Parallels Plesk Panel if compared with other available control panels (both on Windows and Linux), provides you with a more bigger business sphere to manage your Customers. Within Plesk panel you will find sections for Customers, Reseller, Subscriptions, Hosting plans and Domains.

To begin with providing hosting services to your clients first you should add your customers to your server. Below are mentioned steps for creating customer accounts in Plesk Panel:

1) Login to your Plesk control panel as an administrator using the login credentials provided by your hosting provider.

2) Look for Customers option on the left panel under Hosting services category.

3) Then on the next page you will find the option of Add new customer. Click on it.

4) On the next page you have to first enter the contact details of your client. Take care while entering the contact details of your client as these details will be required for future communication for his services. The name and email address will be the same on which the login details of his separate control panel access will be sent.

5) Under the Access to panel you will have to enter the username and password. These credentials will be of his control panel.

6) While creating a account of your customer its up to you whether you want to add a subscription/hosting account or can assign his hosting service later on. Click on Create subscription for the customer to create his hosting account.

7) Once clicked on the Create subscription for the customer some options will appear below it. Enter the desired details.

• Domain name: Enter the name of the website of your client.
• IP address: Your sever IP will appear here. Select the one that you want to assign. If you want to assign a separate IP, select one, being provided by your hosting provider.
• Username: This username will be used by your client to manage his website. emails and databases. Also can be referred to as ftp username.
• Password: Enter the password. You can check the password strength there itself.
• Service plan: Assign the hosting plan to his domain name. You can select none to assign a customized hosting plan. 

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8) Click OK.

Please note that clicking the OK button will  send the Login credentials of Plesk Panel and his subscription plan on the registered email id of your customer. If you don't wish to provide him the access to his panel then you may enter your own email id and later can send him only his subscription username and password.

Plesk Overview:

The Parallels Plesk Panel is a Web Hosting Control Panel developed and released under Plesk Inc. used by the web hosting providers and server administrators on both Windows and Linux platforms. The Plesk Panel was developed and released under the Plesk Inc. that was acquired by SWSoft, the parent company of Parallels.

Parallels Plesk Panel is designed to work as a control panel for the web hosting providers to manage their clients, websites, email accounts, databases, etc. with a web based interface. Parallels Plesk Panel is available for both Linux and Windows platforms with the ability to support Linux/Apache as well as Windows Server 2003/Windows Server 2008. Plesk panel is also available on other OS platforms like Debian, Fedora, Red Hat Linux, Suse and Ubuntu.

The latest version of Plesk Panel is 11.0 released on 13th June, 2012, provides you a very user-friendly interface to the server. It is available in Power User Mode and as a Service Provider Mode also. For a hosting provider (whether as a Hosting Reseller or a Server Administrator) the service provider mode is comfortable.

So let's start with the Creating a Hosting Plan in Parallels Plesk Panel. Follow the below steps:

1) To begin, first get your server Login credentials (url, username and password) and login using those details as a administrator or as a reseller (depending on your hosting plan). The login URL is generally provided as: https://:8443.

2) If you are currently in the Power User Mode then change the panel interface to Service Provider Mode. This you can do from your control panel itself. Just go to Tools and Settings then to the Panel Appearance and then select Interface Management. Then you can select the radio button of Service Provider View and click OK.

3) After switching to the Service Provider View look for the Service Plans on the left hand panel under the Hosting Services category and click on it.

4) After clicking on the Service Plans, on the next page you can see three tabs of Hosting Plans, Reseller Plans and Additional Services. Using the Hosting Plans you can create Hosting packages for individual Customers. From Reseller Plans you can crate Hosting packages for your Customers who prefers to sell you hosting services under their name. Additional Services let you add extra services to for your clients that are added in the extensions in the Plesk Panel.

5) On Hosting Plans page click on Add new plan and on the next page you can see the necessary fields for the resources provided with the plan. Here on this page you will find three options of Overuse. Selecting the first option will not allow your clients to exceed the allotted server resources. The second option allows them to use only disk space and traffic/bandwidth than allotted. The third option will give the liberty to your clients to use the complete server resources. This feature also found with many hosting plans as unlimited. But this is not recommended as it will let all your customers to use the server to its full extent and thus resulting in server slow-down.

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• Service plan name: Enter the name by which you want to create the Hosting Plan.
• Disk Space: Enter the desired disk space required to assign to that particular Hosting Plan. Right below this field you will find the option of notification. With this option you can get the notification of your user when he will reach a specific disk limit.  You can enter the limits in MBs, GBs or in TBs or can also select Unlimited.
• Traffic: This is the bandwidth part. Enter the desired units, you wish to specify.
• Sites with Web Presence Builder: The number of websites your client can add that is designed in Web Presence Builder.
• Domains and Mobile Sites: The number of domains that the user can add in this Hosting plan and the maximum number of Mobile websites that can be published.
• Sub-domains: The number of Sub-domains allowed to be created.
• Domain Aliases: Domain Aliases are the number of alternate domains pointing to a single website.
• Mailboxes: These are the number of email accounts that the user can create under the hosting plan.
• Mailbox size: The size of per email account.
• Total Mailbox quota: This is the size of all the email accounts allowed in the particular hosting package. You can use number of mailboxes, mailbox size and total mailbox quota collectively to assign the email facility.
• Mailing List: The number of emails allowed to send in an hour.
• Additional FTP accounts: The number of FTP accounts allowed in the package.
• My SQL Databases: Specify the limit of My SQL databases to be allowed.
• My SQL Database Quota: The size of all the Database.
• Microsoft Server SQL Database: The number of MS SQL database to be allowed.
• Microsoft Server SQL Database quota: The total size of Ms SQL Databases.
• Validity Period: If you wish to set the availability of the hosting package for a specific duration, select this option.

