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Welcome to AlphaOne Technology Web Hosting!
In your Login Email you will have received some very
important information, including your login information to manage your
billing and access technical support, as well as the name of the server
your account is on, its IP address, the server DNS Name Servers, your
server user name and password. Please print out that e-mail and
keep it in a safe place! You may also want to print out, or
bookmark, this page for future reference.
DNS Name Server Changes
In order for your domain name to be 'found' on the
Internet, it must point correctly to the DNS Name Servers we sent you
in e-mail. If you did NOT have us register a domain name for
you, the first thing you will want to do is change your DNS name
servers at your domain registrar. If you are not sure how to
go about doing that, we have
tutorials
available for most of the more popular registrars. If we
have registered your domain name for you, you don't have to do
anything. In either case, it will take between 12-72 hours for
the domain name to resolve to our servers.
How do I access my web control panel?
Your control panel, called CPanel, can be accessed even
before your domain name resolves via the IP address of the server your
account is located on. For example, if your account has been
assigned to our Phoenix server, you can access your CPanel at:
http://70.85.82.84/cpanel/
. Each of our servers has a different IP address. The IP
address for your server will be found in your Account Login
Information E-Mail.
Once your domain name has resolved to our servers, you can access your
Cpanel directly from
http://<yourdomainname>/cpanel/.
Our custom Cpanel theme, CPanel Evolution, has
tutorials on the main
CPanel features available right from within Cpanel. If you chose
to use the alternate Cpanel theme, X-theme, our online
Cpanel X theme tutorials
can help you find your way around.
Activating
Pre-Installed Applications
Your new hosting account comes with almost 50 pre-installed
applications you can activate by using Fantastico. In order to
use any of these applications, including our Easy Online Website
Builder, you will have to use Fantastico from your CPanel and select
the application(s) you wish to use. You will be asked to name
a directory for the application to run under. This is a new
directory that will be created by Fantastico when it activates the
application, so do not use an existing directory name.
Once Fantastico has finished activating the application, a screen
will appear that tells you what URL to use in your browser to access
the administrative functions for that application.
Using Fantastico
A
tutorial on using Fantastico is available. Should you have
further questions, please feel free to post them to our
User
Support Forums
How Do I
Access the Free Webmaster Resources?
Over 8,000 free resources are available to you in our Webmaster
Resources area. You can access Webmaster Resources directly
with your browser at
www.alphaone-tech.com/resources/ or, if you use our custom
CPanel Evolution theme, there will be a direct link you can click
from within your CPanel.
You must first register in Webmaster Resources in order to access
any files. Once you register, an activation email will be sent
to the email address you used during registration. It will
contain a link for you to click to complete the activation process.
Once that is done, you will have unlimited access to all resources
available.
Using E-Mail
Creating an E-Mail Address
Before you begin using E-mail you MUST configure an
email address in Cpanel. Do not try to use your user name as an email
address - it will NOT function properly.
Tutorials are available for creating e-mail addresses in both
CPanel X and Cpanel XP themes
Sending & Receiving E-mail using POP or IMAP
programs
You can access your e-mail via any standard POP/SMTP/IMAP e-mail
program, such as Outlook, Eudora, etc. Please configure your program
so that it shows that your outgoing mail server requires
authentication. If you need further instructions, our
e-mail tutorials will be useful.
You will need the following server information to configure your
e-mail program.
POP Server: mail.yourdomainname
SMTP Server: mail.yourdomainname
Sending & Receiving E-Mail using Webmail
You can send & receive e-mail using your browser either
by logging into your CPanel or by going directly to your server’s
Webmail Program. Your Webmail URL is:
http://<yourdomain>/webmail/
Getting
Technical Support
We have tried to provide you with a wide range of tools to assist
you in building and maintaining your website. But sometimes we
all need help getting started or solving a problem. The
support methods below will help assure that you know where to go for
different issues that may arise for you.
Important
Announcements
Important announcements regarding scheduled server or data center
maintenance, security issues with applications you may be running,
and other critical information, is provided as
NEWS in our Technical Support Center. We encourage
everyone to subscribe to these announcements. You can elect to
subscribe to them via E-Mail from the news screen OR you can have
your favorite RSS reader configured to get new announcements via
XML.
