Managing ICP Permits

According to the policy set by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, a state agency of the People's Republic of China, all China-based websites need to receive a special permit, called an ICP permit, to be able to operate in China. Websites that do not obtain a valid permit are blocked after the grace period expires, and every domain needs to have a separate permit. If you plan to run your hosting business in China, Plesk makes it easy for you to assign and manage ICP permits for the websites you host.

Enabling the ICP permit functionality enables you to do the following:

• Grant or revoke the "ICP permit approved" status to any domain, subdomain, or domain alias. Domains that have not been granted the "ICP permit approved" status are unavailable, though Plesk users can still view them via the site preview functionality.
• Set the ICP permit ID for any domain, subdomain, or domain alias. Both the ICP permit status and the ICP permit ID are clearly visible in the Plesk GUI.

Note: Plesk does not check the validity of permits, it merely blocks or allows domains based on their "ICP permit approved" status. In other words, even if you grant the "ICP permit approved" status to a domain, it will be blocked by the Chinese Internet providers if the permit is not valid.

The proposed usage scenario looks like this:

1. A customer creates a domain in Plesk. At this moment the domain is blocked by Plesk, as no permit is installed.
2. The customer provides the necessary information to the hosting provider, who then files a request for an ICP permit on the customer's behalf.
3. If the permit is denied, most likely the information provided by the customer was incomplete or wrong. The hosting provider clarifies this with the customer, than re-submits the request.
4. If the permit is approved, the hosting provider notifies the customer and tells them the permit ID.
5. The customer adds the permit ID to their website's footer and notifies the hosting provider.
6. The hosting provider associates the permit with the customer's website in Plesk and unblocks the website.