Sometimes praise is nice

[tenowg]

Mind you I haven't played with everything yet with Plesk 11, but after upgrading from a error heavy 10, with many doubts on whether I was going to stay with Plesk at all, I am impressed.

I did something I almost never do, I hit install/upgrade and went to the store. When I return 11 was installed, and all the previous errors I was recieving are gone, 1000% more responsive, no more memory issues, no more CPU issues.

Thanks I hope I don't have to come back and resend this statement.

Craig

 

[abdi]

Thanks for appreciating Craig. You may write that again and again ...

Indeed this time paralles nailed it with plesk 11.*. I only sorrow that Site Builder is nolonger FREE with 11.*

 

[sergius]

Sometimes nice to hear praise

Hello, Craig. It is nice to hear the praise, especially after months of hard working on Plesk 11 launch. It motivates. Thanks.

I hit install/upgrade and went to the store. When I return 11 was installed, and all the previous errors I was recieving are gone, 1000% more responsive, no more memory issues, no more CPU issues.

That is what the Plesk team was focused on.

"We have heard you loud and clear that you want us to focus on the fundamentals: Web Server Performance, Security, and Support." as said in An Open Letter from Craig Bartholomew, VP Panels at Parallels to launch the Plesk 11.

 

[TDuncklee]

Not so thrilled

Although I have to agree that the install and lack of bugs is impressive, I have to say I'm less than thrilled with it overall. I've been using plesk since sometime around version 4 and have gotten to know it quite well. However, I've been behind in upgrading for quite some time. I have several machines still using 8.6. 8.6 was great. Stable, simple, it did what I needed it to do.

Some things I despise about 11:
Migration manager no longer remembers logins between migrations.
Migration manager does not allow me to migrate directly to a specific customers account.
Migration manager REQUIRES root login. 8.6 and before could use a sudo account.
Email can no longer use short names. Must use full email address.
Enhanced security mode is enabled by default and can only be changed by modifying the database and only if you have not added any domains/customers/resellers. This should be an install preference. I'm sure there are others like me who manage things outside of Plesk with scripts that modify the database directly. I understand the implications but sometimes we have to accept a tradeoff between security and crippling lack of functionality.
It seems IMPOSSIBLE to change the default ip address. I'm sure there is a way but I gave up after fighting it for a couple hours and and just nuked the server and started over. With 8.6 this was a trivially easy function.
I understand the flexibility all the different hosting services (Customer/Reseller/Subscriptions/Service Plans) gives us but I find it extremely confusing. I still don't understand the many different relations.
Why does an email account need to have some kind of other "account"?
Basic usage (disk and bandwidth) info has been removed from the Customer (used to be Client) view list of domains.
Can't get directly to a domain setup (hosting or email) by clicking on customer. Apparently I'm going to have to wade through all customers domains to find the one I am looking for.

I've only been using it for a day now so I'm sure i'll get more comfortable with it as time goes on but I'm also sure I will find more things that were better in 8.6.

There are several things I do like but for now I'm wishing I had an updated 8.6.

 

[Sergey L]

Hello,

Thanks for posting your feedback. Each product has a room for improvement, and hearing feedback helps moving in right direction. There are several items in your list I can probably help you with and would like to ask for additional detail:

Email can no longer use short names. Must use full email address.

http://kb.parallels.com/en/888

It seems IMPOSSIBLE to change the default ip address. I'm sure there is a way but I gave up after fighting it for a couple hours and and just nuked the server and started over. With 8.6 this was a trivially easy function.

Which role you assume the default IP address shall perform in your system? In Plesk 11 all IPs are generally equal. If you want to make some site default for an IP - it is easily managed in UI. What you see as "default IP" in home screen is just first IP on an interface I think and it is just a decoration.

I understand the flexibility all the different hosting services (Customer/Reseller/Subscriptions/Service Plans) gives us but I find it extremely confusing. I still don't understand the many different relations.

If you don't run Customers and Resellers, you can switch to Power User View. If you were installing Plesk 11, you have seen it asking for a preferred view. Power User View doesn't use Subscriptions and Service Plans either, so it is fairly simple - just for managing sites of your own.

Why does an email account need to have some kind of other "account"?

Mail address may need user account in order to access control panel. I agree it needs usability improvement.

Basic usage (disk and bandwidth) info has been removed from the Customer (used to be Client) view list of domains.

Overall consumption against limit is reported on Home page and Statistics page. Starting Plesk 10 it is supposed customer would obtain a single "subscription" hosting all their domains and also domains can share disk space within subscription. Do your customers need this information to find most consuming domain?

Can't get directly to a domain setup (hosting or email) by clicking on customer. Apparently I'm going to have to wade through all customers domains to find the one I am looking for.

Try enabling "Open hosting operations in Server Administration Panel" in "Tools & Settings" > "Interface Management".
Once enabled - click a customer, then click either "Websites and Domains" or "Mail"

I've only been using it for a day now so I'm sure i'll get more comfortable with it as time goes on but I'm also sure I will find more things that were better in 8.6.

If you do find those, we will appreciate your feedback posted on the forum.
We'd like to hear which improvements can make 11.0 better for you.

 

[TDuncklee]

Sergey,

Thanks for responding! In times past there was a near zero chance of hearing from anyone at Paralles in the forum.

