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Setting Up Hosting Account for a Web Site

To host a web site on the server:

  1. Click the Clients shortcut in the navigation pane.
  2. Click the required client in the list.
  3. Click Add New Domain.
  4. Specify the domain name just as you have registered it. Leave the www check box selected if you wish to allow users to access the site by a common and habitual URL like www.your-domain.com.

    Having the www alias preceding a domain name will not cost you anything, but it will allow users to get to the site no matter what they type in their browsers: www.your-domain.com and your-domain.com will both point to the same site.

  5. If you have previously created a domain template for this client and predefined all hosting features and resource usage allotments (as described in the chapter Simplifying Setup of Domains and Web Sites), select the required template from the Select template box.
  6. If you have a number of IP addresses to choose from, select the required address from the Select an IP address drop-down box.

    Bear in mind that e-commerce sites need a dedicated IP address (not shared among other sites) to implement Secure Sockets Layer data encryption.

  7. Make sure that there is a check mark in the Proceed to hosting setup check box and click OK.
  8. Select the Physical hosting option to host the Web site on this machine.

    Upon completion of this procedure, your control panel will set up the domain name server on this machine to serve the new domain name and prepare the web server to serve the new Web site: a new zone file with appropriate resource records will be added to the Domain Name Server's configuration files, a web space will be created inside the Web server's directory, and necessary user accounts will be created on the server.

    Note: If the site is hosted on another machine, and you wish to set up your control panel's DNS server only to serve the DNS zone for that site, select either Frame forwarding or Standard forwarding option. With standard forwarding, a user is redirected to the site and the actual site's URL is shown in the user's browser, so the user always knows that he or she is redirected to another URL. With frame forwarding, a user is redirected to the site without knowing that the site actually resides at another location. For example: your customer has a free personal web site with his or her Internet Service Provider or a free Web host, and the Web site address is http://www.geocities.com/~myhomepage. The customer purchased a second level domain name www.myname.com and wants you to provide domain forwarding to his Web site. In this case you would normally choose the Frame forwarding service. See the chapter Serving Domain Names for Sites Hosted on Other Servers (Domain Forwarding) for details.

  9. Specify the properties of a hosting account:
  10. Click OK.

    Now your server is ready to accommodate the new web site, and the site owner can publish the site to the server. For instructions on publishing a Web site, refer to the Publishing a Site section of this guide.

    Note: If you transferred this domain name from another Web host, you will need to update the host DNS address with the domain name registrar so as to point to your name servers: log in to your registrar's web site, locate the forms used to manage the domain host pointers, and replace the current DNS host settings with your name servers' hostnames. The information on new name servers will spread across the DNS system within 48 hours.

By default, new web sites that you set up without the help of domain templates, are allowed to consume unlimited amounts of bandwidth (data transfer) and disk space.

To limit the amount of resources this site can consume:

  1. Click the Domains shortcut in the navigation pane.
  2. Click the required domain name in the list.
  3. Click the Limits icon.
  4. Adjust the resource usage allotments as required:
    1. you can notify the domain owner and suspend the domain/web site after a grace period until you receive the payment (not so good for your business, but if you are going to follow that way, see the Suspending and Unsuspending Hosting Accounts and Web Sites section),

      OR

    2. upgrade the account for your customer (see the instructions on upgrading accounts in the Modifying User Accounts section).
  5. Click OK.

To allow the site owner to log in to control panel for managing his or her web site:

  1. Click the Domains shortcut in the navigation pane.
  2. Click the required domain name in the list.
  3. Click the Domain Administrator icon in the Domain group.
  4. Select the Allow domain administrator's access check box.
  5. Type the password for access to the site owner's control panel.

    For security reasons, the password should be more than 8 symbols, and it should comprise a combination of letters, numbers, and punctuation; dictionary words and proper names should be avoided.

  6. Specify the settings related to the appearance of user's control panel, if desired: interface language, theme (skin), the limit on number of characters that can appear on custom buttons placed into the control panel by the site owner.
  7. Leave the Allow multiple sessions check box selected to allow the site owner to have several simultaneous sessions in the control panel.
  8. Leave the Prevent users from working with the control panel until interface screens are completely loaded check box selected.

    This will forbid users from submitting data or performing operations until the control panel is ready to accept them.

  9. Specify the operations that the site owner will be able to perform in his or her control panel:
  10. Specify the site owner's contact information.
  11. Click OK.

Now you can tell your customer the control panel's URL, login and password. The URL is https://<user's_domain_name>:8443, where <user's_domain_name> is the domain name without the www alias. The login name that the site owner should specify in order to log in to the control panel is his or her domain name, for example, your-domain.com.

If you have registered several domain names that you would like to point to a site hosted on this server, you should set up domain aliases. Refer to the Setting Up Additional Domain Names for a Site (Domain Aliases) section for details.

If you need to host several domains on your machine that will point to a site hosted on another server, you should set up domain forwarding. Refer to chapter Serving Domain Names for Sites Hosted on Other Servers (Domain Forwarding) for details.