Internet Access

Web Development

Domain Names

Web Hosting

Home Telephone

IT Services

For Locals

Help

Web Hosting Information

Topics

1. Glossary

Domain name
Domain names act as unique identifiers for network-addressable entities such as computers, web servers, or networks. Your domain name maps to the IP address of one of our web servers, which then serves your website to the web browser asking for it.
Domains Quota
You can have multiple domains pointing at the same website. Every domain after your main domain being used in this fashion is known as a "domain alias". Your domains quota refers to how many domain aliases you are allowed to assign to your hosting service.
Home Directory
Your home directory is the directory that contains all of your files. Not all of these are visible to web site visitors. The files visible to web site visitors should be placed in your HTML directory.

Your home directory exists in the folder /home/username, where "username" is your hosting username.
HTML Directory
Your HTML directory, also known as the 'web root', is the directory that contains the files a traditional website will display.

Your HTML directory exists in the folder /home/username/public_html, where "username" is your hosting username.
Mailboxes Quota
Every hosting service includes e-mail addresses. The number of e-mail addresses you can have active on your hosting service at any time is no greater than your mailboxes quota. If you wish to create more e-mail addresses than are available to you in your quota, you will have to either remove existing e-mail addresses or move to a larger plan.

In addition to mailboxes, you can also create e-mail aliases. These are e-mail addresses that point to another mailbox - this other mailbox could reside within your hosting service or be a completely different mailbox, such as a gmail account. Each e-mail alias also counts towards the number of mailboxes used towards your quota.
Storage Quota
Your storage quota is the amount of hard disk space you have available to you. The amount of space you are using is calculated by taking the sum of the sizes of all of the files in your home directory (this includes e-mails) and adding that to the sizes of your databases, if you have any. Your storage quota is a hard quota - once your quota has been reached you will not be able to add new files or receive new e-mails.

Technical contacts for hosting services that are in excess of 90% of their quota will receive nightly notifications from us so that they can adjust their plan or reduce usage.
Sub-server
A sub-server is an entirely separate hosting service with its own domain, home directory, HTML directory, etc. The only thing a sub-server shares with its parent are quotas - mailboxes created on a subserver count towards the same quota as mailboxes created on its parent server, for example. As such, we offer a number of complimentary sub-servers with each plan, up to a specified quota.
Technical Contact
Every hosting service with Vaxxine has a technical contact associated with it. While every customer in our system has a billing contact, this can differ from the technical contact for a hosting service (which can differ from the technical contact for another hosting service, should you have more than one). Technical contacts are usually somebody that has a strong technical background; this way, if our system ever needs to alert somebody about potential issues with your hosting service, the technical contact will be able to act on it quickly.
Transfer Allowance
Your transfer allowance is the limit of the amount of data sent from your website (via HTTP) over the last 30 days. If you go beyond that Vaxxine may require you to move to a larger plan.
Username
Your username is what you use to authenticate when logging into your web server. This is needed to upload files or view your awstats, among other things.
Web Server
A web server is simply the computer that contains your website files and "serves" them to anybody with a web browser that is browsing your website. Every web server on our system has its own unique name.
awstats
Every hosting service is provided a simple stats utility that you can view as you please. This can be viewed at yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/awstats.pl, where "yourdomain.com" is the name of your actual domain. You will have to enter your hosting username and password to access this utility.


2. Secure FTP Access

Administrators and authorised users can use Secure FTP (SFTP) to manage files on your server. You can use any FTP client to connect to your hosting account, be it a *nix terminal or a GUI like FileZilla.


Configuring your FTP Client

Once you have your FTP Client program downloaded and installed, open it up. The first thing we need to do is set the program to connect to your web site on Vaxxine's Server.

You will need the following information that was provided to you when your hosting account was set up:

  1. Protocol: SFTP.
  2. Host: yourdomain.com, where "yourdomain.com" is the name of your actual domain.
  3. User: [your hosting username]
  4. Password: [your hosting password]
  5. Default Remote Directory: /home/username, where "username" is your hosting username
    *Your actual web site will reside in /home/username/public_html
When you open the program for the first time you need to enter in all of your connection information to connect to the web site This can be done by using the FileZilla 'Site Manager'.



3. Control Panels

Vaxxine provides simple control panels that can be used to configure basic aspects of your hosting solution, be it e-mail accounts, e-mail aliases, subdomains, or personal e-mail options like vacation auto-reply messages.


Server Management

If you are a server administrator, you can log into the hosting panel with your Vaxxine customer number and Vaxxine password at https://my.vaxxine.com/.

