Information about our services & systems

The following are a few of the things you should know pertaining to our services, our systems and its features:

1. Site: Your site can contain files and directories. Your files can be in any format, but most sites will contain html pages, cgi programs, images, animation, video, audio etc.. which can be stored in your root directory or any sub-directory. Your root directory is the space on the server reserved to your site. It's the directory you are looking at when you connect via FTP. Your root directory is not empty, because we have already created a few directories like admin, bin, etc, lib32, mail and you will never be able to delete these. They must be there in order for the systems to work properly.
   
   
2. FTP: FTP is used to transfer your files to your space on our servers. If you are using Microsoft FrontPage, please read our Frontpage instructions. If you are using any other programs to create your pages, please read our regular ftp instructions.
   
   
3. HTML Pages: In your root directory or any sub-directories, we have enabled some file names to be brought up by default by the server to the browser. These default file names are "index.html", "index.htm", "default.html" or "default.htm" (without the quotation marks, always lowercase). For example, if you want to go to "http://www.food.com" (this is your root directory) and view the home page directly, you must name the home page one of the above mentioned file names, like "index.html". The same applies to sub-directories of your site. For example, if you want to go to "http://www.food.com/pizza" (this is the sub-directory "pizza" inside your root directory) and view a page automatically, you must also name it according to the file names mentioned above. NOTE: Make sure you don't have two of these in any directory or it is impossible to predict which one will show up first. If such a file name does not exist in your root directory or any sub-directories, then a listing of all the files and any sub-directories contained in that directory will be shown on the browser.
   
   
4. Directories: It is a good practice to name directories with letters and numbers only, as any other character can become confusing to the browser and can yield unpredictable results. NOTE: don't create a directory called "scripts" or "script" because they will not work!
   
   HINT!: follow a naming convention with your files and directories for easier management of your files in the future. Create directories for different sections of your site, for your graphics, for your scripts, etc...
   
   
5. Links: Unix servers are case sensitive, so be sure to link properly. For example, if your image is named "SmallPizza.gif", you have to link to exactly that file, with the capital "S" and "P".
   
   
6. CGI scripts: These are small programs that accomplish specific tasks. If you have one, please read our cgi/perl scripts page.
   
   
7. C Programs: You can also run C programs on your site. Since C programs need to be compiled, we will need to do that for you. We will compile C programs for you a couple of times, after which we will ask you to create a make file before we compile them again.
   
   
8. Stats and Logs: You can view your site's hit statistics for the past two weeks by clicking on stats at the top (top frame) and viewing the report. We can run reports because all actions on your site are recorded in a log. These logs are zipped every week, kept for 6 weeks after which they are automatically deleted. If you would like to keep these logs, please download them via ftp by going in the directory "admin", then going in the directory "logs" and downloading all the files. These logs can be used to run custom advanced reports if you download them and run them through a hit statistic analyser software that you have purchased.
   
   
9. Email: You can have two types of email accounts or email addresses, POP3s and aliases. POP3 emails are real email addresses that are stored on the server in a mailbox. Emails sent to these email addresses can be retrieved via any email application and require a password. Alias emails are different. These are virtual email accounts that are actually forwarded to another email account. Since these emails are being forwarded somewhere else, you cannot check these email accounts directly. To check these emails, you must actually check the account that these emails are being forwarded to. For example, you might setup a POP3 username called "food@food.com". Then you might setup an Alias username "sales@food.com" that forwards to "food@food.com". To check for emails sent to "sales@food.com", you will need to check "food@food.com" which is where the mailbox "sales" is being forwarded to. To use email, please read our email instructions. NOTE: Remember that whether an email address is a POP3 or an Alias, it must be unique. You cannot have a POP3 email account "food@food.com" and an Alias email account "food@food.com". For that reason, the panel will not allow you to add a username that already exists.
   
   
10. Support: Should you have technical support questions, please check to see if there is a topic about your questions in the HELP section of the control panel. We always try to post answers to questions asked before, and there is a good chance someone has asked before. If you cannot find your answer, please feel free to email the support team. Don't forget to provide us with your domain name, and if necessary, the names and locations of the files.