This plan is the one that we recommend for the small brick and
mortar,
or mom and pop, business with local customers. It allows this type of
operation to give business hours, directions, and contact information.
Even forms to request information!
More importantly, it allows the shop to build on any yellow pages or
newspaper ad by giving a web address with much more detailed
information at a fraction of the cost of a larger advertisement.
Web space is a very good investment for ANY business.
Back to Top
Q: Can I run
chatrooms and forms on a personal site?
A:
You can have the html or java chat, but the phpmychatroom will not
work since it requires mySQL database support which is not part of the
"Personal" plan. The icon is on cpanel, but the installation will
fail.
You will also be unable to install the XMB forum on the cpanel for the
same reason.
However, you are free to use any flat-file forum script (and there are
many available) with this package, since CGI and PHP are supported.
We recommend that anyone seeking these advanced features consider
upgrading to the "Economy" plan however. The price difference gives
you more space and bandwidth, in addition to the database support.
Back to Top
Q: Can you register my domain name for me?
A: Yes, we will add it in your account balance.
Back to Top
Q: DNS registration information
A: If you are registering or transferring your domain name
yourself using any of the ICANN-accredited registrars, you will need
the following information.
The registrar will want to know the names
and/or IP addresses of your primary and secondary nameservers. We
provide this information in our welcome email.
As part of your domain name registration, you will be asked for
technical contact information. This is so that we can make adjustments
if our nameserver IP addresses or other technical information
changes. It is important that you update this information when
switching web hosts.
Our DNS Admin's contact info is:
DNS Admin
dnsadmin@garymillerandson.com
If you would like assistance registering your domain name,
we would be glad to register or transfer your name for you for
a small fee of $20*. Just send an email to:
dnsadmin@garymillerandson.com.
*Fee does not include the cost of the domain name
with the registrar. Our "at cost" price for registration is $16 for
one-year registration. This is the best price available! This fee
does not apply to domain name transfers.
NOTE: Our nameservers are configured immediately upon setting up
your web account. However, your domain name may take 2-3 days to
successfully point to them, and resolve to your space. This depends
largely on the frequency that your internet provider refreshes their
DNS servers. If your name is not resolving within 48 hours after
registration, contact them to inquire.
Back to Top
Q: How long does a domain take to resolve?
A: Once you have given the nameserver values we provide you
to your domain registrar, it can take from 24-48 hours for the name to
point to your space.
Domain propagation doesn't happen all at once, as individual ISPs
refresh their information on their own schedules. Generally, 90% of
people will be able to see your space on our servers using your domain
name within 24 hours.
Back to Top
Q: Parked Domains
A: You are able to point up to ten additional domain names
to your space FREE. (This is frequently used by those that have the
.com, .net, and .org versions of the same name, though the domains do
not have to be the same).
Parking is done in two easy steps:
1) Set the nameservers for the parked domain to the same ones sent in
your welcome email (the nameservers that point your main domain to
us). You do this at the registrar.
2) Use the "Manage Parked Domains" feature in the control panel to
point the name to your space.
Back to Top
Q: Problems accessing CPanel
A: If you are able to see your site, but can not get to
cpanel, the most common problem is firewall related.
Firewalls are common in business settings, and home users with DSL or
cable modems where a computer is online constantly typically use
something like Zonealarm. Newer versions of Windows include some
firewall capabilities.
CPanel runs over port 2082 (secure cpanel on 2083, and webmail on
2095). If you cannot access cpanel it is likely that port 2082 is not
open.
If you are unable to open port 2082 in your firewall, you can access
cpanel by going through a proxy server. There are many public proxies,
the most popular of which is anonymizer.com. Proxy servers allow you
to connect over the web (port 80...always open in a firewall), and
then make the connection for you to cpanel.
Please let us know if you have checked the firewall and are still
having issues bringing up the control panel and we can help you
resolve the problem.
Back to Top
Q: CPanel Changes
A: The CPanel control panel that is installed on all NEIT
Solutions' accounts is constantly being improved. It is upgraded
automatically as new releases are developed.
This results in additional features being added to our hosting
packages all the time.
The CPanel web-based control panel is one of the best...and it keeps
getting better all the time.
