General hosting settings

Foreword

The hosting settings of a Plesk subscription define the technical basis for the operation of a website. This overview covers central configuration areas: the hosting type, security-related options, scripting functions and statistics settings.

Prerequisites

Plesk server

Localization in Plesk

Navigate to the Websites & Domains overview in the Plesk Control Panel and select the Hosting and DNS → Hosting tab of the subscription to be customized.

Domain settings

Customize domain name

In the screenshot, the domain name of the corresponding subscription can be customized under item 1.

Please note that you are interfering with one of the most basic mechanisms in web hosting, so that the A and AAAA entries of the domain must resolve to the IPv4 and IPv6 addresses of your Plesk server. Otherwise, your visitors may receive a certificate error message and, after ignoring it, the login screen of your Plesk Control Panel.

Customize hosting type

Under Item 2 in the screenshot, you can select the hosting type, which includes the types website, redirect and no web hosting.

Please note that changing the website type deletes the website data and the subscription logs completely and irrevocably. Plesk also warns you again before the change.

Website

As the name suggests, this enables the delivery of a website under a preferred domain (with or without www prefix, or none). A document root must also be specified for this type, which is relative to the Plesk subscription path.

In the file system, each subscription is located under: **/var/www/vhosts/your-domain.tld** By default, the document root is set to the httpdocs subfolder in Plesk.

The document root is the directory whose content can be accessed by visitors to your website. Shopware, for example, stores this data in the directory named **public**, which means that if the web application such as Shopware 6 has been installed in the httpdocs directory, the root directory httpdocs/public must be configured.

Forwarding

For a redirect, you can specify a domain or URL to which visitors to the domain should be redirected in the Direct visitors to text field. A permanent redirect (301), temporary redirect (302) or frame redirect can be selected here.

Caution must be exercised with the permanent redirect (301), as many browsers store these very specifically in the cache and cannot be easily removed by the user. As a result, your visitors may no longer be able to access your website correctly even after correcting the redirect type if they have accessed the corresponding domain during the permanent redirect.

No web hosting

No web hosting can be used here if a domain is used exclusively for sending e-mails.

SSL/TLS support

Under Item 3 in the screenshot, you can activate or deactivate the encryption of data traffic with HTTPS by ticking the box. With the option Redirect visitors from HTTP to HTTPS via an SEO-friendly 301 redirect, visitors are automatically redirected from HTTP to HTTPS via a permanent redirect (301). In the multiple selection for Certificates, you can choose between SSL certificates in the subscription's repository, see Installing the SSL certificate.

Webspace settings

The system user name and its password for the subscription can be defined in item 1. The user specified there is therefore also the owner of the files in the subscription in the file system itself. The password set serves as authentication for subsequent logins via SSH or SFTP.

Further information on the system user can be found in the article System user.

SSH access

SSH access in Item 2 is set to Forbidden by default, so that a shell must be selected in the multiple selection for successful access via SSH, FTP or the su command.

The most common shell is **bash**, so that **/bin/bash** or **/usr/bin/bash** can be selected here.

IP addresses

Point 3 controls the IPv4 and IPv6 addresses used for the subscription. By default, only the IPv4 address is set here, so the IPv6 addresses should also be set for the greatest possible compatibility.

All WAN IP addresses available on the server are displayed in the multiple selection if you have obtained several WAN IP addresses for your server.

Please make sure that a necessary DNS record of the RR type AAAA exists and that it resolves to the IPv6 address specified there, otherwise the Plesk Control Panel page will also be called.