|
If you've gotten so far as to read our web hosting how-to, then you no doubt have heard about our features
and are interested in signing up for web hosting with us, or you are already a customer and want to learn
more about how to more efficiently manage your account and your website. In this document, I will detail
how to sign up for an account, give limited information about writing web pages, tell you how to use ftp
or the file manager that comes with your account to create or upload these pages, and introduce you to your
control panel that will be very useful in managing your website and email. Lets get started!
|
Signing up is quick and easy. First, decide which webhosting
account is best for you. For those of you starting a web page for the first time, the 100MB account will
probably be more than enough unless you plan to do heavy advertising, you already have a large audience set up
and ready for your opening, or you plan to be hosting a large collection of files like pdf or image files.
(Remember you cannot use your account for illegal or harmful activities, some of which are outlined in our
Acceptable Use Policy.) If you are transferring
your account from another web hosting provider, have a large site or base audience, are hosting many large
files, or expect lots of traffic, consider one of our larger accounts. Remember - you can upgrade or downgrade
your account at anytime. Starting with a smaller account and working your way up is a good way to get a feeling
for your site's needs while staying financially effecient.
Next, choose a domain name. FuzzyMonkey can host your website no matter what type of domain name you have, and
we can register many different types of domain names for you, such as .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .us, .ws,
.cc, .jp, .be, .co.uk, .me.uk, and .org.uk. If you are targetting a specific nationality or location, a
national domain name may be a good idea. If you already have a domain name, all you have to do is point it
at our servers. If you want a domain name of a type that we cannot register, like .edu or .gov, simply
register it with another registrar and point it at our servers. It usually takes anywhere from 12-24 hours for
a new or newly changed domain name to being to direct traffic to its server. This is the same no matter
who you order your domain from, no matter who you have your web hosting account with, and no matter
what type of domain name you have.
Once you have made a decision about these two things, you are ready to sign up for web hosting. Simply fill in
this form and proceed to paypal.com for
payment! Once you complete the steps required for payment, your account will automatically be set up. Within
a couple of minutes after payment, you should receive an email with your username, password, and instructions
on how to get started. You'll be able to log in immediately!
|
When you sign up for an account, you have the choice to pay just the prorated amount for the current month or
to pay for your account for an entire year. If you choose to pay monthly instead of yearly, payments are due
on the first of every month. You will receive a bill on the 25th of the previous month and one on the first of
the month. It is your responsibility to make sure we have a working email address on file for you at which you can
receive your bills. Any account past due on the 7th of the month will be suspended until payment is received.
This will not delete your files or your settings, but you will not have access to your account, and your website
will be temporarily replaced with an "Account Suspended" notice, so be careful to never let your account become
suspended. Once the
account balance has been paid in full, your access and service will be reinstated as soon as possible. If you
choose to pay a year in advance, you will not receive bills until your balance has run out. You will then be billed
monthly. You can choose to pay as far in advance as you wish. For every complete year you are paid in advance, you will
receive one month's service for free.
All payments must be made through the online payment system on FuzzyMonkey.net located here.
A link to this system can be found
in every bill you receive as well as in your welcome email that you received immediately after signing up with us.
Payments not made through our system will not be posted to your account automatically, and therefore, your account
may be suspended even though you have paid if you do not use this system. We will make every effort to catch payments
not made through the system and apply them to your account manually, but we make no guarantee payments will post to
your account unless you use the link we provide. If you find that your account has been suspended in error because of
this, please let us know immediately and we will correct the error.
Please note that if you use PayPal's echeck option, your payment will take several days to post to our account after
you request it. Please allow enough time for your payment to clear in order to avoid having your account suspended
in error.
|
|
When you sign up for an account with us, you will actually have two accounts. The account you will use to make
changes to your website is located on your server. To access this account, log in with the link in your welcome
email and the username and password you picked when you signed up. The second account will be located on our website
at my.fuzzymonkey.net. This is where you will pay your bills and make account
changes. It is possible to have more than one web hosting accounts listed under the same FuzzyMonkey account.
Anytime you sign up for a new web hosting account with the same email address you have used for a previous account,
the new account will be grouped with your old accounts under my.fuzzymonkey.net.
|
|
You can make changes to any web hosting account by logging into my.fuzzymonkey.net.
For instance, you can upgrade or downgrade your hosting plan, order a new domain name, renew an existing domain name,
add an authorized user to any web hosting account, or edit your contact information. Just log in and click on the domain
name that you want to modify. Click "Change Contact Information" to change the contact information for the main contact
on the account. Click "Make Account Changes" to perform a web hosting account upgrade or downgrade or to register or renew
a domain name.
|
|
Once you have signed up for a domain name, you can log in immediately and get started creating your new web site
or transferring your existing site to our servers.
|
|
After you sign up you will immediately receive an email from us detailing your account information. This will include your
username and password and instructions on how to set up your email and perform other tasks with your account.
