Renewed UX of a website creation in Plesk
We’re very excited to tell you all about the improved website creation UX in Plesk, and why we invested in making it even better in 2021. Let’s face it, creating a website in Plesk was never hard. Type in your domain name, fill in a few details, and bam! In a matter of seconds, your website was ready to go.
Easy as pie, right? Well, turns out, that the procedure was not as clear-cut for new Plesk users. Some of them got frustrated and left without discovering the many benefits Plesk could bring them. A real bummer, and a lose-lose both for us and for them. We had to fix that. In this article, I will walk you through the revamped website creation workflow, and also tell you about the customer pain points these improvements aim to solve.
New website creation workflow
Challenge: How can I create a new website or add my own website in Plesk?
Despite the seeming simplicity, the previous website creation UX had a major flaw. It hid all the options that Plesk offered when creating a new website.
Specific situation: one of our partners told us that four out of five new clients they get migrate existing websites from different web hosting services to Plesk. Plesk comes with the ‘Site Import’ tool for just such a job. However, the partner didn’t know about it and therefore chose to use a third-party solution.
Many other cool Plesk features fared no better in terms of discoverability. New customers did not know that they could upload content easily with the File Manager, pull files from a Git repository, or use our Toolkits (for WordPress, Joomla!, Laravel) to create and manage websites within the snap of a finger.
Thus, our main goal was to clearly show the customers all available options, and make it so that right after website creation they could easily select the desired functionality and thus hit the ground running. The available options depend on the installed extensions, and their visibility can be controlled via the panel.ini configuration file. I will talk about this in more detail later in this article.
Let’s say I need to create my own WordPress website so that I can blog there instead of writing articles for the Plesk Blog. Gotta develop that personal brand! For that, I have chosen the ‘WordPress site’ option.
Challenge: What if I don’t have a registered domain name?
So, the next screen is similar to the old one, just waaay better.
First, I need to type in the domain name of my website. But what if I don’t have a domain name yet? Where can I get one? What if a domain name isn’t important to me at this stage? Can I continue and assign one later? What if I want to quickly show a potential client that my hosting environment can host a Laravel website?
The answer is: “Use a temporary domain name, courtesy of Plesk“.
Plesk automatically generates a free domain name in the .plesk.page DNS zone you can use as a placeholder. We handle all the icky technical stuff like DNS resolving so that you can get on with your work. On top of that, your temporary domain name uses HSTS and is automatically secured by a free SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt. Your website becomes available on the web right from the get-go, no waiting time needed!
One more important note: previously, you had to enter all required credentials by hand before a website could be created. To speed things up, Plesk now pre-generates system users’ credentials. You can see what they are or change them at any time – just click ‘Connection Info’ on the domain card.
As I haven’t registered my own domain name yet, I choose the temporary domain and click ‘Add Domain’.
Challenge: What’s going on behind the scenes? What does Plesk do for me?
Okay, it’s doing something… but what exactly? Here’s what the process looked like before:
Who doesn’t like staring at spinning activity indicators? Well, everyone, actually.
So, now we give you a glimpse backstage by adding concrete steps with progress bars:
Challenge: What should I do next?
As I chose to use WordPress for my future blog, right after creating hosting for my website Plesk takes me to the WordPress installation screen. What do I need to do next? Click the ‘Install’ button, and that’s it!
No need to scour the interface in search of the desired functionality.
You can see detailed progress of what’s going on under the hood:
Finally, I am taken straight to the WordPress dashboard. Here I can configure and manage the newly created website (which is already available on the web, mind) to my heart’s content.
And it only took a couple of minutes, from start to finish!
Customizable creation options
Last but not least: every option you see is configurable.
You can leave the desired website creation options and hide the others by modifying the panel.ini configuration file. You can disable all options except one.
For example, if you are a WordPress hoster and only ever create WordPress websites, leave only that option available and hide the rest! In this case, the screen with the different website creation options is skipped and the users are taken directly to creating a new WordPress website. Pretty nifty, right?
What if you don’t need to see these options? Disable them altogether, and the world (or at least your Plesk server) is your oyster.
