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A Word Before Signing Up
What size plan to do I need?
The current pricing plans are found on the
Hosting Plan Page.
Level 1 is generally only enough space for a basic or "brochureware" website. It is great for small personal sites, event sites, small business sites, and other low traffic or limited use purposes. If you use webmail heavily, you will not have much email storage. If you plan to install any sort of interactive feature or script, move up to at least Level 2.
Level 2 is the most popular starter plan. Great for most average business sites, email and webmail users, and to support many popular content scripts (like message boards, blogs, and shopping carts).
Level 3 is our next-most popular plan and offers more storage. Good for sites with more photos, audio files, higher webmail traffic, larger shopping carts.
Levels 4 and 5 are for sites that are begining to be more popular... they accommodate much more traffic.
You can upgrade from one to another at any time, and we will calculate a pro-rated fee for you. Just open a helpdesk ticket and ask to upgrade.
We do have special options for multiple domains, larger sites, adult content sites, and resellers. You need only ask to get our recommendations.
Why would I need a static IP?
You will need one if you plan to use a private SSL certificate (secure server feature for e-commerce). You will NOT need a static IP if you are using the free shared SSL we offer.
Don't order an IP if you don't need one.... it's a waste of IP block resources and your money. The rumor that it makes your site more secure is NOT, I repeat NOT, true.
Wo no longer offer anonymous FTP (public_FTP)on the shared hosting servers. Too insecure and messy for shared accounts. It is available by request on dedicated servers.
Not sure? Add one later. You do not have to decide at sign-up.
Can I manage my own website?
We sure hope so! We have a control panel loaded with features to help you do just that.
There are extensive CPanel instructions, with a handy indexed Table of Contents. Free free to browse around in the instructions to get a feel for what it can do. Also consult our tutorial pages, resource links, and archived newsletters for more help and ideas.
How fast can I set up an account?
You can make payment right from our shopping cart on the Hosting Plan Page. We will set up your account within 24 hours of receiving your payment. You will receive an email welcome letter with initial instructions as soon as the account is activated. If you have mailed us a check or money order, the account will be activated as soon as the payment clears.
If you have any questions or need to tell us about errors or changes before we set you up, send an email to support.
Do I need to buy FrontPage Extensions?
FrontPage is Microsoft's consumer webpage editing tool. You can buy FrontPage and use it to lay out webpages. Frontpage also has a bunch of features that interact with your website... you can upload files with it, and perform various functions. Using those functions requires FrontPage Extensions to be enabled on your account.
You *can* use FrontPage to just design pages, and then use a regular FTP client to upload them. You do not need to have Extensions enabled to do that... it just becomes another web editing tool.
If you do not have specific plans to use FrontPage, don't enable it. It takes up storage space and it messes up your .htacess files if you later disable it.
If you have a professional designer working on your site, don't enable FrontPage; few designers use it. It is more of a do-it-yourself tool.
Can I remove the FrontPage extensions later?
Sorta. If your account is created with FrontPage Extensions, they can later be removed, but it will also remove your .htaccess data. That means that if you password-protected any directories, the protection will disappear, along with the user data. Back up the data.
Or consider using some other web editing tool to build your site. You CAN use FrontPage as an editing tool WITHOUT using the Extensions. Again, you do not have to have FrontPage Extensions installed on your account to simply use the software to build websites that you upload to the server with an FTP client or using FileManager in the control panel. You just can't use the features that require extensions.
Can I use Frontpage 2003?
If you upgrade to Frontpage 2003, you may find that you cannot use some of its features on our servers. We are running FP Extension for FP 5.0.xx, but we CANNOT upgrade it to FP 2003 "Extensions" because there are none. Microsoft now requires it to be run on a Windows serer with yet more expensive MS software.
As you know, Gryphyn Media does not license Microsoft products. So, Microsoft will continue to support "old" extensions on Linux servers, but there will be things you can't do on FP 2003.
You WILL still be able to develop a website using FrontPage and PUBLISH it to our servers using the "regular" FTP process that everyone else uses.
Microsoft: "While we are eliminating investment in the development of future server extension versions, we will continue to support existing server extensions on the Windows and UNIX/Apache server platforms. We will also update the FrontPage 2002 server extensions to support Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS 6.0), but will not add any additional Web site authoring functionality."
Microsoft: "All of the live data-driven Web site features in FrontPage 2003 require Windows SharePoint Services. Some of these features include data-driven Web sites, XML support, the Data Source Catalog, Web package templates, and Web Parts."
