Getting Started

     Welcome to WebHostingSpace.Net! To get started with using your new WebHostingSpace.Net hosting account, you'll need an explanation of the basic process of getting your Web site up and running as well as some important features that will help you administrate your hosting account. We'll start by assuming that you have just created a brand new WebHostingSpace.Net account using our setup process and have already received your account setup letter containing important account information such as your account username and password. If you have not received your account activation letter containing this key information, please contact our support department immediately.
     One the first things that every new account user should know is that for a few days after your original signup date, you will have to access your domain in a web browser temporarily via the address and your username (example http://www.webhostingspace.net/~username), not your new domain name (Web address). Your new or transferring domain name can take a few days to function due to the fact that Online NIC, Network Solutions or other domain name registrars, must register and propagate the name across the entire Internet. This can take from 24-36 hours for new domains, and 5-10 days for domain name transfers. To test the domain, simply type it into a Web browser and see if your account comes up.
     If you are transferring a domain that you already own you will want to quickly initiate the transfer of your domain using the following information:
Your Domain Name Registrar maintains information relating to who your Web hosting provider is for your Web site. When you change hosting companies, your Domain Name Registrar must be given the necessary information to redirect traffic to your new location. There are dozens of Domain Name Registrars and they all have different procedures to complete the process.
To expedite the transfer of your domain to WebHostingSpace.Net, Inc as your preferred Web hosing provider, simply contact your Domain Name Registrar and request a technical contact change. Ensure you have the below information handy when speaking to your Domain Name Registrar support team.
     WebHostingSpace.Net, Inc. primary and secondary DNS numbers:
     Primary Server Hostname: NS1.WEBHOSTINGSPACE.NET
     Primary Server IP Address: 70.84.196.251
     Secondary Server Hostname: NS2.WEBHOSTINGSPACE.NET
     Secondary Server IP Address: 70.86.76.88
     Once you have completed the transfer process with your registrar, it may take up to 7 business days for your new information to be fully recognized across the Internet. At this point if you have not already built your website you will need to begin with designing a minimum of one HTML page for your website. To build HTML pages you can use third party HTML creator programs.
     After creating your website, at this point you can begin to upload your files via the IP address provided to you in your account confirmation letter, using an FTP client such as WS_FTP, Fetch or Cute FTP. Step Two of the "Getting Started" tutorials will help you understand more about uploading your files into your new hosting account. Note: Microsoft® FrontPage® users will have to wait until your domain has been registered or transferred to the WebHostingSpace.Net DNS server.

Step Two in Getting Started

Welcome to the second step in getting your new WebHostingSpace.Net account setup. By now you should have a good understanding of how to access your temporary site, began building your website, and initiated the transfer of your domain, if applicable. In section two of the getting started articles, we will assume that you now have at least one or two pages built for your website and are now ready to upload the pages to your new WebHostingSpace.Net account. The below instructions will assist you with the process of moving your newly created website and it's images from your computer to your WebHostingSpace.Net account.

Uploading 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.
Once your new WebHostingSpace.Net account is created on our servers (instantly after signup), 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).
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 will 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).
If your domain name is registered and fully functioning, then you can use ftp.yourdomain.com as the 'Host Name' to access your account with the FTP client other wise we recommend you simply using your IP address provided to you in your account activation letter. In any case, 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.
You will find some files and subdirectories already present in your account space. Other than the index.html, 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 default page or main website page is a Welcome to WebHostingSpace.Net page that we've created to provide you with important information on using your WebHostingSpace.Net hosting account. This page will disappear when you upload your index.htm/html file. Your 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.

     Now you can begin transferring files to the server, but please keep these points in mind when uploading:
1.  UNIX systems are case sensitive. So a file named mycustomers.htm would be a separate file from one named MYCUSTOMERS.htm. If you can't seem to find a file on the server that you just uploaded, check to see that you are using the right case.
2.  UNIX filenames also may contain almost any type of character, and sometimes this may confuse FTP clients. If you have trouble retrieving or linking to a file, try using wildcards in FTP to delete it, and replace it with a file that doesn't have spaces or other special characters in its name.
3.  WebHostingSpace.Net's HTTP server recognizes file formats by extension. This means a client retrieving a file named .htm or .html will be told it is in HTML format. Additionally, all files that are to be viewed in a browser must be placed in the "public_html" directory on the WebHostingSpace.Net servers. Therefore, make sure that you have the proper extensions when uploading your files and the files are in the correct directory.
4.  CGI scripts must be in the /cgi-bin subdirectory and have file permissions set to 'executable'. Otherwise they will not run correctly.
5.  You should upload graphic files (such as .jpg or .gif files) in 'Binary' mode with FTP, and HTML or scripts in 'ASCII' mode in order to ensure that there are no extraneous 'control' characters in your scripts or pages.
6.  You may create an unlimited number of subdirectories (folders) within your account space to organize your site using the FTP command 'mkdir'. To have a page automatically load up when a browser goes to a directory, name a file index.html (make sure its lowercase) and place it in that directory. If an index.html file is not present, the Web browser will default to a list of all the files in that directory. This applies to the root directory as well

