Plesk receives awards for Top Usability, Support and Business Relationships

Plesk awarded by G2 Crowd

Safe to say we’ve had a great 2018 so far. We got happy news when G2Crowd congratulated us on the multiple top rewards we achieved this year! And it’s thanks to all the positive reviews from the verified users, who rated and reviewed Plesk.

From day one we’ve had the user in mind and tailored all our solutions accordingly. Now, real users – web hosters, developers and more – have identified Plesk as one of the best solution providers in our field. This based on their high levels of satisfaction and how likely they are to recommend Plesk to friends and colleagues. What more could we ask for?

Who are G2 Crowd anyway?

G2 Crowd and PleskG2 Crowd is a leading business review directory, with over 381,000 reviews and more than 1 million users visiting every month. You can use G2 Crowd to gain unique insights in order to drive better purchasing decisions. Then compare and choose tech services based on your peers’ reviews and social data.

Plesk set up an account on G2 Crowd as another way of getting to know our customers and collecting feedback, outside of our own channels. And boy did we learn a lot along the way Especially when it came to add-ons that users needs and the ever-improving UI. See our latest update on how we knocked multiple issues out of the park.

Rankings on G2 Crowd reports are based on data provided to us by real users. We’re excited to share the achievements of the products ranked on our site because they represent the voice of the user and offer terrific insights to potential buyers around the world. 

Michael Fauscette, chief research officer, G2 Crowd.

Plesk wins awards in these four categories

We qualified for 16 index and grid reports. Including Small-Business relationship for VPS, Cloud platform as a service, usability and implementation index, and more. All of Plesk’s ratings come from expert business professionals in the field who mainly highlighted the following qualities:

Plesk G2 Crowd Users Love Us Badge
  1. Ease of Use
  2. Ease of Admin
  3. Quality of Support
  4. Ease of doing business

It means so much to us that we even qualified for the index report, let alone been awarded these great achievements. We’re always belting out that our main goals are customer experience and satisfaction. To see us hitting these targets gives us more motivation to do more of the same, and then some.

Be part of our Pleskian Community

G2 Crowd and Elvis Plesky Community

We want to thank you all for your ongoing support! Meanwhile feel free to leave your own Plesk review on G2 Crowd’s Plesk review page. Or get into our Facebook Community Group where we share help, advice, insights and more among Plesk experts and users. As friends do.

New to Plesk?

Learn more about what real users have to say on G2 Crowd’s Plesk review page. You can drop a comment below, or join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.

Our team will gladly point you in the right direction. Meanwhile, you can always give our free 2-week trial a spin. See what all the fuss is about!

New Relic – Application Performance Monitoring with Plesk

New Relic Plesk extension

We have great news! From today onwards, you can get detailed performance data of your Plesk web infrastructure and applications with the New Relic extension on Plesk. Read on to find out how this newly-updated, handy extension can benefit you, your infrastructure and applications.

Post updated on April 26, 2018

What’s New Relic?

New Relic is an analytics software company that specializes in monitoring and analyzing web servers and web applications. With New Relic, you gain access to plenty of analytics tools to measure and monitor performance bottlenecks, throughput, network graph, server health and many more – all almost in real-time.

The New Relic Plesk extension seamlessly integrates with your Plesk server, and supports the two most important tools by New Relic:

  • APM for Application Performance Monitoring and Management
  • INFRASTRUCTURE for Server Monitoring

Without a doubt, New Relic lands near the top of our must-have list for Web Professionals.

Feature #1: INFRASTRUCTURE

Monitors health and tracks capacity, memory or CPU consumption. The INFRASTRUCTURE component allows you to view and analyze critical system properties of your web server. This is a must-have product for monitoring important metrics such as CPU usage, physical memory, and running processes.

new-relic-extension-on-plesk-app-performance-monitoring-screenshot-2
Once installed on the server, you will see all important data within minutes in your New Relic dashboard. You can create alerts to be informed if some metrics pass a critical condition.

Feature #2 – APM

Code level visibility for all your web applications. The APM (application performance monitoring) component delivers real-time, trending data and charts about your web application’s performance down to the deepest code levels. 

