Prepackaging Applications Your Customers Can Use

You can install applications on the server and make them available to your customers for use on their sites. You can add a new application to the application vault by uploading it to your Parallels Plesk Panel server from your local storage or from the application catalog. The application catalog is a publicly accessible Web site where independent software vendors can publish their applications packaged according to the APS standard, and where you can download published applications through Parallels Plesk Panel.

You can set usage rules for any Web application you add to the vault. You can make an application available to all, or available only to selected users.

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

  1. Go to Home > Application Vault.

    All application packages stored in the vault are listed in the Web Application Packages group.

    There are two icons next to the application name. The left icon denotes the following:

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

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

    The icon in the right column denotes the Web application usage rules you defined:

    shared app - available to all; the application is automatically added to the application pools of all users.

    not-shared app - available only to selected users; the application can be added to a user's application pool only by you.

    The Users column shows the number of users using the Web application.

  2. To sort applications by category, select the category you need from the menu located next to the search box.

To add a new application to the application vault by uploading it from your local storage:

  1. Go to Home > Application Vault.
  2. Click Add Application from Local Storage.
  3. Click Browse and locate your application package in .rpm, .sh or .app.zip format, then click OK.
  4. To automatically distribute the application to all resellers and clients with unlimited amount of installations, select the Make application available to all users check box.

To add new applications to the application vault by downloading them from the applications catalog:

  1. Go to Home > Application Vault.
  2. Do any of the following:
  3. To automatically distribute the selected application to all resellers and clients with unlimited amount of installations, select the Make selected applications available to all users check box.
  4. Click Add to Vault.

    You are taken back to the Application Vault page, where you can see the information about the applications addition progress.

To restrict the use of an application and to add it to application pools of selected customers:

  1. Go to Home > Application Vault.
  2. Click the shared app icon next to the application name.

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

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

To make an application available to all users and to add it to application pools of all customers:

  1. Go to Home > Application Vault.
  2. Select check boxes corresponding to the applications you want to make available to all customers and click shared app Make Selected Available to All Users.

    Now the applications were added to application pools of all resellers and clients.

To update an application package:

  1. Go to Home > Application Vault.
  2. Click Check for Updates.
  3. To view available updates, search for an application or search within all applications: in the Web Applications group, click the Show Search shortcut to open the search area, select the Show updates only check box, and click Search.
  4. Click the View updates available link corresponding to the application you want to update.

    Patches and new versions are displayed.

  5. Click the desired version number.

    The pop-up window with the selected version description opens.

  6. Click Add to Vault.

    You are taken back to the Application Vault page, where you can see an information message about scheduling applications and a progress message showing the applications addition progress.

  7. Go to Domains > domain name > Web Applications.
  8. Click the corresponding shortcut in the U column.
  9. Select the application version to which you want to upgrade, read the terms of the license agreement, and then click Upgrade.
  10. 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 Parallels Plesk Panel, 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. Go to Home > Application Vault.
  2. Select a check box corresponding to the application you want to remove and click Remove.
  3. 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.

To switch to another application catalogue :

  1. Go to Home > Application Vault.
  2. Click Preferences.
  3. Specify the catalog URL in the Catalog address field.
  4. To make the catalog show you all actual versions, select the Show full list of versions for every application retrieved from catalog check box.
  5. Click OK.

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

Note: The following information applies only to Windows hosting.

Certain applications (for example, Counter-Strike Game Server) cannot be installed on individual sites, operating on the server level instead.

To view the list of available server-wide applications:

  1. Go to Home > Application Vault > Server Applications.
  2. Click Add New Server Application.

OR

  1. Go to Home > Application Vault > Server Applications Repository.

To install a server-wide application:

  1. Go to Home > Application Vault > Server Applications.
  2. To specify which application you wish to install, select a radio button corresponding to the application of your choice.
  3. Click Install.
  4. Specify the installation preferences and other information that may be required by the application (the requirements may vary among applications). When finished, click Install.

To remove a server-wide application:

  1. Go to Home > Application Vault > Server Applications.
  2. Select the corresponding check box and click Remove.
  3. Confirm the removal and click OK.