netINS.net Hosting Support

Welcome to the netINS Standard Web Hosting system.

Support Information on netINS Business and Advanced Web Hosting can be found here.

Using this system you can create new Email users under your domain (i.e. user@yourdomain.ext). This is an overview of how the Administration Interface works.

With activation of service you'll receive a packet of information regarding your account. Included in that is an Account Settings Document. The Account Settings Document includes the Administration Site URL (http://admin.yourdomain.ext) as well as your Admin Username and Password for entry into the Administration Site.


Type your Administration Site URL (http://admin.yourdomain.ext) into your web browser's address bar. This will bring you to a screen similar to the one below. Enter your Admin Username and Password from the Account Settings Document.

Correctly entering your Admin Username and Password will bring you to the Administrative Site Menu. Here you will be presented with eight options. A description of each option is listed directly to the right of each link.

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New User Setup
Click on New User Setup first.

In the New User Setup screen there are Required and Non-Required fields. The Required fields include:

  • Real Name:  This is the real name of the person you are adding an account for.
  • User Name:  This is the unique login for each user that will also become the first part of their email address. If you are adding an account for Johnny Orr, you may use "johnny" as the User Name. Johnny's email address would become johnny@yourdomain.ext
  • Password:  We suggest a cryptic password to use but you can change this to whatever you would like.

The Non-Required fields include:

  • Alias:  This is if you want email for more than one address to go to Johnny's account. You could enter "whoeee" into the Alias field and email sent to whoeee@yourdomain.ext will go into the mailbox for johnny@yourdomain.ext More than one alias for each account can be created by adding each additional alias on a separate line in the entry field. Using a comma (,) or a semi-colon (;) will not work.
  • Forward To:  If you want email intended for johnny@yourdomain.ext to be sent to another email address, enter any valid email address in the Forward To field.

If you make a mistake and would like to clear all of the entries you've added, you can click on Reset. After adding all of the appropriate entries, click Create!

Each color in the User Administration screen has a meaning.

Black - This color signifies a required field. A user can't be added without submitting all required fields.

Pink - This color signifies an optional field.

Green - This color signifies a "clickable" field. For example, clicking the green word Password would provide an alternative suggested password.

 

After clicking Create you will be shown the results of the operation. It should show successful creation of both the account and email account. You are also given the option to create another user. If you are finished adding users, click the Home button on the top left corner of the web page.

To setup an email client to use the new mail hosting account visit the Email Client Setup Guide.

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User Administration
Click on the User Administration link to continue.

The User Administration section of the site provides you with the tools to view the different attributes assigned to each user.

By searching for "johnny" we should be able to view the account we set up.

If you have a need to view all of your users, or users with similar attributes, you can use the "wild-card" tool. A search for the * (asterisk) character provides a listing of all users.

The results from our "wild-card" search shows a different row for each user.

From this screen we can either Edit or Remove users from the system. Users that have their usernames listed in red are disabled. Reasons for disabling an account may vary but it is a tool you can use if you want to prevent a user from using their email account.

Disabled users will still be included in billing. If you want to stop being billed for a user you must delete the account.

Let's click Edit on the "johnny" account. As you can see the user's attributes are shown but not editable. In order to edit the user's properties, the account must be active. Unchecking the Account Disabled check-box and clicking the Update button will reactivate the user.

This screenshot shows the account after it has been re-enabled.

Note: From this screen you can print an Account Settings Document that you can use to setup your new (or edited) user.

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Domain Configuration
The next section of the interface is the Domain Configuration. Click on that to continue.

Currently this section serves one purpose: how to handle email sent to unknown addresses. If someone on the Internet attempts to send an email to a user at your domain that you have not created, this section will detail what happens to that email. There are four options:

  • Rejected: This service rejects the message as undeliverable.
  • Discarded: This service deletes the message without notifying the sender.
  • Re-Routed to: This service forwards the message to another (actual) email address.
  • Accepted, then Bounced: This service accepts the message, and delivers an "unknown address" message to the sender.

If you choose to use the Rerouted to option, you need to specify an email address to send it to. Often companies send these types of messages to the office manager.

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Disk Usage

The Disk Usage section calculates how much hard drive space your website is using. For Standard Web Hosting customers, your disk usage is divided into two sections, Per-Account Mailbox Utilization and Website Utilization.

