Small Business Web Hosting - NorthLANs Alliance / www.WeWebHost.com

I pay by credit card, when will I be billed?
We bill all credit cards on the first of the month. New customers paying in the middle of the month will be pro-rated for the first month based on the formula:
($monthly_amount/days_in_month) * (days_left_in_month)
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I pay now by credit card but would rather be invoiced.
Invoicing customers is reserved for customers who have a proven track record with us or have been approved for NET 30 credit with us. If you require an invoice-style receipt for your credit card payment, please let us know and we will do whatever is necessary to accomodate you.
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I want to go from monthly billing to annual billing, what do I do?
Contact us at support@northlans.com or by telephone at 612-605-4765 and select the sales extension. We are happy to convert you any time from monthly to annual or vice versa.
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I want to switch from invoice billing to credit card billing - what do I do?
Call us at 612-605-4765 and select option 4 for Billing Inqueries. You will need to provide us with your domain name, full name as written on the credit card as well as your billing address for the card, the expiration date of the card, the card number and the card type (we currently accept Visa/Mastercard and American Express). You will also need to provide the AVS/SID secure identifier, a 3 digit code located on the signature panel on the back of Visa/Mastercard or a 4 digit code located on the front of American Express.
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Control Panel

Is there any documentation on the control panel?
There is documentation and also video tutorials!

For clients with multiple domains:
plesk-7.5r-clients-guide

For domain users:
plesk-7.5r-domain-users-guide

Flash Tutorials:
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Can I configure E-mail access to pick up my E-mail from multiple workstations using Outlook, etc. and also use Webmail?
This is dependant on which E-mail client you use.

Many E-mail clients have an option to leave mail on the server. This function lets multiple E-mail clients/multiple workstations attach to the server and pull down the E-mail. You will then need to manually clean up the E-mail left on the server, as it counts towards your disk storage limit on your plan.

Some E-mail clients, such as Outlook 2002 and Outlook 2003 will allow you to leave messages on the server for a specific # of days or until you put them in your deleted items folder in your E-mail client. This will allow you access from multiple workstations/email clients and will automatically clean up after iteself. Each E-mail client would have until xx # of days to pick up the message from when the message was received. E-mail clients such as Outlook, Thunderbird, etc. store a copy of the message on the local workstation so after the message expires on the server and is deleted, you'd still have the local copy. Webmail could only access the message for the xx # of days in this scenario. The cleanup is automatic however so there is less of a chance that you could fill up your alloted storage which may cause you to be able to stop receiving e-mails until you purchase more storage space or clean up old E-mails on the server.

If you elect to not delete e-mails automatically on the server and your client doesn't support or isn't set to automiatically delete them after a certain number of days, then your only option to delete the messages/clean up your storage is via the Webmail interface.
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Do I have attachment file size limits?
Yes and no.

When using POP or IMAP mail clients, NorthLANs doesn't apply any limits to file size attachments, incoming or outgoing. Its importaint to remember that the recipient of your message may have an attachment size limit.

When using our webmail e-mail interface (Horde) there is an outbound attachment file size limit of about 17 megs. Incoming mail doesn't have any applied limits.
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File Management

How can I manage files through a web site?
Your account includes online access to a file manager that is available through your control panel in the hosting section (fig 1).

fig 1

When you first go into the file manager you will see a list of all the directories that comprise you account (fig 2).

fig 2

You are mainly concerned with the directories where your content is stored. For your "www".yourdomain.com site the content is in the "httpdocs" folder. For other subdomains such as "site2".yourdomain.com or "marvin".yourdomain.com, etc., you need the "subdomains" folder, then the folder named after the subdomain (e.g. site2 and marvin), then finally the "httpdocs" folder for that subdomain.

To change into a directory, simply click on the directory name. Here we have changed into the "httpdocs" directory for the "www" site (fig 3).

fig 3

You will now see a list of files that you can do things with.
1. To view the file, click its name
2. To move the file, put a check in the box at the end and then go to the menu above the file listing and click Copy/Move. You will be asked for a destination directory that is relative to your domain hosting (not relative to your web site).
3. To add a new directory, simply click the add new directory menu option and you will be asked for a directory name. The directory will be created in the directory you're currently in.
4. To add an empty HTML file, click the add new file menu option. After the file is created, you can go to the WYSIWYG editor to put content into it.
5. To remove a file, put a check in the box next to the file and click the remove selected menu option. You will be asked to confirm this. Be careful, while we do make backups of web sites, they are up to 24 hours behind whatever you're working on.
Up to 4 more options are available, depending on the file type (fig 4). fig 4
1. The first button lets you rename a file or directory.
2. The 2nd button lets you edit the text of a file. This is not the same as the WYSIWYG editor, you will see raw HTML here.
3. The 3rd button lets you edit the file as WYSIWYG HTML, similar to MS Word. This editor also has a "HTML" tab to let you view and edit the HTML tags before saving it.
4. The last button opens the file up in a new browser window to preview the file.
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FTP

