TL;DR: If you’ve set a default site for your server’s IP settings in Plesk but still see the “Web Server’s Default Page” when navigating to the IP, the issue might be that Apache is only listening on localhost. This is especially common on EC2 or other cloud platforms where servers have both internal and external IPs. To fix it, run plesk bin apache --listen-on-localhost false then restart Apache and Nginx and that should fix it.
Recently, I spun up a new Ubuntu-based Plesk server on AWS EC2 using the ARM architecture image and their ARM based EC2 instances, expecting it to behave exactly like my previous x86 instance. I migrated my domains, manually synced settings (PLESK really needs to have a method to migrate those as well, but they don’t) and everything loaded fine when I visited the domain names.
While I was doing checks to make sure it was all buttoned up and good to go I tried to access the site by visiting the IP address directly, which should just forward to my default domain, but no… I was hit with a smiley robot and a “Web Server’s Default Page” title on the page. I then went on a several hour adventure to try to get it to do what it was supposed to and what my old Plesk server did just like it was supposed to.
Despite setting the default domain, rebuilding, re-doing configs and everything else in both the Plesk UI and CLI, the IP just wouldn’t forward to the domain. This had worked flawlessly on my x86 server — so I assumed it must be a config issue. Turns out, it kind of was… but not mine.
What I Checked First
Here’s a quick list of what I tried (and probably what you’re doing too if you’re here):
- ✅ Verified domain works fine
- ✅ Double-checked that paxtraining.com was assigned to the public IP
- ✅ Set it as the default domain for the IP
- ✅ Tried different ports, hosts, configs, and curl headers
- ✅ Manually checked nginx -T and plesk.conf.d configs
- ✅ Compared ARM vs x86 setups side-by-side (which matched)
Still… IP traffic refused to get forwarded to the right site. It was clearly defaulting to something else, and I couldn’t figure out why.
The Answer: Apache Was Only Listening on
localhost
Eventually, I reached out to Plesk support. Here’s what they told me:
“We recently implemented that by default Apache is listening on localhost. So there could be issues transferring from external to internal IPs.”
This behavior wasn’t in my older (x86) install — so that’s why the discrepancy threw me off. It most likely has nothing to do with x86 vs ARM and everything to do with the fact that was an old install. Since this was a new install it took the new default setting…
The Fix
All I had to do was run the following command:
sudo plesk bin apache --listen-on-localhost falseThe bad news, there is no documentation I can find about this anywhere. You don’t need this, with the above fix. But before I got that command from tech support at Plesk the only fix I had was to put the following code in as additional an Nginx directive for the domain I wanted the traffic forwarded to.
if ($host ~* "^\d{1,3}.\d{1,3}.\d{1,3}.\d{1,3}$") {
return 301 https://DOMAINTOFORWARDTO.com$request_uri;
}However, if you use the first command it should fix the issue and you won’t need the second one. But just in case the first doesn’t work change the domain in the directive put it and give that a try….
Why This Happens
Plesk’s newer behavior sets Apache to only listen on 127.0.0.1 — which means any request forwarded by Nginx from the public IP is hitting a wall. Apache won’t respond unless the request is internal.
By telling Plesk to let Apache listen on the external IP, the web server stack can properly complete the handoff and serve the correct site.
When to Use This Fix
If all of these are true:
- Your domain loads fine
- You’ve set the site as the default for the IP
- Going to the IP still just shows “Web Server’s Default Page”
Then this is probably the issue — especially if you’re using:
- A new install of Plesk on any host where IP-based access isn’t resolving correctly
Conclusion
This was one of those “everything looks right and most of it works perfect, but there is one thing that doesn’t” kind of bugs.
So if your Plesk server IP shows the default page, even after setting the domain correctly hopefully this helps!