This tutorial is designed for beginners and those who would like to
know in advance how the account set up process works. Here you will be able to find information on all the steps that are
taken to get your web site up and running. We are going to cover a few
topics in the process. This includes ordering the hosting account, setting
up the email users and changing the Domain Name Server information with
your registrar, the company that you registered the domain at. We are
also going to give you a few helpful hints on how to make the best of
your site and get it found in the search engines.
Below you will find our Table of Contents. You can see the main topics
and a small description of each one. Just click on the link on the left
of the table and it will take you to that section on the page. It's
best to go ahead and bookmark this page in case you want to come back
to it later. Well, let's get started!
What you can do to get your site listed in the search engines
Order the Hosting
This is the first step you will take to setup hosting with us. To actually
order the hosting account. This is a pretty simple process. You will
just start on our "order now" page and
enter your domain name there. Then just click the search button and
it will check the domain. If you have already registered the domain,
it will say that it is already registered. If it's not registered, it
will give you the option to signup with that domain and you will pay
the initial $9.99 cost of the domain and then after that, we will pay
the domain renewal fee as long as you are hosting that domain with us.
The domain is completely yours, we just pay the domain's yearly renewal
charge.
After you submit the domain on the next page choose your payment method,
Credit Card, PayPal, Western Union, or a Check or Money Order. When
you select your payment type, you will be taken to a new form that you
will enter all the account information on. Please make sure that you spell
everything correctly. If you pay with Credit Card, be sure all the card
information is correct and you use the same exact billing address
that your bank has on record. This will help us get your account set up as
quickly as possible.
After you submit the form, or mail in your check or money order, our
sales and billing department will process the order and we will then setup the account.
If the domain must be registered by us, it will be about 24 - 36 hours before
the account can be setup. If you already have your domain name
registered then the set up process will be within 24 hours or less.
After Ordering
After you have ordered the hosting account, these are the steps that
we take to get your account setup. Our sales and billing department
processes the form and logs into the systems and sets up the account
under your information. After the account has been setup, they will
email you the "Welcome Letter" that contains all the server information
that you will need to connect to the server and upload files, create
email users, and also check your site statistics. There will also be
a few links to some tutorials that may help you with setting all that
up.
Uploading Files
Now your account is all setup and you have received the email for the
server information. Now you need to upload your files to the servers.
Below you will find the two most common ways that people upload their
files, FrontPage and FTP.
Just take a look at either one of these to see the steps you need to
take to upload your files. If you have created your site with FrontPage,
you will need to use the FrontPage instruction.
If you do not use FrontPage, you can use the FTP
instructions.
Please note: If you do not use FrontPage to create the site,
you can use FrontPage to upload the files. However, if you
do use FrontPage to build and maintain your site, do not
use FTP to upload your files. FTP can corrupt the FrontPage server extensions
and when that happens, we must reinstall the extensions. This can sometimes
cause the navigation that you have created in FrontPage to disappear
and it can also corrupt FrontPage themes.
To see your site on our servers, you will need to go to the temporary
address that we provided for you in your welcome letter. This will allow
you to get everything looking right and working before you change the
domain name servers at your registrar.
Email
To setup the email accounts, you will login to the control panel at
https://cp1.winscontrol.com and once you are logged in,
click the "Domains" link. Next, click on the domain that you want to
add email accounts to. Then click on the "Email Accounts (POP3)"
link. After this screen loads, click the "Add New (+)" link to add
your email accounts. The user must be at least 3 characters and the
password must be at least 4 characters.
Changing Domain Name Servers
Now that you have all your files uploaded and your email accounts
created, you will want to change the domain name servers (DNS) so that your
domain starts pointing to your account on the server. This step will
vary from registrar to registrar so we cannot provide a tutorial for
every one of them. We do have a tutorial for changing the DNS information
at Network Solutions. You can see that tutorial
here.
Help Desk
If you should run into any problems, or need certain permissions set
for your web site, you will need to create a support ticket on our
Helpdesk. The Helpdesk is a separate
system so you must register a new user account to log in to the
Helpdesk. You can do that here.
Once you register the user account for the Helpdesk, you can login and
create a Helpdesk ticket. Please try to be as specific as possible in
your tickets and provide links to any pages you are having a problem
with. This will help us to provide faster support to you and help resolve
any problems.
Promoting Your Site
There are many things that you can do to promote your site. From submitting
your site directly to search engines to optimizing your site with meta
tags, image naming, and content. You can either do it yourself, or you
can hire someone to do it for you. Normally if you hire someone, they
can sometimes get better results than you doing it yourself because
they may know all the "tricks of the trade".
If you would like to learn some of the things that you can do to promote your web
site click here to take a look
at our recommendations. We also offer search engine optimization and
submission services for various fees. Contact our sales department
if interested.
"Great tech support. Willing to go the extra mile! Have 2 sites now with more to add." -- Robert Canty "Great Price. Up-time. Ease of use. Great service. The best!" -- John Henderson
