Plesk’s user-friendly and extensively featured GUI was created to make the management of web, mail, DNS, and other services a lot simpler for IT specialists. It’s is a hosting control panel, so its job is to act as a bridge between a system’s services and its users. For instance, when someone uses the GUI to create a website, Plesk broadcasts this request to either an Apache or an IIS web server, and in the case of the latter it adds a new virtual host to the system. Having a one-stop-shop like this for looking after system services means that maintenance costs go down and flexibility and control for administrators go up.
One of the things that the Plesk GUI lets you do is both manage and add to the list of registered IP addresses.
The designation for every IP address registered in Plesk must the either shared or dedicated. As the name suggest, shared IP addresses can be shared between an endless number of different websites irrespective of which account they belong to. Dedicated IP addresses are tied to one account only, be they for the customer, reseller, or a Plesk administrator. You can use them for hosting numerous websites, but they must always belong to the same account.
An IP address with the dedicated designation offers these benefits:
- hosting anonymous FTP shares (no password authentication required).
- reputation management for an IP address—perhaps because the previous subscriber on that account was distributing spam, for instance—so that websites hosted on it aren’t tarred with the same brush.
- use an SSL/TLS certificate to secure a website if Server Name Indication (SNI) support is not available. SNI opens the door for SSL/TLS protection for websites that share IP addresses. This may not work with every browser and server though. To find out more, see SSL/TLS and Shared IP Addresses.
How to list registered IP addresses
To look at the list of IP addresses registered in Plesk together with essential information like the number of websites or the IP address type hosted on a given IP address, go to Tools & Settings > IP Addresses. The search menu lets you search for IP addresses. You can bring it up by clicking on the arrow button on the right-hand side of the screen.
How To Add IP Addresses In Plesk
1. Go to Tools & Settings > IP Addresses.
2. Click on Add IP Address.
If you are running Plesk within a Virtuozzo container, you can only add IP addresses on the Virtuozzo hardware node. The Add IP Address button won’t be shown. Have a look at the documentation for Virtuozzo if you want to learn how to add IP addresses when running Plesk in a Virtuozzo container. Once you’ve added all the IP addresses you want, you’ll need to re-read IP addresses.
You can’t add or remove IP addresses from a network interface that has DHCP enabled. If that’s the case, you’ll need to disable it for a given network interface.
3. Use the Interface menu to choose the network interface for your new IP.
4. Type in the IP address and the subnet mask in the appropriate box. For instance, 123.123.123.123/16 or 2002:7b7b:7b7b::1/64.
5. Set the Public IP address (this is an option used for Plesk servers behind NAT). If you want to add a private IP address that you’ll be using to host public-facing websites, you can pair it to a public IP address by adding it in the Set the Public IP address field. This IP address will be used in the domain records that show what’s being hosted on this IP.
6. Choose shared or dedicated for the new IP address.
7. Choose the default SSL/TLS certificate to use with the new IP address. Each IP address is secured with the (self-signed) certificate by default.
8. Choose your preferred FTPS usage policy (on Plesk for Windows).
To make FTP connections secure, the FTP server installed on your Plesk server needs to support FTP over SSL/TLS. For instance, Gene6, Serv-U FTP, IIS FTP 7.x servers support FTP over SSL/TLS.
9. Hit OK and the IP address will be added.
How To Hide IP Addresses In Plesk
You can hide any IP address that’s been registered in Plesk, which means that no one will then be able to see them. When someone looks under Tools & Settings > IP Addresses they simply won’t be there, so they can’t be assigned. But why would you want to do this? Well, one reason is to stop you from accidentally assigning a private IP address to a subscription.
Note: you’ll get an error that says “The IP address is already used for hosting” if you try to hide one when it’s already been assigned to a subscription (or several of them). The IP address will also get tagged with a “blacklisted” label under Tools & Settings > IP Addresses, but you’ll still be able to assign it though.
To hide one or more IP addresses
Open the panel.ini file for editing and add these lines:
[ip]
blacklist="88.10.196.83"
88.10.196.83 is an IP addresses which you want to hide. You can hide both IPv4 and IPv6 IP addresses. Here’s an example:
[ip]
blacklist="88.10.196.83, 2002:5bcc:18fd:c:f482:d057:9ccf:993D"
Unhiding one or more hidden IP addresses
If you have a change of heart for some reason, you can unhide a hidden IP address, remove it from the panel.ini file and Reread IP.
Log in to Plesk, go to Tools & Settings > IP Addresses, and click on Reread IP.
How To Update The IP Addresses List
You can update the list of IP addresses in Plesk. This registers every current IP address on the server’s network interfaces in Plesk, which can be helpful when:
- you run Plesk in a Virtuozzo container and have added an IP address using the hardware node.
- you’ve manually added an IP address to the server.
In both instances, you must update the list of IP addresses before you can assign them to subscriptions.
To update the list of IP addresses:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > IP Addresses.
2. Click on Reread IP.
Assigning The Default Website For an IP Address
The first website hosted on an IP address becomes the default website for that address. If several websites are hosted on one IP address when the IP address is used for browsing it’s the default website that’s returned instead of a domain name.
Let’s say that you host several other websites on one IP address as well as your own. You might want visitors to see your website when they visit, and you can make this happen by making your own website the default one.
To set the default website:
1. Go to Tools & Settings > IP Addresses.
2. Click on the IP address you want.
3. Choose the website you’d like from the Default site menu.
4. Click on OK.