     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:
OWNER : you; the owner of the file.
GROUP : all the other users on the system.
OTHER : everyone else (people from the outside).
Note that this works only with WS-FTP for Windows
Once again, congratulations you have completed the second stage in getting started with your new WebHostingSpace.Net site.

Step Three in Getting Started

     Welcome to the third step in understanding how to get started with using your new WebHostingSpace.Net hosting account. At this point we will assume that you have addressed domain transfer issues or contacted our support team for assistance, built at least one HTML page, uploaded the page using an FTP client and set the appropriate file permissions. Now we will begin to get into more advanced website features. We will begin with an understanding of CGI scripts.

     Understanding CGI Scripts
     CGI scripts are used to process information on your Web site. Think of scripts as mini-programs that execute on the server to accomplish tasks. Each mailform, counter, guestbook, or other interactive feature you place on your site must not only have an HTML page, but also a script that works behind the scenes to process the information.

Our servers support Perl scripts easily. Other scripting languages, such as C, require the script to be compiled on a system running the same version of Unix as the server before they will function. So, if you do not have access to a Linux server, you will most likely be limited to Perl scripts for your account.

When uploading Perl scripts to your account make sure that they are uploaded to your cgi-bin directory and that you upload them in 'Ascii' mode; not 'Binary' mode. The cgi-bin directory is located off of your root directory. Also, you should make sure that you have the proper permissions set on your Perl scripts.

Path to perl: /usr/bin/perl

Version of perl: 5.8.7

Path to sendmail: /usr/sbin/sendmail

Operating system: Redhat Linux Enterprise

Troubleshooting:

Internal Server Error"- This does not necessarily mean that the server is misconfigured; in fact, it usually means that a CGI script a user has installed is not functioning correctly, and the server is detecting this. Common causes are: the file is not executable, there is a malformed header, or it is has an incorrect path reference when using a Server Side Include. Also make sure there are no control characters included in the script by using 'Ascii' mode when uploading.

Many errors in Perl CGI scripts can be more easily diagnosed by adding
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);
to the top of the program. This will cause fatal error messages your script generates to be sent to your Web browser.

Make sure you have your path to Perl listed correctly in the script, and the HTML code of the page correctly refers to the script.

Now we have gone through the basics of CGI programming. Lets move on to step four and begin to get a better understanding of advanced account administration features.

Step Four in Getting Started

At this point you have built at least one HTML page called your index.htm/html and uploaded the page to you web account using a FTP program such as WS_FTP, Fetch or CuteFTP.
Now that you have a basic understanding of transferring your domain, building HTML pages and uploading them to your WebHostingSpace.Net account, we will now begin to look at other ways to administrate your new WebHostingSpace.Net account using your control panel located at http://yourdomain.com/cpanel.

     Control Panel
     As stated above next we will touch on the control panel. Your Control Panel contains everything you should need to tweak all of your account options. Once your domain name is functioning correctly, you may want to visit the Control Panel for your account. This is where you can configure your account settings such as e-mail, statistics, secure server access, CGI scripts, and so forth. To reach the Control Panel, type http://yourdomainname.com/cpanel. Upon typing the following url and entering your username and password, you will be placed at the home page of your control panel as seen below.
     Now that you have access to your control panel it is time to get a better understanding and breakdown in the functionality of each button of the control panel.
     Below we have displayed each button you will see in your control panel and given a brief explanation of their functionality. Feel free to explore the details in cPanel User Guide documentation.

