Getting started

Lets Be Optastic

Welcome!

We hope this Getting Started guide is going to be useful in setting up your website and email.

How to Get Support

If you run into any problems or if you have questions while setting up your site, do not hesitate to contact our Optastic 24/7 support team for assistance. Our experienced team will gladly (and quickly!) help you get going.

How to Manage Your Account

The Control Panel is the main administration tool that allows you to manage every aspect of your hosting account, including the DNS configuration of your domain names, your mailboxes and email settings, as well as files, databases, backups, and other hosting services.

Please refer to the Welcome email for the exact URL of the Control Panel for your hosting account. You can use your account details to log in.

Domain Name Setup

If you just purchased your domain name and your hosting account together, the DNS configuration of your domain name is already configured correctly and you can skip this section.

For domain names that you manage on your own, there are two ways to point them to your hosting account:

  1. Point the domain name to the name servers of the hosting account. This can be done at your domain registrar. The name servers in question are listed in the Welcome email. We recommend that option because it is the most straightforward one.
  2. If you have to use third-party name servers for your domain name, you have to edit its DNS records to point them to the correct IP address. This is the most complex way to do this, and you would have to maintain the DNS records yourself.
    In order to use your hosting account for your website and email, your apex domain (e.g., "example.com", without the "www" part), the "www" subdomain (e.g., "www.example.com"), and the MX record of your domain should ultimately point to the IP address of your hosting account. This IP address is also listed in the Welcome email.
    If you are not sure how to do that, please contact our support team for assistance. They can give you the exact DNS records you need. The administrators of the name servers of your domain can then help you set them up.

Parked Domain Names

Any additional domain names that you want to use should point to your hosting account as well. They have to also be added on the Domain Parking page of the Control Panel.

Setting Up Your Website

If you have a website already, you should upload it to your hosting account to have it published. You can move an existing site from another hosting provider to your account as well.

It is also possible to create a brand new website with the tools available in the Control Panel, for example using WordPress.

MAIN/DEFAULT PAGE

Our servers are configured to use the following file names for start/main pages:
index.html
index.htm
index.shtml
index.php

The order above also shows the index files priority.
Let's say for example you have index.html, index.php and index.htm in your account's main folder.
The server will take as start page the index.html file, as it has highest priority.

You can change the default/main page priority or add other files to the list above by using .htaccess file. You need to create an .htaccess file in your site's main folder and place the following line in it:
DirectoryIndex filename.htmlWhere filename.html will be the name of your default/startup page. You can define several pages by placing the names separated by spaces, for example:
DirectoryIndex filename.html otherfile.php mypage.htm

WordPress

WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that you can use to easily build your website.

Our hosting service is designed to work seamlessly with WordPress. You can use the dedicated WordPress administration tools in the Control Panel to perform otherwise complex and error-prone tasks safely and quickly with just a few clicks.

Security

Hacking attacks on websites are quite common, so it is important to keep your website secure. We would recommend that you review the various security measures you can take to protect your website. The most important things are to always keep the software of your site up-to-date and to use passwords that are hard to guess.

SSL Certificate

You can also easily make your website more secure for your visitors by setting up an SSL certificate for your site on the SSL/HTTPS page of the Control Panel. This way, connections to your site will be encrypted.

Email

Email is a comprehensive service with multiple settings you can fine-tune. Your mailboxes can be managed on the Mail Manager page of the Control Panel.

You can use an email program (such as Outlook, Mail, or Thunderbird, for example) to access your mailbox. Although the settings are very similar for all email programs, the configuration process of each application may vary. This is why we have detailed guides on configuring the most popular email programs.

System Backup

We perform daily system backups. These system backups are kept on our backup servers for at least seven days. You can restore data from the backups through the Restore Manager section of the Control Panel. Please check the following article for more information:

RESTORE MANAGER

DEFAULT DIRECTORIES UNDER THE ACCOUNT

There are several directories at the topmost level of your hosting account. They are:

  • /awstats - This directory contains the processed information that AWStats generates when parsing the Apache logs.

    Note that if you have not enabled AWStats from the Site Statistics section of the Control Panel, this directory will not be present.

  • /backup - This directory contains the backups of your hosting account that you may have created from the Backup section of the Control Panel. The backups stored in /backup/temporary are going to be deleted automatically three days after they have been created.
  • /logs - Here you will find the raw access logs of the Apache web server. These files contain unprocessed information about who has visited your site.
  • /private - This directory is accessible only via FTP and the Control Panel. It is not directly accessible to the web server, and its contents cannot be viewed with a web browser. However, your scripts can use it to store sensitive data, for example.
  • /stats - The statistics software, Webalizer, keeps in this directory the information it generates when parsing the access logs of the web server.

  • /www - Your web content is in the subdirectories of /www.

    For instance, the files of your main web site, www.example.com, should be in the /www/www directory; if you have a subdomain like "family" (family.example.com), the files should be in /www/family.

These directories cannot be modified directly. They are readable by FTP, but you cannot rename or delete them. You can directly modify the files in the subdirectories of /www and the ones in the /private directory. This can be done by using either the File Manager of the Control Panel or an FTP program.

On the Backup section of the Control Panel you can manage your backups. The Restore section can be used to extract data from a backup.

CHANGING DOMAIN NAMES

You can change your domain name by following these steps:

  1. Log into your Control Panel.

  2. Go to the Domain Parking page:

    ![Domain Parking](https://tickets.suresupport.com/faq/article-1253/en/faq_img/953-1317731002.png "Domain Parking" =126x92)

  3. Add the new domain name to the list of parked domain names there.
  4. Allow several minutes for the parking procedure to complete.
  5. If you have purchased the domain name at a third party registrar, you will need to update its nameservers there. The nameservers will be e-mailed to you once the domain name is parked.
  6. Use the set as primary button next to the parked domain name to switch the main and the parked domains. This way, the new domain name will become the main one for your hosting account, and the previous one will become parked.

