Am a mite too busy to experiment with the new Plex-controlled environment just at the moment, but the following nagging thoughts are keeping me awake at night:

“We are unable to offer hosting for Plusner sub-domains like www.username.plus.com and ccgi.username.plus.com at this stage. We do plan to offer hosting for these names in the final product.”
Q: Does this mean specifically that my existing ccgi.myusername.plus.com space (which in turn has lots of subdirectories) will be transferable to the new space 'as is' and retain the ccgi.myusername.plus.com name (which is hard coded in those of my ‘Home pages’ pages which need to invoke call PHP)?

“SSH / Telnet access to a shell on the new service will not be available”
Q: What will be the preferred way for me to create and delete subdirectories in the new system? Plex commands? (I assume permissions setting via FTP  - e.g. via Dreamweaver’s Remote View Set permissions -  will still be available?)

“A new web based … file upload tool is available”
Q: Will existing FTP uploads also be supported?

“[Proposed tariff: e.g.] £0 per month - … 3Gb Data transfer per month”
Q: The current allowance is a sum of Home pages data transfer and CGI pages data transfer. Do the new allowances cover both, or are they just for the CGI replacement (i.e. what happens to the allowance in my current contract?)

Q: My current applications use (passive) FTP transfer extensively to move data between Home pages webspace pages and CGI pages. Will this be affected in any way by the move?

(I have a load of other worries concerning transfer of my Humbug MySQL stuff but they can wait for now.  I'll see what tools will be provided on the final version of the platform)
 

Plesk has a file manager that lets you do all that.

I know you can setup any subdomain you like on the trial platform.

So in theory, you can create a ccgi.username.plushost.co.uk area in the trial platform today using Plesk. The missing part is that your new webspace isn't YET able to be accessed by the username.plus.com bit... (instead using the username.plushost.co.uk).

As long as Plusnet are planning to make the username.plus.com domain structure be able to be applied to the new platform, then the ccgi bit could be done as well, I'm sure.

Clearly, you can't have that domain pointing to two places at once, so moving it over, would mean that the old ccgi & homepages would then cease to be addressable. So I can see that if this was offered, then it would have to be a choice to switch the DNS addresses from them over (maybe using the domains too in the portal), so that you chose when to migrate from one to the other. It would also have to be a reversible change, so that you could potentially switch it back again to the ccgi platform if your test website failed - (during the time the ccgi servers were still in service). This would give people a chance to check their website in good time, and switch the DNS when it was confirmed working.

Also the www homepages servers are not going to be decommissioned, so the www bit of username.plus.com if allowed to be moved, would have to be optional, since many would still want their hompages site to stay online. But since the servers for ccgi & www are currently split (on the same domain name), I can see no reason why they couldn't remain split (or both combined onto the new platform) as users saw fit. I think the www bit can already be optionally switched over to CCGI servers for those that request it. Basically it is a DNS change (as I understand it), so tools for self management shouldn't be too hard to code (hopefully!).

So that would be the needed features of creating ability to switch over the domain name. I can see a clear case for recommending that there is a method to move the username domains over (since many sites will be referenced & interlinked from outside websites that the user has no direct control over).

Hopefully, if it is not already in Plusnet's plan for the final platform, then it can be still added to that plan, before it is too late.

Mike

In addition to Jelv's response, you can use also Dreamweaver's file manager facility to setup / delete folders, and move files around

As  I suspected, the lack of shell access is proving to be something of a burden.

I can't even find any easy way to simply edit a file - I have to remove it and add a new one.   Is it just me or does this seem amazingly inefficient?

I freely admit I'm not much of 'get it right first time' coder - I tend to get it pretty close, then have to do a fair bit of fiddling to get it perfect.  This takes really quite a long time fiddling about with Plesk, ftp etc.

How much serious consideration is being given to shell access?

Editing files is one thing that is easy - click the edit icon beside the file name in the File Manager.

tsk....always the last place you look 

cheers.

