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The blog is relocating to devblog.plesk.com. Hope to see you there soon and share more tips and insights with you.

How to schedule Plesk updates to night hours?

Some may be worried that Plesk updates (or other periodical tasks of Plesk) occur during their business hours at their machines. The exact time of running these scripts is defined at /etc/crontab file of your OS, i.e.:

#> cat /etc/crontab
...

# run-parts
37 * * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
17 0 * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.daily
4 0 * * 0 root run-parts /etc/cron.weekly
15 5 10 * * root run-parts /etc/cron.monthly

In my case all daily routines would launch at 12:17 am (00:17), but on other systems this time may be different and you would need to adjust it according to your preferences. 

One of probable reasons is that OpenVz and Parallels Virtuozzo Containers would randomize  cron schedules for better balance between multiple containers.

Wildcard subdomains in Plesk

Sometimes it may be useful to have a site catching all possible subdomain names of your domain. Like a.domain.com, b.domain.com, whatever. Apache web server supports wildcard names such as "*.domain.com", but until recently it required some work with Plesk internal configuration files (i.e. /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/conf/vhost.conf or /home/httpd/vhosts/domain.com/conf/vhost.conf) and thus wasn't available for no-shell-access users.

Since Plesk 10.4 it became much easier. Simply go to your control panel, find "Websites & Domains" tab, click "Add subdomain" and put "*" (asterisk) in the name field. You'll get wildcard subdomain.

How to make Plesk mail user with control panel access (UI)?

Some would complain creating mail user with control panel access in Plesk 10 is complicated and requires double work. Generally this would be quite easy action if the one proceeds with creating a user, rather than mailbox:

This way the one would get a mailbox and control panel user with aligned login and password. And no double-work is involved.

While availability of opposite direction (create User for Mailbox) would make it definitely more convenient, for most practical needs this solution should be sufficient. The key to understanding this approach would be the fact that Plesk 10 makes stricter separation between Mailbox (POP3/SMTP/IMAP access) and User (Control Panel access).

UPD: An easier solution of mail user problem is suggested in Plesk 11.5 

Plesk 10.4 - brief video overview

Something lost and found - brief video overview of Plesk 10.4 new features:

Mail hosting in Plesk 10. Hide "Users" tab.

It has been a blocker for many businesses to run mail hosting on Plesk 10 since its release in 2010. The core issue was that each User of Plesk could see a list of others - though good for Users of the same organization, it is not the case for mail hosting:

That has been solved in Plesk 10.2 - see http://kb.parallels.com/en/111131 for how to eliminate "Users" tab for mail users. Since "Users" tab is hidden now, a password change can be accessed in user profile (click by user's login name in the top bar):