Q: What is my POP3 (Incoming
Mail) server?
A: Your POP3 server is mail.YOURDOMAIN.com,
where you replace “YOURDOMAIN.com” with the name of your domain.
Q: What is my SMTP (Outgoing
Mail) server?
A: This answer varies from ISP-to-ISP, however we do
make SMTP service available to our users from anywhere on the
planet when the SMTP AUTH protocol is used. For most users
you may use mail.YOURDOMAIN.com (replacing YOURDOMAIN.com
with their domain name). Most modern Email clients support
the SMTP AUTH feature, including Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape,
and Eudora.
While we do provide SMTP relay support to our customers, many
ISPs filter outbound SMTP connections for their users. When
filters are in place users are unable to use our outbound SMTP
servers and are forced to use their ISPs SMTP servers. ISPs
that filter outbound SMTP access include MSN, AOL, Prodigy,
Verizon, Compuserve, and Dellnet by MSN. This list is not
complete, but we have confirmed that these users must use their
ISP's outbound SMTP server due to blocks placed on their traffic
by their ISP.
Q: When I try to click
Send and Receive in my Outlook or Outlook Express, I am given
an error with code "0x800CCC0E". What do I do to fix
this?
A: The 0x800CCC0E error code is generated by Outlook
when it is unable to connect to the remote server in order to
send the Email. This connection attempt occurs on port 25, the
standard SMTP port. However, due to circumstances beyond our
control your connection attempt was denied on port 25. This
can be caused by several factors including: a firewall between
your machine and our servers, your Internet connection being
offline, or your ISP blocking access to port 25. You can read
more information about ISP-related port 25 blocking issues in
the previous question.
Please call your ISP, company helpdesk, or network administrator
to ensure that your network connection allows connections to
port 25. If you are allowed to connect to port 25 are still
unable to send Email please contact Technical Support.
Q: What is my login/password?
A: Your login and password were supplied when the account
or Email box was configured. We can help you determine what
login maps to which box, but after passwords are entered into
the system we can not retrieve them. If you have forgotten
your password, your password can be reset it for you. To have
your password reset, please call Customer Service.
Q: I can receive Email,
but I can't send Email, what is wrong?
A: In an effort to combat spam our Email servers require
special authentication before we allow users to relay through
our system. Please Email Technical Support for more information
about configuring your Email client to use our servers for outbound
service.
Q: What is a catch-all
POP3 box?
A: Every account activated recieves a catch-all POP3
box by default. A catch-all POP3 box provides a single collection
point for all of the mail sent to your domain name that does
not match any other Email boxes. On new accounts, only the default
catch-all box is created, which means you can send and recieve
Email from anything at your domain name and it will all go into
one box.
If your domain name was mydomain.com, your default
catch-all would be mydomain@mydomain.com, which would recieve
everything @mydomain.com. If you created another Email box,
we will use jane@mydomain.com as an example, anything that did
not match that Email box would go to the catch-all box. This
means people could send Email to jane@mydomain.com and it would
be collected in Jane's Email box, and everything else would
collect in your catch-all Email box.
Q: Where are my CGI scripts?
A: We make several popular CGI scripts available on a
per-request basis. Due to the very low demand for these pre-configured
scripts and the inter-operability issues with Microsoft Frontpage
they are only activated on an as-needed basis. If you need
to have the pre-configured CGI scripts installed, please Email
Customer Service.
Q: My Frontpage Server
Extensions don’t work.
A: We only provide support for publishing to your Microsoft
Frontpage-enabled website. Microsoft web-bots (forms, message
boards, and other features that include dynamically-generated
content) are not supported. Most customers are able to use these
additional features without problems. More complex Frontpage
sites frequently exhibit problems with these extensions. We
recommend that you use CGI scripts in lieu of Microsoft Frontpage
web-bots.
Frontpage issues may also be related to the fact they might
not have Frontpage extensions installed. All new accounts have
Frontpage extensions activated unless otherwise specified, but
older hosting accounts and new design customers do not have
Frontpage extensions support. If you need Frontpage activated
on your account, please contact Customer Service.
All questions about how to use Frontpage or any other problems
beyond simple server connectivity issues (which are rare) should
be directed to Microsoft Technical support. Microsoft's support
department can be reached through their website, located at
http://support.microsoft.com.