How do I change my FTP user ID or password?
Each domain only has one FTP user/password. The user and password cannot be the same as the control panel user/password.

To change the FTP user/password:
1. log into your account at www.northlans.com->Customer Login.
2. click on the domain you wish to change the FTP user/password for (domains are listed at bottom of page), most users will just have 1 domain
3. In the [Hosting] section click on the Setup button
4. If you want to change the FTP user name, do so in the FTP Login input box.
5. To change the FTP password, put a new password in the New FTP Password and Confirm Password boxes
6. Click the OK button.
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What is my FTP address?
The ftp address for your web site is ftp.. For example, if it was northlans.com the ftp address would be ftp.northlans.com.

Your FTP user ID and FTP password are different from your control panel user ID and password. This information should have been given to you when you set up your account. If you need to change it, see the article on changing your FTP user/password.
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Online HTML Editor

I modified a file using the online HTML editor and now my page doesn't work.
This will only happen if you are using the original NorthLANs content management system (CMS). If you are using a NorthLANs made page that has a template and you modified an HTML file where you copied and pasted content from a Microsoft Office application such as MS Word.

The problem is that Microsoft Office inserts into the HTML file non-standard HTML tags and XML tags. When you copy/paste into the editor, these tags come with. The specific offender that causes the CMS to break begins with "<?xml".

To resolve this problem, after pasting content from Office into the editor, click the HTML tab on the editor, search for anything that looks like "<?xml ........ >" and delete it. The "......." could be anything, just make sure to get the open "<?xml" portion of the tag and the closing ">" portion of the tag and everything in between.

The original NorthLANs CMS system does NOT support pasting from MS Word because it will never be capable of supporting the <?xml> tags. It is up to you as the administrator of your web site to manually clean up your content to the specification of the CMS.
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Outlook 2003 and earlier

How can I configure Outlook 2003 and earlier to leave messages on the server (or not)?
1. open outlook
2. Go to tools->e-mail accounts
3. select view or change existing e-mail accounts, click next
4. select the mail account for our server, click the change button
5. click more settings button (lower right)
6. click advanced tab (upper right)
7. in Delivery section, click Leave a copy of messages on the server.
8. check Remove from server after xx days and set the # of days to something you can live with that will work for the amount of storage in your plan
9. check the box Remove from server when deleted in Deleted Items
10. click finish button
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How to Set Up Outlook 2003 and earlier to Send and Receive Email
1. open outlook
2. Go to tools->E-mail accounts
3. Select Add a new e-mail account, click next
4. Select IMAP, click next
5. In the Your Name field, type your name
6. In the E-mail Address field, type your E-mail address the E-mail administrator or NorthLANs gave you
7. In the Incomming mail server (IMAP) field, put in mail.northlans.com
8. In the Outgoing mail server (SMTP) field, put in mail.northlans.com
9. In the User Name field, put in your e-mail address
10. In the Password field, put in your password * REMEMBER PASSWORD IS CASE SENSITIVE *
11. Make sure Remember Password is checked or you will have to type your password every time you send & receive mail
12. Click More Settings button
13. Click Outgoing Server tab
14. Check My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication
15. Select radio button Use same settings as my incomming mail server
16. Click OK button
17. Click NEXT button
18. Click FINISH button
19. Look at Document ID 34 if you would like Outlook to leave a copy of messages on the server to be able to pull messages down from multiple workstations or use webmail + Outlook 2003.
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Outlook 2007

How to Set Up Outlook 2007 to Send and Receive Email
1. Start Outlook.
2. On the Tools menu, click Account Settings.
3. On the E-mail tab, click New.
4. In the Add New E-mail Account dialog box, click IMAP, and then click Next.
5. In the Your Name box, type your full name.
6. In the E-mail Address box, type your full e-mail address.
7. In the Incoming mail server box, type in mail.your-domain-name.com.
8. In the Outgoing mail server (SMTP) box, type in mail.your-domain-name.com.
9. In the User Name box, type your user name. The user name is usually the part of your e-mail address to the left of the at sign (@).
10. In the Password box, type your email password.
11. If you want Outlook to remember your e-mail account password, click to select the Remember password check box.
12. Click Next, and then click Finish.
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Outlook Express

How do I Set Up an Outlook Express E-Mail Account
1. Before you get going, make sure you know your email address along with the following information.