The consideration is quite serious and I'm doing my best to identify something that will work better for everyone. It's a debate with many elements though. What would help is if we can make a list of the essential things that don't have an easy work-around, or which cause other compromises to be made by people.

Ian

If enabling a shell access is too risky, a specific utility to unpack a tar file would be great: browse to to tar file, browse to the directory where you want unpacked, a couple of check boxes for options maybe, click a button and it gets done with the output directed back to the used or a log file with a view logfile option at the end.

Is there a plug-in app for Plesk that does unpacking? That would be excellent. Click on the file in Plesk, and select unpack.

The thing with shell access is that is difficult to list all the things you would do with it, as I tend to use it for so many diverse things, and normally I use it when the GUI has already let me down!

Hi

I currently have a MediaWiki site in CGI. Ian Wild said that the new service would have a one click installer for WordPress. I see that Plesk also list MediaWiki as one of the applications available for installation so does that mean I will also have the one click option? I must admit the thought of changing over brought me out in a cold sweat after the struggle I had understanding how to get it set up in the dim and distant past. If the option is already available please excuse my lack of research, if not when will it be there?. My wiki is the only reason I have for trying out the new service so if there is an easy route in the future I will probably take it when it presents itself.

Re the allowance...  i have just had an email from Pahy Support quote >>>
You are currently using 137.95 M of filespace with 134.43 M of data transfer. The limits for your account on this domain are as follows:

125.00 M of filespace.
768.00 M of data transfer.
unquote
I have had a look at the limits and it shows 250 of filespace......
I only have the one domain....   how do i asign the full 250 allocation?
The normal data transfer will be minimal ... it was so large this time because it was the intial transfer.

Also >>>   i could not publish to username.plushost.co.uk  and had to publish to the IP address....  also i cannot view it yet and have been told it will be 24 hours before i can do so.... 
I realise this is only a test system but would be obliged if others can confirm this is the norm.

Thanks.
Ken 

By default half your allowance is allocated to the domain - you can change this - it's come up before in this topic:

http://community.plus.net....msg552980.html#msg552980

FINALLY found it under  TIPS etc.... quote

I only seem to have half the advertised space & bandwidth. How do I increase the space & bandwidth to the allowed maximum?
Plusnet have allocated the correct space to the whole account, but by default have only allocated half of that webspace & monthly bandwidth to the initial website domain (probably username.plushost.co.uk unless you've got your own domain name) and left the other half unallocated.
If you click on this main domain (at the bottom of plesk), and then click LIMITS icon, you can increase them to the full allowance for that site

Thanks for the help..........................

I have a question which I have not found discussed here yet, concerning the future of multiple domains contained within a single websapce.  At present, each is entirely self-contained in subfolders of htdocs, so html pages, css, mp3, jpgs etc are all accessed and downloaded from within the domain.  Neat and professional.

However, under the present system, if I were to use the cgi space for php pages, I have been told that it is currently NOT possible to point to separate directories for each domain, and furthermore that larger files should be stored in htdocs, and accessed by absolute links (so those addresses would NOT be sub-directories of the appropriate domain).  So even if the domain started in www.domainname.com/index.html, it would then go to my general cgi space for all further php pages (something ugly like: http://ccgi.username.plus...amefolder/anotherpage.php.  Not neat or professional, so I have not bothered.

My question with regard to the NEW system is:

Will it be possible to devise the new system to enable ALL the various kinds of files (html, php, mp3 etc.) to be stored under a SINGLE directory (pointed at by DNS) for EACH domain - hosted and "username webspace".  I hope it is possible to build this in at this stage, as it would be of great benefit to those if us who have multiple domains and would like to use php.

Thanks for considering this suggestion, Peter

Hi,

My php application is creating files which are owned by www-data, are in group www-data  and only have owner write permissions. How can I change the permission of these files to delete them?

Thanks

Andy.