It is important to keep your eye on your resources when you have a dedicated hosting plan so that you know when and if something is about to or has gotten out of hand.  Here I hope to give you a few handy tips when it comes to monitoring your site resources and statistics in Plesk.

First thing you need to do is login to your Plesk control panel, and click on Limits.  As you can see Limits displays the resource limits allocated to your account.  It lists such details as:

• Maximum Number of Subdomains
• Disk Space
• Bandwidth
• Maximum Amount of Traffic
• Maximum Number of Web Users
• and more…

Now click on Up Level at the top of the Limits window for your domain, and click on Report.  The Report will show you all account resource limits & usage, as well as users and a full list of all available scripts, utilities and resources.

FTP Stats will show you a history of FTP activity on your site – both in upload as well as download. 

Traffic History will display information on traffic usage by Months and Years on your dedicated hosting account.  To view the detailed traffic statistics used by various services at the domain, click on the Traffic button.  The page will open displaying the traffic usage table.  You can send a copy of the report to an e-mail address you specify too at the bottom of the Report screen.  You can also set up a schedule for automatic delivery of the reports. 

The last detail about monitoring dedicated resources inside of Plesk is the Web Statistics Preferences screen.  From here you can set some of the preferences that will dictate the display of refers in your stats.

Now you should be a little more handy when it comes to stats and resources inside of your Plesk control panel via your dedicated web hosting account.

This is how you manage Crontabs and use the Crontab Manger in Plesk on your dedicated hosting account.  Crontab will allow you to automatically run scheduled tasks on the server, and if selected, receive automatic emails showing the results.

First step would be to login to Plesk, and then go down to the Crontab icon and click it.  Next, you will need to select the name of the user for whom you wish to manage the crontab.  You can also setup crontab messages to be sent to your e-mail address.

To get the task setup, click on the “Add New Task” icon under your Crontab tasks page.  On the next page you should see a web page that reads “Editing the Crontabs tasks of yourusername”.  Enter the specific parameters to set the frequency of the task.  Enter * to select all.

Now under command, you will enter the path to the fill that will execute the crontab.  Once that is done, hit the OK button and you have finished creating your first crontab on your dedicated hosting account using Plesk.

One of the first rules of security they teach you is to have a good password and to change it often.  If you have Plesk installed as your control panel of choice on your dedicated hosting plan this is how you would get that done.

First, login to Plesk and then click on "Domain Administrator".  From there, you will get All of your domain’s preferences as they are seen by Plesk.  The boxes you are looking for are labeled:

• New Password
• Confirm Password

Type your new password into the "New Password" text box.  Make it a 6-8 alpha-numeric combination, and it should not include your user name or anything else that would easily be guessed.  Type it again in the Confirm Password text box and then scroll down the page till you see the OK button.  Click it and you are done.

To change your FTP password, go back to the main Plesk start page and click on "Setup" under "Hosting".  Again make sure it is a 6-8 alpha-numeric combination.  Type it into the New FTP Password and Confirm Password boxes and then scroll down and hit the OK button yet again. 

Now your Plesk powered dedicated account has a fresh set of new passwords and is a ‘bit more secure than it was before.

Any great web site out there, especially those on a dedicated sever, need to have an equally as great backup plan.  Thankfully if you are using Plesk, this is an easy process to step through.

First thing you need to do is login to your Plesk control panel, and then click on the "Back up" icon.  You can then backup locally or remotely.  For convenience, you can enter your FTP details and store them for future sessions.  To do so, click on FTP Account Properties and then fill out all the blanks, giving Plesk your FTP information to remember.  Now that you have that done lets backup our files.  Click on Create Backup on the main Backup page, and then you should see a screen labeled Backup file creation.

Now click on the backup method, either local, download or remotely on an FTP server.  You can also create a multivolume backup from here too.  Now under FTP settings, you should see that everything has been filled out for you.  Give your backup file a name, leave a comment to help your remember what it was about and also you can put in your e-mail address so you will be notified as soon as the backup is done.

When your ready, click on the "Back up" button.  After doing so you may wish to play with other options you have such as enabling backups on a schedule so you don’t have to actually login and do all of this to get it done each time.  You can also browse through the backup file repository too.

Need to get a message out in a hurry?  Autoresponders are a great option for this and they are easy to create with your dedicated hosting plan using the Plesk control panel. 

First thing you need to do is to login to your Plesk control panel, and go to the Mail section under Services.  Next locate the existing POP account that you would like to make an autoresponder.  Click on it, and then select the "Autoresponder" menu item.

If you would like to send an attachment with the autoresponce, you will need to upload the file to the attachment repository.  You can do that by going to "Attachement Files" under the Mail autoresponders screen.  Browse for the file you need and then hit the "send file" button on the screen.  After that has been done it will be added to the repository. 

Now go back to the main Mail autoresponder page and click on "Add New Autoresponder" to get going.  You can from there give the autoresponder a name.  This can be anything you’d like and is for reference only. You can also have a copy forwarded to a specific address.   Next you need to setup the rules for the autoresponder.  You can set it to always respond or just when there is or is not specific words in the message body or subject.

Next setup your reply to address if needed, and select your mail sending format to be plain text or HTML.  Under the "Reply" section you can then type in the text you need for your autoresponce.  To make sure you stay within your e-mail limits if needed, you can limit it to only send this message to not more than "X" amount of people.

