FAQ: Getting Started Guide

A few tips about managing your hosted account.When you acquire a hosting account from WEBADO.NET, you have full control over it through the use of Cpanel, your entry point to the management side of your web site.

You can define and manage your email addresses that will be hosted there, you can check stats, manage your databases, install software through the Fantastico auto-installer, create subdomains, etc. You are your own master.

Your Cpanel is accessible in the form www.yoursite.com/cpanel and you will enter by using your unique userid and password which you will have received at the time of account activation. You are urged to change that password immediately and frequently thereafter and keep it safe.

In Cpanel you will see all the different functions that are available to you, the web master, within the parameters of your account settings.

For purposes of uploading to your web site, the best way is to use an FTP program.

Your hosting account allows you to create and manage a certain number of distinct email addresses. It is strongly recommended that you do not create a catchall address, as this will leave you open to spam. Instead you should discard email arriving for non-existent email addresses at your site.

You can access your email through the webmail functions in Cpanel or you can set up your own email client (e.g. Outlook Express) to retrieve your website email.

Note that it is now increasingly rare to find an ISP that will allow you to send out email using an SMTP server other than the one provided by the ISP, therefore you will very likely have to use that option. This means that when you send out email from your email client (e.g. Outlook Express), even though it will be sent using an email address from your web site, you cannot use your web site mail server for that, you will use your ISP's SMTP server. You will however receive email from your website using your web site's POP mail server.

Databases are the highlight of a full hosting account. Your account allows a certain number of MySql databases to be set up. We will soon have a tutorial that describes the steps involved in creating a MySql database, as well as one explaining how to manage MySql databases through PhpMyAdmin.

A subdomain is for all intents and purposes like another domain, quite separately accessible yet fully connected to your actual domain for purposes of sharing files. It allows you to partition your web space into logical entities, as you see fit.

Finally, your website will look more professional if you have special error pages for those times when somebody's trying to access a page that doesn't exist or to which they do not have permission. All this will be explained in a future tutorial on custom error pages.

For those interested in installing an SSL certificate to provide secure transactions (via https) the steps to follow are outlined in our tutorial on Domains.

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