First, information about the e-mail servers:
� The type of e-mail server you use: POP3
� The name of the incoming e-mail server (generally mail.YourDomainName.com)
� For POP3 and IMAP servers, the name of the outgoing e-mail server (generally mail.YourDomainName.com)

Second, information about your account:
� Your account name and password

2. Start Outlook Express, and on the Tools menu, click Accounts.
If the Internet Connection Wizard starts up automatically, skip ahead to step 4.

3. Click Add, and then click Mail to open the Internet Connection Wizard.

4. On the Your Name page of the wizard, type your name as you want it to appear to everyone who gets e-mail from you, and then click Next.
Most people use their full name, but you can use any name�even a nickname�that people will recognize.

5. On the Internet Explorer Address page, type your e-mail address, and then click Next.

6. On the E-mail Server Names page, fill in the first block of information that you gathered from NorthLANs Alliance in step 1, and then click Next.

7. On the Internet Mail Logon page, type your account name and password.
Note: If you're concerned about break-ins to your e-mail, click to clear the check in the Remember Password box. You'll then be prompted for the password each time you send or retrieve mail.

8. Click Next, and then click Finish.

You're ready to send your first e-mail!
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Security

How can I choose an effective password? How do I change my password?
Choosing a good password is vital to the security of your account. It is important to take care to choose a password that cannot be easily guessed. Often users choose an easy password, assuming no one will ever try to crack it -- this is a dangerous attitude. Please use the following guidelines to help you formulate your password.

Things not to do:
1. Do not use your login name, or any derivative thereof.
2. Do not use any word, from any language.
3. Do not use any personal information of any person associated with the account (birthdays, SSN, initials, job titles, etc.). It is also unwise to use any personal information of your children or other persons.
4. Do not use a keyboard sequence (e.g. qwerty), or any ordered sequence of letters or numbers.
5. Do not use the same password you are using with another service
Things you should do:
1. Choose a password with at least six characters, preferably eight.
2. Include both letters and numbers in your password.
3. Use both uppercase and lowercase letters.
4. After choosing your password, try to memorize it as soon as possible. Try to avoid keeping your password written down anywhere, as it could jeopardize the security of your account if it were to fall into the wrong hands. If you have forgotten your password, write to support@northlans.com and ask for it to be reset. We will reset the password to a random value, allowing you to access the account with that password and change it to something more memorable for you.
NorthLANs Alliance's support administrators cannot browse passwords, because the server stores them in an encrypted format. We can only reset passwords.

If you'd like to change your password, you can use My NorthLANs Account Control Center (NACC) to assign the new password to your account. The required steps are:
1. Log in using the current password.
2. Click on Admin, at the top of the page.
3. Click on Change Account Password.
4. Type the current password, and the new password (twice), where indicated.
5. Click Set Password.
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What steps do you take to secure your network and servers?
Our servers are extensively hardened and tested against security exploits. All unnecessary services are disabled, all security patches are up-to-date, and servers are audited regularly for attempted break-ins. Our systems administrators actively maintain awareness of new security developments. Our network is overbuilt with spare capacity and redundancy. Our custom network monitoring systems ensure that attacks and other anomalies are identified and responded to promptly.
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Spam Filter

Do you have a spam filter?
Yes, we use Spam Assassin.
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How do I block incomming E-mails from a specific domain or country?
You can use the following e-mail patterns for these purposes in Spamassassin black list settings:

*@*. - block e-mails from a specific country

*@domain.tld - block e-mails from a specific domain

For example, to block microsoft.com put in your blacklist: *@*.microsoft.com
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How do I enable Spam Filtering for my domain?
1) In domain management, click the Mail icon under Services section.
2) Select the mail name to turn the spam filter on for, by clicking the name link (e.g. dan@northlans.com)
3) Click the Mailbox icon
4) Check the box "Enable Spam Filtering"
5) Click OK

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How do I tune the spam filter in my domain to be more accurate?
1) In the mail management area, find the line that has the E-mail address you want to tune the spam filter for.
2) Click the "trash can" in the "S" column to the left of the E-mail address.
3) Change "Hits required for spam" to a number between 1 and 99. The lower the number, the less spam will get through but its possible there can be more false positives. (Make sure to hit SET button)
4) Edit your white list and black list here.
5) Go to the top of the page under the "Tools" section and click the Ninja icon that says "Training".
6) A mail interface similar to the Webmail page will come up. Here you can mark E-mails as spam or mark them as not spam. This can help the spam filter find similar E-mails to the ones already found and take the appropriate action.