Back to Top
Q: SSH / Telnet
A: SSH is similar to telnet, but it's more secure. It uses
high level encryption and compression to make sure nobody can
intercept your telnet session. NEIT Solutions offers SSH on all
accounts and there is a built-in SSH client on the control panel.
However, we recommend that our clients download a copy of a free
application called "Putty". Very easy to find on the net, just search
"Putty" in yahoo, and it comes up. Very small EXE file (32K) and a
great telnet application. It's much easier to do that than use the SSH
app on the cpanel.
If you do use a third-party SSH client, simply put www.yourdomain.com
in the host box, and check the SSH method. After it connects, use your
cpanel username and password. You will start in the /home directory of
your space (top level). Navigate with typical Linux commands.
Back to Top
Q: Shopping Cart
A: We offers three shopping cart programs on the control
panel. Red Hat Interchange is a powerful and complete shopping cart
program. It can handle vary complex storefronts and payment gateways.
For those who don't have such a complex need or want to offer a more
modest storefront, we also offer the Agora Shopping cart, which is
much easier to configure and will meet the needs of a basic shopping
cart.
A new option in the "addon scripts" section of the control panel is
osCommerce. This is a much more intuitive cart that will meet most
needs without the complexity of Interchange.
We also permit the installation of any custom CGI, PERL or PHP scripts
into your space and there are many other good shopping carts
available. Users should find no problem configuring their account for
e-commerce.
If you need assistance setting up the Interchange cart, you may find
the answers at Red Hat's site:
http://www.redhat.com/software/interchange
Back to Top
Q: Backups
A: We makes a backup of all files in your space at midnight
every night. This backup is what we would use if there was a
catastrophic failure in the server.
You can access this backup file in the control panel as well, to
retreive a file that you may have accidentally deleted or changed.
In addition to this daily backup, we keep a weekly and monthly backup
as well. You can use these to restore a file that was corrupted or
damaged before the daily backup. You will need to ask us to get these
files for you.
In spite of all our backup efforts, we recommend keeping a full copy
of all current files in your space on your local machine as well.
Back to Top
Q: Mailing list tips
A: Be very careful when configuring the mailing list utility
in cpanel. The default setup is that every post to the list from a
member will go to every other member. This can, and has, caused users
to be accused of SPAM.
There are two types of list that will avoid this, moderated and
announce lists. Be sure to set these parameters if you are seeking to
provide a newsletter-type list and not a full-fledged discussion list.
After you configure your options...test, test, test. Put in some of
your own email addresses and be sure that the list operates as you
expect.
Back to Top
Q: Creating FTP accounts
A: If you are looking to create a subdirectory with FTP
access to it, the default behavior works great, but it should be done
in a specific order:
First, create the FTP account. Creation of an FTP account in the
control panel automatically creates a similarly named directory in
your space. This is the only directory that the FTP user will have
access to. This is the generally desired behavior anyway.
Then, make that directory a subdirectory to allow the user to
reference their space with a simple URL like:
http://subuser.yourdomain.com
Back to Top
Q: Reading POP accounts with webmail
A: The "webmail" link on the front page of the control panel
opens the mail for the main user account that was created when we
opened your account.
If you wish to use webmail to read mail for other mailboxes that you
create, you must do so in the "manage accounts" section of cpanel mail
controls. You can also access the account directly (without going
through cpanel) with the URL format:
http://www.yourdomain.com/webmail
Back to Top
Q: Adding Password Protection
A: If you wish to protect an area of your site to be
accessed by members only or others with specific access, you can use
the "web protect" feature on the control panel. It is found under
"Site Management" on the right hand side.
Select the folder you wish to protect by clicking on it's name.
Clicking the folder icon, as in the cpanel file manager, will descend
into the folder so you can drill down.
Once you have selected a folder name, you can assign the resource
name, or the name that will come up in the authentication box. You can
then create users with access to that resource.
(It is not possible to protect a file, and if you want to restrict
access to a file, place it into a folder for this purpose.)
Any call to files in this folder, whether direct URL or linked from
another page will prompt for authentication.
