This article will show you how to get your website and email live on your new Plesk shared hosting server.

1. Update Your Nameservers

First, we need to make sure your domain name resolves correctly - that is, we need to make sure it's sending your website traffic to your new server. The easiest way to do this is to use our default nameservers for your domain.

Note: You might want to get everything else set up on your server first, before updating your nameservers. That way you can preview your website before going live. See the last section to learn how to preview your website.

If you registered your domain with us, your nameservers will be set up automatically, and you can go to the next step.

If you registered your domain elsewhere, you will need to visit that registrar and update your nameservers (also called Servers of Authority or SOA) to ours.

Note: It can take up to 48 hours for updates to your domain name to take effect. During this time your website traffic and email may be disrupted. If you want to minimize this disruption to your website traffic and email, you may be able to first, before making any other changes to your nameservers, lower your TTL with your current registrar. Once you lower your TTL, wait 48 hours, and then update your nameservers. The change should now happen more quickly.

  • For more about TTL (time to live), please see TTL Time to Live in Related Articles.

2. Access your Plesk Control Panel

Your Control Panel is the portal you will use to make changes to your website and email settings.

Now that you're logged into your Control Panel, let's add your first email account.

3. Create an Email Account

  1. Log into your Plesk Control Panel.
  2. In the left menu, click on Mail.
    plesk_mail
  3. Under Tools, click Create Mail Account.
    plesk_mail_new
  4. Fill in the requested details:
    • Mail account: your new email address
    • New password/Confirm password: Create a password for this account and enter it twice. Be sure to choose a strong one for added security.
    • Control panel access: You can leave these settings at default, or adjust as desired.
    • Mailbox: Leave this selected to create an inbox for this account.
    • Mailbox quota: Use the default for your account, or enter a custom size. This is the maximum amount of email that can be saved on the server for this account.
      plesk_mail_new_details
  5. Click Next >>.
  6. Check Switch on SpamAssassin spam filtering to turn on the spam filter.
    plesk_mail_spam
  7. In the SpamAssassin Settings section, you can leave the default values (recommended) or enter your own settings. A higher number in the spam score field will let through more messages, and a lower number will block more.
  8. Click Finish. You will see a confirmation message, and you will be taken to the control panel for that particular email account. Here you can configure an alias, adjust your spam settings, access webmail, etc.

plesk_mail_account_settings

 

You can access your email online with webmail. To do this,

  1. Visit the following URL in your browser: http://horde.webmail.EXAMPLE.COM/. You should replace EXAMPLE.COM with your own domain name.
  2. Log in with your full email address as the username, and the password that you just set as the password.
  3. Click on Mail on the left to check your inbox.

Set up Local Email Client

Now you can set up your new email address with a local email client such as Outlook or Apple Mail, which you can check from your computer. You will need the following information to enter in your email client of choice:

  • Incoming mail server type: IMAP or POP3
  • Incoming mail server name: mail.EXAMPLE.COM (replace with your own domain)
  • Username or account name: username@EXAMPLE.COM (replace with the email address you just created)
  • Password: the password you just created
  • Outgoing mail server type: SMTP
  • Outgoing mail server name: mail.EXAMPLE.COM (replace with your own domain)

We offer walkthroughs for several popular email clients. For more detailed information on how to set up your email on your computer, please see one of these articles.

4. FTP Login Information

FTP allows you to upload or publish your website files. You have one FTP user that is configured for your account. You can view and edit the settings for this user in your Customer Manager.

  1. Log into your Customer Manager.
  2. Click on My Products.
  3. Click on View Details next to the server.
    cust_myproducts_plesk_details
  4. Under Email & FTP, click on FTP Configuration Settings.
    plesk_ftp
  5. Make a note of the information shown here. You'll need it to set up your FTP client in the next step.
    plesk_ftp_details
  6. To set or reset your password, click (change) next to the Password entry. Then, enter your new password in the field, and click SUBMIT. You will see a confirmation message.
    plesk_ftp_password_change

Set up FTP Client

You will need to enter the following information in your favorite FTP client:

  • FTP server hostname: ftp.EXAMPLE.COM (replace with your own domain) or your IP address
  • IP Address:  your IP address
  • Username: the assigned FTP username from your Customer Manager - see the previous section
  • Password: the FTP password you set in your Customer Manager
  • Root directory: httpdocs/

Tip: You can use the IP address for your server instead of the domain name if your domain is not yet pointed to your server here. You can find your IP address in your Customer Manager. Click on My Products, then on View Details next to your server. Your IP address is shown on the left.

plesk_ip

We offer walkthroughs for several popular FTP clients. For more detailed information on how to set up your FTP client please check the appropriate support article.

5. Preview Website

To preview your website before your DNS settings have updated, use the built-in Plesk feature.

  1. Log into your Control Panel.
  2. Make sure you allow popups from this website in your browser.
  3. Under the Web Site menu, click on Site Preview.
    plesk_sitepreview
  4. Your website will open in a new browser window or tab. Note that certain functions of your website, such as saved sessions, won't work with the preview feature. You can verify that your HTML and PHP are working correctly, however. If nothing happens, make sure popups are enabled.

Once you're happy with how your website looks, you can go live.