New Relic Plesk extension for application performance monitoring

If you have a performance problem with your application, then you don’t have to guess where the performance blockers are. APM supports 7 programming languages to analyze your web application source code, including PHP out-of-the-box. With the help of APM, you can determine whether the bottleneck is within your application, the web server or your database, helping you make quick decisions to enhance your user experience.

Activate Infrastructure and APM with one click

This extension integrates New Relic INFRASTRUCTURE and APM seamlessly into Plesk Onyx and Plesk 12.5. If you’re a developer, DevOp or software company – Use this Plesk extension to understand how your applications are performing in development and production environments.

Meanwhile, there are stress-testing services like  Blitz, Stormforger or Loadstorm to simulate many website visitors. All while using New Relic to identify weak spots in your code.

How do I use the New Relic extension?

Easy!

  1. Enter your New Relic license key
  2. Enter your preferred server name
  3. Click “Install”
  4. Done!

 

new-relic-extension-on-plesk-app-performance-monitoring-screenshot-new-infrastructure-installed

License Key

You’ll first, you need an account at New Relic to get your license key. But don’t worry, you can quickly sign up for a free account with basic functionality.

The INFRASTRUCTURE component is available for free, but the APM component requires a paid subscription. However, you can test APM for a limited time span with your free account.

You’ll find your New Relic license key in the “Account settings” in your New Relic profile. If you’re convinced of the power of APM, just upgrade to an ESSENTIALS or PRO subscription. Your license key will stay the same and you can use the full power of the Plesk extension.

Server Name

You can specify a unique name that will be used as an ID within your New Relic profile. For example, you could use your domain name or hostname – whatever you like.

Install INFRASTRUCTURE: This option installs the INFRASTRUCTURE agent on your server.

Install APM: This option installs the APM agent for PHP on your server. To install the agent, you need to select the PHP versions your applications are using. This configures the APM agent properly in order to analyze requests handled by your applications.

The Operating Systems that this extension supports are: 

  • Ubuntu
  • Debian
  • CentOS
  • Red Hat

Free extension with sources available on GitHub

We love open source! So we also released the New Relic extension in our official Plesk GitHub account in a public repository.

We’d be happy to see your valuable input and contribution. Feel free to create pull requests or add GitHub issues to contribute to this project. If you like it, give it a star 🙂 Now, have fun and get rid of those annoying bottlenecks in your code!

Discover the New Relic Extension on Plesk

Six tips I learned about sustaining long-term core contributions at WCLDN

Wordcamp London - Six tips learned about core-contribution

As a developer and hopeful future contributor to the WP Core, I question what lies on the road ahead. So I sat for Felix Arntz’ talk at WordCamp London on how to sustain long-term contributions. Since joining his first core-contribution table at WordCamp Europe – Seville in 2015, he’s gained a lot of knowledge (and frustrations).

#Tip 1 – Hold your horses

He first talked about the headaches of reporting bugs and creating tickets when in this zone. That even though you’d want to go ahead and immediately patch – you still need to discuss first. This is not a solo project. You need to learn the philosophies of the circle you’re part of and make them part of your mindset.

Always place the project’s goals ahead of your own ego. It’s worth allowing others to try to convince you. In the same way that you should feel free to convince others when necessary. If you disagree initially – step away, think about it further, and come back later.

#Tip 2 – Sometimes you’re wrong

Understand that rejection’s part of the whole process. Your ideas Will not always be accepted by the group – and that’s OK! Here’s how Felix suggests you deal with that rejection.

  • If someone gives no good reason for saying no, ask for one explicitly.
  • Disagree? Then dig further. Ask for a third and fourth opinion.
  • Still disagree? Then, your thoughts may not comply with the project’s philosophies.
  • Always keep your calm and be polite. Don’t take anything personally.

#Tip 3 – Get your answers

Felix shared how when he joined Multisite in 2016, he struggled a bit with unanswered questions. He would say be persistent when you don’t receive an answer for a while. Your question is valid and deserves an answer too. But I think that it’s often up to you to chase your own answers. One way or another.

#Tip 4 – Find your focus.

First, you need to find out what interests you the most, before you can start placing your focus towards it. Then you’ll know which meetings you can participate regularly in for that component.

I may not like to sit back myself – I tend to dive right in and participate. Always keeping in mind that direct communication Works best. But Felix says it’s perfectly OK to just pop in with a hello at first and hang around a bit, seeing how it’s done. And the more you show up, learn and present ideas, the more you build trust over time.