Tutorials
Not sure how to use a feature or an application? We have over 125
video tutorials to assist you. These are broken down into the
following categories:
Knowledgebase Articles
Our knowledgebase contains articles relating to frequently
asked questions. It is located in our Support Center at
www.alphaone-tech.com/tech-support.
User Support Forums
Our
user support
forums over a great resource for getting assistance, (or
even offering assistance to others). While our Tech
Support Team is there to assist you 24/7/365 via our Trouble
Ticket and Chat Support systems, they can not help you with
issues regarding 3rd party applications, web design, SEO,
marketing, payment processing or other issues not directly
related to our servers. By registering in the User Support
Forums you will gain access to a wide variety of expertise in
many areas. Our forums are open to the public as well.
When you register you will receive an activation
email with a link to click to complete your registration.
Once you have done so, you will be able to read, post & reply to
all topics.
3rd Party Software
Directory
All of our advanced feature software that is available are 3rd
party applications. This means we did not create, and can
not completely support, these programs. Our techs will try
to assist you, as will users and volunteers in the User Support
Forums, but sometimes only the authors of the software will be
able to answer your questions. To make it easy for you to
contact their official support sites, we have a
3rd Party Application Directory available.
Customer
Support Center - Trouble Tickets
Most requests for support should go to our
Customer Support Center
via our Trouble Ticket system. You can access our Customer
Support Center directly, at
www.alphaone-tech.com/tech-support/, via the
Customer Support
Link in your CPanel, or via the Customer Support link in our Billing
system. You will log in using the same email address &
password that you use for our Billing System. Please log in to
the Customer Support System before completing a ticket.
This way you will be able to track your tickets.
Also, if you change your email address or password for our
Billing System, this will also change your tech support center
login.
When you complete a Trouble Ticket, you will be asked to choose
a department for the ticket to be assigned to. Technical
questions should go to the Tech Support department to assure
they are handled in a timely fashion. Most tickets are
responded to within 1 hour, (usually less), and are resolved
within 24 hours. Our Tech Team is on duty 24/7/365 to
handle Trouble Tickets. In the event that your issue has
to be escalated to System Administrators, unless it is a server
emergency, tickets will take a bit longer to be resolved.
When a Tech has responded to your ticket, you will receive an
email detailing the response and including a link back to the
ticket for you to provide additional information and/or
comments. Our System Administrators do a quality
assurance check on all Trouble Tickets at least once daily to
make sure that all issues have been handled correctly by lower
level technicians.
Technical Support
Center - Chat
Our chat techs are available 24/7 to assist you with
minor
issues in our Tech Support Center at
www.alphaone-tech.com/tech-support/. If there is an
issue that they are not trained to assist you with, they will
advise you to log in to the support center and complete a
trouble ticket.
Billing and
Customer Service Support
For non-technical issues relating to your billing, account
status, or general questions, you may contact our Billing and
Customer Service team via the Customer Support Center at
www.alphaone-tech.com/tech-support/.
Technical Support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Normal hours of
operation, (central time zone), for Billing and Customer Service
are:
Monday - Friday 9:00 am -
5:00 pm
Saturday
10:00 am - 1:00 pm
Because of the nature of our business,
occasionally our billing and customer service team members will
be on duty and respond to tickets during non-business hours and
over holiday weekends.
Publishing Your Site
What Directory Do
My Files Need To Be In?
However you publish your site, all files MUST be published to the
public_html directory OR a subdirectory of public_html. Files
published to any other directory or to your root directory will not
be accessible via web browsers.
What
Do I Name My Main Web Page?
In order for a page to automatically display when someone browses
your domain, it needs to be named one of the following:
- index.htm
- index.html
- index.php
- default.htm
- default.html
- default.php
Publishing
With FrontPage
To publish your website with
Microsoft FrontPage, you will select the File Publish Web option in
FrontPage.