If you do not receive this email within twelve hours of signing up, or if you signed up using an email address
to which email cannot be sent or that hasn't been set up yet, please notify us. We will gladly send you another
copy of the email. In most cases, you should receive this email within five minutes of signing up.
|
|
FTP stands for "file transfer protocol." It provides an easy way to put files from one computer onto another
computer. We recommend using WinFTP in Windows or GFTP in Linux. Simply enter your web site's domain name or ip address in the
"Host Name" text box and enter your username and password and click "Connect." You will be able to see your
files on your local computer on the left side and files on the remote computer (your server) on the right side.
On the server, your html or php pages should go into the www/ or public_html/ directory and your CGI script files
should go into the cgi-bin/ directory.
|
|
There are many many web sites that offer tutorials and lessons on learning HTML (hypertext markup language), the
language web pages are written in. One of the most common is
Dave's HTML Tutorial. There are also many programs that
will allow you to create html code without memorizing the entire language. Microsoft FrontPage and
Dreamweaver
are two such programs. Also, the Netscape and
Mozilla browsers both come with one.
|
|
Also, if you want to add more content to your site, such as a Guestbook, Photo Gallery, or Calendar, we offer one
of the most comprehensive collections of free web software on the planet. Visit our
software page for more information on the
scripts we have available for download and instructions on how to get them running on your site. Besides, if
you host with us, we'll install them for free!
|
|
Every account we offer comes with an invaluable resource called cPanel. CPanel is a complete control panel that
allows you complete control over every aspect of your website, from managing different domain names, to managing
your files, to creating database and email addresses. The rest of this document is designed to help you become
familiar with cPanel so that you can manage your website and email more efficiently. CPanel is located at
http://www.yourdomain.com/cpanel. There is a very complete documentation of cpanel
here, but for our purposes,
we will concentrate on the most commonly used features.
|
 To set up your email, click on the "Mail" link or icon near the top of the first
page you see after logging into cpanel. From here, we can add or delete an email account, edit the default email
address, add forwarders or auto-responders, create mailing lists, and more.
|
|
To create an email account, click "Add/Remove Accounts." You will see a list of all the current email accounts on
your domain name. By default, your login username is already setup as an email account. Click the "Add Account"
link at the bottom of the page, and enter the desired email address, password, and maximum disk space usage (quota)
for that email account and click "Create." The default quota is 10MB, and this is usually reasonable.
|
|
Checking your email can be done in two different ways. First, you can use your mail client, like Microsoft Outlook
or Mozilla Thunderbird. Setting up your mail client for
your new email is just the same as for your existing email with one exception: you must use your entire email address
as your username. So for the email address erin@fuzzymonkey.net, my username is "erin@fuzzymonkey.net," not just
"erin." Enter your domain name and password just like normal.
Also, you can use your website's webmail feature to check
your email. Simply visit http://www.yourdomain.com/webmail in order to access this convenient feature. Log in with
your complete email address as your username and your password. Webmail is a fantastic feature that makes it possible
to use your mail client when you are at home or work and to use Webmail when you are away from home and not on your
personal computer.
|
|
Email forwarders are a great way to forward email from one account to a different email address. Do you have friends
or coworkers that want an email address at yourdomain.com, but don't want to learn how to check their email all over
again? Just create the email addresses following the instructions above, and go back to the Mail Manager Main Menu. Then
click on the "Forwarders" link and click "Add Forwarder." From here, you can specify an email address to forward
and an email address to forward it too. You can set up your email with as many different email addresses as you want
and forward them to a different email address to check. You can even forward them to an email address that isn't at
your domain name!
|
|
The default email address is a great way to have unlimited email addresses without having to create them all in the
Mail Manager. For instance, maybe you want the following email addresses: yourname@yourdomain.com, sales@yourdomain.com,
support@yourdomain.com, comments@yourdomain.com, and hr@yourdomain.com, but don't want to have to check
five email accounts each day or create them all. Now you don't have to! Any email that comes addressed to an email
address that hasn't been created will go to your default address. Your default address, by default, is your ftp
username@yourdomain.com, but you can change it by clicking "Default Address" on the Mail Manager Main Menu page.
You can also set the default address to ":blackhole:" to delete all email that is addressed to an email address
that doesn't exist or ":fail:" to send an error message to the sender if an email address doesn't exist.
|
There are quite a few spam filters available to you in cPanel. If you have the spam filters turn on in cPanel, spam can get caught and
stored on your account. Many users don't know that they must delete this spam. The result is that the spam folder
gets larger and larger until all the space on your account is taken up by spam. To fix this problem, just log into
cPanel, click on "Mail," click on "Spam Assassin," then click the very last button at the bottom of the page that
says "Clear Spam Box." If this doesn't fix your problem, use the File Manager to delete all the files named "spam"
in the "mail" folder, making sure you go into each subfolder and delete those "spam" files as well. Instructions on
how to use the File Manager follow this section.
