********************************************** *** Sample Welcome Letter To New Customers *** *** Shared Hosting Account *** ********************************************** Thank you for choosing 1849WebHosting! I appreciate your confidence in our company and assure you that we are committed to providing you with excellent service and support. I also understand how important your Website is to you and hope that your experience at 1849WebHosting is a good one. Our success depends on your success, so please do not hesitate to contact us with questions, feedback, and/or suggestions. Again, welcome to 1849WebHosting. We look forward to a long and successful partnership with you. Ralph Freshour Manager Sales & Support Below is your basic account information as well as some additional information for the effective management and use of your new web hosting account. Please take the time to read it. We recommend that you print it out and then store it in a safe place for future reference. +===================================+ | New Account Info | +===================================+ | Domain: xyz.com | Ip: 12.345.67.89 | HasCgi: y | UserName: acme | PassWord: 1234 | CpanelMod: x | HomeRoot: /home/acme/public_html | Disk Space Quota: 7500MB | Bandwidth Quota: 30000MB | NameServer1: ns1.1849webhosting.com | NameServer2: ns2.1849webhosting.com | Contact Email: sales@youremail.com | Package: Deluxe Package +===================================+ Your domain name xyz.com can be used as soon as it has propagated across the internet domain name servers. This could take 24 hours or more. In the mean time, if you wish to get started using your new web hosting account, you can use the alternative access method (IP address) to access your cPanel and other accounts (FTP, etc.) as described below. Updating Your Domain Name To Point To Your New Website ---------------------------------------- Now that you have your new website, the first order of business is to point your domain name to it. You do this by editing your domain name to point to our two name severs: ns1.1849webhosting.com ns2.1849webhosting.com Log into your domain name management center where you have your domain name registered. If you do not know where this is or have not done this before, please contact us at support@1849webhosting.com. While we don't do domain name management ourselves, we can help point you in the right direction to get this done. Until this is done, your new website will not be accessible via http://www.xyz.com for your customers. And remember, once this is done, it will take some time (24 hours or more) before it propagates across the internet - so you need to get this going first thing. ACCESSING YOUR WEBSITE ------------------------------------------------------------------------ http://12.345.67.89/~acme (use this access method until your domain name is active) http://xyz.com (use this access method once your domain name is active) or http://www.xyz.com (use this www subdomain access method once your domain name is active) A default index.html web page is already in place on your website displaying an "Under Construction" message. CPANEL ACCESS --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://12.345.67.89/cpanel (use this access method until your domain name is active) http://xyz.com/cpanel (use this access method once your domain name is active) user: acme password: 1234 FTP ACCESS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ FTP Host Address: 12.345.67.89 (use this access method until your domain name is active) FTP Host Address: xyz.com (use this access method once your domain name is active) Username: acme Password: 1234 POP3/SMTP MAIL SERVER NAMES ------------------------------------------------------------------- POP3: mail.xyz.com SMTP: mail.xyz.com Username: acme@xyz.com (Because your shared hosting account also uses a shared IP address, you will need to login with your full email address including domain name: acme@xyz.com). NOTE: Your ISP (Internet Service Provider) may require that you use THEIR Outgoing (SMTP) Mail Server instead of mail.xyz.com. If you have problems SENDING mail, this may be the cause. ACCESSING WEBMAIL / FORWARDING EMAILS --------------------------------------------------------- If you plan to use one of the webmail applications that comes with your web hosting account, before you can access any webmail account, you have to create that email account first. Log into cPanel (see cPanel Access above). From cPanel, click on the Mail icon. Next, click on the Add/Remove/Manage Accounts. Now, click on Add Account. That's it - now you have created a webmail account. Repeat these steps for each webmail account you wish to create. Note: You may want to use the 'Forwarders' feature for your web hosting account email (for xyz.com) if you want to have those email addresses forwarded to another email account rather than be stored on your own mail server. Let's take your two basic email addresses 'Sales' and 'Support' as examples. You will still need to create these email accounts but how you wish to have them work can be different. Your two options are: (1) Store incoming emails addressed to sales@youremail.com and support@xyz.com on your own mail server at xyz.com with no forwarding at all. In this case, create webmail accounts for each of these email addresses (recommendation email addresses are: abuse, sales, support, info and webmaster). a. Log into cPanel and click on the Mail icon. b. Under "Mail Manager Main Menu" click on the "Add/Remove/Manage Accounts" link. c. This selection will allow you to create webmail accounts (webmail email addresses). Remember that you will have to log into one of the three webmail apps to check your email messages. There are three webmail applications you can use. They all read mail from the same location so you can use any one of them. We suggest you try all three to see which one you like the best (if you plan to use webmail at all). (2) Option 2 is to not use webmail at all. In this case, you will be Forwarding all incoming emails for abuse, sales, support, info and webmaster to another mail account, such as your ISP for example. Or to your gmail, yahoo or hotmail account. This way you