What's New in Plesk 12.5

The goal of this release is to make Plesk a better, more reliable, and more secure tool for both Web hosts and website owners. It offers improved database management, support for in-place upgrades to major releases of Debian, and other improvements.

To view software requirements for installation and upgrade, refer to the Software Requirements section.

To view the Release Notes for the previous version, Plesk 12.0, see the Release Notes for Plesk for Linux or Plesk for Windows.

To see the latest version of Plesk 12.5, visit our demo server.

Here is a closer look at the changes.

Support for Multiple PHP Versions

Plesk 12.5 comes with a long-requested feature - support for multiple versions of PHP out of the box. Plesk 12.5 ships with the following PHP versions:

  • 5.2
  • 5.3
  • 5.4
  • 5.5
  • 5.6
  • 7.0

All supported versions of PHP can be installed with the help of the Plesk Installer. Learn more.

Improved PHP Support

PHP support was improved in a number of ways in Plesk 12.5 to better suit PHP developers and their development practices. The following features and improvements were introduced:

  • Opcode cache modules support was added.
  • php-fpm support for Apache 2.4 was added.

Administrators can choose the list of PHP modules to use for every combination of PHP version and handler type, both from the Plesk interface, via the command line, or via the XML-API. Administrators can also choose to make certain PHP handlers available or unavailable for use, and configure the global PHP settings. Learn more.

The support for APC and Zend OPcache modules, as well as WinCache was added in Plesk 12.5. PHP accelerators substantially increase the speed of PHP applications. Improvements of web page generation throughput by factors of two to seven have been observed. Users can now switch on PHP accelerator modules on the PHP settings page.

The support for the Composer PHP dependency manager was added to Plesk. Users can now scan their subscriptions for Composer applications and update dependencies via the Plesk interface. Learn more.

The service plan permissions controlling access to PHP settings have been re-worked giving hosting providers more flexibility in managing their customers' ability to choose PHP version and handler, and configure common PHP settings. Administrators and Resellers alike can now manage the ability of their customers to choose the PHP version and handler for their websites with the help of the new "Hosting settings management" permission. Learn more.

According to the official Apache documentation, using PHP-FPM is the recommended way to run PHP under Apache 2.4. PHP-FPM is now set to be the default PHP handler when Apache 2.4 is installed on the server. Now it is also available for selection in the PHP handler list in individual domains' web hosting settings, as well as in the service plan settings.

Users can now access the PHP info page directly from the Plesk interface. Learn more.

Scheduled Tasks

Task scheduler UI was re-worked to make it more intuitive. Configuring the time and date at which a task is to run is much more straightforward, and notifications can now be configured on a per-task level.

Scheduled tasks are now divided into three broad categories:

  • Run a command
  • Fetch a URL
  • Run a PHP script

This helps users to more easily configure a task of the desired type. Learn more.

Plesk Interface Improvements

The Plesk interface was massively updated, featuring a new user interface theme and fully responsive design according to the industry's best practices. The left navigation pane was reworked to improve usability. The new interface makes it convenient to use the Plesk Service Provider view on mobile devices.

The Plesk interface was updated to reflect the change of brand from Parallels to Odin.

Frames are no longer a part of Plesk interface, so users can now share direct links to Plesk screens that can be accessed by other authenticated users, and can bookmark their favorite pages in Plesk in the browser.

New high-resolution icons make Plesk look good on high-resolution displays, including Apple Retina displays.

Now administrators can disable logging in to Plesk using the server's root user's credentials. Learn more.

The ability to log in to Plesk automatically from external resources was implemented in Plesk 12.5. This feature can be used, for example, to enable customers to log in to Plesk from their hosting provider's panel without authenticating again.

Plesk Repair

Plesk 12.5 introduces the Plesk Repair tool, a command line utility that can be used to automatically detect and resolve a wide range of issues that may occur during Plesk operation. For example, the Plesk Repair tool can be used to perform the following tasks:

  • Validate and correct the Plesk configuration after Plesk upgrade. Learn more.
  • Diagnose and resolve issues with the mail service, both on the mail server level and on the individual mailboxes' level. Learn more.
  • Diagnose and resolve issues with MySQL or Microsoft SQL Server databases. This includes resolving issues with databases and database users, and testing the connection to remote database servers. Learn more.
  • Diagnose and resolve issues with the web server. Learn more.
  • Diagnose and resolve issues with the DNS service. Learn more.
  • Diagnose and resolve issues with the Plesk database. Learn more.

The Plesk Repair tool can be run on both the server level and the level of individual objects (domains, mailboxes, and so on). The former option enables you to perform a comprehensive checkup of the whole server, and the latter one helps you quickly resolve issues affecting a single mailbox or domain. Learn more.

Improved Database Management

Users can now download and upload database dumps in native format using the Plesk interface. This is a marked improvement compared to the previous mechanism which involved the use of phpMyAdmin or myLittleAdmin. Learn more.