Another common situation in which users space is taken up by emails occurs when a user has created accounts that they don't
check or when they don't check the main account. If the spam filter scenario doesn't apply to you or if you have already
checked that problem, try the following. Make sure your "Default Address" (above) is an email address that you check on a
daily basis. This is the email address that unrouted mail goes to. If your Default Address is set to ":blackhole:" or ":fail:"
you don't need to change anything. Make sure your web client is set up not to leave mail on the server. You can view
your disk space usage by email address from the "Manage/Add/Remove Accounts" page under "Mail" by clicking the "Show Disk Space Used"
link. If you still haven't been able to clear your missing space, use the File Manager to look for all of the files named "inbox"
in the "mail" folder and all subfolders. Look at the file size in the information box. If you find the culprit, you can safely
delete the entire file without causing any harm.
|
 The file manager on your control panel is a great way to have access to your files
and be able to edit them when you are away from home or somewhere where you cannot use ftp or WinSCP. Just click on
the "File Manager" icon or link. You will see a list of all the files and directories in your home directory. To
navigate into a directory, click on the picture of the folder next to the name of the directory. To select a file or
directory for editing or deleting, click on the name of the folder or file. Click "Create New Folder" to make a new
folder inside the current directory or click "Upload Files" to upload files into the current directory.
|
|
cPanel provides three tools for domain management. If any of the tools listed do not show up in your cpanel or do
not seem to work, please contact us, as they may need to be enabled on your account.
|
It is not required that your domain name be registered with us in order to have an account with us. However, if you wish
for us to control your domain name for you, follow these simple steps:
- Contact your existing registrar and request that they unlock the domain name and fully prepare it for transfer away from them.
Be sure to ask if you will need an authorization code to transfer the domain and obtain it from them if you will. Move on to the next step
ONLY when your existing registrar confirms that the domain is ready for transfer.
- Log into your FuzzyMonkey account. Click Account Changes. Use the new domain form
to order the domain you are transferring just as if it were being newly registered.
- Go back to the Transactions page and make sure you have enough credit on your account to cover the transfer fee. If you do not,
make a payment.
- Email support@fuzzymonkey.net and request that your domain be transferred. Make sure to
include the domain name and the main domain name for the account to which this domain is to be added, if they are different.
- Forward any emails you receive concerning the transfer to support@fuzzymonkey.net so
that we can quicky and accurately complete the transfer.
|
 Subdomains are often great for creating different parts to a website. You could
have sales.yourdomain.com, jobs.yourdomain.com, and login.yourdomain.com, each displaying a different portion of
your site. To create a subdomain, click on the "Subdomains" icon or link in the cpanel home page. For each
subdomain you create, there will be a folder created in the public_html/ directory by the same name. There will
also be created a cgi-bin/ directory inside that folder. All files associated with that subdomain should be
placed into the new driectory. When your users access your website, they will see sales.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi,
not yourdomain.com/sales/cgi-bin/index.cgi. If you are using our nameservers, you won't have to do a thing except
create the subdomain in cpanel, which we have already gone over. If you are not using our name servers, you will
need to log into your registrar's management page and create a subdomain on their site too, and assign it the ip
address of your website. This way may take several hours to update, but if you are using our nameservers, the
change will take effect immediately.
|
|
Parked domains are a great way to point one domain at another. Let's say you have
two domain names, but only one website. So what do you do with the other domain name before you create a second
website? Park it! When you park a domain name, any traffic to that domain name will be redirected to the other name.
http://www.onedomain.com/mypage.html is the same as http://www.anotherdomain.com/mypage.html. This is also a great
way to have multiple domain names pointing to the same website, similar to how www.hewlettpackard.com
and www.hp.com point to the same site.
|
 Another alternative to having two domain names on the same web hosting account
is to addon a domain. When you use domaintwo.com as an addon domain to domainone.com, domaintwo.com goes to a
directory inside domainone.com that you specify. This is the perfect way to host multiple sites, each with its
own domain name, on the same web hosting account. Your customers or visitors will never know the web sites are
even affiliated! To addon a domain, click the "Addon Domain" icon or link. Then fill in the desired domain name,
corresponding directory name, and password. The directory name that you enter in the second blank should contain no
special characters. It usually works well if you use the domain name minus the domain extension. For mynewaddon.com,
this would be "mynewaddon," as shown in the illustration below. The label for the text box says "Username/directory/subdomain,"
but don't get confused here and try to put three phrases separated by a slash. This should only be one phrase that will
be used for the username, directory name, and corresponding subdomain.
Also please note that you will only be allowed to use addon domains for which the DNS settings already point to your server.
