FAQS

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Frequently Asked Questions

We've compiled a list of answers to common questions.

After you purchase a shared hosting package from LGM Hosting, you’ll receive a welcome e-mail message that provides information about how to access your account on the LGM Hosting Customer Portal. The Customer Portal enables you to view your account’s product information, including:

  • Domain name and IP address.
  • cPanel URLs and login information.
  • FTP server and login information.
  • E-mail server and login information.
  • DNS name server information.
  • SSH account information.

cPanel is a fully featured web-based control panel that enables you to manage your site through an easy-to-use web interface. Using cPanel, you can manage all aspects of your site, including e-mail, files, backups, FTP, CGI scripts, web site statistics, and much more.

To access cPanel through the Customer Portal, follow these steps:

  1. Log in to the Customer Portal
  2. On the menu bar, click SERVICES, and then click MY SERVICES

  1. Under My Products & Services, locate your hosting package, and then click Manage.

  1. In the Actions sidebar, click Login to cPanel.

To create an e-mail account in cPanel, follow these steps:

  1. Log in to cPanel.
  2. Open the Email Accounts tool.
  3. Click Create.
  4. From the Domain menu, select the domain where you want to create the e-mail account.
  5. Enter a new email address in the Username text box.
  6. Select one of the following options for the password:

    • Select Set password now, and then type a password in the Password text box.
    • Alternatively, select Send login link to alternate email address, and cPanel sends a message with login information to the specified e-mail address.
  7. Next to Optional Settings, click Edit Settings.
  8. In the Storage Space section, enter a custom mailbox quota storage size, or select Unlimited.
  9. To automatically create folders for plus addressing, select Automatically Create Folders.
  10. To send a message with client configuration instructions to the account, select the Send a welcome email with instructions to set up a mail client check box.
  11. Select Stay on this page after I click Create to create another email account after you create this one. Alternatively, click Create to create the account and return to the Email Accounts page.

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) enhances a web site’s security by providing two important features: encryption and authentication.

  • Encryption means that the data sent between your web site and users is unreadable by others. When a user accesses your site using an SSL connnection (URLs that begin with https://), the web server and web browser exchange encrypted information. Contrast this with unencrypted web transactions, which are transmitted as plaintext and subject to eavesdropping.
  • Authentication means visitors can trust that you actually are who you claim to be. When users access your site using an SSL connection, they can be confident that they are seeing your site, and not an impostor’s. Whereas encryption helps protect data, authentication helps prove your identity to others.

When users visit an SSL-enabled site, most web browsers display a lock icon (usually in the address bar). To enable SSL for your own web site, you must obtain and install a certificate.

Here are some techniques for creating a strong password:

  • Choose a password that is at least eight characters long, but preferably longer. The longer the password, the less susceptible it is to brute-force attacks.
  • Use a mixture of lowercase and uppercase characters, numbers, and punctuation marks.
  • Place a punctuation mark in the middle of a word (for example, vege%tarian).
  • Use some unusual way of contracting a word. You don’t have to use an apostrophe.
  • Think of an uncommon phrase, and then take the first, second or last letter of each word. You can’t always get what you want could become ycagwyw. Throw in a capital letter, a punctuation mark, and a number or two, and you might have yCag5wyw.
  • You can deliberately misspell one or more words to make the password harder to crack.
  • Combine several of the above techniques.
  • Use something that no one but you would ever think of. The best password is one that is totally random to everyone else but you. Since this is highly dependent on the individual, it is difficult to tell you how to come up with these, but use your imagination!

Here are some guidelines for what not to do when choosing a password. You should avoid these techniques when you create a password:

  • Using words in a dictionary.
  • Using your username or real name.
  • Using anyone else’s name.
  • Using any word in a cracking dictionary. A cracking dictionary contains lists of words that attackers use to try to crack passwords (this is also known as a dictionary attack). These lists include abbreviations, cartoons, character patterns, machine names, famous names, female names, male names, Bible citations, movies, myths, numeric patterns, short phrases, places, science fiction, Shakespeare, songs, surnames, and just about anything else you can think of.
  • Using any of the above techniques with a single character before or after it (for example, happy1).
  • Using any of the above techniques with capitalization (for example, Penguin or Walrus).
  • Using any of the above reversed (for example, reversing cat to tac), doubled (cat to catcat), or mirrored (cat to cattac).
  • Selecting a word and substituting some characters (for example, changing password into p@ssw0rd, or supersecret into sup3rs3cr3t). Attackers are well aware of these substitutions, and can crack them.
  • Using keyboard patterns (for example, qwerty or nbvcx). Cracking programs look for these types of patterns in passwords.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a protocol that enables you to transfer files between your A2 Hosting account and another computer. FTP establishes a connection between a server (in this case, your account on an A2 Hosting server) and a client (your local computer). To make your website files accessible to the public, you use an FTP client to upload them to your A2 Hosting account on the server. You can also download files from your A2 Hosting account to your local computer.