#Tip 5 – It ain’t just code.

You’re not just gonna be sitting there coding the stuff all day, by your lonesome. Be open to new tasks. And when you accept them, document changes precisely so that others can follow. Or even recap so your colleagues can stay up to date.

Write precise ticket descriptions and commit messages. You may be the one interested in the core, but you’ll still need to collaborate with other teams, like design and accessibility.

Want to become a component maintainer? Once you’re more familiar with your component, start providing responses to new tickets. And make new contributors feel welcome.

#Tip 5 – Learn and repeat

You don’t need to be a coding virtuoso to land an important role in the core. All you need to do is keep contributing, learn from mistakes and never stop improving your skillset over time.

Why is this important?

Well, we advise that you pay attention to details. But keep in mind that even a small change might break something in another location. So write tests to verify functionality and integrity. Don’t break any through a commit. And always make sure your code is reviewed by other experts in the respective area.

#Tip 6 – Be time-aware

You need to be reasonable with the time you have to things. Don’t overestimate what you can do within those core-dedicated hours. Moreover, don’t get involved with too many components. Just stay focused on those select few, so you can make a real difference.

Wanna increase your core time?

Then know that making an impact on core development will spark your fellow coder’s attention. Already got a lot on your plate with the company employing you 9-5? Bring up your aspirations with your boss.

Many companies will be more than happy to grant their developers extra time to work on extra projects that grow their skillset. Also works if it’s time for a change. Because prospective companies may become interested in sponsoring you. So my advice would be to take a chance. You never know!

Dev Spotlight: Felix Arntz on Coding and Contributing to the WordPress Core

Plesk interviews Felix Artnz

After Felix Arntz gave his latest speech at WCLDN regarding contributing to the WordPress Core, I had a sit with him. Mostly to chat about what keeps him going. He’s a freelance backend developer, based in Germany. And for many years, he’s been implementing client solutions and plugins that majorly focus on Multisite environments.

This month, Yoast started sponsoring him part-time to contribute to the WordPress Core. Which lets him spend even more time coding for the open-source-project he’s deeply committed to. Besides this, you’ll also find him involved in Multisite, Capabilities and Post Thumbnails. Moreover, he writes plugins and libraries, focusing on developing clean and sustainable solutions. Here’s what we learned from Felix last weekend.

Felix Arntz Q&A

WordPress is free for us and allows us not only to publish content but also to make a living out of it. And even get in touch with awesome people from all over the world. It’s important to give something back in whatever dimension that’s possible for you, as an individual, in whatever area works best for you.

Definitely overcoming the feelings about being “rejected”. For example, when people closed tickets I opened or didn’t accept my suggestions. It’s important to step back and ask yourself why this make you feel frustrated.

Maybe this won’t make a lot of sense to you. But when you write a unit test in WordPress, you don’t need to clean up after yourself. Because WordPress does it for you. It’s not very well-documented, so a lot of people don’t know – unfortunately.

They clean up after themselves and write tons of additional code which is absolutely unnecessary. It’s not important because it doesn’t break anything. But it just kind of bugs me. Yes, a useless thing, which bugs me. (laughing).

Patience. At first, I was very annoyed because many things took a lot of time. I was like, “come on, it’s not that hard to fix!” But when I got my committer access to WordPress core and did my first commit, that was the moment when it clicked.

I was kind of anxious when I was about the hit the “Enter” button for the very first time. Did I do everything right? Would my decision break WordPress? I know my colleagues have similar attitudes too.

Everybody wants to be 100% sure the code they’ll commit will work – and not break anything. I understood then why (good) things may take time and why not everything I had pushed for previously got merged as quickly as I wanted it to.

That’s a very easy question: going to my first WordCamp! One of the best decisions I ever made, to be honest. In my talk I said I regret that I didn’t to that 2 years earlier.

However, it was definitely outside of my comfort zone, because I wouldn’t say I was much of a people person. I didn’t know anybody. But it immediately worked for me. I already met the first cool people of this community on the plane – which was amazing! (laughter).

I really like Sublime Text, which I use as a code editor. It’s a very basic tool but I love how fast it is. This is way more important to me than additional features other editors would provide me with. Well, I argue about that sometimes with people. (Laughter).

