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Uploading your web site

Now that you have your web hosting account set up, how do you get your web site files onto your web space so that you can access them through your domain name?

You need to use an FTP client. An FTP (file transfer protocol) client is used to transfer files from one computer to another. You will have been given clear information as to what your "FTP details" are when you signed up with your host. They will include a server or a host name, a username and a password. These details are then used to connect to your web hosting account's FTP server, and then you can begin transferring files.

We recommend Smart FTP - which is a free FTP client available from www.smartftp.com. Once again, after installing this program it will be obvious to you exactly where you need to enter your "FTP details" needed in order to connect to your web hosting account.

If you do not want to install another program, you can transfer files using Windows FTP folders. To access and transfer files to your web hosting account using Windows, type in ftp://yourftphost.com into a Windows Explorer window and press enter. You will be asked for authentication details. If you are not, click File > Login As, and then enter your authentication details (the username and password, as mentioned above).

You should then have connected to your web hosting account, and see a series of folders. Any files you upload to the folder "public_html" will be displayed when you browse to your domain name - meaning they are publicly accessible. It is to this folder you would upload your web site files. To do this in Windows FTP folders, simply drag the files you want to upload from your computer to your web hosting account and release them.

Setting up e-mail on your web hosting account

For the purposes of this guide, we will assume that your domain name is www.domainname.com, and by browsing to www.domainname.com, we end up at your web site.

In order to set up an e-mail address or your domain name (for example yourname@domain.com), you must create a mailbox for it using your web hosting account's control panel. You will have been given explicit details as to the location of your control panel and your username and password for it when you signed up for your hosting account,.

Typically, your host may be running the cPanel control panel or similar. Regardless, the process of account maintenance is roughly the same for any web hosting account control panel.

To create a mail box, log on to your control panel and select the "E-mail" option, then proceed to select the "Create account" option. You will then be asked to enter the information for the e-mail account - the alias (alias@domainname.com), the data allocation (a value in MB) and a password. The data allocation for the e-mail account will be how much space on your web hosting account will be set aside to queue e-mails before you collect them. We recommend setting this value to around 20 - 30MB.

After creating your e-mail account, you will then be able to access e-mail sent to alias@domainname.comby logging into your mail server using a POP3 e-mail client (like Eudora or Outlook / Express). You would normally enter the following information when adding your POP3 account to your client:

        POP3 server: mail.domainname.com
        Username: alias@domainname.com
        Password: the password you entered when you created the mail box

Do check with your web host as to what details are required - as they may not always be the same for each control panel, and this guide has been written for the general case.

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