Plesk Obsidian 18.0.62 is now available for upgrades and new installations. Let’s take a look at a few of the included features.
Extended Lifecycle Support
Introducing the Extended Lifecycle Support (ELS) program, designed to give you more time and peace of mind to migrate your Plesk server from an End-of-Life operating system to a supported one. Depending on the underlying operating system, this program will run:
- CentOS 7 & CloudLinux 7 – January 1, 2026
- Vendor EOL date June 30, 2024
- Ubuntu 18.04 & Debian 10 – July 1, 2025
- Vendor EOL date September 2024 for Ubuntu 18.04; June 30, 2024
Until the above specified dates, Plesk will release updates and provide technical support for these OSes beyond the vendor EOL dates. Because supporting End-of-Life operating systems incurs additional development and maintenance costs, taking advantage of this extended coverage option requires a monthly subscription fee.
To avoid any additional fees and to make sure your servers are up to date, we strongly recommend migrating or dist-upgrading to a supported operating system. Additional details about the ELS program and any migration options can be found here: https://www.plesk.com/blog/various/extended-lifecycle-support-oses-update/
Email Delivery Tracking
The newest update to the Log Browser extension includes the new Track Email Delivery tool. Plesk customers, and Plesk administrators, can now track email delivery and manage deferred emails right in the domain card, under the Mail tab. This feature is only available in Plesk for Linux with Postfix as the designated MTA.
Streamline Email Delivery Troubleshooting
The Track Email Delivery tool can make the following manual tasks easier, saving time during email delivery troubleshooting:
- Check if emails were dispatched to an external server or stuck in the local mail queue. The tool’s interface displays additional information regarding the reason for delivery issues.
- View mail logs for dispatched emails. In a situation where an email was successfully dispatched from the Plesk server, view mail logs to uncover where in the delivery chain an email encountered external mail server issues.
This feature will be pushed to customers gradually, but you can manually enable the feature in advance by adding the following lines to the panel.ini file:
[ext-log-browser] mailQueue.customerAccess = true
Install the Log Browser extension today: https://www.plesk.com/extensions/log-browser/
security.txt Compliance
Support for the security.txt standard is now available with Plesk!
The security.txt standard defines a common procedure for communicating and reporting vulnerabilities, helping security researchers get in touch with a server owner.
Plesk Obsidian 18.0.62 provides extensions for this compliance to create one global security.txt file for websites currently going without.
How We Maintain Core Functionality
Now available via the Native security.txt compliance extension. The Plesk admin email is used in the Contact field, and we also maintain the Expires field to show requesters of the security.txt file that the information contained within the file is up to date. The entire file can be customized, and is available via CLI:
# plesk ext security-txt-plesk
In collaboration with LJPc solutions, another security.txt extension is now available in the Plesk Extension Catalogue. This extension includes advanced functionality such as a built-in file generator.
Learn more: https://docs.plesk.com/en-US/obsidian/administrator-guide/80027/
HTTPS DNS Record Support
Introducing an alternative to CNAME records, HTTPS DNS.
In addition to the ability to configure HTTPS records for naked domains, which CNAME records cannot do, HTTPS records can also:
- Alias whole domains without configuring an HTTP to HTTPS redirect on the web server.
- Provide more direct paths for routing web traffic by avoiding the extra lookup step required with CNAME records, reducing latency and improving page load times.
- Use different values in the priority field, creating a fallback configuration for the service.
- Indicate different TCP/UDP ports.
- Signal to clients the supported protocol versions.
This feature is disabled in Plesk Obsidian 18.0.62 by default, but can be manually enabled by adding the following lines to the panel.ini file:
[dns] records.https.enabled = true
Once enabled, HTTPS DNS records can be managed in the Plesk user interface using API requests or the following CLI command:
plesk bin dns
Additional Improvements & Bug Fixes
- Navigation between the most-used pages in Plesk is now 3 times faster.
- Install and remove PHP 5.6 from Plesk servers running AlmaLinux 8 and 9 via Plesk Installer. You no longer have to switch websites running on PHP 5.6 to a supported PHP version before migration to avoid possible migration issues.
- NOTE: PHP 5.6 is EOL and does not receive important security fixes. After migration, we recommend switching your websites to a supported PHP version.
- New tile blocks and improvements to the New Home Dashboard
- SSL It! Block contains the consolidated status of certificates on the Plesk server to help avoid sudden expiration.
- Advisor extension block to help monitor the state of the Plesk server.
- Via the Serverwide tab of Performance Booster, apply one or several database server improvements instead of applying all suggested improvements.
View the full change log here: https://docs.plesk.com/release-notes/obsidian/change-log/#plesk-18062