FrontPage will prompt you for the URL that you wish to publish your web
pages to. Be SURE to include the full URL to your domain or
sub-domain. Example - http://www.alphaone-tech.com is the correct
URL format. www.alphaone-tech.com is the wrong format to use.
You will then be prompted
for your user name and password. This is the user name and
password that was sent to you in your Account Activation e-mail.
Once you have correctly supplied your user name and password, you will
be presented with the a split screen.
On the left
side of the screen is the contents of your local web site directory.
On the right is the contents of your web site on our server.
To publish your
website, click the PUBLISH button. If properly configured, FrontPage will automatically
publish your pages to the correct directory and with the correct file
permissions.
Publishing with
FTP
For non-Microsoft® FrontPage® users, an FTP
Client is the most common method of transferring your files up to the
server. Following these steps will ensure that your website is uploaded
and visible on our servers, and allow viewers from the outside to visit
your site easily.
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Once your new account is created on our servers,
you will receive an Account Login E-Mail & you should
be ready to upload any files you have created for your website. You
can start by installing and running an FTP client, such as the
recommended two FTP clients, WS_FTP (for Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000 or
XP users), or Fetch (for Macintosh users).
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Important Note for FrontPage users:
Although we provide FTP access to FrontPage accounts, it is
not to be used to upload your pages to your account as FTP
MAY corrupt your FrontPage website if used. If you use FTP to modify
your site (html files, etc.), you will run into errors the next time
you use FrontPage to access your Web site, and the FrontPage
extensions may become corrupt. Also, do not remove any files from your
FrontPage account with an FTP client. The only files that you may
remove with FTP are the files that you put there with FTP (cgi scripts
and files in your public FTP directory).
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If your domain name is registered and fully functioning, then you can
use ftp.yourdomain.com as the 'Host Name' to access your
account. You will be required to log into the server with your
User Name and Password. Note also that logging in with a Web Browser,
such as Netscape or Internet Explorer, will NOT give you access to the
entire account. Only an FTP client will give you total access to your
account space.
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If your domain name has NOT resolved to
our servers yet, you will need to FTP to the IP address you have
been given for the server your account is on. (This IP address is
contained in the Account Login E-Mail you received) You will be
required to log into the server with your User Name and Password.
Note also that logging in with a Web Browser, such as Netscape or
Internet Explorer, will NOT give you access to the entire account.
Only an FTP client will give you total access to your account space.
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You will find some files and
subdirectories already present in your account space. We recommend not altering or
deleting any of these subdirectories in any way (other than depositing
files into them, or changing permissions). Until you upload your
files, your website will appear as a directory listing. This
listing will disappear when you upload your index.htm or index.html file. Your index.htm
or index.html file is your 'Home' page, and any viewer who visits the
site will see this file initially when entering your domain name on
their browser.
File
Permissions
File permissions allow you and others to access each file on your site
for reading, writing, and executing. CGI scripts must be made
'executable' in order to function correctly, while HTML files should be
'readable' to everyone by default.
If you need to change file permissions on a particular file or
directory, follow these steps with WS_FTP for Windows:
Right click on the file which requires permission alteration. Choose 'chmod
(UNIX)' and left click. A window should appear:
Click on the check box
next to the what you wish to enable. Access is split into three
categories:
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OWNER : you; the owner of the file.
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GROUP : all the other users on the system.
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OTHER : everyone else (people from the outside).
FTP - File Transfer Protocol
What Is FTP
FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is the simplest and most secure way to
exchange files over the Internet. Whether you know it or not, you
most likely use FTP all the time.
The most common use for FTP is to download files from the Internet.
Because of this, FTP is the backbone of the MP3 music craze, and
vital to most online auction and game enthusiasts. In addition, the
ability to transfer files back-and-forth makes FTP essential for
anyone creating a Web page, amateurs and professionals alike.
What FTP Programs Can I
Download?
Most FTP Software is available either free of charge or as a trial
version. Most members of our team use CuteFTP.
How Do I Configure My
FTP Software?
We have
tutorials available
to walk you through configuring and using the 3 most popular FTP
programs - CuteFTP, SmartFTP & WSFTP.
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