WP Query Monitor is a great Developer Tools panel for WordPress. And then some automation tools like Gulp and a lot of testing tools. If I counted them all, it would take us some time. (Laughter)

Coding standards and well, design patterns. Basically more abstractions in the code base. And making it maintainable. Because to be honest, maintaining it is terrible at the moment.

I’ve been holding off learning JavaScript for some time now. Even if my focus is PHP, and if it will probably stay that way, I still really wanna learn and understand JavaScript. And enable myself to create some cool stuff in Gutenberg. And maybe help out in the Gutenberg team at some point.

I didn’t start learning it yet, but I definitely will! Now that we’re talking, I seriously think I’m gonna start tomorrow by learning React and then dive into Gutenberg. (Laughter)

I decided not to go down the business road. Because I love coding. And when you run a business, you do this part that you really enjoy less and less. I just wanna code (Laughter)

I’ve been a freelancer for some years now and I try to automate my workflow as much as possible. So I think I would probably use any tool that would help me doing so. Why not a server management platform like Plesk? I must confess, that I haven’t used Plesk’s control panel so far. And I don’t know that much about it. But that’s nothing we can’t change!

Lots of things music-related: listening, writing and producing music, playing the piano, going to concerts. And I love playing soccer. Oh and of course – travelling the world with WordCamps!

Catch Felix’s WCLDN Talk on WP Core if you’ve missed it

You can very well get familiar with the technical bits of WordPress core contribution during a WP Contributor Day. But you don’t normally get deep insights if you’re interested in finding your spot in a core contributor team.

Felix’s talk is for those who want to contribute as efficiently as possible and deal with roadblocks with less frustration. He showcases the benefits of contributing, recommends how to build trust, and gives insights on which traits are particularly valuable to have. It’s more than just code-writing. It’s building long-term relationships and making significant impacts. WPTV Talk coming soon! Meanwhile, check these slides here.

Are you an expert yet? Take the New Plesk Onyx Quiz | 5 Minutes

Hello and welcome to the first of what we hope to be many quizzes related to the world of Plesk. We’ll start off with the latest from the product itself – the New Plesk Onyx and the March 2018 update.

Do you know what’s been going on? Have you checked out what you can do with our new features, extensions, fixes, and enhancements? Well then, show us what you’ve got! Because we want to make sure you can use the control panel optimally.

The New Plesk Onyx Quiz

You’ve got 14 questions below – answer them as best you can (and no cheating!). 

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

How did you do?

Finally, how was it? Did you get a great score? Almost there but not quite? Let us know how you did in the comments below. You can also join the conversation on either Twitter or Facebook. And then see how you stack up against your peers too.

Think you can do better yet? Fortunately, there’s a free Plesk University course, dedicated to learning more about the new Plesk Onyx. There might be more you can do with it.

First, hit the button below to get the course. Then start completing it. New to Plesk University? Then click “Get this Course” and sign up first.

Learn More about the Latest Plesk Onyx

These 9 Web Hosting Trends could be impacting your business

Web Hosting Trends for 2018 as told by Plesk

How do you keep your web hosting business growing? Part of your responsibility lies in staying on top of industry trends. Ignore these trends, and your company starts to suffer as your customers start looking elsewhere for solutions.

Trend 1: Competition from DIY website builders

Squarespace, WordPress premium and other website builders make creating new websites a breeze. We have also seen bloggers publish content like How to Create a WordPress Blog in 5 Minutes. Such content creates the impression that websites are easy to build and set up.

What does this mean for web hosting companies? A growing number of your customers and potential customers think websites are easy to set up. In fact, some probably believe that there’s no real difference between web hosts. After all, everybody promises “easy to set up websites” right?

How to respond to this competition trend

Simply offering web hosting is not enough. You need to provide additional value to your customers. For example, consider offering a quarterly security review for your e-commerce customers. Or review the other trends in this article for more ideas on how you can develop your business.

Trend 2: Bigger demand for managed web hosting services

Modern websites are sophisticated bits of business technology. Take a successful e-commerce website, for example. It may have over a dozen plugins running to increase conversions and manage security risks. To serve media to end users, you might even have a CDN (content delivery network) in the background to keep media flowing quickly.

