River Valley Hosting & Web Design
Web Hosting & Web Design FAQs:
Pre-Sales Questions
Q. Will you place ads on my site?
A. We will NOT place ads on your site.
Q. Do you allow sites to advertise for money, on their web site?
A. Yes, we allow sites to have commercial advertisements.
Q. What forms of payment do you accept?
A. We currently accept Visa, MasterCard, and American Express by e-mail invoicing or mail-in payments by check or money order.
Q. Are your server's Unix, or NT?
A. Our servers are Linux Red Hat 7.3 and Red Hat 9.0
Q. Do you allow adult sites?
A. No! We do not allow adult web sites or adult web content of any kind.
Q. Is tax included with my monthly or yearly plan?
A. Yes, tax is included within the price.
Q. What control panel do you use?
A. The control panel we use is called CPanel 10/11.
Q. Can I pay monthly?
A. Yes, you have the option to pay monthly, quarterly, semi-annually and annually.
Q. Can I host friends?
A. Yes, you may host your friends.
Q. How long does it take to setup my account?
A. Your account will be setup automatically within 15 minutes of ordering.
Q. Are there any hidden costs, or setup fees?
A. No, you will not find any hidden costs or setup fees.
Q. Do you offer telnet or shell access?
A. No, due to security reasons, we do not offer telnet or shell access. You are still able to unzip files on the server using our file manager as well as the ability to setup Cron jobs.
Q. Can I password protect directories?
A. Yes you may password protect your directories within CPanel.
Web Design
Q. How much does it cost to get a web site?
A. It varies from one design to the next and depends on several factors including how simple or complex the site is, if any special features are included, etc. For a custom estimate on your design project, please Contact Us with your request.
Q. How long does it take to get my site?
A. The length of time to develop a web site also depends on many factors, most projects are completed with approximately 30 - 40 hours of work. However, this may be spread out over several days or even weeks depending on how quickly clients respond to changes and communications.
Q. Will my new site need to be optimized for the search engines?
A. No, all new designs include optimization for search engines in their field of products or services offered as well as geographic location if it applies to service radius that you may have or the countries in which you conduct business.
Q. Will I be able to accept credit cards and other forms of payments with my site?
A. If we are designing a e-commerce web site for you and you do not already have a merchant account or an alternative method of payment or you simply need a means of adding a cart and accepting payments, we will help you find a solution that is right for you and your business.
Q. Can you do a site in ________ (insert design language here)?
A. Most of our designs are done in either HTML or make heavy use of it because it is still the best language for getting the search engines to index a site. We also use DHTML, PHP, SQL, Flash, JScripts, Cascading Style Sheets, Server Side Includes, etc. to make your site interactive which will help to keep your customers coming back for more.
Q. Do you do redesigns, site modifications or customizations?
A. Whether it is just some tweaks to the coding to get your pages to load faster to a complete overhual of your site, no job is too big or too small. Often we are asked to take an existing site with dynamic content and simply give it a new look, for example modifying a BBS to match a client's site and so on.
Q. Why don't you advertise your services?
A. Most of our work (99%) comes from direct referrals or from traffic on sites that we have done, there really is no need to do any additional advertising as our work speaks for itself. We enjoy building lasting relationships with our clients as much as we love building web sites for them!
DNS
Q. How long does it take to get my domain working?
A. It usually takes 24-48 hours for a domain to fully propagate throughout the web.
Q. What do I set my domains name server's to?
A. Please read your welcome e-mail, if you have lost your welcome email you can email us requesting your DNS.
Control Panel
Q. Do you have a manual for our control panel?
A. Go to http://www.cpanel.net/docs/cp/index.html
Q. Where do I go to login to my control panel?
A. You go to http://www.rivervalleyhosting.com/cpanel/
Q. How do I make sub-domains?
A. To make a sub-domain, login to your control panel and click "Domain Management." Inside of domain management you will see a place to manage and add sub-domains.
FTP
Q. Where can I download a free FTP?
A. We highly recommend downloading WS FTP from here.
Q. It's not letting me upload my files what's wrong?
A. Make sure you are uploading to the right web directory which is the public_html folder.
Q. Why doesn't my ftp password change when I change my Cpanel password?
A. Please allow 24 hours for your FTP password to sync with your CPanel password.
Paths
Q. What is the path to my users files?
A. The path is: /home/username/public_html
Q. What is the local path to Perl?
A. The path to Perl is: /usr/bin/perl
Q. What is the path to Curl?
A. The path to Curl is: /usr/bin/curl
Q. What is the path to ImageMagick?
A. The path to ImageMagick is: /usr/bin/
Q. What is the path to convert for ImageMagick?
A. The path to convert is: /usr/bin/
Q. What is the path to Sendmail?
A. The path to Sendmail is: /usr/sbin/sendmail
E-mail
Q. How do I create email accounts?
A. To create an email account, login to your control panel and click add/remove email accounts.
Q. What do I put for both incoming and outgoing mail server?
A. For both incoming and outgoing mail server, enter: mail.yourdomain.com
Q. Where do I go to check my emails using my browser?
A. Type in the following: www.yourdomain.com/webmail/
Please Note: Some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) do not allow e-mail to be sent using Port 25 or 26, which will allow you to receive e-mail normally. If you are able to receive e-mail, but unable to send on either Port 25 or 26, you will have to use your ISP's SMTP server to solve the problem.