Changing the main domain name of the account will not affect the email users that are set up. All mailboxes will still work in the same way for both domain names.

If needed, you can remove the first domain name from the Domain Parking page.

Please note that this procedure will not change the username for the account. Once your hosting account is created, the username for the Control Panel cannot be modified.

SERVER TIMEZONE

The timezone setting on our hosting servers depends on the physical location of the particular server.

  • Our servers in the Hong Kong data center are in the HKT time zone (UTC/GMT +8 hours).
  • Our servers in the US data center (Boston, MA) are in the EST time zone (UTC/GMT -5 hours). During the summer, when Daylight Saving Time is in effect, the time zone is changed to EDT (UTC/GMT -4 hours).
  • Our servers in Europe are in the EET time zone (UTC/GMT +2 hours). When Daylight Saving Time is in effect, the time zone is changed to EEST (UTC/GMT +3 hours).

You can check our Changing the server timezone in PHP scripts article for more details on how to change the server timezone for your PHP scripts.

If you wish to change the timezone for your MySQL sessions, please refer to our Setting MySQL session time zone article.

BLOCKING CERTAIN IP ADDRESSES FROM VIEWING YOUR SITE

To block a specific IP address from accessing your site, you should add the following line to your .htaccess file:

deny from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP address that you want to block. If the .htaccess file does not exist, you can simply create it.

For example, if you want to block 1.2.3.4, the line in your .htaccess file should be:

deny from 1.2.3.4

To prevent a range of IP addresses from a given network (123.234.0.0) from reaching your site, you can do that in the following way:

deny from 123.234.

This way all addresses that start with 123.234 will be blocked.

You can add as many such rules as you want. You should note that if your .htaccess gets large, it may slow-down the loading of your site, as the file is being processed on each file request.

You can also block IP addresses and ranges via your Control Panel's Protection section. You can find details at the Block by IP section.

PUBLISHING CALENDAR WITH ICAL

iCal uses the WebDAV protocol to publish your calendar to the server. However, WebDAV is not supported on our servers.

In order to publish your calendar, you can use the iCal FTP application. It is available at https://download.cnet.com/iCal-FTP/3000-2124_4-26973.html. iCal FTP does not require the server to support WebDAV, and it will allow you to publish your calendars to your website via FTP.

CLEARING BROWSER CACHE

You can access the window/menu that allows you to delete your browser cache (cached data and files) in the most widely-used web browsers (Firefox/Chrome/Safari/Internet Explorer/Edge/Opera) quite easily. All you need to do is press the following combination of keys on your keyboard simultaneously while your browser is active and on focus:

Ctrl+⇧ Shift+Del

If you are using a Mac keyboard, you should press:

⌘ Command+⇧ Shift+Del

In the window/menu that appears, you should choose to delete ONLY your cache (cached data and files).

DNS DEFINITION

Every device on the Internet has a numeric IP address. The Domain Name System (DNS) keeps track of these addresses, much like a telephone directory. It allows the use of addresses that are easier to remember. For example, when you visit example.com, this address is being looked up in the DNS, and your browser receives the actual IP address.

CLEARING LOCAL DNS CACHE

This tutorial will show you how to clear your local DNS cache on:

Windows

macOS Linux

After you clear your local DNS cache, you should also reboot the network equipment (routers, modems, etc.) within your premises.

Clearing the local DNS cache on Windows

Press ⊞ Win+R on your keyboard to open the Run application. Input the following command in the Run application window: cmd Press ↵ Enter to open Windows Command Prompt. If your Windows account does not have admin rights, press Ctrl+⇧ Shift+↵ Enter. Execute the following command in Windows Command Prompt: ipconfig /flushdns Press ↵ Enter, and you should receive the following output: Windows IP Configuration

Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache.

Clearing the local DNS cache on macOS Press Ctrl+⌥ Option+⇧ Shift+T or go to "Finder" > "Applications" > "Utilities" > "Terminal" to open Terminal. Input the following command in Terminal: dscacheutil -flushcache;sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder Press ↵ Enter to execute the command. Enter your Administrator password as this operation requires administrator privileges.

Clearing the local DNS cache on Linux

Not all Linux distributions use the same DNS service by default, and Linux allows you to install alternative DNS services, so please refer to the official documentation of your Linux distribution and/or alternative DNS service for instructions on clearing your DNS cache.

You can find instructions on how to clear the DNS cache on a default Ubuntu installation and few alternative DNS services (binddns, dnsmasq, and nscd) listed below:

Ubuntu (default installation) binddns dnsmasq nscd Ubuntu (default installation) To clear your local DNS cache on Ubuntu, you need to:

Press Ctrl+Alt+T to open a Terminal window. Execute the following commands: sudo /etc/init.d/dns-clean restart sudo /etc/init.d/networking force-reload binddns To clear the binddns cache:

Open a Terminal window. The default keyboard shortcut is Ctrl+Alt+T. Execute the following commands: sudo /etc/init.d/named restart sudo rndc restart sudo rndc exec dnsmasq Follow the steps listed below to clear your dnsmasq cache:

Open a Terminal window. The default keyboard shortcut is Ctrl+Alt+T. Execute the following command: sudo /etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart nscd You can clear the cache of nscd by performing the following actions:

Open a Terminal window. The default keyboard shortcut is Ctrl+Alt+T. Execute the following command: sudo /etc/init.d/nscd restart