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6) Click on OK button.

You are finished with creating the Hosting Plan.

The above steps are the very basic configurations that you have to do while creating a Hosting Plan. Apart from these you can see more options as in Permission, Hosting parameters, php settings, mail, dns, performance, logs and statistics and applications.
 

Create Hosting Package in WHM refers to creating Web Hosting Plan that you assign to your clients after creating their CPanel Accounts in WHM. These accounts controls the level of access of the respective clients as per the features assigned to a particular package.

You can create multiple Web Hosting packages depending upon the configuration of your server and the maximum available resources(HDD, RAM, Bandwidth, etc.).

Below are the simple steps of creating Hosting Packages.

1) Open WHM in the web browser using the Login URL. The Login URL is generally as:
http://:2087

2) Login as Administrator using the credentials as sent by your Hosting provider.

3) In the left panel sear for Package and select Add Packages.

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4) Enter the required information.

•      Package name: The name by which you want to create the hosting package.

•      Disk Space Quote: The desired amount of Disk Space or Web Space that you want. It is to be mentioned in MBs.

•     Bandwidth Limit: The required Bandwidth or the Data Transfer in MBs.

•     Max FTP Accounts: The number of maximum accounts that your client can create in his  Hosting Package.

•     Max Email Accounts: The number of Email Accounts that your client can create in his Hosting Package.

•      Max Email Lists: The number of Emailing List in the Hosting package that the user is allowed to create. This is the number of Email Accounts to which your client can send emails in an hour.

•   Max SQL Databases: The number of SQL Databases that you would allow your user to create.

•   Max Sub-Domains: The maximum number of Sub-Domains allowed to the user to create on his main Domain.

•   Max Parked Domains: The maximum number of Parked Domains that the user can create. Parked domains are the alternate URLs to the primary website/domain. The parked domain will load the same contents of the main domains but in the address bar the URL shown will  be the parked domain only.

•   Max Addon Domains: Addon domains are the extra domain hosting facility. That is, if   granted the user can hosting multiple websites in his CPanel.

•   Dedicated IP: Click this option if you want to assign a separate Dedicated IP to this Hosting Package. You should have an extra IP before checking this option.

•   CGI Access: If you want your client to be able to run CGI scripts on the server then check this option.

•   Shell/SSH Access: Shell Access allows user to connect to the server using Putty. This doesn't that the user will have root level access, He will access the server using Putty but with lesser privileges.

•   Front Page Extensions: This allows you to publish your website using Microsoft Front Page. FrontPage Extensions are required supports forms, hit counters and forums.

•   CPanel Theme: Select the Theme from the drop-down.   

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5) Finally click Add.

On the next screen you will get the message: "package created . Now you can assign this package to any domain name, whether added already or while adding a new domain name.

The CPanel account is created from WHM panel. This is also referred to as 'Creating a Domain Account and Creating a Hosting Account'.
Follow the below mentioned steps to create a hosting account:



1) Open WHM in the web browser using the Login URL. The Login URL is generally as:
http://:2087.

Dedicated Server is a type of Web Hosting in which the user gets the whole server on lease from the hosting provider. Dedicated Servers are more flexible and secure as compared with Shared Hosting and Virtual Hosting(VPS) with full control over the server and enhanced security. Though in Shared Hosting and VPS you can get a good level of security and and on-demand control system but in Dedicated Serves you can define your own Security and Control System. A Dedicated Server is placed in a Datacenter similar to Server Co-location but the only difference is that Dedicated Server is owned by the hosting provider only.

Many service providers offer server management services along with the Dedicated Server but it may be chargeable. Many times it is preferred by the customer to have his own technical expertise to control and handle server issues. Dedicated Server can also be considered as your Financial Friend as your are getting the complete physical server with a fraction of cost of Virtual Private Server. For the new Web Hosts also   Dedicated Servers can prove as an profitable choice to have their own masters and start their own Hosting Business.
Though shifting towards a Dedicated Server is a subject to be taken very seriously and there are various factors to be considered before shifting towards a Dedicated Server, we will discuss it later. For now lets see what are the core benefits of Dedicated Servers that can drive you to think for Dedicated Servers:

1. Good Up-time: If you are looking for good server up-time and ready to go for it any how then Dedicated Servers will be a good experience for you. The reason this is that on a Dedicated Server you are the only player, that is, the server hardware and software is not shared by any one else and you are free to do any modifications from your end.
2. Enhanced Security: On your Dedicated Server you can install your own desired security software or application or can control the access level onto the server. Further the Firewall Setup can also be done with a VIP flavor with your own definition.
3. Privacy: On a Dedicated Server since it is not shared with any one else and have a secure and individual access you enjoy a private workstation and are not to bother with any intruder alerts and access.   
4. Good for heavy traffic: You can welcome your visitors to your Server without any botheration of server downtime and slowdown as you are equipped with fully burstable bandwidth and  memory (RAM). More concurrent users can hit your server and from business point of view you are on the 'Cloud number 9'. 
5. Big space to expand: The very important benefit of a Dedicated Server is that you can expand your server components to a high level and can get a big arena to deploy your innovations. Backups can also be scheduled and arranged on your server only with less dependency on your vendor. 
6. Reliability: Reliability in the performance of server and from your vendor point is high in Dedicated Servers as you become one of the 'Premium Customer' of your vendor and can get a better 'Service Level Agreement' against your purchase. You are assured of good response from your vendor for any server related issues and queries.