Problem with second level domains, ftp accounts, different webspaces, e-mail aliases

[TobiasF]

Hi all,

I just upgraded to Plesk 10 from Plesk 9. So far, I recognized the new directory structure which Plesk 10 generates when adding a new subscription/webspace and domains/subdomains.
It's a great improvement that one now can set www-root of a subdomain to a subfolder of domain.com.

But why on earth would I wanna do that with a second level domain (which is NOT an alias to domain.com) ?!

Let me explain my problem with that - maybe someone has a solution for this issue:

I manage domains/webspace for an organisation which owns, let's say, 2 domains.

• domain1.com is the webspace/subscription main-domain. we use email services with this domain as well
• domain2.com is totally different website/product of the company, also managed by different people (therefore, the need their own ftp-account). we use email services with this domain as well.

Although domain2.com is a totally different product, we used domain2.com as email aliases for domain1.com.
So people having an email account for domain1.com and beeing involved in product of domain2.com didn't just get a second mailbox, but they got an email alias for domain2.com


At the moment, I don't see a chance I can achieve this setting with plesk 10. Am I right?

Scenario 1
If I add domain2.com as a second level domain in domain1.com subscription, the www-root is set inside domain1.com. Therefore, webmasters of domain1.com can access data from domain2.com.
On the other side, it seems not to be possible that the FTP user for domain2.com can access it's very own config-directories (e.g. error_docs, cgi-bin, etc...) since you can only grant FTP permissions to the www-root of domain2.com. Right?
Only advantage I see in this scenario is, that I can use domain2.com as an email alias of domain1.com

Scenario 2
Adding a second webspace/subscription for domain2.com solves the FTP problems since domain2.com is a separate folder in /var/www/vhosts/ and the main FTP user can access also the config dirs (error_docs, cgi-bin, etc...). Perfect!
But now it seems that I can't use domain2.com as an email alias for domain1.com... Bummer...

Any ideas?
Thanks a lot!

 

[Sergey L]

That's correct, domains cannot alias domains from other webspaces. That is probably something we shall enable in future versions. You also cannot make a domain an email alias with a web hosting. Maybe it is also worth of enabling. I don't think you were able to do that in Plesk 9 though, were you?

The best you can do now is probably to setup mail forwarding on the second domain for each user involved in both projects.
You can setup domains both in the same or in different webspaces. When in the same webspace, they will have to share IP, error_docs and system user, but you can have separate FTP users and separate CGI.

Your choice for the same or different webspaces wouldn't much impact your mail setup - you cannot have a hosting on a domain and make it an alias at the same time. But you can add mail redirects to another domain. As I understood you do email aliasing for selected people only, so it should work better that full aliasing.

Regards

 

[TobiasF]

Hey Sergey,

thanks for your reply! You're right, my "scenario 1" is total **** since one can't define different domains as email alias domains for each other...
So I will use "scenario 2" and set up email redirects.

Anyways, there's one last question regarding scenario 1:

Say I have domain1.com as my main-domain in the webspace and domain2.com as a second-domain (not alias).
Is there any chance that I can setup a ftp user for domain2.com who can also access the config-directories (e.g. error_docs, cgi-bin, etc...) ?

 

[Sergey L]

well, regarding config directories:
- cgi-bin >> YES, can be put inside docroot (so FTP user can access them)
- error_docs >> NO, you would need to grant access to whole home folder to manage error_docs.
other config directories like conf/, etc/ were never available for a FTP user