As the domain administrator, you may manage the following entities:
Accounts
Accounts represent users on your domain. A user by default has a mailbox and thus every user has an e-mail address on your domain.
Each mailbox is also pointed to by any domain alias you may have active.

After creating a user account you will likely want to manage e-mail for the user on a mail client such as Outlook, Mac Mail, Windows Live Mail, or Mozilla Thunderbird. To configure your mail client for the address "firstname@yourdomain.com, use this information*#:

  1. E-mail address: firstname@yourdomain.com
  2. Login username: firstname.[hosting username], where [hosting username] is your hosting username.
  3. Login password: The e-mail account's password
  4. Incoming mail server: mail.yourdomain.com
  5. Outgoing mail server: mail.yourdomain.com ✝

*This information is available via the control panel on a per-user basis. Just hover your mouse over the underlined username.
#FTP access can also be granted to users you specify. SSH access is granted to the domain owner only, for now. If you wish another user to receive domain access, please contact us.
✝select "authenticated SMTP" and use port 2525, your login username and your login password as your auth values.


Mail Aliases
Mail Aliases are used to forward e-mail from one e-mail address to another.

Mail aliases are useful when you have a generic e-mail address, such as help@somedomain.com. Instead of having an employee check the help@somedomain.com mailbox, you can create a mail alias that forwards mail from help@somedomain.com to said employee's mailbox.

Domain Aliases
Domain Aliases are alternate names for their "parent" domains.

For instance, if you own both yourdomain.com and yourdomain2.com, and you wish visitors to yourdomain2.com to see yourdomain.com, you would add yourdomain2.com as an alias for yourdomain.com.

Additionally, all mail addressed to addresses on yourdomain2.com will also be directed to the equivalent address on yourdomain.com. For example, if you have created an e-mail address firstname@yourdomain.com and have created a domain alias from yourdomain2.com to yourdomain.com, sending e-mail to firstname@yourdomain2.com will be directed to firstname@yourdomain.com.

E-mail Management

Any e-mail user on your domain can log into the e-mail control panel to manage things specific to their e-mail address. To access the panel, go to https://web.vaxxine.com/email and enter your full e-mail address and e-mail password to log in.

As an e-mail user, you may manage the following entities:
Vacation Auto-reply Message
This is a message that is automatically sent out any time you receive an e-mail. The automatic reply will be sent to the e-mail address that originally sent you the e-mail.

E-mail Forwarding
If you maintain an address on another domain that you wish to receive the same e-mail messages received by an address on this domain, you can set this address up as a forwarding address.

You will have the option to keep a copy of the forwarded mail on this domain's e-mail account if you wish.

Spam Control & Filtering
We offer the following controls to manage what messages are let into your inbox:

  • Blacklisting: Every e-mail address in your blacklist will be blocked by our spam filters and never make it to your inbox. We allow wildcards (the * symbol) in our filter rules, so adding *@gmail.com will block all e-mail messages coming from @gmail.com addresses.
  • Whitelisting: Every e-mail address in your whitelist will be let through our spam filters and always make it to your inbox. We allow wildcards (the * symbol) in our filter rules, so adding *@gmail.com will allow all e-mail messages coming from @gmail.com addresses.
  • Automatic Spam Blocking: If you enable automatic spam blocking, we will automatically remove all messages we flag as spam (based on certain criteria) before they even reach your inbox. You can choose to disable this if wish to manage it yourself using the blacklist/whitelist filters explained above.


4. Database Access

MySQL and PostgreSQL are already installed on Vaxxine's Web Servers and free for our clients to use. MySQL databases are managed through the phpMyAdmin interface. PostgreSQL is managed via the command line.

The subject of database-driven web development is broad, and well beyond the scope of this document.



5. SSH Access

Administrators can use SSH protocol (secure shell protocol) to manage everything pertaining to your server. Mac OS & Linux users can simply use their terminal to access their hosting account via SSH. Windows users can use a third-party client like PuTTY.



6. Advanced Control Panel

We also provide the default Virtualmin control panel to all of our hosting customers, although it is recommended for advanced users only. Domain administrators can log into this panel at https://virtualmin1.niagara.net:10000/.

The official documentation for the advanced control panel can be found at http://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/tutorial.



7. Software & Install Scripts

We provide some simple install scripts for you if you wish to install popular CMS software like WordPress. See the image below for the location within the advanced panel that facilitates script installation.

Of course, you are free to install any web framework manually if you have the know-how!

Popular default software binaries

  • php 5.3
  • python 2.6
  • ruby 1.9
  • perl 5.10
  • gem (rubygems)
  • mysql 5.1
  • psql (postgresql) 8.4
  • git
  • svn (subversion)
  • ... and more