********************************************** *** Sample Welcome Letter To New Customers *** *** VPS 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 Web site is to you and hope your experience at 1849WebHosting is a good one. Our success depends entirely on yours, 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 other access information for the effective management and use of your new web hosting account. Please take the time to read it. We recommend you print it out and then store it in a safe place for future reference. +===================================+ | New VPS Account Information | +===================================+ | Domain: acme.com | IP: 12.345.67.89 | Username: acme | Password: 1234 | Home Directory: /var/www/html | Disk Space Quota:10000MB | Bandwidth Quota: 40000MB | NameServer1: vps1.1849webhosting.com | NameServer2: vps2.1849webhosting.com | Contact Email: sales@youremail.com | Web Hosting Plan: VPS Premimum +===================================+ Your domain name can be used as soon as it has propagated across the internet domain name servers. THIS MAY TAKE UP TO 24 HOURS OR MORE. In the mean time, you can use the alternative access methods to access your Site Manager, FTP and other accounts as shown below. WEBSITE ACCESS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Use the following URL string to access your website home page until your domain name is usable: http://acme.com.yourtempsite.com The home folder location where you will be uploading all of your web pages (*.html, *.php, etc.) is: /var/www/html A default index.html web page is already in place displaying an "Under Construction" message and will display when you use http://acme.com.yourtempsite.com. SITE MANAGER ACCESS --------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is your main website management tool (your master control panel): http://acme.com.yourtempsite.com/manager/ (use this access method until your domain name is active) http://www.acme.com/manager/ (use this method once your domain name is active) Username: acme Password: 1234 FTP ACCESS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ acme.com.yourtempsite.com (use this access method until your domain name is active) acme.com (use this method once your domain name is active) Username: acme@acme.com (you must use your full web hosting email address if you're using a shared IP address) Username: acme (if you have a dedicated IP address you can use just your account username) Password: 1234 var/www/html is the home folder location where you will be uploading your website files to. phpMyAdmin ACCESS ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://acme.com.yourtempsite.com/pma/ (use this access method until your domain name is active) http://acme.com/pma/ (use this method once your domain name is active) (use site manager username and password to login, not MySQL users names) SSH ACCESS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 208.131.150.8 (your IP address) Username: acme Password: 1234 POP3/SMTP MAIL SERVER NAMES ------------------------------------------------------------------- POP3: acme.com SMTP: acme.com Username (if non-Dedicated IP based): acme@acme.com Username (if Dedicated IP based): acme NOTE: Your ISP (Internet Service Provider) may require that you use THEIR Outgoing (SMTP) Mail Server instead of the one listed above. If you have problems SENDING mail, this may be the cause. CRON JOBS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cron jobs are managed in the traditional Linux manner; that is, manually with a cron file located in the /var/spool/cron folder. You have two ways in which to get to and edit your cron job file: (1) Use SSH to access the cron job file via the SSH command line mode and edit within the command line using the default SSH command line editor. (2) Use FTP to download the cron job file to your local PC where you can edit the file (your editor must be able to save the file in 'Unix' mode, otherwise do not use this method) and then upload it back up to your server in the same folder location. IMPORTANT FTP NOTE: because the default cron file permission is set to 400 (owner read-only), you will have to delete (using your FTP tool) the cron file on the server *first* and *then* FTP it over from your PC. If you don't delete it first, you won't be able to FTP it over to your server and successfully over write the old file; so be sure and delete it first! The Cron file is located in the /var/spool/cron/ folder and has the same name as your web hosting account name with no file extension; so in this case it would be 'acme'. For those of you who are coming from a shared hosting environment where you may have used a cron management tool before (such as inside cPanel), there is no such 'front end' management tool available within your VPS Site Manager tool. You'll have to use one of the two methods above to edit your Cron file manually. Here is a tutorial on better understanding Linux Cron Jobs: http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-do-i-add-jobs-to-cron-under-linux-or-unix-oses/ SHARED SSL ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ All VPS web hosting accounts come with shared SSL capability. If you wish to use Secure Socket Layer (https) protocol, access your website this way: https://ssl4.westserver.net/acme.com (this URL will work whether your domain has propagated yet or not). Note: Shared SSL is not installed by default. If you wish to use it, you will have to log into your host manager account and install it: 1. Look for "Site Applications->Install & Manage" 2. In the lower right area of the "Install and Manage Applications" web page, you'll see the "Security" section. 3. Look for the "Shared SSL 1.0" item. 4. Click on the green down triangle to install. 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.acme.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. SSL Certificate File Locations: /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.crt (for the cert) /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.key (for the key file) External MySQL Access ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To use an external MySQL tool, you first have to log into your Site Manager account. Look on the left side for Site Applications. Click on Install & Manage. Click on the Edit icon (pencil and paper icon) for the MySQL4 or MYSQL5 you have already installed (this will be in the light blue area, not a white area). A new window will popup. Click on the Next button. Enter in an admin password and verify it. Check the TCP/IP Connections checkbox to enable accessing your database using an external tool. a. Start up phpMyAdmin (please see phpMyAdmin ACCESS instructions above). b. Click on the home icon in the upper left area of the web page. c. On the bottom of the home page click on the 'Databases' link. d. On the bottom of this page you'll see a textbox 'Create new database'. Type in your database name and then click on the Create button. e. Once your database name is created, click on the home icon in the upper left part of he screen. f. Next, click on the 'Privileges' link in the lower/center part of the screen. Note: The username cannot be 'root' to connect externally, so create a new username and password and use that username to connect with. The sequence is as follows: g. Click on 'Add a new User'. In the Login Information section: 1. Type in a User name. 2. Leave Host name empty and accept the default 'Any host'. 3. Enter your password. 4. Confirm your password. 5. In the 'Database for user' section click the radio button 'Grant all privileges...'. 6. In the 'Global privileges' click on the 'Check all' link. 7. Then click on the 'Go' button in the lower right corner of the screen to finish creating a user. h. Now that you have created your database name and a username to access your database, you are now ready to access your MySQL database using your external SQL tool. Connect to your MySQL database using your external SQL tool using these parameters: acme.com.yourtempsite.com (use this access method until your domain name is active) acme.com (use this method once your domain name is active) username: use the username you created in step 1 immediately above. password: use the password you created in step 3 immediately above. SOFTWARE INSTALLATION RECOMMENDATIONS --------------------------------------------------------- Unlike shared servers, VPS servers come only with the minimum software installed to make them functional. You will probably want to install a database such as MySQL and PHP, etc. Once you have logged into your Site Manager, on the left hand side of the web page you'll see "Site Applications" - click on the "Install & Manage" link. We recommend you install the Apache Tomcat software which supports Java servlet containers for running servlets and JavaServer Pages (JSP). This is a recommendation, not a requirement. We also recommend you install a MySQL4 or MySQL5 database. If you are planning to use phpMyAdmin to manage your MySQL databases, then you will need to install PHP5 (phpMyAdmin runs under PHP5, not 4). If you are planning to use a 3rd party SQL tool such as MySQL-Front then you won't need phpMyAdmin and you can choose to install either PHP4 or PHP5. Install any other software you may need. Misc Information ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The PHP configuration file - php.ini - is located in the etc folder. If you have any questions please email us at support@1849webhosting.com.