Read more at the Microsoft site:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/frontpage/prodinfo/faq.mspx
Where is the Acceptable Use Policy?
Click here for Acceptable Use Policy A new window will open.
Also see the question about BANNED activities in this section of the FAQ.
What are the pricing plans?
The current pricing plans are found on the
Hosting Plan Page.
Do you do Windows hosting?
No right now. I've chosen to specialize in Linux hosting, which I think is a better platform for shared hosting, and a more affordable development platform.
I am developing a Windows product to host Cold Fusion developers in the near future.
Do you support IMAP?
Yes.
We have three system webmail clients ready to use:
Neomail http://www.neomail.org/
Horde http://horde.org
Squirrelmail http://www.squirrelmail.org/
Horde and Squirrel support IMAP. You may also configure your own email client to use IMAP. I know Eudora supports it, but I have not experiemented with others. Check the support docs for your email program to see if you can use it with IMAP.
I run the University of Washington’s IMAP, UWIMAPD, (imap-devel-2001a-10 and imap-2001a-10).
http://www.washington.edu/imap/
What is IMAP?
http://www.imap.org/about/whatisIMAP.html
You may also install your own version of Squirrel on your account, rather than using the system installation, so you can make mods or install some of the many open source plugins available. Learn more at the Squirrel website and on their email lists.
Do you support Cold Fusion?
This page USED TO say:
"Not at the present. But since many of our clients are designers and developers, we are considering it in 2004. Please drop us a lineif you are interested in hearing about Cold Fusion hosting when it becomes available."
UPDATE (07/26/04)
Unfortunately, we have decided NOT to launch a server that support Cold Fusion. Several reasons, including:
-- Macromedia is shifting its marketing of CF. They are pushing it more and more toward enterprise users. Gryphyn Media sells mostly shared hosting and managed servers to small-to-medium business users (not enterprise users). So, the market for us will shrink as time goes by, making our investment worth less and less. That seems unappealing.
-- It runs best on a Windows platform. We tried... but we just hate it. We don't want to have to start supporting all sorts of Windows products just to be CoOld Fusion hosts. It's not where we want to go.
Sorry... no Cold Fusion.
Are you using Cogent bandwidth?
No. Cognet bandwidth is cheap and widely-used... but also blocked by some corporate servers, because it is favored by high-volume users for porn and spam. We use NAC bandwidth... more expensive, but worth every penny.
What do you mean I'm spamming!?
The fact of the matter is that YOU may not think so, but
I might have to treat you like a spammer unless you follow
some rules. A respected Gryphyn Media client recently found
itself in serious hot water over this. Use their painful
lesson to your advantage.
Spam is generally "bulk unsolicited commercial email."
TRUE OR FALSE?
"Real spammers send out millions of emails. I am only
sending 250 or so. It will not be considered spam."
False. There is no minimum number to be considered a "bulk"
mailer. Obviously, large mailings get examined more closely.
But if you send out 50 emails, and we receive spam
complaints, it can be considered spam. I may not know if you
are deliberately sending email, or if you have been
hijacked, but a big blast of email can slow down a shared
server for everyone. Be a good neighbor and use an email
list management program that spreads out the mailing in
smaller batches. Talk to me when you plan a big mailing.
Another rule of thumb: don't use Outlook for big mailings;
it's the wrong tool and will annoy your ISP.
TRUE OR FALSE?
"I have carefully assembed a list of people in my industry
who would WANT to know what I am telling them... it is news,
not spam."
False. The key word here is "solicited." They did not ask
for the mail. You do not have their permission to decide
what they need to know and send them email about it. If you
blast out an email announcement, you are spamming. You need
to contact them a few at a time and ASK them to join your
newsletter list... if they don't find your offer attractive,
do NOT email them again!
TRUE OR FALSE?
"I am not a marketing business. I am sending out email to
my own contacts. No one will come after me for that."
False. The recent CAN-SPAM Act just went into effect. ISPs
and hosts are on alert. The law is confusing and inexact;
it does not exclude newsletters. The big ISPs like AOL,
Yahoo and Hotmail do not care if your email has "commercial"
content. They only check how big your mailing is, whether
your recipients "whitelisted" you, and how many reported you
as spam (fairly or not). Be extremely careful with a new
domain name... you are not on ANYone's whitelist when you
are new. Ask me how to get permission from people you want
to email.
If we get spam alerts, or complaints from the big ISPs, they
will threaten to blacklist our whole IP block. We will have
no choice but to shut you down, even if your mistake was innocent. We are all part of a network, and email from our servers CAN be blocked by important carriers if we do not respond to spam complaints by taking action.