Fully-managed hosting is a particularly popular option if you have non-technical customers. In addition to basic traditional hosting, a web host will provide backups, system updates, managed backups and help desk services.

In the hosting market, fully-managed hosting sometimes includes one-click installation for commonly used applications, like WordPress and databases. You can also expect to see risk management services like disaster recovery and secondary facilities.

How to respond to this trend of bigger demand

This trend is an opportunity to offer greater value to your web host customers. In order to take advantage of this trend, you’ll need to offer more value in-house. You can do this by building a team or connecting with third parties. In either case, you’ll need extra management effort to maintain the customer experience.

Trend 3: Price competition heats up

It is the flip side of increased demand for fully managed web hosting – price wars for less complex services. If your company specializes in offering simple, do-it-yourself web hosting, be prepared to offer more price-based offers. The largest web hosting companies, like GoDaddy, are masters of discounts and pricing. So study their offers.

You can navigate this trend without destroying your business. However, you need to understand your costs and where you can get increased efficiencies. You might start by looking at your third-party bills for software, hardware, and services.

Alternatively, you might offer discounts in the short term to attract longer customers. It’s the classic ‘cell phone company approach’. Offer a price break today in return for a two or three-year contract.

How to respond to this pricing trend

Ask yourself: Are you losing customers because of price competition? If yes, decide whether you want to respond with more aggressive pricing – or move up the market.

Trend 4: The death of simple web hosting?

When you think of the leading companies in the web hosting business, how many services do they offer? At a moment’s notice, we thought of the following:

  • Web design services
  • Security services like HTTPS, SSL and more
  • E-commerce support: help to install plugins or to implement shopping carts and payment services
  • Email services
  • Online training to help customers deploy their ideas
  • Marketing and SEO services. It might not be a specialty of web hosts, but we see this being offered in the market

How to respond to the trend of ‘extra needs’

What does this mean for your company? If you run a basic web host service, your days are numbered. To survive in the modern web host market, you need to offer additional services. Ask yourself: What are you doing to support your customers’ security needs?

Trend 5: HTTPS is the new normal

In 2017, HTTPS went from being a good idea to being nearly mandatory. As of early 2017, Wired reports that about half of all websites were running HTTPS. Why did it happen? The process started gradually. In 2015, Google said it would favor websites with HTTPS in search results. In mid-2018, the Google Chrome browser will mark sites lacking HTTPS as not secure.

How to respond to this security trend

If you don’t offer your customers HTTPS today, you’re already behind in the game. If you currently charge for HTTPS, that service offering will go under pressure. Why? Because many web host companies offer free HTTPS. You may have to give up that particular service offering. Don’t worry – there are other security services you can charge for.

Trend 6: Protecting user privacy

2018 is already shaping up to be a major year for data breaches and security matters. In Europe, the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is causing a tremendous impact on business. If you have web host customers in Europe, you may want to reach out to them to remind them of the changes.

Outside of regulatory changes, there’s a growing concern about the power of large Internet companies. While you may not have Facebook’s scale or problems, their experience has lessons for web hosts. Government agencies and end-customers expect companies to protect their privacy. And take action when there is a failure.

How to respond to this privacy trend

There are 2 dimensions to responding to this trend.

  1. First, rethink how you collect and use information from your customers and users. Do you have a program in place to track and report data breaches?
  2. Next, what advice and information do you provide your web host customers to protect their customer’s personal info? That’s an area where you can add value through webinars, newsletters and additional services.

Trend 7: Green Hosting

Did you know that Internet activities, including running data centers,are significant sources of power consumption today? As a response to this challenge, Google has started changing their approach to adding more “green hosting.” What does this look like? Take a look at GreenGeeks Web Hosting.

The company purchases wind energy credits equivalent to triple the energy it uses. In marketing terms, the company’s hosting plans offer “300% Offset with Renewable Energy.” If you’re interested in making a similar report to companies, look into the company’s reseller program.

How to respond to this green trend

As Internet companies grow, consuming more power, you need to decide whether you’ll contribute to the problem or the solution. One solution is to purchase green energy credits. You might also look into better power efficiency software to optimize your company’s hardware. If your company uses a reseller arrangement, consider adding green provisions into your contract.

