Frequently Asked Questions

What settings should I use for my name servers?
How long does it take for the domain name to work?

2. FTP

How do I FTP into my account?
What if I can't use FTP?
I have created an extra ftp account in the control panel. How does that person connect?
Anonymous FTP

3. Pre-Sales Questions

Can I pay you by check?
In my monthly bill email, it indicates that there are 36 billing cycles. Am I locked in for 36 months?
How much downtime will there be when I transfer my site to you?
Do you have a money-back guarantee?
What kind of hardware do your servers use?
What kind of connections to the internet do your servers have?
What operating system do your servers use?

4. Scripts

What is the path to sendmail?
What is the path to perl?
Where is date?
Where is time?
Where is my home directory?
What PERL modules are installed and available for use?
What is the CGI base directory?

5. Email

How do I connect to my email account?
Connecting to email accounts using Netscape mail
Why have my POP email accounts been deleted in cpanel?

6. Billing

Why are all the payments for your webhosting plans set up as reoccurring payments?

7. Documentation

Where can I find detailed documentation about MySQL databases?
Where can I find detailed documentation about the Interchange Shopping Cart?
Is there an operating manual for adventwebhosting customers?

8. Miscellaneous

How do I control the default webpage for my domain and/or subdomain(s)?

Answers

1. Domain Names

What settings should I use for my name servers?

For correct nameserver information, you should consult your 'welcome email' message that was sent to you after the account was setup.

How long does it take for the domain name to work?

It usually takes 1-2 days for the domain to transfer once you update the name servers. If it takes longer than 3 days, please contact us and we will try to find the problem.

2. FTP

How do I FTP into my account?

To transfer files or browse through your directory using FTP, you need to connect with an FTP client to hostname ftp.your_domain.com or ftp.your_username.100megs*.com (replace "your_domain.com" or "your_username" with the appropriate info, and "100megs*.com" with the server your account is on). Use port 21, and login with your account username and password.

Any files that you want viewable on the web should be uploaded to the /public_html directory. You might want to set this as the default directory in your ftp client.

What if I can't use FTP?

We also offer a web based file manager that will allow you to upload the files to your account.

I have created an extra ftp account in the control panel. How does that person connect?

They would use the same procedure as above, but they need to enter their username as user@yourdomain.com. For instance, if you create a user called bob, he would log in with the username bob@yourdomain.com. Please change yourdomain.com to your actual domain name.

Anonymous FTP

When anonymous ftp is turned on in your account, anonymous ftp users have access to your /public_ftp folder. To set things up for anonymous ftp access, log into your cpanel and click on "Setup anonymous FTP access". The first checkbox allows anonymous ftp users to download files from your /public_ftp folder. The second checkbox allows anonymous ftp users to upload to your /public_ftp/incoming folder. No anonymous ftp users can view or download the contents of the /public_ftp/incoming folder.

To connect with an ftp program as an anonymous ftp user, you need to use ftp@your_domain.com as the username. Leave the password field blank. The hostname is ftp.your_domain.com . Use port 21.

3. Pre-Sales Questions

Can I pay you by check?

Yes, any of our 1 year plans can be purchased by check, money order, or paypal.com. Please use our contact form to enquire about this.

In my monthly bill email, it indicates that there are 36 billing cycles. Am I locked in for 36 months?

Certainly not. You can cancel your payments and webhosting at any time.

How much downtime will there be when I transfer my site to you?

As long as things are done properly there should be no downtime as a result of the move. We suggest following these steps:

1. Sign up for an account with us
2. Upload your website to our servers and test to make sure everything appears as it should
3. Update the name servers with your domain registrar to point to the ones we provide in your welcome email
4. Wait a couple of days before cancelling your old hosting plan. It can take a couple of days for a domain to transfer and it is best to leave some overlap to ensure there is no downtime.

If you follow these steps the transition will happen smoothly.

Do you have a money-back guarantee?

Yes, we have a 30 day money-back guarantee.

What kind of hardware do your servers use?

Our latest servers are P4 2.0 GHz with 512 MBRAM Hard Drive 18 GB SCSI.

