Eat My Business

For those using PLESK as a control panel to manage a web site:

If you have access to the Domain Hosting Set-up Panel (Domains > Example.com > Hosting > SetUp) and have ticked the box next to “Web statistics” - I encourage you to always tick the extra box to tell PLESK to make the stats “accessible via password protected directory”.

Why?

Because, if you just tick the first box (just after ‘Web statistics’) without ticking the second one, it will make your stats publicly available to all who know that web address (i.e. everyone else in the World who uses PLESK).

I had, previously, assumed that the “accessible via password protected directory” checkbox was a kind of switch where ticked means “accessible” and un-ticked means “never accessible”. THIS IS WRONG!

Instead, that checkbox should be viewed as a kind of switch with ticked meaning “stats are accessible but password protected” and un-ticked meaning “stats are accessible and not password protected”.

Its not disastrous if everyone can look at your stats, but it does give away a lot of info to nosey hackers. I just thought some of you PLESKies might like to know about this.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 22nd, 2007 at 9:13 pm and is filed under practical webmaster tips, PLESK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.