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Creating your first website

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David
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There are three ways to create the content for your website. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Here is a short summary of all three:

  • Employ a professional designer and upload content. This option guarantees you will get exactly what you want. However, it is also the most expensive one. The web designer will provide you with the files you will need to upload to your hosting account. You can do it using FTP or the File Manager. 
  • Use Presence Builder. The Presence Builder tool that comes bundled with Plesk enables you to create websites using a web interface. You can use one of the provided templates to create a professional-looking website in a matter of minutes. 
  • Use a content management system. Content management systems (CMS for short) are third-party applications that enable you to create and maintain a website. They are highly versatile, and come with a large number of optional add-ons. CMS offer a greater degree of customization as compared to Presence Builder but demand more technical knowledge from the user. 

 

Option A. Upload Content

If you have coded your website yourself, or employed a web designer to do it for you, you need to upload the website content to Plesk before the website becomes available on the Internet. Plesk gives you the option to upload content either using FTP, or the file manager. The instructions below explain how to do both - choose which option works best for you.

To publish a website using FTP:

  1. Download an FTP client program. You can choose any FTP client you like. If you do not know what FTP client to choose, you can use FileZilla:
  2. Connect to your subscription on the server using the FTP client. To connect, you need the following information:
    • FTP server address. The FTP address should be ftp://your-domain-name.com, where your-domain-name.com is your site’s Internet address.
    • FTP username. This is identical to your system user name. Note that the system user name may differ from the username that you use for logging in to Plesk. To find what your system user name is, open the Websites & Domains tab and click Web Hosting Access. You will find it under Username. You can change your system user name if you wish.
    • FTP password. This is identical to your system user password. If you do not know what your system user password is, open the Websites & Domains tab and click Web Hosting Access. You can reset the password under Password.
  3. Switch on the passive mode if you are behind a firewall. Refer to your FTP client documentation to learn how to enter the passive mode.
  4. Upload the files and directories of your site to the httpdocs directory. If you use CGI scripts, place them in the cgi-bin directory.

To publish a website using the file manager:

  1. On your computer, add the folder containing your website’s files to a .ZIP archive.
  2. In Plesk Control Panel, go to Files, click the httpdocs folder to open it, click Upload, select the archive file, and click Open.
  3. Once the file has been uploaded, click the checkbox next to it, click the More button, and select the Extract Files option.

    File_Manager_upload

It is possible that the website you have uploaded requires a database to function. 

 

Option B. Create your Website in Presence Builder

To create a website using Presence Builder, go to Websites & Domains> Presence Builder and click Create Site.

WPB-create_site

Find more information on creating and editing websites in Presence Builder at http://docs.plesk.com/current/customer-guide/.

Creating your website in Presence Builder means that you do not need a database. 

 

Option C. Install a Content Management System

To create a website using a Content Management System (or CMS), go to Applications > Install.

Application_install

Note that installing a CMS following the instructions above means that a database will be created for your website automatically.