Q: What are all of these
files in my home directory?
A: There are many files configured in your home
directory automatically by our system. The most important one
you will notice is the directory called “www”. You should place
all of your webpage files in the “www” directory if you wish
for them to be available on your website. Anything placed in
your home directory will not be accessible to others.
Q: Where is the control
panel?
A: A control panel available for advanced users
to manage their own hosting accounts with. If you wish to have
access to this control panel, please email Technical Support.
Q: Where do I upload files
with FTP?
A: When you log into your website, you should look for
a directory called "www" in your home directory.
Place all content you wish to make accessible on your website
in this directory. For example, placing a file called "test.txt"
in your "www" directory would allow users
to view the file at http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/test.txt.
Q: Where are my stats?
A: Your statistics are located in one of two locations,
depending on how long you have held an account. Older accounts
have their statistics placed in http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/wusage/,
while newer accounts have their statistics placed in http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/stats/.
We are currently in the process of moving users from the wusage
statistics (older accounts) to the newer graphical webalizer
stats (new accounts). When your statistics are migrated you
will be contacted by a service representative.
Q: What webserver hardware
and software do you use?
A: We use RedHat Linux-based hosting platforms for
all of our shared hosting accounts. Our machines are Intel Pentium
III based systems with at least 256MB of RAM and 10000RPM SCSI3
harddrives, connected via full-duplex 100mbit Ethernet connections
to our Cisco-switched network. All machines are backed up to
a central backup server nightly at 2AM EDT.
We leverage the power of open source to provide
top-notch services to our clients. We utilize Apache combined
with PHP (a popular scripting language for webpages, more info
can be found at http://www.php.net)
to serve webpages, ProFTPd for all dedicated FTP server connectivity,
and OpenSSH to provide encrypted SSH, SFTP, and SCP connectivity
for our security-conscious customers. We track the latest Linux
kernel series and keep all of our systems up-to-date with the
latest patches available from RedHat. Additionally, we have
intrusion detection systems and security scanners in place to
ensure the integrity of your data.
Q: Do you support ASP?
A: We have chosen to utilize Linux and FreeBSD-based platforms
in lieu of Microsoft-based platforms because we feel that Linux
and FreeBSD offer a more robust feature set and increased reliability
when compared with Microsoft-based hosting platforms. Since
ASP is a Microsoft-created standard, there are not many effective
solutions for running ASP on Linux/FreeBSD machines, therefore
there is no support for ASP on our webhosting accounts.
In order to provide customers with the dynamic
scripting support required of modern websites, we provide PHP
capabilities on all of our hosting accounts and platforms. PHP
is a popular scripting language that provides ASP-like functionality
in a stable, open-source product. PHP is freely available, and
is capable of database interaction, image creation, and much
more. For more information about PHP and the features we provide
you may visit http://www.php.net.
Q: Do you offer telnet access
to webhosting accounts?
A: We do not offer telnet access to webhosting accounts
at this time. Due to recent vulnerabilities in telnet daemons
found on most UNIX systems and the insecure nature of telnet
sessions, we have disabled telnet on our hosting machines. However,
for advanced users who require telnet access to their servers
we provide support for SSH connections to our equipment. SSH
can be used to encrypt and secure both interactive and file-transfer
sessions.
You must use a program that supports SSH (version
1 or version 2) in order to connect to the SSH services on your
webhosting account. One popular freeware interactive session
client is called putty. Putty can be downloaded by clicking
here. Please note that we do not provide application support
for Putty, and that download restrictions may apply depending
on your location.
We also provide support for SSH-encrypted file
transfers to help you protect the integrity of your data as
it travels across the Internet. You can find helpfiles for two
popular SSH file transfer clients, designed as replacements
for standard unencrypted FTP by using the side navigation to
your left. All of our servers provide support for both scp and
SFTP file transfers through SSH.
Q: What do all of these
webpage statistics mean?
A: Webpage statistics give you a quick synopsis of all
activities on your website. Most of the information provided
in your statistics reports are related to how frequently people
visit your webpage.
