Manual

Quick Start Guide

Where you see USERNAME, this is usually the first part of your domain name. For example, if your domain name is called toffeeshop.co.uk
your username may be: toffeeshop

Email Settings

We recommend using an email package such as Eudora with the Microsoft viewer disabled. It is much less prone to virus attack. However, the basic details are all pretty similar on most email packages.

Outlook Express configuration

From the Outlook Express main menu, select Tools and select Accounts.
Click on Add and select Mail.
After entering your full name click on Next.
Type in the e-mail address that want to use. e.g. info@toffeeshop.co.uk
After entering your email address, click on Next.
On the next screen, you will be asked to choose the e-mail server type and supply the names of the Incoming mail (POP3 or IMAP) server and the Outgoing mail (SMTP) server. Use the following settings:
Mail server type: POP3
Incoming mail server (POP3): mail.visn.co.uk
Outgoing mail server (SMTP): <your ISP SMTP setting goes here>
After entering all the information, click on Next.
On the next screen, you will be asked to enter your login information.
In the POP3 account name field, enter your username (e.g. toffeeshop).
In the Password field, put your account password which will have been sent to you.
After entering the information, click on Next then Finish.

The reason that we ask you to put in the SMTP address of your ISP is that in order to use any outgoing mail service you must be authenticated (logged in) on the outgoing email server. In the case of your ISP, you will have logged into their network in order to use their services so you are free to use SMTP. On our server, you would not have been authenticated which makes sending mail a little more difficult. In the event that you cannot use your ISP's settings here, we suggest that you contact us and we'll provide you with the settings you need.

If you have a personal Firewall configured on your PC then these settings may be different. For example, Norton Antivirus protection may set up it's own proxy server on your machine and configures your email program to connect to it when retrieving email. It then changes your account name from, for example "toffeeshop" to toffeeshop/mail.visn.co.uk".

Domain name propagation

If you have just ordered your domain name and hosting, you should be aware that before your web site is fully active, it has to propagate to all the ISP's. Your dial-up connection ISP has to know where to look for your name and it does so by updating its DNS settings from a central point.

Some ISP's only take 24 hours to know where your name is pointing to but others can take a few days. Please allow at least 2 days before contacting us with a question like:
"I type in my domain name and get an error message"
This simply means (during the first few days) that your dial-up ISP has not updated the DNS settings yet.

In order for you to allow you to access the site to upload files while your domain name propagates, we ask that you use the hostname that you will have been emailed rather than your domain name.

Uploading files

If you're using Microsoft Windows, it's possible to use Internet Explorer to upload your files. Enter ftp://username:Password@wh.visn.co.uk/html/ into the address bar to connect. It's then possible to drag and drop any files you want to upload into this window.

An easy way to upload your files is by using a File Transfer Protocol program (FTP) such as WS_FTP or CuteFTP .

Whichever package, you use, you will find that there are a few fields that need to be completed in order to function.

Site Label or site name: Anything you want here - it's for your records only.

Host address or name/IP address: Use the hostname you have been given. Do not put anything else in apart from this. When the domain propagates you can insert the domain name here instead although it doesn't really matter as it points to the same web space. Please don't put http:// or www in this field as it won't work if you do.

UserID: This is your username which you have been given. It is generally the first part of your domain name so if your domain name is toffeeshop.co.uk, your username is : toffeeshop

Password: Which you will have been given. Please be careful as it's case sensitive.

IMPORTANT
Once you have connected, you will see a directory called 'html'. This is where your web pages will be served from and where you should put all your pages. We set this up in a separate directory or folder as it gives more versatility and security as your site grows. For instance, you could have a password file stored in the initial directory which would be impossible to access accidently from the main html direcory. It will also keep prying eyes out of your CGI or SSL directories if you have these extra options.

If you want your ftp program to bypass this directory so that you can immediately see and access your html directory, on WS_FTP, you will need to click 'properties' followed by the 'startup' tab. You should then enter html/ in the 'Remote Site Folder' field. On cuteFTP, there is a field called 'Initial Remote Directory'. Just enter html/ into this. Leave all the other fields at their default settings and you've successfully configured your ftp program to upload files to your webspace.

If you're using Dreamweaver to upload your site, here is an example of how you would fill the fields in...

Creating custom error pages

All our packages can be configured for a custom error page that will appear if someone tries to go to a page that doesn't exist on your site.

First of all, you'll need to create the error page that will appear to the user. Produce this in your usual html editor just like any other page and call it something like 'missing.html'. You will then need to create another file called '.htaccess' with the following line...

ErrorDocument 404 /missing.html

Both files should now be uploaded into your html directory on the hosting package. It's possible to cater for other types of errors that may occur. For instance, you may want to add the following lines and have custum error messages for each.

ErrorDocument 400 /bad_request.html
ErrorDocument 401 /unauthorised.html
ErrorDocument 403 /access_forbidden.html