Mail	Add/Remove Email Accounts Used to add and remove new pop account users.
	Default Email Address Set a default catch-all email address for your account. (Quick Note: It is not necessary to create email aliases as your default email account acts as a catch-all account. In other words anything@yourdomain.com will be delivered to your default mail account.)
	Autoresponders Add email autoresponders to your account so that when someone writes to an email address that you define an email with a message of your choice is automatically sent to them.
	Block Email Filter email from your account that you don’t want to receive.
	Email Forwarding Forward email from any alias to an external email address.
MySQL Databases	MySQL Database MySQL is a database engine that you can use with your Web site. There are two separate features in the control panel. One allows you to create your databases and assign users while the other feature permits you to edit the database.
Mime Types	Mime Types MIME = Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions - Add Mime Types to your account. Mime Types are an advanced feature. You should not use this option from the control panel with FrontPage Extensions installed. You will have to use FrontPage to perform this function.
FrontPage Extensions	FrontPage Extensions Install and uninstall your account's FrontPage Extensions at the click of a button. Note to FrontPage users: Most of the options in your control panel will not work with FrontPage Extensions installed. It's a known fact throughout the industry that Microsoft has established itself as a "world in itself" and therefore the majority of their software is incompatible with the other world. We provide FP Extensions as a courtesy to those that know how to use it and prefer it over the more common methods of designing Web sites.
FTP Manager	FTP Manager Add FTP users to your account, both regular and anonymous, change anonymous policies, view who is online, and boot anyone from a session.
Error Pages	Error Pages Customize how your error pages look. It includes: 400, 401, 403, 404, and 500 error pages.
File Manager	File Manager Using the File Manager you can view all the directories and files in your account, change permissions for directories and files, create directories, create and edit files, and upload files from your hard drive to your account.
Web Protect	Password Protect Directories Password protecting your directories has never been easier. This option allows you to select the directory you wish to password protect from a drop down box and then enter usernames and passwords of those you want to allow access to that part of your Web site and remove them just as easily...all at the click of a button. Note: You cannot use this option with FrontPage. If you’d like to password protect directories and you’re using FrontPage, then this option will have to be done in FrontPage rather than from the control panel.
Raw Access Logs	Raw Access Logs View and download your raw access log files for viewing in a text editor or third-party Web statistics analyzer.
Web/FTP Statistics	Web/FTP Statistics This option will assist you in monitoring visitors to and from your site. This area features 3 different views of your traffic: Analog, which basically provides you with a quick summary, Webalizer, which provides you with more detailed information, and Last 300 Visitors, with detailed information on each. In addition you’ll find the bandwidth monitoring feature where you can see how many bytes of transfer your account has done. This area also contains a link to access your error log, which will assist you in trouble shooting your scripts.
Chat Room	Chat Room This option will allow you to setup a Web based chat on your site.
Backup	Backup This feature allows you to compress and backup your directories and files.
Shopping Cart	Agora Shopping Cart

Now that you have a stronger understanding of the benifits that WebHostingSpace.Net's account control panel can give you in administrating your WebHostingSpace.Net hosting account, lets move on to step five.

Step Five in Getting Started

      Welcome to the fifth and final step in understanding the basics of getting your new WebHostingSpace.Net hosting account up and running. At this point we have covered, registering/transferring your domain name to WebHostingSpace.Net, building a HTML page, uploading your new web site, setting permissions, CGI scripting, and finally your account control panel. The final step in getting you’re the basic of your hosting account up and running is to understand how to configure your email client to access your domain’s email.
     To access your domain’s email account you will need a third party email client. WebHostingSpace.Net recommends Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape, Eudora, or Pegasus.
     As a WebHostingSpace.Net client you will need the below basic settings to configure any of the noted third party email clients. You'll need these setting to configure and retrieve email from your main pop account:
Type Of Mail Server: POP3
POP server: mail.yourdomain.com
POP username: yourusername
POP password: yourpassword
Here are the settings that you'll need to send email:
SMTP server: mail.yourdomain.com
SMTP username: yourusername
SMTP password: yourpassword
Note: The outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication (Make sure you select this option when setting up your email client.) i.e. when you send email you'll be prompted for your username and password.
     Finally, if you would like to add more email accounts to your hosting account, simply access your account control panel and in the “Add/Remove Accounts” area, add your additional email accounts. Each account will need a separate password.

     Congratulations, we have now completed a five step basic understanding of getting your new WebHostingSpace.Net hosting account up and running. For more information on more advanced web building functions as well as information relating to your WebHostingSpace.Net account, please take a moment and read Question & Answers in our WebHostingSpace.Net Support area.

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