Trend 8: Web hosts need to improve their management systems

Once you grow beyond a handful of clients, managing your client needs becomes a challenge. There’s too much information to retain correctly. How do you keep WordPress updated for your clients? How do you monitor backups and uptime for everyone?

This trend is all about the challenge of effectively managing growth. An IBIS World publication estimates that the web hosting industry will grow 7% annually for the next several years. Is your web host ready to take your share of the growth?

How can you improve the customer experience without adding a small army of support staff? The Plesk Hosting Pack because it will address your security needs. It also includes support for Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) and Kaspersky antivirus support. Check our product selection – You’ll see we make it easy to quickly add and configure new servers as you grow.

How to respond to this management trend

There are 2 ways to invest in improving your management.

  1. First, educate yourself on business systems.
  2. Secondly, invest in web management tools like Plesk’s Hosting Pack to automate repetitive admin tasks.
Check out our Hosting Pack

Trend 9: Hosting data centers are disappearing

Web host companies used to invest in building their own data centers. For small companies, this meant buying and managing a half-dozen servers. Larger web hosts would purchase and manage much larger facilities. But all that’s changing now! Industry research found that the number of data centers peaked at 8.55 million in 2015. That figure is projected to drop to 7.2 million by 2021.

How to respond to this data center trend

If your web host operates a data center, it’s time to evaluate that investment carefully. Unless you happen to have unusually demanding customers like banks and governments, there’s little need to own and operate your own data centers.

Use these trends to grow your web hosting business

Security, value-added services and anxiety about personal privacy add up to make web hosting a more demanding business. If you want to stay in business, you’ll need to increase your efficiency and management controls. Sit with your management team and review these 9 trends to see what part of your business plan you need to change.

Why You Need SSL Certificate Everywhere to Scale Your Web Host

Get an SSL Certificate and scale your web host with the Symantec SSL extension

Web security leaped forward in 2018. Google began flagging websites lacking the SSL security stamp. Chrome users – so, over 50% of the market, will start to see “not secure” on websites that lack an SSL Certificate. So, if you ever needed an incentive to get on the SSL Certificate bandwagon – Google’s just provided it.

For web hosts, providing SSL is quickly going to provide an industry standard. Let’s quickly refresh how an SSL Certificate improves the user experience.

Why hosts should care about an SSL Certificate

Why you need SSL certificate to scale web host

Looking bad in Google Chrome is just part of the story. Aside from appearances, having an SSL Certificate is an excellent foundational security practice. In fact, adopting SSL everywhere will improve your Google search engine rankings.

What is an SSL Certificate?

An SSL Certificate is a tiny data file that attaches a cryptographic key to your website. This security protocol will protect user data transfers, secure logins, and credit card transactions. Plus it will authenticate the overall business website or domain. In browsers, SSL activates the padlock and https to make connections secure from the server to browser.

First – Check your SSL certificate

If you were not persuaded by the security benefits, neglecting to generate an SSL Certificate may cost you organic traffic.

And if that happens, you may start losing customers as competitors turn their SSL Certificate into a standard offering. Just imagine if a customer website is hacked because you failed to recommend them an SSL Certificate. That’s not going to work.

But how exactly can you help your customers adopt SSL and stay current?

Helping your customers manage their SSL Certificates

We need to realize, friends, that most business customers are not fluent with the details of SSL. They know the “lock” icon helps security, but that’s about it. They may not realize SSL is necessary or valuable for their website. To help your customers make the transition, you can use the following process.

1. Identify customers lacking an SSL Certificate

Fortunately, many websites have SSL Certificates in place. In those cases, skip ahead to the “Ongoing Support” section. For everyone else, make a spreadsheet listing the following details:

  • Domains that lack an SSL Certificate. Identify the domains that currently lack SSL.
  • Customer contact details. You need this information to contact them. If you have a small customer base, we recommend going for a personal approach. Even large hosting companies like GoDaddy find time to call their customers.
  • A rationale for reaching out. You can make general recommendations about SSL helping search rankings and protecting customer data. If the customer takes customer payments or sensitive data through their website (including support requests), they have an even greater reason to buy an SSL certificate.

2. Reach out to customers

With your customer list in hand, it is time to reach out to customers. Use the following email template as a starting point:

Dear CUSTOMER NAME,

Your DOMAIN URL doesn’t have any SSL security in place. You may know that a website SSL certificate is one of the most popular ways to secure information sent online. Without SSL in place, your website looks like it’s less secure in Google Chrome, the world’s most popular web browser. Your traffic may also decline because security is a factor in Google’s rankings.