We MUST act to protect everyone on the server. You MUST
become literate about email and spam issues. Or you may be
considered part of the problem that plagues us all.
We will be providing more details about these issues as they develop. Make sure you read the newsletters that we send.
What is the difference between "parking" and "redirecting" and an "add-on" domain?
Park, Redirect, and Add-on are 3 methods of having one domain lead to another domain. Each is useful, but for different things.
We would PARK a domain "on top of" one you already have hosted. Let's say you have hosted a website at "car.com" and you want "auto.com" to show the same content. If you PARK auto.com on top of car.com, when someone types in auto.com in their browser, they will SEE the content from the car.com site, but see "auto.com" as the URL. You can make email accounts and control email for the parked domain with this option.
(For techies, parking is a function of a DNS entry, whereby the DNS zone for the "parked" domain resolves at the same location as the original domain. With Park, the system actually recognizes one domain to be the other domain.)
When we set up a REDIRECT, the websurfer types in one domain, and shows up at another. If we REDIRECT auto.com to point to car.com, then when the websurfer types in auto.com, he just shows up at car.com. This is often perfect for domains you purchased because they were mispellings or alternate spellings of your main domain. There is no email control with this option.
Many registrars provide this service for free when you register a domain name. They will ask you if you want to point it at another domain, at GoDaddy, for instance. It is sometimes called DOMAIN FORWARDING.
(Techies: Redirect is a function of .htaccess, usually used for temporary redirection to another location or when moving a site. Redirect means you show up at one address and you get sent to another. You enter one domain in the browser, and end up at a different domain. It can also be done with an HTML redirect, from an existing website.)
An ADD-ON domain is the same as parking a new domain to a SUBDOMAIN. If you made auto.com an Add-on Domain, it would point to auto.car.com. and display the content of that subdomain while the user sees "auto.com" in the browser window. This is great for making microsites and landing pages for extra keyword domains you want to promote in search engines, since each domain has its own content.
I have a BIG email list... can you host it?
Probably, unless it is *very* large. We will need to talk about the details before I can give you a price.
There are also hundreds of list hosting services you might consider. As a host, I tend to use in-house solutions, so I do not have direct experience with a wide variety of list hosts.
If you want to consider that, here is a "buying guide" for finding a list host. Might be very useful for making such an important decision, but you can use the list on that page to check out some other companies.
You (and/or your client) should consider subscribing to EmailSherpa's newsletter... it is a top-rated resource for organizations that market with email. It's free and they send case studies, articles about various techniques, reports on regulations that affect email marketers, etc.
How does your daily back-up system work?
Please keep in mind that our backups are mainly for faster disaster recovery in case a whole server goes down. You may use them for occassionally restoring files, but it should not be considered a replacement for maintaining your own offsite backups.
The system saves a full backup once per month (although not necessarily on the first of the month), a backup of differences from the previous monthly backup once per week, and a backup of differences from the previous weekly backup once per day. This provides up to three different dates to restore from (however there will be less than three dates at certain points during the month, such as right after a full monthly backup). This service is provided without fee to all shared hosting customers.
We can quickly restore full accounts or individual files or directories at your request. You would have a choice of either the weekly backup or the last daily backup.
For example, if it is Thursday and the weekly backup happened on a Sunday and the last daily backup happened on a Wednesday, you would get a choice of either Sunday or Wednesday. You would need to specify the files and/or directories you need, in a helpdesk ticket.
Are your servers mirrored, or otherwise "bullet-proof?"
No. Did you look at the pricing? The shared hosting plans are entry-level business hosting. you just don't get "bullet-proof" at this level.
The concept of "bullet proof hosting" is an excellent one, but there are a few key things that need to be kept in mind. First, things can always go wrong, and typically these things are related to hardware. The amount of hardware required to circumvent a failure also follows an exponential curve, albeit a logarithmic one, as it is scaled.
Unfortunately, the term "mirroring" is thrown around in the industry as if it is as simple as clicking a button. Mirroring requires a full duplicate set of hardware, software, data, and typically a duplicate network to be available, and dedicated, at all times. This by itself is cost-prohibitive for small-to-moderate businesses. We can provide these services to enterprise customers, but they start at around $1,000/month for a basic installation with N+1 redundancy, starting with 2N where N is 1. Once load balancing becomes part of the equation, it is necessary to start with 3N where N is 1 in order to provide failover without overload on another box.
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