Newbie needs some adice

[bjsteiger]

Hello Plesk Community,

Here's the situation -- My clients are demanding certain features my current host doesn't provide so I have felt pushed to get into root level hosting and it came with Plesk.

I have read through all of the manuals and I honestly can say I just don't know where to start?

I have heard about the following but I am not sure what to do:

1) Name Servers -- What do I do with this, any recommendations? And where do I go to set this up

2) Domains -- I know that domains need to be pointed to name servers but I don't know what to do first in relation to the name servers.

3) Emails -- Once the domains and emails are setup how do I know what the MX records are

Any advice on how to just get started would be so greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much!
Brandon

 

[bcscomp]

Sure i'll have a stab at it.....
Preamble:
First off i have used Plesk for almost a year, and i have found it to be superior to anything else i've ever tried to use, i'm certain once you get used to it you'll love it too.
the answers i'm going to give you will in no way give you everything you need to click and go, but they should point you in the right direction. if i'm off a bit on something, i appologise in advance, and i'm certain some of the "gurus" here in the forum will correct it for you
Q&A:

1) Name Servers -- What do I do with this, any recommendations? And where do I go to set this up

for the most part you'll do nothing with this, except for adding entries later if needed.
this is a two part deal, one part has to do with your server, and the other has to do with domain registration, i'll start with the domain registration part first.
Whenever someone registers a domain, in the information they are ask to select the DNS servers that will handle the DNS for that domain... your customers will need to tell the registrar this info.
whenever you create a client in the plesk control panel and then tell your system to create a domain named duh.com that belongs to that client, plesk will create the dns records for that domain, and assign permissions/ect based on your input.

2) Domains -- I know that domains need to be pointed to name servers but I don't know what to do first in relation to the name servers.
See the first answer

3) Emails -- Once the domains and emails are setup how do I know what the MX records are

they will be created when the domain is created, during the domain's DNS records creation.

So to make a long story short,
1. Create your client
name/pass/info/ect
2. create a domain in Plesk based on what the client says his/her domain name is IE. duh.com and make sure it's assigned to that client.

3. sit back and let plesk create everything needed for that domain

just a suggestion: setup your own domain IE. myhostingbox.com (or whatever your domain's name is) then make sure that everything for your account is working properly, and create your own NS entries like ns1 and ns2.myhostingbox.com then tell your customers to use those names as the dns servers in thier registrar's management panel for thier domain. This should work just fine when you're using shared IP hosting.
hmmm? i think i said that right.....

Best thing about Plesk is it's mostly point/click/fillin info/click apply.

oh yeah read the manual again...and lookup the terms you aren't familiar with and get the deffinitions so when you're reading it makes more sense.

HTH
Bill

 

[bjsteiger]

Name Server Follow Up

Thank you so much for your response. However the part I guess I am not understanding is what is the process for setting up a name server? Secondly, how do you tell Plesk what your name server is so that when you have new domains they all register this domain.

It seems like there has to be a way for Plesk to know what your name servers are?

Sorry for sounding so confusing

bjs

PS -- Thanks for the advise on reading the manual. I have read the manual three times now and each time it makes much more sense.

 

[jamesyeeoc]

Re: Name Server Follow Up

Welcome to the world of Plesk and Hosting administration!

Originally posted by bjsteiger
Thank you so much for your response. However the part I guess I am not understanding is what is the process for setting up a name server?

Assuming you already have registered your own domain name for your hosting business, you would go to your registrar (Like GoDaddy, NetworkSolutions, etc) and follow their procedures for Registering a new Name Server. Each registrar has different links/icons to click on to get to the screen where you fill in ns1 and ns2.yourdomain.com and an IP address (your plesk server's IP). Note that some registrars may require you to have 2 different IPs, others will allow you to use the same IP for both (assuming you want to have 2 name servers). Once this procedure is done, you will then have to wait for the registration info to propagate to the top level name servers.

Secondly, how do you tell Plesk what your name server is so that when you have new domains they all register this domain.

In Plesk, you create your domain and set the DNS entries for the NS records to be your newly registered nameserver names (ns1.yourdomain.com and ns2.yourdomain.com), then also create new A records for your name servers to point them to the specific IP address.

Example:

mydomain. com.		NS	ns1. mydomain. com. 		
mydomain. com.		NS	ns2. mydomain. com. 		
ns1. mydomain. com.	A 	 xx. yy. zz. 193 		
ns2. mydomain. com.	A	xx. yy. zz. 67 		
mydomain. com.		A	xx. yy. zz. 6 
mail. mydomain. com.	A	xx. yy. zz. 6 		
webmail. mydomain. com.	A	xx. yy. zz. 6 		
ftp. mydomain. com.	CNAME	mydomain. com.	
*. mydomain. com.	CNAME	mydomain. com. 		
[url]www.[/url] mydomain. com.	CNAME	mydomain. com. 		
mydomain. com.		MX 10	mail. mydomain. com. 		
mydomain. com.		MX 20	mail. mydomain. net. 		
xx. yy. zz. 6/32	PTR	mydomain. com.

It seems like there has to be a way for Plesk to know what your name servers are?

See above. Then you will also want to modify the Plesk default DNS template so that when you create additional domains, they will automatically be setup in a baseline fashion.

Example:

<domain>.		NS	ns. mydomain. com. 		
<domain>.		NS	ns1. mydomain. com. 		
<domain>.		NS	ns2. mydomain. com. 		
<domain>.		A	<ip> 		
webmail. <domain>.	A	<ip> 		
mail. <domain>.		A	<ip> 		
gateway. <domain>.	A	<ip> 		
ftp. <domain>.		CNAME	<domain>. 		
*. <domain>.		CNAME	<domain>. 		
<domain>.		MX 10	mail. <domain>. 		
<ip>/32			PTR	<domain>.

Note: On a shared hosting server, it is recommended to not have more than one domain on a given IP address with a PTR record. There are various reasons, but you can leave every domain with a PTR record even if you have 1000 domains on a single IP address.

This is just the tip of the iceberg on the learning curve You'll be back with many more questions!

Additional advice: Browse through the forums to not only get a feel for issues that other people are having, but also as an additional way to learn more. There are thousands of helpful and informative posts every month. Some info/issues are not Plesk version specific, such as Qmail and Apache, but you should start with the forum specific to the version of Plesk you are using (7.5.x)

Sorry for sounding so confusing

Hosting is confusing at the beginning, that is what this forum is all about, helping to un-confuse and find solutions to problems

bjs

PS -- Thanks for the advise on reading the manual. I have read the manual three times now and each time it makes much more sense.

Some additional information:

IP Addresses: xx.yy.zz.nn/32, the /32 means just this single address. Other values such as /8, /16, /24 specify larger blocks of IP addresses. That is a whole class on IP subnets....

Name Servers: My examples show 3 name servers, but you don't have to have 3. You can possibly get away with 1, it is recommended that you have at least 2 but not more than 8 name servers. There are different schools of thought as to using 2 name servers for a single server which is both the name server and the hosting server. If the server goes down, and it has both NS1 and NS2 on it, then all is down anyways. If you have a separate NS2 on a different server somewhere and the hosting server/NS1 goes down, then all is down anyways and the NS2 doesn't do much good other than to point people to a hosting server that is down... However, if you have redundant servers/clusters/server farms, then multiple name servers do have benefits.

I could go on for months with additional info and advice, but this is already getting pretty long... See you around!