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR FRONTPAGE USERS:
The web protect feature, and many others, makes use of the Apache .htaccess
file in your space. Microsoft FrontPage uses this same file for it's
authentication and on publishing, may overwrite changes you make via
cpanel. Make a backup of the modified .htaccess file (name it
something like .htaccess_my) so that if it is overwritten, you can
rename your backup to return it.
Back to Top
Q: PHP Information
A: You can obtain a list of important PHP environment
variables and system pathnames by creating a PHP page with a single
command in it: phpinfo(). This will generate an HTML page giving you
all of the important system variables and pathnames, similar to this:
http://webhosting.garymillerandson.com/php_info.php
Put the page on the server and call it up in your browser.
Back to Top
Q: Installing custom CGI scripts
A: We allow you to run cgi scripts on the servers, as long
as they conform to our acceptable server resource. Any script that
uses exceptionally high server resources (such as constant and
excessive sendmail use) will have to be removed. Most CGI scripts will
be fine.
CGI scripts should be put into the cgi-bin directory to be run. (This
is required on all of our newer servers. Some of our older servers are
configured to run any file with a .pl or .cgi extention as a script,
even in the public_html directory. However, it is still good practice
to put scripts into cgi-bin!)
Be sure that the folder and file permissions on any CGI scripts are
set so that the "world" can execute them.
In addition, you must enable the CGI Wrapper in the CGI center of
CPanel to allow your username to run scripts on the server. This
wrapper allows your username to function as the "root" user for the
purpose of running your custom scripts.
Back to Top
Q: Path to send mail.
A: Many scripts require a pathname to sendmail. This is
located at:
/usr/lib/sendmai
Back to Top
Q: Path to PERL
A: Before a cgi script will work, certain paths must be
specified in some scripts. After the "#" in the first line of the perl
script, the path to perl must be specified. This path is:
/usr/bin/perl
This is the default in most programs and you will generally not need
to modify PERL programs to run on our servers.
Back to Top
Q: Do you support ASP Or JSP pages?
A: We do not support ASP. We run exclusively on Linux
servers, and do not have .asp script support.
We have added JSP (Java Servlet) support to certain servers, and if
you plan to run JSP pages, we can move your account to one of those
machines. If you know you will be requiring JSP when you sign up,
please mention it.
(Don't confuse servlet support with JavaScript support, which is a
browser technology. Our servers will all serve up JavaScript code as
this is embedded in HTML.
Back to Top
Q: Can you help me with my Site Design or Scripts
A: Yes, we can if you go to
webdesign.garymillerandson.com there will be more support and we
will be able to help you, there may be certain fees may apply.
Back to Top
Q: Where to upload my files?
A: The Home Directory:
Your html files, and or the files you want to make accessible to the
World Wide Web must be uploaded to your account. When you first FTP
into your account, you'll be taken to your "Home" directory. Don't
confuse this with your "web directory." The home directory is "not"
accessible to the World Wide Web; it's a private directory where
critical system files reside. DO NOT delete files that have been
created by the system, otherwise your web site may disappear into
cyber oblivion!
The public_html and www directory - (Where web accessible files are
placed):
These are the two directories, where files you want accessed from the
web must be placed. Open the folder "public_html" , which is your "web
accessible directory." The folder named "www" is actually a shortcut
to public_html, (both of them take you to your web directory). Upload
the files you want accessible to your visitors and feel free to make
the appropriate sub-directories you'll require.
Back to Top
Q: FTP Settings
A: When you configure your FTP program to upload files to
your web space, host name should either be the IP address of your
space or www.yourdomain.com (once your domain is resolving).
Username and password are the same as what you use to log into the
control panel.
Back to Top
Q: CPanal "file manage" Vs. "FTP"
A: The file manager feature on the control panel is a very
nice way to get a quick look, or make changes to an existing site. The
main strength of this functionality is the ability to get at your
files and perform maintenance from any computer with a web browser.
In our opinion however, it is not a sufficient substitute for an FTP
program and we recommend that all clients download one for maintaining
their site.
Just a tip
Back to Top
Q: What is FTP? Where can I get an FTP programs?
A: FTP (File transfer protocol) is the standard method for
moving and managing files on a remote server. The software that you
use to connect to that server is an FTP client.
Some design software, such as Microsoft Frontpage and Dreamweaver,
include the FTP mechanism and an easy way to use it. See the
documentation.