Now save your settings and your autoresponder should be ready on your dedicated hosting account using the Plesk control panel.

The Application Vault for Plesk via your dedicated hosting account can be a useful tool to have at your fingertips.  Think of it like Fantastico is for cPanel, for those more familiar with that interface and control panel selection.

Application Vault allows you to easily auto-install selected third party scripts into your web site.  To access, login to Plesk, and then go to the Application Vault icon.  Click that and then click on the icon to "Add New Application".  That should be located under "Tools".  There is also a "Site Application" section on this screen which is where your installed apps will live after being added to your dedicated hosting plan.

Next you will be taken to a screen with all the site application packages that are available for you.  You can see version numbers, names, and descriptions for each.  Make sure you have set the target URL as the right URL you want to use, and then pick the radio box for the application you wish to install.  Once you have done that, go to the top of the screen and hit the "Install" link. 

Now you can create a button for the Plesk panel to use (sort of like a shortcut) and setup other options such as the destination directory or if you would like to install it to http:// or https://.  Plesk will automatically pre-populate certain fields with default entries.  Feel free to modify them.

The last thing you will do to get your application installed would be to hit the OK button.  You should be redirected back to the first page and configure or remove your application from there.

Using a good anti-virus program is key to protecting yourself, your visitors and the server from being infected by something nasty.  Here is what you need to do to use Dr. Web Antivirus in Plesk.

Select the mailbox for which you wish to configure Dr. Web. Once you have clicked on the e-mail address from the Plesk mail management screen,  you can enable Dr. Web for both incoming and outgoing mail.  Select the choice you want, and then hit OK.  Also it is worth taking note of the fact that you could do it for an either/or situation too.

That is all you have to do.  Now your protected from any viruses getting to you from this direction.  Did you know that Dr. Web offers leading frequency of updates and a comprehensive database of viruses? 

They track more than 100,000 of them. 

The heuristic virus scanning technology detects new and unknown viruses without the traditional virus fingerprints and this makes Dr. Web an effective anti-virus solution.

Do you want to keep yourself updated to know what you’re using on your dedicated server and when? This kind of information can be especially helpful if you are allotting a certain amount of disk space, bandwidth, or email accounts to specific clients on your dedicated server. Plus, knowing what you are using and how often will assist you in keeping your server up to date and if you need to upgrade, you will know before any issues arise.

In Plesk, via Windows or Linux hosting, you can find this information easily.

First, click on Limits

Limits displays the resource limits allocated to your account. For example, it shows you the maximum number of subdomains allowed, disk space, maximum traffic or bandwidth, maximum number of web users, maximum number of databases, maximum number of mailboxes, mailbox quota, maximum number of mail redirects, maximum number of mail groups, maximum number of mail autoresponders, maximum number of mailing lists, and a ton more.

To see account resources limits and usage, click on Report.

Report options will display all resource limits and usages, as well as users and a full list of all available scripts, utilities, and resources. For example, you’ll see Web Statistics, Web Stats, Web Stats SSL, FTP Stats, Traffic History, and can manage Report Delivery.

If you click on FTP Stats, this will show you a history of FTP activity in your website, both in upload as well as download.

If you click on Traffic History, this will display information on traffic usage by Months and Years.

To view detailed traffic statistics used by various services at the domain, click on the Traffic button.

If you’d like to keep yourself updated, you can also choose to send a copy of the report to any email you specify.

Or, you can setup a schedule for automatic delivery of reports by clicking on Report Delivery.

Accessing this information can assist you in self-managing your dedicated web hosting.

We have already gone over the importance of using cronjobs to manage your Dedicated Server, as these scheduled tasks assist you in self-managing. This will save you time, staff, and money in the long run, especially because they are so incredibly easy to setup! Crontab will allow you to automatically run scheduled tasks on the server, and if selected, receive automatic emails showing the results. These email updates can really save you hassle, as you will know that each task has been completed and what the results were immediately.

Using Plesk on Linux or Windows dedicated servers, you can manage your crontabs effeciently by simply following these easy steps:

Click on Crontab and then select the name of user who you want to manage the crontab. There should be a dropdown box of all the users listed on your dedicated server. You can also choose as an optional step to have emails sent to whatever address you provide. If you don’t want emails, don’t enter an address in this box:

Next, click on Add New Task which is the small Clock Icon you see in the upper left.

From there, you’ll need to enter the specific paramaters to set the frequency of the task. Enter * to select all. For example, you can set options to run crontabs every minute, every 2 hours, every Monday of each week, and every month of the year. Then simply enter the path to the file that will execute the crontab: i.e. /usr/bin/python-s/var/mailman/cron/checkdbs and click OK:

Afterwards, you’ll be able to assure the task has been successfully setup. If you ever need to modify an existing task, simply click on the name of the cronjob listed under “Command”. To delete existing tasks, check the box next to the command and click on “Remove selected”:

Plenty of first time Plesk (and dedicated hosting) users are often confused when it comes to adding users to a new MySQL database.  They can create the MySQL database with no issues, but adding a user can be a little trickier.

The option to create a MySQL database user should become available after you click on the database name from within Plesk.  As you can see sometimes it is the obvious issues that get in our way the most.

Plesk offers a powerhouse of tools and services to use to manage our dedicated hosting servers, but as with anything it pays to read up on it before you jump in with both feet.  All control panels are pretty much the same, they just have different ways of getting these jobs done.