specify whether the customer will be able to adjust the cleanup and recycling of processed log files for his or her sites.
   - Anonymous FTP management. Specify whether the customer 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 (available only for Windows hosting). Specify whether the customer will be able to create and manage additional FTP accounts.
   - Task scheduling. Specify whether the customer will be able to schedule tasks in the system. Scheduled tasks can be used for running scripts or utilities on schedule.
   - Limits adjustment. Specify whether the customer will be able to change resource allotments for his or her own account and sites.
   - DNS zone management. Specify whether the customer will be able to manage the DNS zones of his or her domains.
   - Java applications management. Specify whether the customer 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 customer will be able to use spam filter provided by the SpamAssassin software.
   - Antivirus management. Specify whether the customer will be able to use server-side antivirus protection for filtering incoming and outgoing mail.
   - Ability to use remote XML interface. Specify whether the customer 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 customer will be able to use Sitebuilder for creating and editing his or her Web site.
   - IIS application pool management (available only for Windows hosting). Specify whether the customer will be able to manage his or her IIS application pool.
   - Web statistics management. Specify whether the customer will be able to manage Web statistics for his or her domains.
   - Additional write/modify permissions management (available only for Windows hosting). Specify whether the customer will be able to manage additional write/modify permissions for his or her 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 customer will be able to manage shared SSL for his or her domains.
   - Home page management. Specify whether the customer will be able to customize his or her Home page.
   - Ability to select a database server. Specify whether the customer will be able to select a database server of each type for creating his or her databases, not only use the default database server.
   - Data backup and restore functions. Specify whether the customer 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 local repository check box, to allow the customer to use an arbitrary FTP server for storing backups, select the remote (FTP) repository check box.
8. Click Next >>.
9. Allocate IP addresses to the customer. Select the addresses you need from the Vacant IPs box and click Add >>. Keep in mind that e-commerce site hosting customers need dedicated (exclusive) IP addresses: one dedicated IP address per one site.
10. Click Finish.

You can now send the URL to control panel and login credentials to your customer.