There are countless FTP clients available, and many of them are freely
downloadable. You will find lists of them at sites like
tucows.com or
winfiles.com, along with
ratings to give you the pros and cons of each. Newcomers to file
transfer should choose a client that has a graphical interface.
One good, and free, product is called AceFTP and can be found here:
AceFTP Freewar
Back to Top
Q: Default "Home" page
A: When you go to www.yourdomain.com, the web server will
look for an initial "default" (index) page to show...in the following
order. This page must exist in the public_html directory of your web
space:
index.html
index.wml
index.cgi
index.shtml
index.php4
index.php3
index.php
index.phtml
index.htm
default.htm
default.html
home.htm
If none of these pages is found on the server, your "site" will be
a directory listing of the files and folders in your space.
Back to Top
Q: Setting up mail accounts
A: There are a couple of ways to configure your mail
accounts. How you set it up will depend on how you want to handle your
mail.
You have a specified number of POP email boxes with your account. You
also have an unlimited number of email "alias" and forwarders.
There are two primary ways to setup your mail handling. The first way
is to simply set up a forwarder. This may be perfect for you if you
already check your ISP mail account and don't want to check another
one. By simply forwarding mail sent to "user@yourdomain.com" to "you@yourcurrentemail.com",
you will get mail addressed to you at your current mailbox, but don't
need to give out that personal address. The other nice thing about
this method is that you do not use up one of your POP email boxes.
The other method, setting up a POP mailbox, means that mail sent to
"someone@yourdomain.com" will go to an emailbox for "someone." The
mailbox will store the mail until the person collects, or reads and
deletes it.
You can collect and or read mail from POP mailboxes with many
different client programs, including Outlook, Outlook express, Eudora,
Pegasus, and even Yahoo mail and Hotmail!
Settings for the mail client program are available in this FAQ page.
Basicly, you put "mail.yourdomain.com" as the POP server and username
as "user@yourdomain.com" and password as set by you.
Back to Top
Q: Mail program setup
A: We provides a web interface for viewing and sending mail
through a browser (webmail).
You can check your POP mailbox using webmail by going to:
http://www.yourdomain.com/webmail/
and entering the full email address as the username and the password
you set when you created the account.
You can also check your email using standard programs like Eudora,
Outlook, Yahoo mail, or Hotmail. (Any program that can access or
download from a POP mailbox).
Mail program setup example:
If your domain was "yourdomain.com", and you had a POP mailbox called
"user":
Mail server: mail.yourdomain.com
Username: user@yourdomain.com
Password: (your pop email password)
Back to Top
Q: FrontPage extensions
A: FrontPage extensions are provided free of charge if
requested. Simply check the box when ordering your account or install
them from the control panel at anytime. Our servers have the latest FP
2002 extensions!
Back to Top
Q: Publishing to a new site with FrontPage
A: If your shared-IP site has been created, but your domain
name is not yet resolving, FrontPage will have a problem publishing to
your space in the usual manner.
Generally, publishing to http://www.yourdomain.com works fine in
FrontPage. But because the name is not pointing to your space, FP must
use the IP address. For accounts with a dedicated IP (200MB and up),
this works fine as the server knows which account to put the files in.
If you have a shared IP, however, you will have to use the notation:
http://ipaddress/~username/
to publish to your site, or wait for the name to resolve.
You can also publish using FrontPage's FTP function. Just put:
ftp://ipaddress
instead of using the http: method
Back to Top
Q: Physical path to account root directory
A: The path to your root directory is:
/home/username/
Substitute "username" with the login you were assigned when you first
received your account details.
Also, keep in mind when you configure your CGI, that your /public_html
is included in your path. For instance, if you have a guestbook.pl
script in your /cgi-bin, the exact physical path to that file is:
/home/username/public_html/cgi-bin/guestbook.p
Back to Top
Q: What is the "www" directory
A: The "www" directory is an alias of the public_html
directory. All files that you wish to be accessible over the web must
be placed under the public_html directory of your space.
This directory supports full paths and folders underneath it.
Back to Top
Q: Do you support Server Side Includes (SSI)?
A: Yes. All of our plans support the use of SSI.
