ProZ.com Hosting
Getting started guide

Getting started with ProZ.com Hosting


Signing up

If you are a full member, you can sign up for ProZ.com hosting from the hosting info page. During the sign-up process, you will select a username and password for your hosting account. You will need these to access various features of your account. Save the welcome email you receive shortly after signing up for later reference; it contains your username and password, as well as links to helpful hosting resources.

Substitute your own username, password, or domain name as appropriate in the sections that follow.


Your domain name

New domains and transfers generally take 24 to 48 hours to be entered into the nameserver database. Transfers from a different registrar can take up to one week.

When you signed up for your account, if you chose to register a new domain name through ProZ.com or to use a subdomain of my.proz.com, then you need take no further action. In a few days you will be able to manage your domain information from your hosting info page.

If you chose to transfer a domain name to ProZ.com or use a different domain registrar, then you will need to enter the following information at your domain registrar in order to point your domain to your new hosting servers:

Primary nameserver: NS1.HOST.PROZ.COM     96.47.67.61
Secondary nameserver: NS2.HOST.PROZ.COM     96.47.67.62

Your registrar should be able to help you update your domain's DNS information.

See the domain name howto for more information about domains.


Accessing your control panel

Your control panel allows you to manage most features of your hosting account using a simple web-browser-based interface. A full list of control panel options, with information about their use, is available in the control panel documentation.

You can access your control panel by typing h1.host.proz.com/cpanel in the address bar of your browser. Once your domain registration or transfer has taken place, you may instead access your control panel by typing www.yourdomain.com/cpanel (replacing yourdomain.com with your own domain name). You can find a link to your control panel on your hosting info page.


Creating and uploading your web pages

This section assumes that you will not be using Microsoft Front Page to design and publish your site. If you are planning to use Front Page, please skip to the next section.

The most common way to design a web site is to first create and test it on your local computer. A large number of software packages are available which are designed to make this process as easy as possible, for both beginners and experts. Many of these programs are available free of charge and some of the best are reviewed and rated at the Tucows and Download.com shareware web sites.

Once you are ready to copy your site onto the Internet, you can upload it using FTP (File Transfer Protocol). Nearly all web design programs, with the exception of Microsoft Frontpage, use FTP to upload your pages to your web site. Some have their own built in FTP program while others require you to use a separate, stand-alone FTP program to upload your web pages.

If your web design program has a built in FTP program, enter the following information in the program's FTP configuration dialog:
Remote directory: /public_html
Host name: ftp.yourdomain.com (substitute your domain for yourdomain.com)
Username: your hosting username
Password: your hosting password

WS_FTP and Cute FTP are good FTP programs for uploading your web pages, but any FTP program should work. You can upload your site to the servers immediately after you receive your welcome email, which will contain the necessary information to set up your FTP program correctly.

When you first connect to your account by FTP you will see a folder listing similar to the following:

mail
This is a system folder and should not be accessed directly. It contains configuration information and data relating to your email accounts.
public_ftp
This folder is where you should place files for your anonymous FTP users to download. It also contains a subfolder called incoming to which you may allow anonymous FTP users to upload their own files.
public_html
Upload your web pages to this folder in order for them to be visible on the web. This folder will contain a subfolder named cgi-bin. Upload any CGI scripts there.
tmp
This is a system folder and should not be accessed directly. It is used to store various temporary files.
www
This is a shortcut to the public_html directory.

Your web page files should be uploaded to the public_html folder, so be sure to change to that folder (by double clicking it in most FTP programs) before uploading your web pages. You will need to replace the index.html file already in this folder with your own version of this file which should contain the home page for your site. You can, of course, also upload web pages to subfolders if you wish (any subfolders to be used for web pages should be created under the public_html folder).

When using your FTP program, please do not delete any other preinstalled files or folders. Many of these files are essential for the smooth running of your account. Deleting or renaming them may cause corruption which can only be corrected by completely resetting your account.

Small numbers of pages may also be conveniently uploaded and edited online using the File Manager available in your Control Panel. See the File Manager section of the cPanel documentation for more information.


Using Microsoft Front Page

If you plan to use Microsoft Front Page, you will need to install "Front Page Extensions" for your account before you can publish your site. To install Front Page Extensions, log in to your control panel and click the "Frontpage Extensions" icon. Then click the button labeled "Install Extensions".

Please note that you will need to wait until your domain registration or transfer is fully completed before publishing using Front Page.

Once your domain name is fully functional, you may publish your site to http://www.yourdomain.com/ (replacing yourdomain.com with your own domain name). Here is a good flash tutorial about publishing your web site with Front Page, published by talkfrontpage.com.


Accessing your email

The mail hosting howto explains how to use the mail features provided by your hosting account in detail.

To access your email, you will need to configure your email program to use the correct mail server for your hosting account. Set your "Incoming" (POP3 or IMAP) and "Outgoing" (SMTP) mail servers to:
mail.yourdomain.com
Your actual mail server name is shown on your hosting info page.

Use the username and password of your main hosting account to access your default mailbox.

For step by step instructions for setting up the most common email programs, see this page published by Lighthouse Hosting.

For more information about managing your email, including creating additional accounts and configuring spam filters, see the mail howto or the Mail section of the cPanel documentation


Further resources