Neonetix Frequently Asked Questions

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Email Section

Q. How do I configure my POP3 Accounts, Forwards, and Aliases?

A. Load the NNTX QmailAdmin web page, http://qmailadmin.nntx.net.  Log in with the username "Postmaster" and your  Password.  A new web page will show up, titled QmailAdmin. 

QmailAdmin is pretty self-explanatory.  To set up a new POP3 E-Mail Account follow these steps:
1.  Click "Email Accounts"
2.  Click "Create Email Account" (at the bottom).
3.  Enter the account you want to POP from (IE the POP3 username in Outlook).
4.  Enter the password and Real Name.
5.  Click Add.

It'll then bring you to your Email Account Management Screen. 

You can then set up your E-Mail client (such as Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express, Netscape, or Eudora) to use POP3.QMAIL.NNTX.NET as the POP3 server, and you@example.com as the username.  Note that unlike many ISPs, you must use the full E-Mail address as your username.

Q. How do I configure my Mail client to get my email from Neonetix's servers?

A.  Take a look at our email support page.

Q. How do I configure my Mail client to keep SPAM out of my Inbox?

A.  Take a look at our email support page.

Q. I can send mail to anyone who's domain is hosted by Neonetix, but I get a bounce message when I try to send to anyone else.. What do I do?

A.  You most likely have 'smtp.nntx.net' or 'pop3.qmail.nntx.net' in your email client's "Outbound E-Mail" (or SMTP) field. Unless you are using a Neonetix IP Address, you should be using your ISP's SMTP servers. (Click here for possible information about who your ISP is)

Q. My Mail Program won't let me enter the "@" sign in the username field.  Is there anything I can do?

A.Yes.  You can substitute the @ sign with a % sign.  So, if your email address is you@example.com, you would simply enter you%example.com in your Mail program.  

Note this has nothing to do with changing your email address; It is simply to allow your Mail program to work correctly.  Your Email address is still you@example.com.

Q. Do I get any POP email accounts?

A. Each hosting package gets a different number of POP accounts.  Look at our Services Page, or contact sales@nntx.net for more information..

Q. Can I check my email from the web?

A. Yes; load http://webmail.nntx.net in your browser.   Use your email address as your username, and enter your password.

Hosting Questions

Q. What are domain aliases?

A. A Domain Alias is just when you own two or more domain names and you want them to all resolve to the same web site.  

Say that you own two domain names. Your main domain name is abc.com and your other domain name is xyz.com.  A domain alias is when your website name is www.abc.com  and you want it so that when people go to www.xyz.com it loads the www.abc.com website. You'll still have to register the alias domain name with dotster.com, joker.com, register.com or another registrar.

Q. What are Neonetix's DNS Servers for registering domains?

A.NNTX has two main DNS Servers for domain registrations.
DNS Server1: A.NS.NNTX.NET (204.9.96.4)
DNS Server2: B.NS.NNTX.NET (204.9.96.5)

Q. Do I get telnet access so I can work with my files and scripts?

A. We can provide telnet/ssh access with the Intermediate package upon request.  Telnet access will not be configured for the Intro or Starter hosting packages.  Note that you may NOT use shell level access (or any other access) to develop new scripts on our servers.  You must develop them elsewhere, and only upload them when they are in their final, bug-free, security hardened state.

Q. Can I Co-Locate my computer in your Data Center?

A.  Absolutely. With the best rates around, contact sales@nntx.net for more info..

Q. Can web site billing companies such as CCBill or Website Billing.com process my password files and take signup information with any of the hosting packages?

A. Yes.  Any billing company can interface easily with your Virtual Server.  They provide all the instructions for initial setup, and all the tools for ongoing maintenance.  If you do use a credit card processing company, we highly suggest that you solely use FTP to update your website.

Q. Can I edit my website with FrontPage 2000?

A. Yes. FrontPage 2000 server extensions and FTP are standard.  It is your choice to use either one, or both.  If you are going to use a Credit Card Billing company, we highly recommend using FTP only.  If you choose to use both FrontPage and FTP, it is your responsibility not to corrupt the FrontPage extensions and/or the Credit Card processing companies' files while in FTP mode. 

To use Microsoft FrontPage with your NNTX Virtual Server, follow these steps:
1.  Open FrontPage
2.  Click "File", and choose "Open Web"
3.  In the "Folder Name" field, enter: http://www.EXAMPLE.COM
4.  Click Open to the right of the "Folder Name" field
5.  Enter your Username and Password and click OK

Q. Why can't I FTP my files up to the web server?

A. You are most likely using PASSIVE FTP instead of ACTIVE FTP.  In order to secure your web site, we have taken extra precautions to protect your data, by not supporting Passive FTP.  Once you've configured your FTP program to use Active FTP, be sure any firewalls are configured correctly.

Active FTP generally requires you to open all ports destined to your computer greater than 1023/TCP, and port 20/TCP from your website's ip address. If you were using a Cisco access-list, it may look like:

access-list 100 permit tcp host 64.115.47.x host 1.2.3.4 gt 1023
access-list 100 permit tcp host 64.115.47.x host 1.2.3.4 eq 20

Where 64.115.47.x is the ip address of your website, and 1.2.3.4 is the ip of your computer.