Regarding changing IP address. Occasionally I need to change the primary address of the server. For example, on the system I'm working on now, I will be moving the virtual machine that it's running on to a new host on a different subnet. In the past I would change the IP on the server then tell plesk to "Reread IP" Although Reread IP is still there, it does not work correctly. It's been a while since I did this so I do not recall the exact situation.

I do not believe I can use Power User View. I do have clients who manage their own domains. I also like to group domains by client. I'll just have to play with it until it makes sense.

In the past, email users logged into their account with their email address. Sounds like it's not that simple any more. Sounds like I'll be getting lots of support calls from confused customers...

My comment on "Basic Usage" is just that in the past it was easy to see what each domain's usage was while viewing a client's domains. As far as I can tell that is no longer possible.

I still have not had time to really get to know v11 but here are a couple things:
There are several issues I have with the migration manager. Basically, make it work like 8.6. What you have now is is a huge step backwards.

v11 is quite slow. I spend a lot of time waiting on it and it's on a fast server. The old 8.6 system is on old slow hardware and it's still quite fast.

I do believe I will like v11 as soon as I get some time to learn it. Meanwhile, can you offer any opinion on this?
http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=260971

Thanks,
TD

 

[abdi]

TDuncklee, I agree with you on this ...

Plesk 10.* is verrry had to understand when coming from 9.*
Everything changes, totally new concepts and designs ..

It took me almost 2 years to get convinced to upgrade all my servers to 10.* and that was after I totally failed to understand my test server immediatly and didnt have much time to dig and concetrate on it more ...

But men, you still have to upgrade, 10.* + 11.* is really good once you get hold of its concepts and understand it well..

There is plenty of new features, improvements, security enhancements and etc. AN upgrade is highly recommended

 

[TDuncklee]

abdi,

I'm sure you are right. I imagine I'd have had a much easier time if I'd have read the manual first! LOL

TD

 

[Sergey L]

Sergey,

Thanks for responding! In times past there was a near zero chance of hearing from anyone at Paralles in the forum.

Regarding changing IP address. Occasionally I need to change the primary address of the server. For example, on the system I'm working on now, I will be moving the virtual machine that it's running on to a new host on a different subnet. In the past I would change the IP on the server then tell plesk to "Reread IP" Although Reread IP is still there, it does not work correctly. It's been a while since I did this so I do not recall the exact situation.

Well, it is hard to judge w/o details, but maybe this information may help
- Reread would add all new IPs in the system, yet will not remove IPs used for domains previously.
- Reconfigurator tool can be used for mapping old IPs into new ones. I guess it might have been easier if in UI you had option to "substitute" one IP with another, so that all domain settings are reconfigured. Is it what you are looking for?
- Or use '/usr/local/psa/bin/ipmanage --auto-remap-ip-addresses true' prior to moving into different subnet and have all IPs reconfigured transparently on start

In the past, email users logged into their account with their email address. Sounds like it's not that simple any more. Sounds like I'll be getting lots of support calls from confused customers...

That's probably fair impression. We will work on better usability here.

My comment on "Basic Usage" is just that in the past it was easy to see what each domain's usage was while viewing a client's domains. As far as I can tell that is no longer possible.

I see. Traffic/diskspace overview is really missing in Customer screen. You would have this information in "Domains" screen or in "Subscription" screen though.

v11 is quite slow. I spend a lot of time waiting on it and it's on a fast server. The old 8.6 system is on old slow hardware and it's still quite fast.

Would you mean longer panel screens loading or slower website response, or maybe higher resource consumption?

Regards

 

[TDuncklee]

Sergey,

Regarding speed. Using the panel is slower. I have not noticed any difference in the speed of the sites. However, I've been so busy fixing problems with sites due to plesk problems that I have not had time to really notice. My biggest issue is ModRewrite of which it seems no one has a solution:
http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=260971

Then there is the nonsense where :7080 gets added to any http-equiv="REFRESH"
http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=260563

These two issues are so basic I'm losing faith. Ready to jump ship...

TD

 

[abdi]

Then there is the nonsense where :7080 gets added to any http-equiv="REFRESH"

Because of that and the continuous reset of vhosts, I have temporarily disabled Nginx

 

[TDuncklee]

abdi,

Can you tell me how you disabled nginx?

Thanks,
TD

 

[TDuncklee]

This is NOT praise. I’ve spent the last four hours just trying to figure out how to allow an email user to log into the control panel and do things like change their password or manage auto responders. Still have not figured out how to do it. Even after searching the documentation. I've been using Plesk for over ten years on many servers so I'm not new at this...

I've had so many problems with Plesk v11 and struggled so much with it's utterly confusing interface I've been forced to make the decision to move on. For anyone using Plesk 9 or earlier. This is NOT the Plesk you know. Plan to endure significant pain.

TD

 

[IgorG]

I've had so many problems with Plesk v11 and struggled so much with it's utterly confusing interface I've been forced to make the decision to move on. For anyone using Plesk 9 or earlier. This is NOT the Plesk you know. Plan to endure significant pain.
TD

Why you do not write your complaints regarding Plesk interface here? http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=261293

 

[TDuncklee]

IgorG,

Thank for letting me know about the other post. I will try to formulate my issues and post them there know that I know someone is listening.

TD