What kind of connections to the internet do your servers have?

We currently have 4 OC12 connections, with the ability to go to 4 OC192 connections pending some hardware upgrades.

What operating system do your servers use?

Our servers run on Linux.

4. Scripts

What is the path to sendmail?

/usr/sbin/sendmail

What is the path to perl?

/usr/bin/perl or /usr/local/bin/perl

Where is date?

/bin/date

Where is time?

/usr/bin/time

Where is my home directory?

It is located at /home/username, where username is the username you use to log in.

What PERL modules are installed and available for use?

For a list of installed perl modules, log into your cpanel, and click on the "i" icon next to where it says "PERL version" in the lower left part of the main page.

What is the CGI base directory?

/home/username/public_html/cgi-bin

5. Email

How do I connect to my email account?

There are a couple of methods for doing this.

The easiest is to log into your control panel, click on "POP email accounts", and then click on the autoconfig link next to the account you want to set up in Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express (assuming you use one of these email programs). This will automatically set up the email for Outlook or Outlook Express.

If this doesn't work, you will need to use the following settings.

POP3 server = mail.your_domain.com
SMTP server = mail.your_domain.com

You will need to authenticate in order to send mail through our SMTP server. There is usually an option for this in the email client. You will then need to enter your username and password again.

The username has two possiblilities. If you are using the default account with the username that you signed up with, you can just enter your username. If you set up an extra email account, you will need to use user@your_domain.com as the username. This prevents confusion if multiple people try using the same user name.

Connecting to email accounts using Netscape mail

There is an issue with Netscape regarding the use of the "@" symbol in the username. In order to log into your email account with a username with an embedded "@" using Netscape, you have to go into the user's profile directory for Netscape and edit the "prefs.js" file. Add the following line:

user_pref("mail.allow_at_sign_in_user_name",true);

That should fix the issue.

Why have my POP email accounts been deleted in cpanel?

There's a bug in cpanel that can occurr on occaision. Sometimes when you change the domain password (the main password for your cpanel account), cpanel goes and deletes any additional POP email accounts you may have created. This occurrs quite rarely, but it's best to check if your email accounts are there after every change you make to your domain password, just to be safe.

6. Billing

Why are all the payments for your webhosting plans set up as reoccurring payments?

We don't currently set accounts to automatically terminate on a given future date. The reason we have all of our payments set up as reoccurring payments is so that when the next billing date nears, customers can decide if they want to cancel their billing and have us terminate their webhosting account. We've found that going ahead and terminating accounts without first receiving confirmation from customers tends to create a lot of unintentional account deletions, and frustrations. Therefore, we'd prefer to leave your payment as reoccurring. When your next billing date comes along, if you wish, you can then notify us that you wish to cancel your billing and your webhosting account, and we'll do so right there and then. If you forget and don't notice the charge on your credit card until later, that's OK. Just let us know, and we'll cancel your account and refund that charge on your credit card.

7. Documentation

Where can I find detailed documentation about MySQL databases?

You can go to http://www.mysql.com or you can try http://www.mysql.org . At mysql.org, click on the documentation button. The documentation is tarred and gziped. You can extract the html documentation files using WinRAR, which you can obtain from http://www.rarsoft.com .

Where can I find detailed documentation about the Interchange Shopping Cart?

You can go to http://interchange.redhat.com .

However, please don't contact interchange directly about any problems that you might be having with your shopping cart. They won't provide any direct support to you.

Is there an operating manual for 100 Megs Web Hosting customers?

Yes, it can be found at http://www.adventwebhosting.com/docs/manual.htm

8. Miscellaneous

How do I control the default webpage for my domain and/or subdomain(s)?

All you need to do is create an empty text file called .htaccess in the folder containing your desired default webpage. Then, your have to add the following line to the .htaccess file:

DirectoryIndex something.xyz

where something.xyz is the filename of your desired default webpage. This will be the webpage that loads up by default when someone accesses that folder with their web browser. Each folder (including the /public_html folder) can have its own .htaccess file. Since each subdomain has its own folder, this means that the default webpage for your domain and each of your subdomains can be easily specified.