The list of databases belonging to a subscription now includes short summaries for each database, including the database server, names of the assigned database users, the number of tables, and the size of the database. This provides the users with information at a glance without the need to click on the database or drill down into menus. Learn more.

Now users can set and manage the MySQL database users' roles, as well as configure database users' permissions from the Plesk interface. Learn more.

A mechanism allowing users to check the integrity of database tables and resolve some issues automatically was implemented. It enables users to troubleshoot issues with databases faster and possibly resolve them without manual intervention. Learn more.

The ability to move databases between subscriptions was added in Plesk 12.5. Customers can reassign databases they own between their subscriptions, while the Plesk administrator can reassign databases between all subscriptions on the server. Learn more.

Additional links to the database management page were added to the Plesk interface, and the UI of the Databases tab was re-worked to make it more intuitive, and make it easier for users to manage databases.

Support for MariaDB version 10 was added in Plesk 12.5.

Disk space taken up by remote databases can now be calculated and included in the resource usage reports. Learn more.

Every database can now be associated with the corresponding website in the Plesk interface.

Improved Site Preview

The default site preview mechanism was reworked. Users now face far fewer restrictions on the type of content that can be viewed in the preview mode. In addition, the preview link now works outside Plesk by default. Learn more.

Log Browser

The new interface of the Log Browser has made it more convenient for finding and vieweing log messages.

Users can access redesigned Log Browser and see web server logs updated in real-time (similar to tail –f command).

Users can see multiple combined logs on one screen at once and choose which logs should be displayed.

Date and string filters are available, and they work in real-time mode as well.

Learn more

Incremental Backups Support

Another much-requested feature implemented in Plesk 12.5 is the support for incremental backups. An incremental backup, as compared to a full one, both takes up much less disk space and finishes much faster. This functionality enables the Plesk administrator to both drastically save on disk space used for customer backups and significantly reduce the server load. The backup operation is fairly resource-consuming, so making a full backup of every domain on the server can noticeably increase the load on the server for a few hours. Creating incremental backups instead solves this issue. Learn more.

Users can download, upload, and remove incremental backups stored both locally and on an FTP server via the Plesk interface.

Dist-upgrade Support

(Linux)

Another long-requested feature added in Plesk 12.5 is the ability to upgrade the OS on a server where Plesk is installed. At the moment, only the following in-place upgrades are supported:

  • Debian 6 to Debian 7
  • Debian 7 to Debian 8
  • Ubuntu 12.04 to Ubuntu 14.04

Learn more

And also

Multi-Language Support

The support for the Indonesian language was added in Plesk 12.5. Plesk is now available in 22 languages, including English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Russian, Chinese Traditional, Chinese Simplified, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Turkish, Greek, and Ukrainian.

WordPress Toolkit

Quick installation of WordPress now automatically matches the WordPress locale to that of the user's control panel.

Users can see security status of all WordPress instances in the list of instances in WordPress Toolkit. Clicking "Scan" while no instances are selected will recheck the security status of all instances in the list.

Users can select WordPress instances where plugins or themes should be installed if installing from the Plugins or the Themes tab in WordPress Toolkit.

Backup Improvements

Now administrators can set up a password that will be used to protect sensitive information contained in Plesk backup files (user passwords, ODBC connector information, and so on). Knowing this password makes it possible to restore backups on a different Plesk server with the encrypted information intact. Learn more.

Administrators can now adjust global settings of scheduled backups via the XML-API.

Command-Line Interface Improvements

A number of command-line utilities were added or improved, giving Plesk administrators new options, such as:

  • Viewing and managing the list of Plesk interface languages with the help of the locales utility. Learn more.
  • Retrieving information about existing mail accounts and mail account aliases with the help of the --list and --info options of the mail utility. Learn more.
  • Managing SSL cyphers and protocols for all services with the help of the server_pref utility. Learn more.
  • Switching the Fail2ban service on or off with the help of the ip_ban utility. Learn more.

Plesk Extensions Support

Developers of Plesk extensions can now retrieve information about the features of the installed Plesk license keys via an SDK method.

Plesk Administrators can now have installed Plesk extensions upgraded automatically when upgrades become available. Learn more.

Web Server Improvements

(Linux)

Plesk Administrators running CentOS 7 or Ubuntu 14 with Apache 2.4 or later can now select the desired Apache multi-processing module from the Plesk interface.

The support for Phusion Passenger was added to Apache and to nginx in Plesk 12.5.

Fail2ban

(Linux)

A ModSecurity default jail was added to Fail2ban in Plesk. It allows Administrators to have suspicious IPs detected by the Web Application Firewall blocked by Fail2ban. Learn more.

Plesk Installer

(Linux)

Starting with Plesk 12.5, Plesk packages are signed with a GPG key to prevent installation of unauthorized packages. This is done to ensure that only valid Plesk packages produced by Odin are installed. If the signature check fails for one or more packages, the installation of Plesk is canceled.

Web Statistics

(Windows)

The support for the AWStats GeoIP plugin was introduced in Plesk 12.5.