We can offer that you purchase an SSL certificate. To set up your next steps, give us a call or contact us here: XXXX.

Concerned that some of your customers may panic about weak security? You can reassure them that over 25% of US government websites analyzed in 2017 failed SSL testing. They are far from alone. After you complete the initial transition effort, move on to ongoing support.

3. Offer ongoing support for SSL

Like passports, SSL certificates expire. If your customers have expired SSL, it degrades the web experience because you get warnings like this:

Help your customers avoid this type of problem by proactively helping them to keep SSL up to date. We recommend setting up an auto-renewal process to notify customers of charges 30-60 days in advance of the charge. Arguing about the SSL process every year doesn’t help anyone, especially if you’re adding new customers each month.

Plesk’s approach to SSL Certificate providers and web hosts

Now we’ve established why SSL is essential for web hosts. Want to hop on the security bandwagon, then stay on top of SSL and all other requirements for your customers? Use the Symantec SSL Plesk Extension.

Get an SSL Certificate

Symantec SSL certificate

Unlike other approaches to SSL, the Symantec SSL extension brings additional value. Installed on over one million Web servers around the world, Symantec is a tested solution. Therefore, you don’t have to worry about your security falling behind. Because Symantec has the resources to invest in security.

The Symantec SSL extension integrates smoothly into your server management workflow when you use Plesk. If you’re unsure which certificate to pick, the extension helps you make the right choice. Best of all, the business-level SSL comes with a significant warranty. Which is a sign of us standing behind our product and its SSL certificate price.

Make SSL easy for your customers

SSL is not just for banks and e-commerce companies. Google practically requires it. As a web host, your customers look to you to provide guidance on security. Bring SSL into your standard operating procedures for all of your hosting customers. Follow the button below to learn more.

More about Symantec SSL

Why our WP Toolkit now has Smart Updates powered by AI

Plesk WP Toolkit Smart Updates

More than 60k websites are victims of hacking every day. And since WordPress is the most popular CMS for building websites, it makes sense that these sites become the preferred target for malicious attacks. What about you – are you covered? Your current practices may be insufficient. Here’s where Smart Updates by AI come in. Available now on the latest WP Toolkit version.

Lack of WordPress updates: The danger is real

Each WordPress update contains important security notifications that make it harder for you and your sites to get hacked. But many users don’t keep WordPress up-to-date. Why? Wed can’t just nail it down to the WordPress community’s lack of care or effort to keep their sites secure and updated. Because that’s simply not true.

So, what is it that holds back certain updates? Well, web professionals and agencies alike know that every update implies the risk of breaking sites, causing downtime and making a lot of customers unhappy. And no one wants that!

Let’s cut out the middleman

Additionally, like many other administrative tasks, running WordPress updates is quite time-consuming. Especially if you do your best to mitigate potential risks. If you want to do it right, you need to:

  1. Create a back-up of your WordPress instances
  2. Copy WordPress to a test stage
    – because you should never apply changes to a production system!
  3. Run the update
  4. Test
  5. Push to production
  6. Test again
  7. Clean up
  8. Potentially more annoying stuff

There must be a simpler process, right? And there is folks! We thought of a smarter way to complete this important task while simplifying the lives of web professionals.

Introducing Smart Updates on Plesk’s WP Toolkit

Plesk Smart Updates powered by Deep Learning technologies makes it as easy as pie to stay secure and keep your WordPress sites up-to-date. Smart Updates run a staged simulation to analyze and verify the compatibility of each available update. It compares the before-after screenshots to check for differences, before applying the update to your production environment.

How Smart Updates works on WP Toolkit

Turn it on and let Smart Updates check whether the planned update will break your production site or is good to go. If an issue gets detected, WP Toolkit will send an Email comprising of an exact description of the issue and including corresponding screenshots.

It’s then completely up to you how you wish to proceed: apply the changes or simply reject them. Smart Updates will always send an alert in case of unwanted line breaks, missing pages or corrupt imagery and videos.

This feature is all part of the new Plesk Onyx update – generally available from April 10, 2018!

Check out the latest WP Toolkit