The Per-Account Mailbox Utilization section will show you how much disk space each user is using. Each user on the system is eligible to use up to 10MB of space. Typically users download all their email to their computer, and remove it from the server. Most users who regularly check and download their mail never run into a disk quota issue. However, users also have the option to leave their email on the server so that they can view it from multiple computers. If this is the case, that user will want to keep a close eye on Disk Usage. As soon as that user's email spool reaches 10MB, the server will no longer accept messages for them. They will have to download or delete the messages in order to receive more mail.

The Website Utilization section will display the amount of memory used by your website, the amount remaining, as well as the percentage of space you have used. This total is separate from the totals of the Mail accounts.

Click on Disk Usage; a warning message will appear. Click OK.

Once the calculations are complete you will be shown an output screen similar to the one shown below. Any users approaching 80% should be warned.

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View Logfiles

This tool is intended for customers that have an netINS Web Hosting account. If you are using the Administration Interface strictly for Email this tool will not provide you with any valuable information.

If you use the netINS Standard Webhosting Service, click on View Logfiles.

From the View Logfiles section you can select how many lines of the most current log entries you'd like to view and which log you would like to view.

  • Web access: These logs show the "hit" activity of your site, which allows you to view who is visiting your site.
  • Web error: These logs show the errors that are generated by access to your site. If you are attempting to troubleshoot an improperly configured CGI script, this can be a useful tool.

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View Site Statistics

Click on View Site Statistics. A new browser window will open with a web page dedicated to your site's traffic statistics. Detailed instructions are listed on the stats site.

Alternatively you can view your sites statistics by going to http://www.yourdomain.ext/stats

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Group Management

Click on the Group Management link.

This will open the Group Management interface for your domain. Groups can be useful for small groups of people in your organization that work closely together. An example might be your sales department. You can set up a "group" for sales. Anytime an email is sent to sales@yourdomain.ext it would be distributed to all of the users you specify for the group.

To create a new group enter the group name (this will be the email address for your group) and give it a Real Name which would better describe the group you are setting up. Place checks next to the options you would like to enable for each group. The only thing left to do is to add the members of the group. Don't worry, you can add more than 3 per group. As you add more and more members, additional entry boxes will appear after creating the group.

Once you've added the group you can use the Current Groups section to make any necessary changes. Explanations of the configuration options are provided below this image.

  • Report Delivery to Group

If this option is selected, then a delivery report (if requested) is generated as soon as a message is copied and re-submitted for delivery to all group members. If subsequent delivery to any group member fails, error reports are not generated. If this option is not selected, delivery to this group is processed as relaying, and the delivery notification options are copied to addresses of all group members. If delivery to any group member fails, the sender gets an error message. If a message was sent with delivery notification requested, the sender will get notification delivery from all group members.

  • Set Reply-To to Group

If this option is selected, the Reply-to: header pointing to the group address is added to the message copy before it is sent to group members. This ensures that replies to a message sent to this group will go back to the group, not to the message author.

  • Expand Member Groups

If this option is selected, the group members are checked before a message is copied and sent to member addresses. If a group member is a group in the same domain, then that group's members are extracted and inserted into the address list. If that group also has this option enabled, the extracted members are checked, too. This option allows more efficient group delivery (only one message copy is created for all recipients) and it also helps to avoid duplicates and mail loops.

If the group contains two other groups (sub-groups) as members, and those sub-groups contain the same address, then only one copy of the message is delivered to that address if the Expand option is enabled. If this option is disabled, the copy of the original message will be delivered to both sub-groups, and each sub-group will send its copy of the original message to that address.

  • Remove Author from Distribution

If this option is selected, the message From: address is removed from the (optionally expanded) members list.

  • Remove To and Cc from Distribution

If this option is selected, all addresses from the message To and Cc fields are removed from the (optionally expanded) members list. The sender address is always removed from the members list so the message sender does not get back his/her own messages.

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MySQL Management

A working knowledge of relational databases is required to use these features

The MySQL® database has become the world's most popular open source database because of its consistent fast performance, high reliability and ease of use. It's used in more than 11 million installations ranging from large corporations to specialized embedded applications on every continent in the world. (Yes, even Antarctica!)

  • Managing your MySQL Databases

Click on the MySQL Management link.

From here you can create or delete MySQL databases

If you try to add more than 2 databases you will be warned that additional databases will result in a charge

Additional settings can be accessed using the PHPMyAdmin found here


System Messages

Click on the System Messages link.

Stored here are important messages about system maintenance and other announcements. If we need to contact you, or inform you of regular system maintenance, we will do it here.

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