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I finally managed to upgrade Plesk 9.5 to 10.0.1. Hence my first impression. (Nb, installing SiteBuilder and Customer and Business Manager did not succeed yet on our server, so I cannot comment on that).
The main thing when shifting from Plesk 9.x to 10.x is of course the new business model. Obviously, it takes some time to get your head around it and that's fine. In Plesk 9.x 'clients' were already very prominent, but you could more or less ignore them in favor of a focus on 'domains'. As we are a web development company and not a 'come all come many' shared hosting company, our focus has always been on 'projects' and 'applications', which translate into Plesk 'domains'. Subscriptions and clients/customers just don't have much meaning for us, especially to my staff.
Hence, for our company, Plesk 10.x is much less suited than 9.x. The domains view is now severely restricted, also in ways that are not necessary at all for the new business model. Hence my suggestion: give us 'domain oriented folk' (i.e. web designers hosting their own clients) some of our tools back.
The main culprit is the cutback in the overview of 'domains', especially the removal of the option to view aliases and subdomains. In Plesk 9.x there was a search function for domains, which wasn't perfect: it did not find aliases and it always defaulted to clients rather than domains. But these were mere nuisances; in Plesk 10.x this search option is gone completely, as is our next point of entry, the overview of domains, aliases and subdomains.
In fact, is has become rather difficult to find a specific site, especially when you only know the site by its alias. Basically, you always need to know who the owner of the site is (and no, that cannot be the name of the company to whom you send your bills, as in Plesk 9.x, 'clients' need to be natural persons.) Then you need to open their 'subscription', after which you can open the 'control panel' in a new window. From there you go to 'website and domains', if you are lucky you find the 'advanced settings', and ONLY THEN can you see some of the domain aliases on your server. By then you better be in the right 'subscription' and the right 'owner', otherwise you are in for quite a fox hunt.
In our case, we often assign one of a set of temporary aliases to a project, especially when the original domain name has not been released yet as we are working on the client's new site. But finding where those temporary aliases are at a specific moment, or to see if we can liberate one, is pretty much next to impossible now. Hence, I'm keeping a list of allaliases on paper (!), as Plesk 10.x makes finding them so difficult. I really don't think that's necessary at all.
I respect the move towards the new business model of subscriptions, I guess for certain types of businesses it is indeed an improvement. But I don't think the concept of domains (and domain aliases) needs to be eliminated to this extend. If my staff knows a site by its alias rather than it's 'default domain', they now need to call me on the phone to ask what the client name is, just to add a subdomain or mail address for some web form. If they know the 'default domain' it's still more difficult than it was, but doable. I respect that Parallels targets larger shared hosting providers who have clients who create and manage their own sites, install PHP apps and all. But I don't think we're the only ones using Plesk to give our clients access to a limited set of function of what basically is a managed site. Some small adjustments to make working with domains, domain aliases and sub domains easier in Plesk 10.1 and 10.2 could go a long way in order to keep us on board.
The main thing when shifting from Plesk 9.x to 10.x is of course the new business model. Obviously, it takes some time to get your head around it and that's fine. In Plesk 9.x 'clients' were already very prominent, but you could more or less ignore them in favor of a focus on 'domains'. As we are a web development company and not a 'come all come many' shared hosting company, our focus has always been on 'projects' and 'applications', which translate into Plesk 'domains'. Subscriptions and clients/customers just don't have much meaning for us, especially to my staff.
Hence, for our company, Plesk 10.x is much less suited than 9.x. The domains view is now severely restricted, also in ways that are not necessary at all for the new business model. Hence my suggestion: give us 'domain oriented folk' (i.e. web designers hosting their own clients) some of our tools back.
The main culprit is the cutback in the overview of 'domains', especially the removal of the option to view aliases and subdomains. In Plesk 9.x there was a search function for domains, which wasn't perfect: it did not find aliases and it always defaulted to clients rather than domains. But these were mere nuisances; in Plesk 10.x this search option is gone completely, as is our next point of entry, the overview of domains, aliases and subdomains.
In fact, is has become rather difficult to find a specific site, especially when you only know the site by its alias. Basically, you always need to know who the owner of the site is (and no, that cannot be the name of the company to whom you send your bills, as in Plesk 9.x, 'clients' need to be natural persons.) Then you need to open their 'subscription', after which you can open the 'control panel' in a new window. From there you go to 'website and domains', if you are lucky you find the 'advanced settings', and ONLY THEN can you see some of the domain aliases on your server. By then you better be in the right 'subscription' and the right 'owner', otherwise you are in for quite a fox hunt.
In our case, we often assign one of a set of temporary aliases to a project, especially when the original domain name has not been released yet as we are working on the client's new site. But finding where those temporary aliases are at a specific moment, or to see if we can liberate one, is pretty much next to impossible now. Hence, I'm keeping a list of allaliases on paper (!), as Plesk 10.x makes finding them so difficult. I really don't think that's necessary at all.
I respect the move towards the new business model of subscriptions, I guess for certain types of businesses it is indeed an improvement. But I don't think the concept of domains (and domain aliases) needs to be eliminated to this extend. If my staff knows a site by its alias rather than it's 'default domain', they now need to call me on the phone to ask what the client name is, just to add a subdomain or mail address for some web form. If they know the 'default domain' it's still more difficult than it was, but doable. I respect that Parallels targets larger shared hosting providers who have clients who create and manage their own sites, install PHP apps and all. But I don't think we're the only ones using Plesk to give our clients access to a limited set of function of what basically is a managed site. Some small adjustments to make working with domains, domain aliases and sub domains easier in Plesk 10.1 and 10.2 could go a long way in order to keep us on board.
