Quick Start Guide

Congratulations and thank you for purchasing your hosting account from Hosting Spectra. Here is how to get started with your web hosting account. Please read these steps carefully before contacting us with any questions.

Configuring Your Domain Name

If you elected for us to register your domain, we will point it to the correct server for you. If you did not register your domain with us or are transferring your domain to us, here is what you need to do.

Set the domains name servers for the domain you wish to transfer to the following:

Primary Server Hostname: ns1.hostingspectra.com

Primary Server Net Address: (see your welcome email)

Secondary Server Hostname: ns2.hostingspectra.com

Secondary Server Net Address:(see your welcome email)

Most domain registrars provide you with a place to login and manage your domain's name servers. If you don't know how to do that or do not have a place to login and manage your domain, please contact the place where you registered your domain from and tell them to change your domains name servers to ours. Please do not contact us if you did not register your domain with us as we cannot help you transfer it, this must be done by the company that registered it.

NOTE:

After changing name servers or registering a new domain name, it will take at LEAST 24 hours before you will be able to see your domain by going to http://www.yourdomain.com/. This process normally takes between 24-72 hours, but can sometimes take up to 5 days. This delay, referred to as a DNS propagation delay, occurs with all hosts and is outside of our control. During this period, you may also experience intermittent connection to your domain. That is, it may become available, then disappear again a few hours later. This is also an artifact of the DNS propagation and will typically resolve itself within a few days after assigning the new name servers.

Until your domain fully resolves (1-5 days from the time you changed it) you will NOT be able to do the following:

* View your domain at http://www.yourdomain.com/

* Check your mail (POP3, SMTP and Webmail will NOT work)

* Publish using FrontPage extensions.

Creating Your Web Pages

If you don't already have a website, and are wanting to build your own, you will probably need some HTML authoring software. There many such programs available on the internet. A few recommendations for varying budgets are listed below:

* AceHTML - A relatively easy-to-use package. The best part is that it's completely free.

* HomeSite - A powerful and relatively inexpensive package that's good for simple and advanced sites alike.

* Dreamweaver MX - The gold standard in web authoring software. It's somewhat pricey, but if you're serious about making a sophisticated website quickly and easily, Dreamweaver comes highly recommended.

For more alternatives, check out download.com. Of course if you're prepared to learn HTML, you can also just use a program like Notepad or UltraEdit to make your web pages.

Frontpage Extensions

By default, Frontpage Extensions are disabled on all accounts. If you intend to use Frontpage to create your website, then we install the Frontpage Extensions from your account. You can do this via your CPanel, by clicking on the Frontpage Extensions icon, and clicking the "Install Extensions" button.

Uploading Your Files

Once you've got your website ready, you can upload it onto our servers.
Despite the fact the you will not be able to access your domain via its name immediately after signing up, you can already start uploading your files onto the server. Once your domain name starts pointing to our servers, your site can already be set to go. Below are step by step instructions on how to FTP your files.

1. Run your favorite FTP program (if you don't already have one, we recommend AceFTP)
2. In the FTP program, set the FTP Host to your yourdomain.com. Alternatively, if your domain name has not yet resolved you can set it to the ip address.
3. Type in your username and password (they are listed in your welcome email).
4. Click connect
5. fter you have connected you will see several files and folders.
6. Open the "public_html" folder.
7. Upload your files to this directory. Be sure that you have created a file called "index.html" or "index.htm". This file will be viewable at your domain (http://www.yourdomain.com/). Also be sure all letters are lowercase (for example Index.html is not the same as index.html).
8. Until your domain name has fully resolved, you can access your webpages at http://ipadress/~yourusername/

Setting Up Your Email Account(s)

Login to the control panel and take a look around (your username and password can be found in your welcome email). You can set up any mail accounts you would like, but please remember they will not work until your DNS fully transfers. Here are directions on how to set up a POP3 email account:

1. Login to the site admin control panel at http://yourdomain.com/cpanel after your domain name has fully resolved. You can also login at http://ipaddress/cpanel/
2. Click the "Mail Manager" icon.
3. Select the "Add / Remove Accounts" link.
4. This shows a list of your current email addresses. Note: A default email address has been created for you which is the same as your username. All unrouted email (i.e. all email sent to anything@yourdomain.com) will be forwarded to this address.
5. Type the username you would like for your email account. For example if you want the email address "webmaster@yourdomain.com" you would create a user called "webmaster".
   Create a password and click "Create".
6. You have just created a POP3 Email account. You can check it using your webmail or a POP3 Client, with the following settings:
   POP3 Server: yourdomain.com (or ip address if your domain name has not yet resolved)
   
   SMTP Server: yourdomain.com (or ip address if your domain name has not yet resolved)
   
   To check your newly created POP email addresses, set your username and password in your email program to those that you created in CPanel.
   

   For the above example, your username would be: webmaster@yourdomain.com. If you have not created any individual email accounts, and would like to just receive all email sent your domain, simply set your username and password to those supplied with your hostingspectra.com account.

7. If you are using a POP3 Email client to send mail, Under your software settings for the SMTP server, be sure "My Server Requires Authorization" is selected. Otherwise you will get an error when you try to send mail.

Alternatively, you may wish to simply forward any mail directed to yourdomain.com to an existing email account. If you choose to do this, you will not need to make any changes to your email software.

1. Login to the site admin control panel at http://ipaddress/cpanel/ (or http://yourdomain.com/cpanel after your domain name has fully resolved).
2. Click the "Mail Manager" icon.
3. Select the "Forwarders" link.
4. Click on "Add Forwarder"
5. Enter your username in the first box to the left of the @yourdomain.com, then in the box to the right, enter the email address you would like the mail forwarded to.
6. Click on "Add Forwarder". Once your domain name has fully resolved you will be able to test if you've done it correctly simply by sending some email to anything@yourdomain.com

If you have more questions, remember to check out our faq, which addresses many of the most common problems that our customers encounter.