Introduction To FTP

When you initially log into the root of your account you will see various files and directories. Among them, the one that holds the most importance is the public_html directory.

public_html

DO NOT DELETE OR RENAME any directory or any hidden files that you may find already present. These directories are automatically setup by the system and required in order for your account to function. Deleting or renaming any of them will cause fatal errors that can only be repaired by deleting and resetting your account.

Of these directories, the ONLY ONE that is important to you is the public_html directory. This is the directory where you will upload your web pages and create other subdirectories that will pertain to your web site and be viewable from your web browser. Your pages WILL NOT be viewable on a web browser unless they are uploaded to this directory.

When you initially enter your public_html directory, you will see only one directory, which is your cgi-bin (aside from the FrontPage extension files and folders). The cgi-bin is where you upload your cgi scripts. DO NOT DELETE OR RENAME your cgi-bin.

As you add features from your Control Panel, the system will automatically create other directories within this area. ANY AND ALL sub-directories and/or files created by the system are required by the system to make a particular function operate and SHOULD NOT BE DELETED OR ALTERED IN ANY WAY. The index.html page is the default entry page for your account; this file SHOULD ALWAYS BE PRESENT.

ALL files must be uploaded to your public_html directory.

Files can be uploaded to your account via WS_FTP, CuteFTP, Fetch or any other FTP program that you may prefer. For more in depth information pertaining to your FTP Client, refer to its documentation.

Aside from our own FTP FAQ, there are also numerous tutorials for using FTP out on the web, simply do a search for FTP tutorials.

If your domain name is not yet live on our servers, you can view your pages by using your IP address as follows: http://your-ip-address/~username .Be sure to include the forward slash after your ip address. If your domain is live on our servers, you can view your pages within any browser by typing any of the following in your browser: (of course replace yourdomain.com with your actual domain name and its extension.)

http://www.yourdomain.com
http://yourdomain.com
www.yourdomain.com
http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html
http://yourdomain.com/index.html
www.yourdomain.com/index.html

If you are getting an error when typing the above, several things could have gone wrong, these are as follows:

1) Your initial page is not named index.htm

2) The code in your index.html page is incorrect

3) The registration/transfer request for your domain has not been completed. (this process can take up to 72 hours. If it has been 72 hours and the transfer of your domain has been requested through Network Solutions, you will need to contact Network Solutions using the “tracking number” provided in your confirmation email.

4) Your account has been deactivated due to non-payment,/non-compliance of our policies, or spamming violations - users need to contact Technical Support.

The best advice that we can pass on to our users is DO NOT SPAM. There are only so many backbones and while you may find it convenient to hop around from hosting company to hosting company, eventually you will start getting "We don't want your business" replies from the hosting companies. This is because the backbone will not allow them to host you because you've been banned for spamming. You don't have to like this rule, but it's the one that rules your existence on the Internet.

Are you unsure of what spamming is? We can make this short and simple for you. Spamming is the sending of any unsolicited email to an email address who’s owner did not invite you to send an email to them.