Getting Started

Chapter 2 - Getting Started

IN THIS SECTION

What are all the files in your account? | How and where to upload your files.
How to view your pages on the Web. | Back To Summary Of Chapters

The Files In Your Account

When you initially log into the root of your account, dependant upon the method which you choose to log in, you will see various hidden files and directories, among them, the two that hold the most importance are the public_html and public_ftp directories.

public_ftp
public_html

DO NOT DELETE OR RENAME any of these directories or any hidden files that you may find. These directories are automatically setup by the system and required in order for your account to function. Deleting or renaming any of them will cause fatal errors that can only be repaired by deleting and resetting your account. Deleting and resetting your account will inadvertently cause you to experience DNS problems. DNS problems are not something that can be manually fixed, as they can only work themselves out in an unpredictable amount of time.

Of these directories, the ONLY ONE that is important to you is the public_html directory. This is the directory where you will upload your web pages and create other subdirectories that will pertain to your web site and be viewable from your web browser. Your pages WILL NOT be viewable on a web browser unless they are uploaded to this directory.

When you initially enter your public_html directory, you will see only one directory, which is your cgi-bin.

The cgi-bin is where you upload your cgi scripts. DO NOT DELETE OR RENAME your cgi-bin.
Cgi files can be placed in an any folder within your public_html directory as long as the .cgi extension is at the end. If your scripts end with .pl, you must place them in the cgi-bin, or rename them to .cgi .

As you add features from your Control Panel, the system will automatically create other directories within this area. ANY AND ALL sub-directories and/or files created by the system are required by the system to make a particular function operate and SHOULD NOT BE DELETED OR ALTERED IN ANY WAY. The index.html page is the default entry page for your account and this file SHOULD BE REPLACED by one of your own design, but IT MUST BE named index.html.

Where and how to upload your files

ALL files must be uploaded to your public_html directory.

Files are uploaded to your account via WS_FTP, CuteFTP, or Fetch or any other FTP program that you may prefer. Please refer to Chapter 1 for instructions for setting up your FTP client. For more indepth information pertaining to your FTP Client, refer to its documentation.

There are also numerous tutorials for using FTP out on the web, simply do a seach for FTP tutorials. We located one at http://www.computrnet.com/tutorial/ftp.htm.

How to view your pages on the WWW

If your domain name is not yet live on our servers, you can view your pages by using your IP address as follows: http://your-ip-address/ be sure to include the forward slash after your ip address. If your domain is live on our servers, you can view your pages within any browser by typing any of the following in your browser: (of course replace yourdomain.com with your actual domain name and its extension.)

http://www.yourdomain.com
http://yourdomain.com
www.yourdomain.com
http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html
http://yourdomain.com/index.html
www.yourdomain.com/index.html

If you are getting an error when typing the above several things could have gone wrong, these are as follows:

1) Your initial page is not named index.html
2) The code in your index.html page is incorrect
3) The registration/transfer request for your domain has not been completed. (this process can take up to 72 hours. If it has been 72 hours and the transfer of your domain has been requested through Network Solutions, Resellers will need to contact Network Solutions themselves using the Tracking number provided in their confirmation email. Our regular hosting clients need to submit our Technical Support Request Form and provide us with the Tracking Number so that we can contact them.
4) Your account has been deactivated due to non-payment, non-compliance of our policies, or spamming violations - users need to contact Technical Support.

NOTE: If your account has been deactivated due to spamming violations, we have received complaints from our backbone provider. Our spamming policies are set forth by our backbone providers themselves and when an account violates these policies, we remove the account in question from our server without the option of reactivating. We feel that our warnings throughout our web site as well as within our User Agreement is sufficient warning to our users to not spam.
We will NOT retrieve back up copies of sites closed for spam.

The best advice that we can pass on to our users is DO NOT SPAM. There are only so many backbones and while you may find it convenient to hop around from hosting company to hosting company, eventually you will start getting "We don't want your business" from the hosting companies, this is because the backbone will not allow them to host you because you've been banned for spamming. You don't have to like this rule, but it's the one that rules your existence on the Internet.

Are you unsure of what spamming is? We can make this short and simple for you. Spamming is the sending of any unsolicited email to an email address whos owner did not invite you to send an email to them.

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