Starting with Your Account
This document covers
the following topics:
Your Temporary Index Page
Right after your
account is approved and set up, a directory for your site is created on the
server. This directory contains a temporary index page that is accessible
from the internet and allows you to:
- administer your
user account. Enter your control panel login and password into
"Login to your Control Panel". This login and password are
e-mailed to you at the address you specified at signup. Use the Control
Panel to change/update your contact information, change passwords, get
more resources, check your account usage, and much more.
- create a web site
in a matter of minutes right from your browser. Use the option
"Launch Site Builder". Initially, the password to log into the
site builder is the same as that for the control panel.
Uploading Your Site
Whenever possible,
upload your site using the utilities that come with your web-site
development software. For instance, if you made your site with SiteStudio,
FrontPage or Dreamweaver, use their integrated web publishing tools. If you
made your site with simple text editors, or if your site-building software
does not have a publishing utility, use freestanding FTP clients, such as
CuteFTP, SmartFTP, or the built-in web-based
FTP agent.
Please note that site publishing tools don't remove your old web content from the
server. For instance, if you used SiteStudio to upload a site with 15 pages and later
you published an updated 7 page version of this site, your directory on the server
will have all the new pages and the old pages that haven't been overwritten. If you
publish many versions of the website, the site may become cluttered with old files.
Warning: If you have a complete website, be
careful not to overwrite it with a publish command.
Don't upload your site to the
root of your user directory! Instead, put it to the document root directory of your
account. See below for more information.
Contents of Your Home
Directory
Your home directory
contains several default subdirectories. Their number and names will differ
depending on your plan, yet some of them are common for all plans. Here are
some of the directories that are automatically created and may not be
deleted:
- Directories that
contain your domain names. Each of your sites is put in a separate
directory. The name of the directory is the same as your site's domain
name. If you have more than one site, you will have several such
directories. These are the directories where you will upload your .html
files or any other files that you want to make accessible from the
Internet. Each of these directories may contain their own /webalizer
directories. Do not delete either of these directories! Your site is too
valuable to lose at a touch of a button.
- The Logs
directory. It contains directories for every site with transfer log
enabled. Each such directory contains its own set of log files that are
required to write and read the data about all visits to your sites.
Deleting the Logs directory will cause the loss of the web statistics
accumulated in the course of your site operation. Click here for more on web statistics.
- The Virtual FTP
directory. Its name is the dedicated IP address. This directory is
created when you enable Virtual FTP Server and can be accessed by
virtual FTP users to list and download its content. There are as many
such directories as dedicated IP addresses. Deleting Virtual FTP
directories will cause incorrect operation of Virtual FTP. However, you
may harmlessly delete individual files in these directories. Click here for more on Virtual FTP.
- The subdomain
directories. When you make a subdomain, a new directory is created
with the subdomain name as the directory name. If you delete a subdomain
directory, internet visitors will get the 404 "File not found"
error when attempting to access the subdomain. Click here to read on how to create subdomains.
- The ssl.conf
directory. This directory stores SSL pairs for all encrypted sites.
Deleting the ssl.conf directory will result in incorrect SSL operation.
Warning:
Don't delete ANY default directories in your root directory, as this will
cause malfunctions of your account. As a rule of thumb, you may delete only
directories and files you have uploaded yourselves or that have been
uploaded by any of your Virtual FTP and Anonymous FTP users.