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I don't want spam delivered to my inbox, but I don't want it deleted either - in case something gets accidentally flagged. What can I do?
Use your E-mail program to set up a filter to automatically move anything with a subject line that starts with the same string you have configured for your SPAM subject line. The default is "*** [SPAM]" so your filter would recognize this and move it to a SPAM folder that you could manually clean up. See each individual E-mail client section for how you would accomplish this in each E-mail client.
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I don't want spam to be delivered to my inbox, I want it to be deleted instead.
1) In mail management area, find the E-mail address you want to change the options for.
2) Click the "trash" can icon in the "S" column to the left of the E-mail address.
3) Change the option to deliver to inbox or delete. Hit the "SET" button.

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Statistics

How do I make my statistics private so only I can see them?
Your statistics are served up out of a sub-directory of your web site. By default, this information is not secured. To protect your statistics so no one else can see the usage of your site, do the following:
1. log into your account at www.northlans.com->Customer Login.
2. click on the domain you wish to change the statistics setting on (domains are listed at bottom of page), most users will just have 1 domain
3. In the [Hosting] section click on the Setup button
4. At the bottom of the page at Web Statistics put a check in the box that says "(accessible via password protected directory '/plesk-stat/'). Note there are 2 check boxes--the one to the left is whether you want to keep statistics at all, the one on the right is to secure the statistics
5. Click the OK button.
To get to your statistics, follow the usage instructions documented in a different article in this category or simply go to www.yoursite.com/plesk-stat/webstat. Your user name and password should be the same as your control panel user name and password.
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How do I see detailed historical usage of my site?
Your web site includes historical usage statistics. To see them do this:
1. Log into your control panel at www.northlans.com
2. Click your domain name at the bottom of the page
3. Click the Report button at the tom under the [Domain] section
4. Click the Web Stats button under the [Tools] section
5. On the overview page, drill down on the month & year you want to look at
6. Scroll down to view the detailed information for that month
REPORT SECTION DEFINITIONS
1. Top x of y Total URLs = top pages visited - shows which page is the most popular/useful
2. Top x of y Total URLs by KBytes = top pages served up ordered by bandwidth
3. Top x of y Total Entry Pages = First page someone came into your site at - useful to see if someone is linking to a page within your site instead of your main page.
4. Top x of y Total Exit Pages = Last page someone was on your site before leaving your site
5. Top x of y Total Sites = IP address or DNS name of people who visited your site ranked by hits
6. Top x of y Total Sites by KBytes = IP address or DNS name of people who visited your site ranked by bandwidth transfered during their visit
7. Top x of y Total Referrers = How the user got here--this is the search engine or other site link that the user used to get here. Direct Request means they typed your address into the address bar themselves or used a bookmark.
8. Top x of y Total User Agents = Indicates what Browser/platforms are visiting your site
9. Usage by Country Graph - What countries/top level domains (.com, .net., .org) are your users coming from
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Thunderbird

Can I use Thunderbird to fetch my mail
Yes you can use Thunderbird to fetch your mail.

1. First click on Create a new account.

2. Select Email account and press next.

3. Fill in your name and email address, press next.

4. Now you are asked select the server type, and to fill in the incoming server, (example mail.YourDomainName.com), press next.

5. Now you are asked to fill in your user name for your email provider, for example "jsmith", press next.

6. Now you are asked what you would like to call this account, choose something yourself, press next.

7. You will get a summary, check your information, and if everything is OK press finish.

8. Mark your email address and press Get mail.

9. You are immediately asked for the password to your email account, fill in and press OK, you can also choose if you want Thunderbird to remember the password. Don't save the password until you're sure it's typed in correctly - as it is hard to change it once it has been saved.