To configure Absolute FTP v2.0.1 to use Active FTP, simply create your profile as normal, and when you're done, right click the session in the Connect menu, and go to properties.  A new window, titled "Session Configuration" will show up.  Click on FTP under the Options Category, and make sure the "Use outgoing data connections (PASV)" is NOT checked.  Click OK, and you're ready to connect.

Other than this, simple things such as making sure you're using the correct hostname (in the format: www.example.com) and checking that the correct username/password (CaSe sensitive!) are being used will usually solve the problem.  You can also check our hosting support section, here.

Q. Why do I get a "Permission denied" error when I try to upload files in the _vti_ directories?

A. These directories are Microsoft FrontPage specific, and you should not edit them through any means besides FrontPage.  Just upload your files normally - the FrontPage extensions on the server will know what to do.  If you try to upload your whole site including your local FrontPage extensions, you will get a "Permission denied" error - just click ok and any good FTP client (like AbsoluteFTP) should keep on uploading.  

Q. What file modes should my files be in when my site is being hosted on one of your UNIX Servers?

A.

All regular files should be in mode 644 (-rw-r--r--)

All executables (in the /www/cgi-bin/ directory) should be in mode 744 (-rwxr--r--)

All data files (in the /data/ directory) should be in mode 600 (-rw------)

All directories should be in mode 655 (drwxr-xr-x).

If your files are not in these modes, you run a much higher risk of having your data compromised, or your CGI-BIN scripts not working.

Q. What is a good Unix aware file editing program for Windows?

A. Be sure NOT to use Microsoft's Notepad program.
Use a program that is aware of CR vs. LF vs. CRLF. Neonetix recommends, but does not support Edit Plus as a windows text file editing program.
Once you have Edit Plus loaded, be sure to choose Document -> File Format -> Unix.

Q. How can I password protect one of my directories on your shared UNIX Servers?

A. Using a Unix aware file editor, create a file called .htaccess. Inside the .htaccess file, enter:

AuthName "Private Area"
AuthUserFile /home/hostedsites/www.example.com/www/directory/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthType Basic

<Limit GET POST>
order deny,allow
require valid-user
</Limit>

Replacing www.example.com with your web site, and directory with the directory you want protected, of course.

Create a file called .htpasswd. Inside the file, put:
<username>:<crypted_password>
for example, if your desired username is "joe" and your desired password is Bob123, the file would look something like:
joe:1LW/O6RsroAjo

If you want multiple usernames and passwords, simply enter them one per line.

Click here if you need help generating your .htpasswd file.

Once you have your .htaccess and .htpasswd files ready, just use your favorite FTP program to upload them to the directory you want protected.

Q. Do you have any example code to use MSSQL with PHP4?

A. <?
$db="db_name";
$dbun="db_username";
$dbpw="db_password";
$dbserver="db_servername";
$table="db_table_name";

$dbh = mssql_connect($dbserver,$dbun,$dbpw) or die("Unable to login to database");
$sql="SELECT * FROM $table";
@mssql_select_db($db);
$sth = mssql_query($sql, $dbh);

while( list($key,$value) = mssql_fetch_row($sth) ){
     echo "$key => $value <br>\n";
}
?>

Q. Do you have any example code for sending an E-Mail from my shared UNIX site?

Although unsupported, you can take a look at FormMail.pl.

Using a Unix aware file editor, just change the lines that start with @referers and @recipients.  Don't forget to change the file mode to at least 744 (see the FAQ above about file modes).

Check the next FAQ for a sample front end to this program.

Please note, that setting up a Message Transfer Agent [MTA] on the Internet is quite a big responsibility.  The slightest error will let evil SPAMmers exploit your web site to send their SPAM.  The lesson here: don't just try things that you don't understand.  To read more about how Neonetix is fighting SPAM, please read our AUP.

Q. Do you have any example HTML code to use the FormMail.pl script?

A. <!-- I called this: question_form.html
You can cut and paste this if you'd like.  Just remember to change the email address and the form action -->

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN">
<html>

<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<title>Example Page</title>
</head>

<center>
<br>

<p><h1>title of page</h1></p>
</center>

<br>
<form action="http://www.example.com/cgi-bin/FormMail.pl" method="POST">
<input type="hidden" name="recipient" value="email_address@example.com"><hr>
<!-- if you want to redirect the user to a specific page after they've filled out the form, do this:
<input type="hidden" name="redirect" value="http://www.example.com/file.html">
-->
<h3><font size="5">Please fill out this form:
</font></h3>
<pre>
<font face="Times New Roman"><strong>Your Name:</strong></font>
<input type="text" size="25" name="realname">