When using a UNIX system it is sometimes necessary to enable certain
HTML files executable for the purpose of using SSI. Server Side
Includes are often used to run a cgi script. An include is called with
an example such as this: After you insert your include, you must mark
the HTML file as executable so the server will parse the file. This is
done using one of two options.
1.) Renaming the file to .shtml: On our server any file name .shtml
will be parsed. So instead of having an index.html file, you would
name it index.shtml. This is the easiest way of enabling includes.
2.) CHMODing the file to 777: With CHMOD 777 you can also mark a file
as executable. It is important to only make the files which you want
parsed executable. This poses certain security issues, as well as a
strain on our resources, as the processor has to work harder to parse
a file.
Back to Top
Q: Understanding case sensitivity
A: Case sensitivity is a small detail which can throw many
newer users into a tailspin. Unlike your local PC, the Unix file
system is very particular about "uppercase" and "lowercase" file
names. Therefore, if you were to install a script, (let's say the
wwwboard discussion forum) for example), the name of this script would
be wwwboard.pl. If you name a file picture file called me.jpg, then
this is what you must call it as. Naming it me.JPG for example,
(observe the uppercase) tells a Unix web server to treat it as a
totally different file name.
Unix file servers are exceptionally fussy on this issue, so make sure
you pay close attention to "case' when uploading files, or installing
and configuring cgi based scripts. The same rule applies for all files
including your .html pages. Again, the server treats .html and .HTML
as two entirely different files. Want to keep in simple? Try to stick
with lowercase letters in all file names and extensions.
Back to Top
Q: Custom Error Pages
A: Custom error pages are a really nice touch that are easy
to create. All you need to do is create (or edit if it exists) a text
file with the name .htaccess (no extention) and put it in your
public_html directory. You only need one line in it:
ErrorDocument 404 /yourerrorpage.html
You can also replace the 404 with other error types if you want those
as well (each on it's own line). 404 is the most common, and is the
error someone gets if they try to load a page that doesn't exist.
Replace the html page in the example above with the one you want shown
when the user gets this error type (can be full path within
public_html as well).
Currently, the tool for creation of the shtml error pages on the
control panel does NOT create this .htaccess document...so this needs
to be done manually.
Back to Top
Q: Editing files with the Linux "vi" editor
A: For linux gurus only:
Some advanced users may choose to do some file editing using linux's
built-in editor, "vi". We have installed the
VI IMproved - enhanced (vim) and this is the default when you edit a
file with vi.
vim-enhanced has a number of nice additional features including syntax
color coding, undo/redo and additional editing tools. There are a
number of good resources on the net to learn to use vi, but start at
http://www.vim.org/docs.php
If the color coding bothers you, it can be turned off with the vi
command
:syntax off
Turn it on using
:syntax enable
If the coloration is too light, it may be because you are on a dark or
light background. You can specify which you are using with one of the
following, which will change the color set to be more readable. The
default on our servers is "dark"
:set background=dark
:set background=light
Using vi takes a lot of practice, but it can be a handy tool.
NOTE: If you do plan on using vi to edit files, PLEASE be sure to
properly exit the program to avoid "stopped" processes accumulating on
the server. You can exit vi with the command.
Back to Top
Q: What is "anonynow FTP"
A: Enabling anonymous FTP in the control panel allows users
to upload files into your public_ftp directory without a specific
username/password. Generally, the username is "anonymous" (without the
quotes) and the password is the email address of the user. Users are
ONLY given upload access to the public_ftp folder, which is outside of
your website space (the public_html folder contains this content).
Examples of use would be for a web designer or printshop to accept
digital photos or files from clients, or for a repository of files
that are too big to attach to an email.
The upload area is public, and anonymous, and is therefore not secure
and any data of a sensitive nature should be handled by providing
clients a unique FTP account to upload to.
Back to Top
Q: Can I stop people from viewing a directory controls?
A: If there is no default home page in a specific directory,
users who type:
http://www.yourdomain.com/directory/
will get a list of the files and folders in that directory.
The easy way to stop this list from showing up is to place a blank
index.html file in the directory.
In addition, cpanel has an option that allows you to turn off
directory viewing by folder. You can now use this in lieu of an index
page.
Back to Top