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Web Hosting

What is Bandwidth?
In website hosting bandwidth is the amount of information downloadable from the webserver over a prescribed period of time. In essence it is the rate [data/time], but the time in this case is not seconds but rather a month or a week. So this rate is not like 56K or broadband etc which are also bandwidth but are measured per seconds. Web hosting companies often quote a monthly bandwidth limit for a website, for example 2GB/month. If visitors to the website downloaded a total of 2GB in one month, the bandwidth limit would have been exceeded.
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Webmail

Can I undelete messages?
You can undelete messages any time up until you click on the Empty Trash or Purge Deleted buttons, or until any automated emptying of the trash occurs if you have set up such an option. To undelete messages (marked as deleted) from the inbox listing, check the checkbox to the left of the messages you wish to keep, then press the Undelete link at the top or bottom left of the page. When you are viewing a message marked for deletion, there will be a link at the start and end of the message to undelete that message.

If you are using a Trash folder, you can undelete the messages by moving them out of the Trash folder into another folder.
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How can I request a return receipt or delivery notification?
You can request a return receipt by clicking the "Request a Return Receipt" checkbox in the message composition screen.

Whether or not you will get a confirmation back depends on many factors outside of IMP's control. For example, some mail servers will remove return receipt requests from mail before it reaches the recipient, and some mail clients will allow the user to select if return receipts should be honored. Because of these and other factors, you should not depend on return receipts being honored by all recipients.
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How do I add people to my address book?
Whenever you're viewing a message, the email addresses of the sender and each recipient have a small green book icon next to them. Click this icon to add that address to your WebMail address book. Of course, you can also add, edit, and delete address book entries by clicking Address Book in the left side WebMail menu.
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How do I change my password in Webmail?
Once you are logged into webmail, from the menu on the left hand side, select "My Account" then "Password". You will be prompted to enter your current password, then your new password.
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How do I create groups in my WebMail address book?
You may wish to create a group (or list) of recipients to which you often send email. To do this;

1.) First create address book entries for each of the individuals to be on your list (see the tip above for an easy way to add entries to your address book).
2.) Then, while viewing the listing of your address book, select the checkbox to the left of each recipient that you wish to have as a member of your list.
3.) In the top right corner, select New List from the Select List pull-down menu and then click the Add to button.
4.) Supply a name for your new group.

To address messages to your new list, simply type the group name into the To: or Cc: field in the compose window and, if necessary, click Expand Names.
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How do I enable or disable the lefthand menu?
1) From the top menu, select "Options"
2) Pull down and select "Global Options" from "Edit Options for:"
3) Select "Display Options"
4) Place a check mark for "Show the Horde Menu on the left?"
5) Select "Save Options"

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How do I have SPAM delivered to a spam folder instead of the inbox using your Webmail application?

1) Log into webmail
2) Go to your inbox
3) Click the Folders icon on the toolbar
4) Under "Choose Action" select Create Folder
5) Name the folder SPAM or something similar, hit OK
6) Click the Filters icon on the toolbar
7) Click the NEW RULE button
8) Name the rule "SPAM To Spam Folder" or something similar
9) Select a field and pick the Subject field
10) Set the option to "Contains" and input the text that you have your SPAM filter prepending to the subject line, e.g.:
[SPAM] ***
11) Select under "Do This:" Deliver to folder: then select the folder you created earlier, e.g. SPAM
12) Click checkbox under "Mark message" to "Deleted"
13) Click checkbox Stop checking if this rule matches
14) Hit Save button.
15) Uncheck Display detailed notification when each filter is applied? 16) Click Apply Filters and any existing SPAM will be moved.
17) Go to toolbar item Options
18) In "Other Options" section select Filters
19) Check box Apply filter rules upon logging on
20) Check box Apply filter rules whenever INBOX is displayed
21) Click Save Options
22) In "General Options" section select Server and Folder Information
23) In the "Spam folder:" drop down list, select the folder you created earlier for containing SPAM.
24) Click SAVE

Periodically check your SPAM folder and purge the spam messages contained inside it.

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How do I send mail to more than one person?
To send mail to more than one person, separate their email addresses in the To:, Cc:, or Bcc: header (or a combination of all three) with commas (","). Do not use semicolons (";") to separate lists of email addresses.
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I was typing my E-mail and then the entire message disappeared!
This can be an annoying "feature" of HTML forms. What you likely did was press the ESC key on your keyboard by accident. This will make your entire message go away, like reseting a form. To get your message back, before you type anything else you need to press CONTROL + Z. When you do that, it will undo your last action (ESC) and your message will return. If you type something between when you press ESC and when you press CONTROL + Z, then you will not be able to recover the message you typed.
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