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Users, customers and plans

cpleks has three roles. The administrator runs the machine: modules, the server, backups, updates and everybody on it. A reseller manages their own customers and what they sell them. A customer has one plan's worth of hosting and their own account. Each role sees only its own part of the panel; a customer never sees Accounts, Plans, Modules or Server.

Packages

A package is what you sell: a disk allowance to start with, how many sites and databases, and which features and modules are included.

  1. Open Plans and, under Packages, press Add a package.
  2. Name people see, and a Billing key: lowercase letters, digits, - and _. The billing key is what a billing system sends to provision a customer, so it cannot be changed later.
  3. Disk to start with (GB): the allowance a new hosting account starts with. Changing it later affects the next account, not the ones already on the package.
  4. Sites and Databases: leave them empty for unlimited. These are live: changing them changes what every customer on the package may do straight away.
  5. Under What it includes, switch off what the package should not have. Anything left untouched is included.
  6. Press Create it.
The Plans screen: the Default and Standard packages with their disk allowance, sites and databases, the Add a package button, and What each package may use with its switches.
Plans: the packages and what each may use. The customers on them, with Suspend and their exceptions, are further down the same screen.

A package's disk allowance is recorded and shown; this release does not yet enforce it on the filesystem, and a plan change does not resize an account's allowance.

Customers and hosting accounts

  1. Open Accounts (a reseller's rail calls it Customers) and press Add a customer.
  2. Type the customer's name and email address (a real one: WordPress is installed with it).
  3. Under Panel sign-in (optional), give a username and password if the customer should sign in themselves. Leave both empty for a customer you manage yourself.
  4. Press Add customer.
  5. Under Hosting accounts, press New hosting account, choose the customer and the package, and press Create. The server creates the Linux account and the home directory, and the New site button now works for it.
The Accounts screen: two customers, Example Ltd with no panel access and Studio Example who signs in as studio (with View as, Reset password, Sign-in and Edit), and the Hosting accounts table with Change plan and Close.
Accounts: customers, and the hosting accounts their sites belong to. Only a customer who signs in themselves has View as, Reset password and Sign-in.

Looking after a customer

  • View as: see the panel exactly as the customer sees it. A bar across the top says so and cannot be dismissed; Stop viewing as … brings you back. It is recorded in the activity log.
  • Reset password: set a new password directly. There is no email to send a link to: tell the customer yourself. It signs them out everywhere.
  • Sign-in: where the customer is signed in, with Sign out per browser, and Switch sign-in off. With sign-in off, their websites, mail and scheduled tasks keep running; only the panel login stops.
  • Change plan on a hosting account moves it to another package: its site and database limits and its features follow.
  • Suspend, on Plans: every hostname on the plan answers 503, its scheduled tasks and applications stop, and nothing is deleted. Resume puts it all back.
  • Close a hosting account: removes it, its Linux account and its home directory. It is refused while the account still has websites; delete those first. The confirmation says which backup sets still hold a copy of its files and databases.

Exceptions per customer

On Plans, a customer's Exceptions switch a feature or a module on or off for that one customer, whatever their package says. A feature switched off disappears from the customer's panel rather than being shown greyed out. When something is refused, the panel says which of three gates refused it: this version of cpleks cannot do it, this server does not have it installed, or the plan does not include it, because each sends a person to somebody different.

Not in this release

  • Creating a reseller, or a second administrator, from the panel.
  • A forgotten-password email. Administrators reset from SSH (First sign-in); everybody else is reset by whoever manages them.