Age: <input type="text" size="2" name="age">

Address: <input type="text" size="48" name="address1....">

City: <input type="text" size="31" name="city........">

State: <input type="text" size="2" name="state.......">

Zip: <input type="text" size="5" name="zip.........">

Work Phone: <input type="text" size="30" name="busphone....">

Home Phone: <input type="text" size="30" name="homephone...">

Your Email Address: <input type="text" size="41" name="email">

</strong></font>

</pre>
<h3>Comments/questions/concerns </h3>
<pre>
<textarea name="body........" rows="10" cols="53"></textarea></pre>
<p><input type="submit" value=" send this form!">
<input type="reset" value="Reset"></p>
</form>

<p><a href="question_form.html">Back to Top</a></p>

</body>
</html>

Q. I just moved my site to Neonetix. Why are a few of my images and hyperlinks all broken now?

A.  The most common reason is that you have a mixed-case html file, or a mixed case file name.  Windows NT treats upper and lower case files the same - on UNIX, they are completely different file names.  

If you have a lot of these problems, and you would like us to fix this for you, we can run a script that takes about 5 minutes to convert everything into lower case.  Just contact support@nntx.net.   

Q. If something goes wrong, and I need immediate help regarding issues besides html programming and any other programming of my web site, can I get a hold of someone?

A. Yes. After signup, you will receive several methods of contacting our staff 24 hours a day.

Q. I had a designer make my website in ASP pages. Can I use the same files on your servers?

A. Yes.  Starting with the Intermediate Hosting Plan, you can choose to be hosted on a Windows 2000 Server, which supports ASP.

Q. Can I send my SPAM email with Neonetix's Email Servers?  What about my own server on Neonetix's network?

A.Absolutely NOT. Please refer to the Acceptable Use Policy regarding mailing lists/unsolicited e-mail.

General Questions

Q. What is the difference between MB and Mb?

A. MB is Megabytes.  Mb is Megabits.  There are 8 Megabits for each Megabyte.  Bandwidth is almost always measured in Mb and storage is almost always measured in MB.

Q. What Operating Systems and system configuration does Neonetix use?

A.  All UNIX HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SMTP, POP3, and DNS servers are Sun Solaris UNIX 7/8/9, and FreeBSD 5.
HTTP is provided by Apache, SMTP/POP3 are provided by qmail, authoritative DNS is provided by tinydns (of djbdns), and recursive DNS is powered by dnscache (of djbdns).

All Windows HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and SMTP are Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, running IIS 5.0.

Q. Can my web site be hosted on Neonetix's servers, but still have my DNS, email, and other services provided elsewhere?

A.  Yes.  Although we recommend keeping all of your services together, you may choose to split them up throughout different providers.  You can be given an address that you will be able to point your domain to for the Word Wide Web.  Depending on the level of difficulty, there may be an additional setup fee.  Pricing remains completely the same; there are no discounts for this type of service.  Email sales@nntx.net for more details.

Q. If I currently run my website with another hosting company, what do I have to do to transfer it to Neonetix?

A.There are a few simple steps in transferring your website.

1. First, make sure that you have the most up to date content on your website on your hard disk or other local media.

2. Complete the Signup form on NNTX's signup page and make sure you receive the signup verification email.

3. Contact the registrar of your domain (dotster.com, network solutions, register.com, etc) and tell them to change the name service so that the primary name server points to Neonetix's name servers. This can usually be done right through their web site or email.

4. To make sure that your users will not see a blank web page while you are transferring your domain, upload your website  to <tld>.nntx.net and log in with the username and password that you signed up with as soon as you are done with Step #3.  You will be given the name of the tld upon completion of NNTX configuring your web site via email.

5. After the ns changes have been committed by your registrar (usually 2-3 days after Step #3) you can tell your current hosting provider that you are transferring your domain and that you would like to cancel your account with them.  Click Here to see Name Server information about your domain.

If you have trouble with uploading your web site to our servers, or changing your domain's name servers with your registrar, you may contact our support staff for free assistance.

Q. What kind of upstream bandwidth do Neonetix's servers utilize?

A. While most of our competitors try to confuse you into thinking that have a special "fast" setup, Neonetix really does. Our servers reside on a 100 Mbps, Full Duplex, Switched Ethernet backbone consisting of meshed OC-3s running to Tier-1 providers including UUNET and Sprint. We run redundant/meshed IBM Switches and Cisco Routers.  Unlike most of our competitors, we have control over our forward/reverse DNS and our Internet address space routing, so we're never at the mercy of another company's beurocracy.

Q. How does Neonetix monitor it's servers and services?  How often are things checked?

A. Every NNTX server, service, switch, and router is checked every minute by a monitoring server that is on the same network as the other servers.  Another monitoring server, on a different network, monitors servers, services, switches, and routers every five minutes to ensure world reach-ability at all times.  Our Admin staff is paged 24/7 if any service becomes too slow or fails.

Home ● Services ● Support ● Contact ● About 124 South Maple Ave, Suite 250, Ambler, PA 19002 ● 888-FOR-NNTX ● Copyright © 2007 Neonetix, LLC.  All Rights Reserved.  Please read our AUP. Neonetix: For all your Web Hosting needs.