don't have to log into yet another webmail account to check emails. This is how we have chosen to setup and handle our 1849WebHosting.com email addresses. Note: You can access your webmail apps either from cPanel or by using the following URL's directly: Horde Webmail - http://12.345.67.89:2082/horde/index.php Squirrel Webmail - http://12.345.67.89:2082/3rdparty/squirrelmail/src/webmail.php Round Cube Webmail - http://12.345.67.89:2082/roundcube/index.php phpMyAdmin Access ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- phpMyAdmin is a MySQL database management tool that is available for use from your cPanel. The instructions below will walk you through accessing and logging into your MySQL Account Maintenance web page via cPanel. Once logged into MySQL you can create your database name and user(s) and set access rights for your user(s). Once that is completed, if you want to access your MySQL database using an external tool, your database will be ready. Let's proceed with creating a database name and creating your user(s). 1. Access your cPanel (see instructions above) 2. Click on the MySQL icon 3. The MySQL Account Maintenance page will display. 4. Type in the name of your MySQL database and click on the Create Database button. 5. Next, create a new User in the Current Users section. Note1: Make a note of the username and password you choose. You will need them later to configure your 3rd party SQL tool. Note2: All MySQL users are managed inside cPanel itself and not in phpMyAdmin at all. In other words, you won't find a 'Privileges' link in our version of phpMyAdmin. 6. Once your new user has been created, click on the Add User to Database. 7. Next, we have setup the accessing host identification for this new user. In the Access Hosts section enter in the name of the host to allow access to the MySQL database from an external SQL tool. If you don't plan to use such a tool then you are done with this section. Hint: if you try to access your database after you have created it but with no user yet, using your 3rd party SQL tool, the connection will fail and you should be able to see the accessing host name string displayed that it wouldn't let you connect from. The host name string will be something like "Access denied for user steve@pool-123-456-789-123.lasnca.dsl-verizon.net". Now back to your cPanel: In the Access Hosts section, enter in the full string starting from the @ character, like this: @pool-123-456-789-123.lasnca.dsl-verizon.net. (use the actual IP address for your host connection, not the one shown here!). Then click on the Add Host button. This will now allow your third party SQL tool to connect to your MySQL database from your specific PC that generated that access host name. Note: You can use a wildcard % character in the host string if you want to. If you do not have a static IP address to connect to the internet with, your IP address will always be changing every time you connect to the internet. For this reason you will want to use the wildcard character (%) to eliminate the IP address part in the host string. This will allow you to connect with different IP addresses so you don't have to keep adding news ones to connect with. This is more convenient for you but is less secure. So, in this case you would want to enter your Access Hosts string like this: @pool% That way, you're telling cPanel MySQL to let anyone connect to the database coming from in from a host starting with @pool regardless of what the IP address is. Again, if you plan to always use phpMyAdmin to access and manage your MySQL database, then you don't have to worry about these host access name strings or the % wildcard. phpMyAdmin is built into cPanel and you can manage your MySQL databases internally using that tool so there is no access host issue to setup or worry about. CONNECTING AN EXTERNAL SQL TOOL --------------------------------------------------------------- Now you're ready to use your 3rd party SQL tool if you wish to. Connect with these parameters: Server: 12.345.67.89 Port: 3306 Connection Type: Direct User: your user name you created for the MySQL (when you were in cPanel). Password: the password for the user you created (in cPanel). Database: the name of the database you created (in cPanel). That's it! You should now be able to connect to your MySQL database using your external SQL tool. If you cannot connect please re-read the section above regarding the accessing name string and making sure you have set that up in cPanel in the Access Hosts section. PHP PATH -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The path to the PHP interpreter is: /usr/local/bin/php You should put the following line at the very top of your PHP scripts: #!/usr/local/bin/php SSH ACCESS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SSH on a shared server is a security risk, however, it is available if two conditions are met: (1) a photo ID is emailed to us and (2) a $10.00 payment is made. This is the SSH access policy we have established for our shared servers in our data center for security reasons. If you still wish SSH access on your shared web hosting account, scan a photo ID (drivers license is preferred) and email it to us at support@1849webhosting.com. Then visit our secure payment website and make a one time $10.00 credit card payment: https://www.bestdbf.com/ccForm.php. In the comments section state this is for SSH access. Once received, we will enabled SSH on your account and send you an email to you when it ready for use. SSH access is: Host Name: 12.345.67.89 Port: will be provided in your email. Login as: acme Password: 1234 DEDICATED IP ADDRESSES / SSL CERTIFICATES ----------------------------------------------------- A dedicated IP address is required before you can install an SSL Certificate. Dedicated IP addresses cost $2.00 per month. Contact us at support@1849webhosting.com to request one. SHARED SSL ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ All shared web hosting accounts come with shared SSL capability. If you wish to use the shared Secure Socket Layer (https) protocol, access your website this way: https://secure108.websitewelcome.com/~ralphf/ (your domain name must be active in order to use the shared