A webpage "hit" is defined as a single
attempt to access your webserver, regardless of whether or not
it was successful. All successful pageviews count as at least
one hit. Each image, flash movie, media clip, or other file
included in your webpage also counts as a hit. This means that
a single page with 15 graphics generates 16 "hits"
each time it is loaded by a single visitor. When you see totals
and statistics related to "hits", this is the number
of attempts to access your webserver for any given period of
time.
A webpage "file" is a request that actually
sent a file to the user. This gives you the ability to see how
many times someone actually downloaded something from your website.
Files will not count errors (such as 404 Not found errors, covered
below), and it will not count attempts to view your page by
caches servers. Cache servers are computers that proxy requests
from a large network and store the result. Large Internet providers
often uses cache services to speed up Internet access for their
customers. Caches download one copy of a page and then store
it for a predetermined period of time. Users attempting to access
your webpage from behind a cache will only show up as a "File"
(IE- they downloaded something from your website) if it is the
first time the cache has visited your webpage, or if the content
has updated. Otherwise the cache simply checks to see if the
file has changed, and if it has not changed it sends back the
locally stored copy instead of the copy from your website.
A webpage "site" is the number of individual
computers that accessed your webpage for a given time period.
Each computer on the Internet receives its own unique number
while it is connected to the Internet (called an IP Address).
Sites counts the number of unique IP addresses that visited
your website.
Visits track the number of individual user "browsing
sessions" that occur on your website. If a single user
stays on your website for a given period of time and remains
active (IE- he/she is clicking webpages and reading your webpage)
that entire "session" will count as a visit. If they
visit your webpage again after the session has timed out, they
will be counted as a new visit. Visits only count pages, they
do not count images, so users who are linking to graphics on
your webserver will not appear as visitors until they actually
download or view an HTML page.
Response codes are an indication of how the webserver
handled your request. Code requests in the 200 range are successful
pageviews, codes in the 300 range are related to content relocation,
or cache requests to check the validity of stored pages. Only
codes in the 400 and 500 range indicate errors on your webserver.
404 errors are the most common type of error code, and are encountered
when you attempt to access a file that is not on your website.
If you are getting a 404 error (Also known as a "Not Found"
error), make sure you typed the filename you wish to link to
properly and that you have uploaded that file to your website.
Additional information about webalizer can be
found on the author's webpage at: http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer/webalizer_help.html.
Q: I can't connect to my
website, what can I do?
A: The first step is to check and make sure you are
dialed in properly and you can access other webpages. It is
usually a good idea to check very large sites (CNN, Yahoo, etc.)
and make sure they are loading properly. If they are loading
properly and you are still unable to load your website, it is
possible that the connection between your ISP and our network
is unstable.
With any support issue your first line of defense
is the Support website (this website). Our administrators will
post important information about network status on this webpage.
If you are unable to load the webpage for some reason, you may
Email the technical support department, or you may call our
technical support department using the technical support contact
informaion found on our main technical support webpage.
For advanced users who wish to debug their own
connectivity, here are the last two hops of our connection as
seen from the outside world (if you don't understand what traceroute
is or how to use it, please ignore this information as it is
not critical to use a webhosting account):
## border1.fe0-0-bbnet1.atl.pnap.net (216.52.192.4) XXX.XXX
ms XXX.XXX ms XXX.XXX ms
## bdr1-inap.atlh.aismedia.com (63.251.72.1) XXX.XXX ms XXX.XXX
ms XXX.XXX ms
Q: What sort of Internet
connectivity do you have?
A: We currently use Internap for our network connectivity.
We have a variable-bandwidth connection to Internap's datacenter
in downtown Atlanta that allows us to scale our connectivity
needs to meet customer demand. In turn, Internap has connections
with 9 major Internet backbones, which include Quest, UUNet,
BBNPlanet (GTE/Verizon), Sprint, Verio, AT&T, Digex, and
more. This flexible connectivity allows websites hosted with
us to bypass major bottlenecks on the Internet where ISPs connect
together and travel directly to the destination, passing over
a minimal amount of third-party networks increasing reliability
and speed.
Q: How do you ensure 24x7
availability of my website?
A: We employ monitoring systems to ensure that our
servers and services are available 24x7. Machines are polled
every 5 minutes, and administrator notification is sent immediately
after service problems are detected. We have also configured
our servers to check themselves and correct service problems
if they are detected, allowing graceful service restarts even
before notification occurs.
