Hosting Account FAQ's
 

Certain sales and support questions tend to crop up more than others and so in an effort to make things easier for you we have listed details of some of these here in order for you to quickly find the answers to your common hosting queries.

Hosting Accounts

Q. I want to transfer my domain to you - what are the addresses of your nameservers?

A. The nameserver details are provided to you via e-mail after you have filled in our online order form.

Q. How do I access my control panel?

A. Your control panel is accessed using the format http://www.yourdomain.com/admin

Q. How do I enable Frontpage extensions on my account so I can publish using it?

A. These are enabled free of charge - just e-mail our support team with your request

Q. How do I change the password used to publish my site via Frontpage?

A. Your Frontpage password is maintained by the server independently of that of your hosting account itself. To change this, open Microsoft Frontpage on your computer and then open the Frontpage Web that you wish to work on. You have to open the web directly from the web server and not your hard drive. In other words, make sure that you are opening the site from http://www.yourdomain.com and not c:\yourdirectory. Once the web is open, click on "Tools" at the top menu, select "Server" and then slide your mouse over and choose one of the following three options that relate to what you want to manage:

Administration Home...

Permissions...

Change Password...

All three of the selections relate to the administration of users and passwords within your Frontpage web(s). Pleas note, the above directions are for Microsoft Frontpage 2002. If you are using an older/newer version then the directions will be similar, however you may need to make slight adjustments as appropriate.

Q. How do I access my FTP account?

A. Configure your FTP client to connect to ftp.yourdomain.com with username: username@yourdomain.com and password: yourpassword, where yourdomain.com is the name of your domain name.

Q. My domain isn't yet registered or hasn't yet transferred to you 0 can can I access FTP?

A. Use the above syntax of username & password for accessing your FTP account, however substitute ftp.yourdomain.com with the IP address of the server. This will have been supplied in your welcome e-mail with your account details.

Q. What is bandwidth / data transfer?

A. Data transfer (or bandwidth) is basically the amount of data transferred through your hosting account. If for example you have a page on your website that takes up 1Mb of disk space and 10 people view it, you would then have transferred 10Mb of data through your account. The same goes for e-mail and FTP transfers - if 5 people e-mail you a 1Mb attachment then you would have transferred another 5Mb of data through your account. An upload of 30Mb of files to your webspace would also be counted against your monthly data transfer amount. We log all data that is transferred in conjunction with your account as this is one of the key expenses in providing you with a hosting account on the Internet.

E-Mail

Q. How do I access my account via POP3 or IMAP?

A. Configure your e-mail client to connect to mail.yourdomain.com for both the incoming (POP3/IMAP) mailserver and also the outgoing (SMTP) server. Your username should be in the format username@yourdomain.com with the password that you have set for that particular mailbox.

Q. How can I access my messages via Webmail?

A. In your browser, open http://www.yourdomain.com/webmail

Q. I cannot access webmail on my account, even using the above - what's happened?

A. As default, Squirrelmail (webmail) is disabled on all accounts. This is because it takes up a small proportion of your webspace to install it into your account. As not everyone may require this and so to stop it taking up any unnecessary space in your account, this is enabled by our support team on request. There is no charge for this.

Q. How can I stop receiving e-mails sent to a certain address at my domain name without stopping using the catch-all facility?

A. Just create/edit the alias of the name that you no longer wish to receive mail to and forward this mail to the site_blackhole alias. Any mail now sent to this alias name will be dropped by the server and permanently disappear and so never be received by yourself.

Scripting

Q. What is the path to perl?

A. /usr/bin/perl

Q. What is the path to sendmail?

A. /usr/sbin/sendmail

Q. What is the absolute path to my webspace?

A. /var/www/html, or as detailed at the top of the main page in your control panel.

General

Q. I've forgotten my password - what do I do?

A. We cannot re-advise you of your password as they are all encrypted on the server for added security and cannot be retrieved by any means, even by ourselves. We can however enter a new password for you. In the event that you do forget your password, we will require sufficient verification of your identity in order to change the account password. This may require that you send us a signed FAX on headed paper with your account details and the new password that you require, or may even be as simple as an e-mail from your registered address e-mail to us. This will be determined on a per-case basis by our support staff.

Q. I've just uploaded a new page or pages to my website, but the old page keeps being displayed. What's wrong - does this take some time to update?

A. Uploads to your account take effect immediately the transfer has completed. The majority of ISP's now tend to use what is known as a transparent cache with operates between your ISP and the Internet and the 'remember' the pages that you've visited recently in order to be able to send them to you again more quickly than downloading them from the web server they are actually located on. This is a great benefit for general browsing of the Internet, however can cause issues for a web designer as every time you make a change, the cache is sending you it's slightly older 'remembered' version, not the one that you've just uploaded. Pressing <CTRL-F5> in your browser should however force your browser to get the latest version of the page directly from the website for you.

Q. I've just uploaded a page to my website bit I cannot view it

A. We use an operating system generally known as Unix on all of our servers which is case sensitive for filenames. Due to this, it is good practice to make sure that all files, images and directory names are kept to lower case characters only and also to not use spaces in a filename. Your problem may well also be due to the fact that for example index.htm is treated by the server as a completely different file to Index.htm and will allow both at the same time, however the server is only configured to look for the lower case versions of filenames.

Q. I cannot access my FTP account anymore - what's happened?

A. Please check that you have not requested that Frontpage extensions be installed on your account. Frontpage and FTP are not compatible at the same time and so if Frontpage is requested, FTP access will be turned off and vice versa.

Domains

Q. What is your IPS TAG to transfer my .uk domain to you?

A. Our IPS TAG is PENGUIN

Q. How do I transfer my existing domain to you so that you bill be for future renewals?

A. With a .uk domain name, this just requires that the IPS TAG is updated for your domain. If you currently have a control panel for the domain with your current registrar then there may be a facility there to update the TAG, otherwise manually request with the registrar that they update the TAG for you.

With all other types of domains the transfer procedure is a little more complicated. In laymen's terms though, what basically happens is that we apply to the registry to extend your domain name registration by another year and in doing so we then end up with control of the domain name by being the last company to make a payment towards it. In order to stop domains being hijacked, the current administrative contact for the domain must be able to authorise the transfer via an e-mail they will be automatically sent.

You can check the current administrative contact for your domain name by using the domain lookup facility on our website in the domains section. Registrar transfers will be charged at our standard rate for one years registration of that applicable domain type. This is not an admin charge and your domain will receive an extra years registration in the process of transferring to ourselves.