SSL URL). While shared SSL Certificates *are* functional (they will encrypt data flowing between your browser and website) they leave a lot to be desired in regards to how your URL string looks. If your customers are going to be accessing your website using https then you probably will want your own private SSL Certificate. Note 1: Since the SSL Certificate is not specific to any website, as a private one is, it will give some kind of security warning (depends on the browser and security settings) and may give you a whole warning screen and ask if you want to continue to the site. Unfortunately this is how shared SSL Certs work and IE will not show a padlock while FireFox will. Note 2: If you want to use your own (private) SSL Certificate then you will need to purchase one. In almost all cases involving customers you will want to do this so they will be able to simply use https://www.xyz.com. SSL Certificates are (a) purchased on a yearly basis; (b) they certify the website (not the domain name) and (c) once approved and certified, they cannot be moved to a different website. We charge a one time $10.00 installation fee to install a private SSL Certificate on your website. The purchase of the SSL and the installation fee are not refundable. Note 3: Prices vary widely for SSL Certificates; starting at $19.95 and going up to several hundred Dollars. However, they all provide the same basic functionality: encrypt data flowing between the browser and the server - and for most ecommerce websites, this is all that is needed. If you are interested in obtaining your own SSL Certificate, contact us at support@1849webhosting.com. We use a $19.95 SSL Certificate on our website for taking Orders. CPANEL BACKUPS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- cPanel has an excellent Backup utility that you should get into the habit of using periodically. While we do daily backups of your website, your website contains your data and you are responsible for maintaining backup copies of your data. Backup is very easy to use in cPanel and you can even backup your MySQL databases. JOOMLA - A CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM ---------------------------------------------------------- If you're looking to build your website with a Content Management System (CMS) we highly recommend Joomla. It's one of the free Fantastico applications that can be in stalled from accessing Fantastico within cPanel. We chose Joomla as our CMS tool of choice to build our 1849WebHosting.com website! While we do not offer support on any of the free Fantastico applications, almost all of them have excellent forums where you can get technical support. In the case of Joomla, visit http://www.joomla.org. Joomla Installation Notes: (1) If you install Joomla into your public_html (home) folder, this is also known as your root folder and you will be able to access your website joomla index.php file automatically by using your normal domain name URL syntax: http://www.xyz.com (joomla's index.php file will automatically be found. If it isn't, delete the index.html file in your home folder). or http://xyz.com If you install joomla into any other folder off of the public_html (home) folder, such as 'public_html/joomla' for example, then you will have to access your website like this to get to your websites joomla index.php file: http://www.xyz.com/joomla/ or http://xyz.com/joomla/ Since this isn't what your customers are going to know to do to find your website, if you use this method you will have to setup a URL Redirect in cPanel to redirect: http://xyz.com TO http://xyz.com/joomla/ Then it will be able to find joomla's index.php for you website home page. We installed our websites joomla into our public_html (home) folder so http://www.1849webhosting.com would work without having to use redirect. But you can install joomla either way and get it to work, (2) If you want to install Joomla and start using it before your domain name is active, follow these instructions: a. Install Joomla from cPanel->Fantastico. b. Using your FTP tool, down load the Joomla configuration.php file to your local PC. c. Using your text editor look for the line: $mosConfig_live_site = 'http://xyz.com/joomla'; (assumes joomla was installed into folder 'joomla') and change it to: $mosConfig_live_site = 'http://12.345.67.89/~acme/joomla'; (assumes joomla was installed into folder 'joomla') d. Now upload the file to your website using your FTP tool. Now when you access Joomla in Admin mode, it will work correctly. After your domain name becomes active, you can either change this line back to what it was or leave as is, as it will still function properly. SOHOLAUNCH WEB BUILDING TOOL ------------------------------------------------------------------ Soholaunch is a website building tool that you can use to create your website without having to know anything about HTML, the language of websites. Please note that we proudly offer the Professional version of Soholaunch - almost every other hosting company offers the free (aka limited) version. Soholaunch is installed from your cPanel by clicking on the Fantastico Icon - then scrolling down near the bottom of the page to find "Site Builders". While we do not provide support for Soholaunch since it is a free Fantastico application, soholaunch provides free technical support at their URL: http://info.soholaunch.com/index.php?pr=Support Once you have installed Soholaunch, you can access your soholaunch admin control panel two ways: http://12.345.67.89/~acme/sohoadmin/ (use this access method until your domain name is active) or http://xyz.com/sohoadmin/ (use this access method once your domain name is active) If you choose to start using Soholaunch right away before your domain name has become active, Soholaunch will display the following message the first time you log into your admin control page: "Cant resolve www.xyz.com to this server. Temporarily Changing this domain name to 12.345.67.89/~acme in config file. When www.xyz.com starts resolving to this server, the config file will automatically be changed back." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you have any questions please email us at support@1849webhosting.com.