Hosting Overview Every customer gets his own password protected userid under Linux. By logging in with his user_name, the customer gains access to his web storage space. Every user_name "owns" a structure of disk subdirectories in the Linux file system. The "root" of this structure is the "home" directory, found at path "/home/user_name." Note that this is somewhat similar to the MS-DOS directory structure, except that there is no drive letter and forward slashes are used instead of backward slashes. The path referred to above, however is in relation to our own servers. When you FTP to your account using your domain name and userid, you don't need to put in "home/user_name." You will automatically be taken there. Inside the home directory are many files and other directories (for more info on FTP, click here). The most important one is named "mainwebsite_html". Every customer has his own separate "mainwebsite_html" subdirectory. Files placed in the "mainwebsite_html" directory are visible to remote browsers over the Internet, so this is where you want to place all your html documents, graphics, sounds, files, etc. which you want people to be able to access from the world wide web. For example, when a browser asks for URL http://yourdomain.com/page.html, Apache looks for the file: /home/user_name/mainwebsite_html/index.html and sends it out.
Note: FrontPage users, do not need to add public_html directory to their ftp configuration within FrontPage. Check out FrontPage info in resource guide for more information. The Index Page The filename of your home page should be index.htm or index.html. The webserver will automatically send the file at path /home/user_name/public_html/index.html when a browser specifies http://www.yourdomain.com. When your account is set up, there will be an index.html page already installed. This is just your welcome page with basic information about your account. You will replace this file in the public_html directory with one of your own creation. If you wish to use Server Side Includes (SSI), you must name your page with the .sht or .shtml extension. You can put an index.htm file in any subdirectory that you wish, and it will be the default page served when you don't want your visitors to have to type a full page URL reference, for example, -- http://www.yourdomain.com/whatever --instead of http://www.yourdomain.com/whatever/page.html, or http://www.yourdomain.com/whatever.html. FTP Access Now that we know where the files have to be located in order to be visible from the Internet, just how do we put the files there? There are several ways, depending on your computer system. For the Macintosh, a program called "Fetch" is used. Microsoft Windows systems use "Cute_FTP." For detailed instructions on each of these programs go to ftp resource page. Log In and Out of cPanel You need to log on in order to use cPanel to manage your web site.
How to log on:
- Enter the address of your cPanel in your web browser. The address needs to be in the form of http://www.yourdomain.com/cpanel
- You will have a popup asking for login information.
- Enter your user name and password in the User Name and Password fields.
- Click on OK button. You will now be logged on to cPanel.
In case your domain name has not been resolved by the Domain Name servers around the world, you can access the control panel using the IP address given by entering http://IP-ADDRESSHERE/cpanel in the browser address box.
To Log Out You should explicitly log out whenever you have finished using CPanel, as this tells the web server that you have finished that session. If you do not log out, the server automatically closes your session after a set period of time, but there is a small chance that a hacker could use that open connection.
To log out:
Click on the Logout button. This is located on the opening page of CPanel in both the default and iconic themes.
Email Usage The Mail Menu area allows you to manage all aspects of your email, from adding new accounts, managing mailing lists, and setting spam filters. There are quite a number of options available, so take your time.
Note: All email options can be used in conjunction with each other. For example, you could set up an auto-responder on your main account to email an "Out of Office" message, a forwarder to send the email to your uncle's house where you are staying, and a spam filter to reject all email with "credit" in the subject line. This flexibility is what makes email so powerful as a communication medium.
Reading Your Email You can read your online email using Squirrelmail, Neomail or Horde. This is browser based and it allows email functions that you are used to. The main difference between webmail and an offline email applications, such as Eudora or Thunderbird mail, is that all of these functions are performed online, rather than on your own computer, and offline applications generally provide many more features.
To read your email Online, please go to http://www.yourdomain.com/webmail, then choose which webmail application you wish to use. Username:
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(full email address)
password: whatever you setup For information on setting up email clients to receive email, click here.
Setting Up and Modifying Email Accounts You can set up as many POP (Post Office Protocol) email accounts as you require, up to your maximum limit. Each one of these is in the standard email formation of
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. As with your default email address, you can access these accounts through webmail or through your own offline email application.
To add an email account:
- Click on the Add / Remove accounts link in the Mail Manager.
- Click on the Add Account link.
- Enter the first part of the email address and the password for the account in Email and Password fields.
- Enter the maximum size limit of this mailbox in the Quota field, if required. The size limit is in megabytes. Not entering a number means that the mailbox size is only limited by the available disk space.
- Click on the 'Create' button.
Your new account has been added. For information on setting up email clients to receive email, click here. To change an email account's quota:
- Click on the Add / Remove accounts link in the Mail Manager.
- Click on the Quota button next to the required email address.
- Enter the new Quota in the New Quota field. You can remove a quota limit from the email account by erasing all information in the field or entering the word unlimited.
- Click on the 'Change' button.
Your quota has now been changed for that account.
To change an email account's password:
- Click on the Add / Remove accounts link in the Mail Manager.
- Click on the 'Change Password' button next to the required email address.
- Enter the new password in the New Password field.
- Click on the 'Change' button.
Your password has now been changed for that account. To delete an email account:
- Click on the Add / Remove accounts link in the Mail Manager.
- Click on the 'Delete' button next to the unwanted email address.
- Click on the Yes button.
Other things you can use in Cpanel are auto-responders (which is an email sent out automatically for a specific email account as in “out of town/office” messages, block email, forwarders (to forward your incoming email to another account as well), mailing lists and spam assassin (to block unwanted spam or junk mail).
Uploading Your Pages You can upload your web pages to the web site using any ftp program. Click here for more information about ftp
To upload your pages, use the following information in your ftp program:-
ftp address: Enter the IP address provided in your welcome email
ftp site user name: Enter your administrator username
ftp site password: Enter your administrator password
The ftp program should take you to the page "/home/admin_user_name" where "admin_user_name" is your administrator user name. The directory should contain a sub-directory called "public_html" and that is the folder you should upload your pages to. Please do not delete these folders. If you are using perl/cgi scripts then upload those to public_html/cgi-bin/
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