By default, Plesk is automatically secured with an SSL/TLS certificate from Let’s Encrypt.
The certificate secures the transferred data each time you and your customers (if any) access Plesk.
In certain cases, a new Plesk server does not have a resolvable hostname. In this case, Let’s Encrypt cannot issue a certificate,
which could leave the Plesk server unprotected. Additionally, each time anyone visits Plesk, they would see a warning about an untrusted connection.
To prevent this from happening, Plesk generates a temporary server hostname if the actual server hostname is non-resolvable.
The temporary server hostname is based on the server IP address and has a randomly generated prefix, which enhances security,
for example, purple-bear.192-0-2-1.plesk.page, where:
-
purple-bearis a random prefix. -
192.0.2.1is the server IP address.
Using the temporary server hostname, Let’s Encrypt issues a certificate that secures Plesk.
To ensure that the temporary server hostname does not get in the way of your configuration,
the hostname is generated only if both of these conditions are met:
- The actual server hostname is not resolvable during Plesk installation.
- You did not provide the server hostname during the initial configuration of the Plesk server (via the CLI using the
init_confutility).
Note: If you provided a server hostname after a temporary one had been already generated and after having worked in Plesk for some time,
Plesk will not reissue the Let’s Encrypt certificate securing the server. You need to issue a certificate
for the new hostname manually.