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We are commissioning an external developer to develop part of our site and he will also need access to a MySQL database attached to the domain but I can't figure out how to create a user that has the least required privileges for him to do his work.

I only want to allow phpMyAdmin access to the database as well as FTP access to the website directory. When I create a database and user, phpMyAdmin sits behind Plesk, requiring a Plesk user account to log in.

I don't want to grant the developer any access beyond FTP and MySQL/phpMyAdmin. Is this not possible without creating some kind of Plesk user?

And what do I do to limit that Plesk user's privileges? The privileges grantable in Plesk are rather liberal and not granular enough it seems.

  • Windows 2008 Server
  • Plesk 11.5.3
  • Running on a VPS
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  • You may be stuck doing some creates and inserts giving your situation. If he is a MySQL developer, he should be able to create a local schema and work from that. You may have to reverse engineer any existing schema for him and possibly provide example data. You can use the MySQL Workbench for this easily enough. As well, he should be able to do a dump off his work into SQL create (if appropriate) and insert statements. All of this should be easy enough for a database developer. If it is not, then I would think twice.
    – closetnoc
    Oct 9, 2014 at 5:49

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If you don't want him to have direct access to the Plesk panel then the easiest way would be to give him an FTP user account and define a new MySQL user account with remote access granted that way he can use the MySQL Desktop Application to get into the MySQL database to manage the schema. Once he has finished his work you can disable remote access to the database and disable his MySQL and FTP account to return to a secured environment. When you create his user account for MySQL simply give him access to the database he is needing access to and not to any other database or to MySQL administrative controls and that way you can maintain the security while giving him access and not requiring him to have access to Plesk. If you desperately need him to have access to phpMyAdmin instead of using the desktop MySQL interface then he will need Plesk access but in my opinion as someone who has done database design on a contract basis it is preferable to be granted remote access through the desktop tool instead of needing to log into the control panel and into phpMyAdmin as the experience is faster, more streamlined, and I can save the login details to re-access as often as I need to as part of the contract without needing to save the password to the browser or searching records to locate the password every time I need to login.

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