This is required so that clients cannot spoof domains that do not belong to them. If you have just registered a domain name
or just updated the DNS settings, please allow adequate time for the new DNS information to propogate before trying to add
the domain name to your account as an addon domain.
|
 MySQL can be a great way to easily store data about many many things. In order to
create a mysql database, click the "MySQL" icon or link. You must then create a database. This database will begin
with your username, underscore and end with a name that you specify like username_mydb. Then, you must create a mysql
user and assign it a password. This username will also be your username, underscore, then a name that you specify,
like username_myuser. It is possible to create a mysql user with a blank password.
The final step is to give the user you created permission to access the database you created by clicking the "Add
User to Db" button. It is possible to create a MySQL database with a blank text string as the second portion of the
name. With this naming convention, your database would be "username_," and your username would be "username_."
After you create the username and database, if you using the database in a particular script, you must edit the
settings of the script to use the same username and database that you created. If you write a script yourself,
you must also use these settings in your program.
|
 Password protected directories can allow you to store content on your server
that only you or people that you allow access to can view. In order to password protect a directory, click the
"Password Protect Directories" icon or link. To navigate into a directory, click on the picture of the folder. To
select the directory for protecting, click the name of that directory. First you must add users and their usernames.
Finally, after all the users have been added, check the box "Folder requires a password to access via http://,"
specify a name for the folder (this doesn't really matter), and click "save."
|
When you try to access your site, does your browser complain about the domain name not being found, not being able
to resolve the domain name, or does your domain name point to some place other than your new FuzzyMonkey.net server?
If so, your DNS (Domain Name Server) settings may be incorrect or nonexistant. If you registered your domain name
through FuzzyMonkey.net, this will never happen. If you didn't, you are responsible for pointing your domain name at
the servers whose IP address you were emailed when you signed up. You must now log into your registrar's website and
change your DNS settings, or if they do not provide a way for you to do it yourself, you must request that they be
changed. You can do this in either of two ways. FuzzyMonkey.net provides nameservers that you can use. They were
emailed to you in the confirmation email you received immediately after signing up with us. Change your domain name's
DNS servers to the servers named in that email. The second way to make this change is to keep your DNS servers the same,
but to change the IP address your domain name points to to the IP address above.
When we create a brand new account, we automatically create a file that tells any visitors to your site that you haven't
moved in yet. If your website still has the "We haven't moved in!" message when you visit it, and it shouldn't, it means
that you haven't changed that default message, which is in index.html. You need to create a new front page and name it
index.html, overwriting the default message. If you use FrontPage, the index.html that is created will by default,
be named index.htm, so it will not overwrite the index.html that is already on the server. You must manually delete this
file. You can also change index.html to redirect, using meta tags, to another page, if you do
not want your front page named index.html. For example, using the following code, we can make index.html a redirect to
http://domain.com/cgi-bin/mysite/site.cgi. The 0 indicates that the page will wait for zero
seconds before bringing up the new page. The url tells the page what page we want to go to.
<html>
<head>
<title>FuzzyMonkey</title>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="0; URL=http://domain.com/cgi-bin/mysite/site.cgi">
</head>
<body bgcolor=#FFFFFF>
Please wait while we redirect you. If your browser does not redirect, please click
<a href="http://domain.com/cgi-bin/mysite/site.cgi">here</a>.
</body>
</html>
|
If at any time you wish to cancel your account, simply log onto your FuzzyMonkey account at
my.fuzzymonkey.net, choose the domain you want to cancel, click
"Make Account Changes," and click the "Cancel this Account Permanently" button at the bottom of the page.
The cancellation of your account will be processed within 24 hours after the request is received by us.
You can also email us at support@fuzzymonkey.net
and request cancellation. Any
credit left on your account will be refunded to you. If you cancel within 30 days of opening your account, you will receive
a full refund, minus any charges for domain name registration. If you have a domain name registered with us we will gladly
cooperate with you to get the domain name transferred into your control. In order to do this, you will need to choose a registrar,
create an account, and use their website to request transfer of the domain name. We will cooperate and do our best to approve any
legitimate transfer requests made. You MUST notify us ahead of time if you wish to transfer your domain name away from us so that
we can confirm the legitimacy of the request. This will help us make sure the transfer goes as smoothly as possible. Any charges
for domain name registration are not refundable, but when you transfer the domain name, you will still get credit for the time left
on the registration from your chosen registrar. When you cancel your account, your account will be deleted from the server along
with all of your files and settings, so be sure to back up anything you will need later before requesting cancellation of your
account.
Do you still have questions on something you didn't see covered here? Please take time to email us and request that
we update our FAQ so that we may provide you with the most comprehensive and helpful documentation possible! Email
support@fuzzymonkey.net and let
us know what you think!
FuzzyMonkey.net
|
|