Q. How can I setup Webmail to go directly to Horde, Neomail or Squirrel Mail?
A. Login to the one you prefer to use, after doing so copy the entire URL from your address bar. You will not login to your CPanel and create a subdomain to go to the address you just copied.
CGI/ASP/PHP/MySql/JSP
Q. None of my CGI scripts are working on the server. How do I get them to work?
A. Make sure that they are chmoded to 755
Q. How do I create databases and manage them?
A. Login to your CPanel and click MySQL Databases. After your database is created you can manage it from phpmyadmin. This can be found at the very bottom of the MySQL page.
Software Versions
Q. What version of PHP are you using?
A. We are using version 4.3.3 and 4.3.4
Q. What version of Perl are you using?
A. We are using version 5.6.1.
Q. What version of MySQL are you using?
A. We are using version 4.0.15
Q. What version of CPanel are you using?
A. Our servers automatically stay up to date with the most recent stable CPanel version.
Billing
Q. How do I get the 30 day money back?
A. Simply email us your username, password, and why you wish to cancel within thirty days, and we will process your refund in less then 24 hours.
Q. How do I make a payment?
A. All online payments are recurring. Your payment will automatically be deducted in most cases.
Q. How do I stop billing?
A. If you wish to close your account simply email us your username, password, and why you wish to cancel. You must also include "I give you permission to delete my website and all of it's content."
SSL
Q. What is the difference between Shared SSL and Private SSL?
A. A Shared SSL displays as https//ip/~yourusername/ A Private SSL would display as https://www.yourdomain.com in the address bar.
Q. How do I purchase a private SSL from you and what type is it?
A. Please Contact Us to do so.
Q. What is the path to the free shared SSL?
A. We need to activate the shared SSL on each site manually that will require it.
Q. I'm going to purchase my own SSL, what do I need to know?
A. Our servers are Apache + Mod SSL. If you require assistance from us to install it there will be a $35.00 installation fee.
Q. How do I transfer a SSL?
A. Every company that sells SSLs has a different transfer procedure; you will need to ask the supplier that you purchased it from.
Subdomains: READ THIS BEFORE SETTING UP A SUBDOMAIN!
Q. How do I set up a Subdomain?
A. To create a sub domain, CPanel asks for the name you wish to use. MAKE SURE the subdomain name you give it doesn't have a folder already named that name. If it does the Subdomain will not work!
For Example... I want to create the subdomain test.yourdomain.com, so my sub name is going to be test. If I already have a folder in my ftp named test I need to delete it or rename it to something different before I create the subdomain with the test name from CPanel.
Q. What is a Subdomain?
A. www.domain.com is a domain name. A subdomain is anything that comes between the www in and the domain name.
For Example: chat.rivervalleyhosting.com would be a subdomain of rivervalleyhosting.com
Add-on Domains: READ THIS BEFORE SETTING UP AN ADD-ON DOMAIN!
Q. How do I set up an Add-on Domain?
A. To create an Add-on Domain, CPanel asks for the Domain Name you wish to add (www.yourotherdomain.com). You must purchase this new Domain Name first, then point it to River Valley Hosting's Name Servers.
NS1.RiverValleyHosting.com
NS2.RiverValleyHosting.com
You may then add this new domain to your existing web hosting account.
Please Note: You will have to allow 24 - 48 hours for the new DNS settings to fully propagate throughout the web.
There are three fields CPanel asks for when creating an Add-on Domain:
1. "New Domain Name:" You will put in the newdomain.com Do not put www in the name!
2. "Username/directory/subdomain Name:" This will be the folder CPanel creates in your main accounts FTP, that refers to your Add-on Domain. MAKE SURE that the name you give it doesn't already have a folder.
For Example... If you want to give it the username chris. You cannot have a folder in your account named chris already. If you do and still try creating the username for the Add-on Domain to be chris you will mess a lot of things up!!!
3. "Password:" fill in any password you want here.
Q. What is an Add-on Domain?
A. An Add-on Domain is a fully functional domain that will work out of a folder in your main site's FTP, similar in the manner in which Subdomains work.
Q. Help I added an Add-on Domain why did it say subdomain added?!
A. It creates it as a Subdomain by creating the folder within your main site's FTP. Please ignore this! It is a fully functional domain name. It is only called a Subdomain when in fact it is an Add-on Domain.