The original FTP protocol does not encrypt data sent between the server and the client. Instead, we strongly recommend you use one of the following protocols to transfer files:

  • SFTP (Secure Shell File Transfer Protocol) is available for all of our hosting accounts. As its name implies, SFTP uses the underlying SSH (Secure Shell) protocol to encrypt file transfers. To transfer files using SFTP, you use the same username and password that you use to access SSH or cPanel.
  • FTPS (FTP Secure) is available for all of our cPanel-based hosting accounts. Like SFTP, FTPS adds a layer of security to file transfers. Instead of using SSH however, FTPS uses TLS (Transport Layer Security). TLS is the same protocol used to provide secure connections in your web browser. To transfer files using FTPS, you use a regular FTP username and password. You do not have to use your SSH password.

There are numerous FTP clients available, and many of them support SFTP (Secure FTP) and FTPS (FTP Secure) as well. A2 Hosting recommends FileZilla, a free program that you can download here. It supports all three protocols (FTP, SFTP, and FTPS), and runs on Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Linux. In the following procedures, we show how to use FileZilla to connect to your account and transfer files.

To connect to your account using FileZilla, follow these steps:

  1. Start FileZilla.
  2. On the File menu, click Site Manager:
    • The Site Manager dialog appears:
  3. Click New Site, type a name for the site, and then press Enter.
  4. In the Host text box, type your site’s domain name. Alternatively, you can type the server hostname instead.
  5. If you want to connect using SFTP, type 7822 in the Port text box. Otherwise, leave the Port text box blank.
  6. In the Protocol list box, select the protocol you want to use:

    • To use SFTP, select SFTP – SSH File Transfer Protocol.
    • To use FTPS, select FTP – File Transfer Protocol, and then in the Encryption lbox, select Require explicit FTP over S.
    • To use regular FTP, select FTP – File Transfer Protocol, and then in the Encryption list box, select Only use plain FTP (insecure).
  7. In the Logon Type list box, select Normal.
  8. In the User text box, type the account username you want to use:

    • If you are using SFTP, you must use your cPanel username. Make sure you do not include your domain name. For example, type username, do not type username@example.com.
    • If you are using FTPS or a regular FTP connection, you can use either your cPanel username, or the username for an FTP user you have created in cPanel (for example, ftpuser@example.com).
  9. In the Password text box, type the password for the account you specified in step 8.
  10. Optionally, you can specify a default directory for FileZilla to open on the remote server after it connects. For example, many people prefer to have an FTP client access the website document root directory by default. To do this, follow these steps:

    • Click the Advanced tab.
    • In the Default remote directory text box, type /home/username/public_html, where username represents your LGM Hosting account (cPanel) username.
  11. Click Connect. After a few seconds, FileZilla establishes the connection.

After FileZilla establishes a connection between your local computer and the LGM Hosting server, you can transfer files. FileZilla has a Local site pane that displays files on your local computer, and a Remote site pane that displays files in your account on the LGM Hosting server:

To transfer files using FileZilla, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate through folders in the Local site and Remote site panes just as you would in Windows Explorer or the Mac OS X Finder. To open a folder, double-click it.
  2. To upload a file to the server, drag the file from the Local site pane to the Remote site pane. After the file transfer is complete, the file appears in the Remote site pane.
  3. To download a file to the local computer, drag the file from the Remote site pane to the Local site pane. After the file transfer is complete, the file appears in the Local site pane.
  4. You can also transfer entire folders at once:
    • To upload a folder to the server, drag the folder from the Local site pane to the Remote site pane.
    • To download a folder to the local computer, drag the folder from the Remote site pane to the Local site pane.

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