Here is the list of available panel.ini options to customize the website creation process in Plesk:
| Creation option | panel.ini (control option) | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Blank website | [domainManagement] applicationWizard.blankSite = false | Disables the blank website (skeleton) creation. |
| Deploy using Git | [ext-git] enableOnSiteApplicationWizard = false | Disables the option to pull the files from a remote Git repository. |
| Import website | [ext-site-import] enableOnSiteCreate = false | Disables the option to import a website from another hosting server. |
| Joomla! site | [ext-joomla-toolkit] enableOnSiteApplicationWizard = false | Disables the option to create a Joomla! website. |
| Laravel site | [ext-laravel] enableOnSiteApplicationWizard = false | Disables the option to create a Laravel website. |
| New ‘Add Domain’ screen | [domainManagement] applicationWizard.enabled = false | Disables the new website creation screen in Plesk. A blank website will always be created by default. |
| Upload files | [domainManagement] applicationWizard.uploadFiles = false | Disables the option to upload files using File Manager after website creation. |
| WordPress site | [ext-wp-toolkit] enableOnSiteApplicationWizard = false | Disables the option to create a WordPress website. |
TLDR
To sum it all up: when we make changes to Plesk, the goal is always to solve real customers’ pain points.
With the website creation workflow redesign, we brought more clarity, showed all possible options, tools, and ways of creating a new website, and simplified the process as much as possible.
We hope you like it!
And we hope that Plesk helps you spend less time working, so that you may spend more time with your family, engage in a hobby, and relax.
As always, we’d love to hear your feedback! Have you tried the new and improved website creation process? What are your thoughts? Let us know at [email protected] or in the comments section below.
Getting Started With Plesk Extensions & Tools
For web developers & sysadmins, managing multiple sites and servers can include endless tasks that take up your entire day and leave no space for new projects. So that’s why at Plesk we want you to start with the best tools in place, freeing you to take on more tasks and grow your business.
So you’ve got your Plesk license sorted, your sites & servers synced to the control panel, and you’re ready to optimize your workload quickly and easily. Where do you start? Here is a list of top extensions that simplify, automate and speed up your setup and maintenance.
Let’s get started:
Setting up your sites & servers
Here are the best tools and kits to get started:
The Plesk WordPress Toolkit
The world-famous WordPress Toolkit sites developed by Plesk packs a punch of power. If you’re managing your sites on WordPress, this is without a doubt the place to start:
- One-click installment
- Single dashboard to manage multiple instances
- Default security scanner that blocks attacks
- Testing environment to stage features with no separate server
- Centralized updates to mass-manage themes and plugins
- Easy for beginners, great for developers
With access to CLI, search engine index management, cloning, migration tools and beyond, WordPress users and web developers have a clear place to start safely and efficiently.
Smart Updates (for the Plesk WordPress Toolkit)
The Plesk WordPress Toolkit is particularly well suited to work in conjunction with other plugins, as is the nature of WordPress itself. Another top extension to optimize your WordPress sites is Smart Updates.
Automatically updating your WordPress site or multiple sites is far easier than doing each one manually, but it comes with a risk – the update could break your sites, and backtracking is difficult and costly. With Smart Updates, the extension tests your auto updates in a testing environment to make sure there are no problems before applying to update to your live site. Just like that!
The Plesk eCommerce Toolkit
Another powerful toolkit in the Plesk extension library helps you set up eCommerce stores from scratch – that’s right, from top to bottom.
With the eCommerce Toolkit extension, web developers and inexperienced retailers alike can enjoy the full power of online selling in just a few steps:
- Create a website complete with personalized domain, products and shopping cart
- Connect to EVO Payments or other gateways to make secure transactions
- Broadcast products across multiple selling platforms like social media & Amazon
- Sync with existing PoS systems
For an A to Z kit specifically designed for online retailers, this kit is a top-notch solution available directly through Plesk.
Securing & backing up your data
Once you’ve taken the first steps to getting your sites and servers online and running, the next step is keeping everything safe.
Backup to Cloud Pro
First things first: You have to keep your data safe.
