With Cpanel, setting up e-mail accounts is easy.

In your control panel, simply go to “Email Accounts”, under the “Mail” section. As you can see above, you can set up the user name, password, and disk quote with just a few easy steps. After that’s done, you can set up the account in your e-mail program, or you can use the various webmail programs that Cpanel offers, including Horde, SquirrelMail, and RoundCube. Choose the “Webmail” option under “Mail”, and then select your favourite client. Then, bookmark the URL, and you can check your e-mail whenever you want. Bookmark it on your laptop, and you can easily check your mail where an Internet connection is available, without worrying about blocked ports.

Cpanel offers other powerful options, too, such as Spam Assassin, which reduces spam. You can easily set up the filters to be as tolerant or as powerful as you wish. You can also control numerous other e-mail options with Cpanel, setting up forwarding e-mail addresses, and controlling the “Default Address”.

This will define how your account will handle e-mail sent to an address that doesn’t exist. Do you want it to bounce? Do you want to delete it without notifying the sender? Do you want to forward it to another address?

Cpanel makes it easy for you to set your e-mail options precisely as you like them.

If you’ve never hosted a website before, or if you just don’t have the time to learn the technical details, you’re in luck. With Cpanel, the control panel software that we offer here as part of your service. It’s easy to run a website. With just the click of a button, you can control e-mail addresses, FTP accounts, DNS settings, subdomains, SQL databases, and so much more.

Over the next couple of weeks, you can read articles that will explain these things easily.

For example, with Cpanel, by going to the e-mail account section, you can easily add POP accounts, which you can then check from webmail applications or software such as Windows Mail or Outlook. You can control the disk space quota, and change passwords with a click of a button. Not only that, but controlling spam settings, and what happens when mail is sent to a non-existent address is a snap, too. You’re in for a treat with Cpanel.

These days, everything requires databases: forums, blogs, and so forth. You don’t need to know a thing about SQL databases if you don’t want to, thanks to Cpanel. With the SQL option, you can do everything that you need to do to set up a database: name it, add a user, and a password.

You can even assign the same username and password to more than one database with the click of a button. Also included is the industry standard PHPMyAdmin, which makes it easy to repair databases, export, and import tables. If you want to use a database that’s located on another server, that’s no problem, thanks to the remote feature. The best part is, with Cpanel, you don’t need to do any manual work with your databases if you don’t want to.

And it’s just that easy to perform other functions, too. Check back for installments on the items mentioned above.

If you like saving money, do we have an offer for you. When you pay for a hosting plan on a yearly basis, you can get 35% off the first year’s fee. This can add up to some really good savings, so take a moment to review our plans, and then order yours today!

When purchasing a server or a hosting plan, you’re usually offered bandwidth choices: 20GB a month, 100GB, whatever it may be. But how much do you need, exactly?

It’s always better to have a larger allowance than you need, because when you run over, one of two things will happen: you will be charged (usually for each GB that you go over), or your service will be suspended. Neither of them are viable options for most people.

One question to ask your host is how bandwidth is charged. Are you charged for incoming and outgoing traffic, or just outgoing? This will be a key element in your decision-making process. For many sites, as little as 20GB will do, but for the more popular sites, more bandwidth will be needed. Most dedicated hosting plans offer 1000-1500 GB of monthly bandwidth, and this is usually good enough for most hosts. If you run a site that eats up more bandwidth than this, you likely will need to consider other options, such as load balancing.

One good idea is to start off with an amount you estimate will be appropriate for your site, say 40 GB. Then, monitor your bandwidth. If it looks as if you’ll go over before your month is over, arrange with your host to add more bandwidth. Soon, you’ll have an idea of how much bandwidth your server consumes on average. Then, add another 10GB to be safe, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what’s good for you. So, if your server typically eats up 15-20 GB a month, go for 25GB or 30GB. That way, if you experience a sudden spike, or temporary increase in popularity, you won’t be as likely to be hit with hefty overage charges.

The one certain thing about domain names is that there will always be a cost associated with registering them. The registrar that you use must pay registrars a set price for domains, regardless of what price they charge you.

Coming October 1, there will be yet another price increase, thanks to Verisign, which is the registrar that oversees the .com and .net extension.

Because of this increase, you may wish to consider registering or renewing before the end of this month, so that you can take advantage of the current price structure. On that day, registrars will be charged $6.86 for .com domains, and $4.23 for .net domains. Of course, to absorb this increase, the price that they charge you will be increased. By now, you should have gotten e-mail notifications from your registrar informing you of the increase, and urging you to register or renew now. That is excellent advice. By renewing or registering before October 1, you “lock in” the prices that are currently in effect, whether you do it for one year, two years, or 10.

This isn’t the only upcoming increase. On November 9, Public Interest Registry, which oversees the .org domains, will increase the price they charge registrars to $6.75, from the current $6.15.

Increases come often; registries do have operating costs, and they are in business just like we all are. There are pros and cons to registering your domain for long periods of time, but if you renew your domain now for 10 years, that means you won’t be affected by registry increases until 2018.

One vital component of your website is the DNS. The key to a successful domain name server is geographic diversity. Many websites have both their nameservers on the same server. That’s fine, but you may wish to consider a “secondary DNS” service, such as Backup DNS.

What a secondary service does is offers a third DNS server, which would be located in an another part of the country, or the world. In the event that your BIND– or domain server– goes down, as long as your Apache service is up, your website will still serve. In the event that your entire server is down, users will see an error message that indicates there’s a technical problem as opposed to your website not existing.

Obviously, if you run a dedicated server, and your DNS is on the same server as the rest of your services (Apache, SQL, etc.), it may seem redundant to employ a secondary DNS. However, you never know when such a service may come in handy, and the cost is minimal. You could even have a friend who runs a DNS host a zone file for you. The only change you will need to make is to add the appropriate nameserver information to your local DNS zone, so that the additional DNS is “authoritative”.

One final point is this: you can never have too many DNS, and the wise move is if you have several DNS, that they are spread out at key points around the world, so that if a backbone goes down in one portion of the globe, users can still find your website. Downtime for a website defeats the point of having a site in the first place.

As part of your website, you have e-mail service. You can access this e-mail via webmail or through an application such as Outlook or Windows Mail. But which is more secure? Fundamentally, there is no difference, except for one thing: your IP address.

Depending on your Exim (the program that processes the e-mail) configuration, the IP address of your computer may be visible in the headers if you use Outlook. Most webmail programs will only display your server’s IP address when you send e-mail.

This means that it may be possible for someone to learn your home IP address. If this does not concern you, then there is no need to worry. If you prefer to remain private, however, check with your server administrator to tighten up the security in your e-mail configuration.