We use Plesk to run one of our bigger servers, and it’s been pretty useful. Every now and again Plesk updates and slips a few adverts and promos into its interface, most (but not all) connected with the WordPress Toolkit. I don’t want to see them, so this is how to get rid of them.
EDIT 2020: there is now – two years after this article was first written – a global option to turn off all promotions.
The Plesk administrator can now disable all promotions in Plesk by adding the following lines to the panel.ini file:
[promos]
enabled=false
Read on to find out how to do that.
Editing panel.ini for Plesk
You need to edit panel.ini. if you know how to connect to your server over SSH and edit a file, that’s the simplest way. If not, you might want to install the Panel.ini Editor extension which allows you to edit the file from within Plesk. Either way the changes you need to make are the same.
If you are using SSH the panel.ini file can be found here:
- (Plesk for Linux)
/usr/local/psa/admin/conf/panel.ini - (Plesk for Windows)
%plesk_dir%\admin\conf\panel.ini
If the file is missing on your server, create an empty file at the specified location and name it panel.ini. By default there is a file called panel.ini.sample already in the same directory to panel.ini. Have a look at that and rename a copy to panel.ini if you want to use it.
While you’re in there – other promos you might want to delete
In panel.ini.sample there are a few spammy promotional things you can turn off. It’s a shame that Plesk hides these options away like this, but as you are editing the file you might as well do these as well. Look out for the following block:
[promos]
; Disable other products promotions
enabled = on
; Hide Like link
showLikeLink = on
[rating]
; Hide feedback dialog with question to rate product
enabled = on
The wording of these three items is a bit odd, making it hard to understand whether these options should be ‘on’ or ‘off’. But trust me, they should all three be ‘off’ if you no longer want to see promotions from third parties on your dashboard, links to the Plesk facebook page, and requests to rate the product. You do not need any of these to run Plesk and so if you no longer want them, change the options to ‘off’ and save the file.
Disable the Addendio plugin
From Plesk Onyx onwards, we found that the WordPress Toolkit started automatically including a promotional plugin on all new sites installed. This plugin was called Addendio PLUS. It no longer seems to be active but if you still have a version and want to get rid of it, this is how. The software has the rather sinister strapline: “If you don’t come to Addendio, Addendio comes to you!” It seems to be a promotional tool that recommends certain plugins to you. Now this may or may not be a useful bit of software. I’ve no idea, because I didn’t ask for it and I didn’t want it. Finding plugins, downloading and installing them is not a problem I need to solve, thanks. So I removed it from my new WordPress installation, and set about finding out how it got there.
I was concerned that this was malware or unauthorised software of some sort, but no, it turns out that this was an official Plesk extension. So if you don’t mind having it, feel free to leave it there. But if you do, there is a way to remove it.
This doesn’t delete existing Addendio plugins (you have to do that on the individual installation) but it stops any new ones being automatically installed on new WordPress instances. It also removes the adverts for SmartUpdate, which is a paid-for autoupdate service for WordPress.
Add either or both of the following lines in panel.ini:
[ext-wp-toolkit]
allowInstallAddendioPlugin = false
showSmartUpdatePromo = false
Don’t omit that initial section heading in square brackets – it is important and is not a comment, don’t change it. Both those lines need to be in the [ext-wp-toolkit] section.
That’s all done.