The popular Backup to Cloud Pro extension allows you to keep your backups safely in the cloud of your choice: AmazonS3, Google Drive, SFTP Backup, Dropbox, DigitalOcean Spaces, or MicrosoftOneDrive. These backups can be scheduled to repeat automatically, so you don’t have to do a thing. From a security perspective, this extension is a great place to start.
ImunifyAV & Imunify360
Two great products from one powerful security giant. Imunify provides the best immunity (pun intended) against viruses, adware spyware, trojans, and worms.
With ImunifyAV, you can equip your site with the essentials for combatting various threats in real-time, keeping your sites locked and closely monitored. It also smartly manages reputation, blacklists, and malware cleanup.
Upgrading to Imunify360 packs in even more security features to ensure the best, automated system tracking your sites. It includes everything you get in ImunifyAV, plus additional firewall software, hardened PHP, some integrations with backup, and more. It is the complete security detail you need to keep your inventory safe without a fuss.
Plesk Email Security
Moving on to your mailing. If you want to safely manage your mailing system on the Plesk control panel, Plesk Email Security is the place to start.
Spam can be a real nuisance, and viruses can present a real threat to your privacy and data. With this extension, advanced anti-spam filters keep spam and ham under control server-wide. Even more importantly, the pro version allows you peace of mind with antivirus technology designed to recognize and learn about harmful content. With this tool scanning all emails, managing DNS blacklists, and blocking unwanted content, you can start using Plesk for email too without a worry.
KernelCare
Now it’s time to keep the safety of your OS in check.
Web developers know that the integrity of your kernel is paramount. So this extension in the Plesk catalog, KernelCare, does exactly what it says on the tin: it takes care of your kernel and thereby protects Linux servers against vulnerabilities.
Updates are checked every few hours, and can take place without rebooting the server. This stops service interruptions happening due to server downtime, and the extension monitors this uptime too. This security patching is a web developer’s dream, as it works on a live site automatically without causing anything to go offline.
Monitoring your sites
Many of the above extensions have monitoring features related to their specific area of expertise. However, we suggest getting started with performance monitoring too, to have a real understanding of your inventory through and through.
Google PageSpeed Insights
This add-on takes your sites to the next level. The performance of your site in terms of speed and optimization is key for creating fast, useful sites. And Google PageSpeed Insights analyzes your site content and performance to suggest the best steps to take to improve.
Plus, as it supports SEO efforts, your sites’ visibility is vastly improved. Plus, as an extension built for Google, the top search engine, you know your insights are accurate and helpful!
Plesk WordPress Toolkit 5.9 Release Now Available
The last major WordPress Toolkit release in 2021 — v5.9.0 — is now officially available for Plesk. This quick release adds more site vulnerability goodness with a number of important bug fixes. As there have already been major developments in the 5.8 release, this newest update is building on those existing features:
Site Vulnerability: Policies
It’s hugely beneficial that you can now update or disable vulnerable WordPress assets in WordPress Toolkit once you learn that they’re vulnerable. However, you must log in and perform these actions manually, even if it’s not a convenient time for you. To make life easier for site admins, we have added advanced auto-update policies that allow site admins to make sure that vulnerabilities that can be fixed by installing updates are addressed by WordPress Toolkit automatically. In the case of plugins, site admins can also opt to deactivate them instead of updating (before you ask, we can’t do the same with themes, since there must always be an active theme on a site).
Security updates for vulnerabilities are installed immediately after these vulnerabilities are found; there is no ~24 hour wait period. Also, there is no special auto-update policy for WordPress core, since minor WordPress auto-updates already handle this case.
Finally, if you’re a server admin, keep an eye on future release as we’re planning to introduce auto-update defaults specifically to suit your needs. This should help keep the servers secure even when some customers forget to look after their sites.
Site Vulnerability: Email Notifications
As we’ve mentioned, you can easily learn if you have vulnerabilities when you visit WordPress Toolkit. But this could cause you to miss this information because you don’t visit your control panel that much. To address this, we have added email notifications about security vulnerabilities found by WordPress Toolkit:
These notifications differ from our usual email notifications — they are sent immediately after WordPress Toolkit finds a vulnerability, without any delay. Once a notification about a particular vulnerability on a particular site is sent, we will not repeat it to avoid spamming.