Free student Web hosting for students enrolled in the ROP Web Development Program is back online. This hosting program is not available to the general public. All current students will have to sign up for new accounts. If you are enrolled in the program accounts should be approved within 72 hours. You will not be able to access your new account until you receive a “New Account Information” email from me.

If you’re looking for paid hosting check out Host Gator, accounts start at as little as $4.95 per month.

With cPanel’s graphical tools you can change your account password, create and manage email accounts, create directories and perform online file management, password protect directories, backup your entire site, create custom error pages, manage FTP functionality, setup MySQL directories, install scripts and open source software, and check your site’s statistics (visitor logs). This is just a sampling of the tools available in cPanel.

When you sign up for an account with robinshosting.com you will have access to cPanel. Visit http://www.robinshosting.com/cpanel and use your robinshosting.com User Name and Password to log in.

It is important to learn how to use cPanel to manage your Web sites. To help you to learn how to use cPanel there are numerous Flash tutorials on the robinshosting.com support page. Viewing these tutorials will help you to learn what cPanel can do and how to manage your Web site account.

Additional cPanel resources

Interactive cPanel Guide – A good starting point to learn about some of the basic cPanel functionality.

Learn cPanel – Numerous tutorials and resources for learning to use cPanel.

cPanel.net – cPanel user documentation. Be sure to visit the rest of the cPanel.net site for additional documentation.

1. Setup mail accounts and read email via the Web
2. Change your account password
3. Park a domain
4. Add FTP accounts
5. Manage your online files and permissions – upload files
6. Check your disk space usage
7. Make backups of your site
8. Password protect directories
9. Create error, 404, pages
10. Setup subdomains
11. Create and manage MySQL databases
12. Setup redirects
13. Add and remove FrontPage Server Extensions
14. Check your Web site statistics/visitors
15. Install Web Applications via CPanel and Fantastico

To log into your CPanel account visit http://yourusername.robinshosting.com/cpanel and enter your username and password.

These are just some of the administrative tasks you can do using CPanel. I have numerous CPanel video tutorials (no sound) on the support pages of robinshosting.com. You should take the time to review these videos and the CPanel documentation. In addition to the CPanel support materials at robinshosting.com, there are video tutorials available when you log into CPanel in the preferences section of the page.

If you skipped chapter 4 of your Head First with HTML, CSS & XHTML you should go back and review it now. You have all of the tools that you need to upload pages to your new sites.

Important Information Before You Sign Up

1. You must be CURRENTLY ENROLLED in the ROP Web Development class with Robin Wood. Your account will NOT be approved if you are not an ROP student.
2. You must use a valid email address to sign up for your account. Use an email address that you normally use to sign up for accounts and services on the Internet; do not try to use an email address with robinshosting.com.
3. Your subdomain name must be at least 5 characters and a maximum of 8 characters.
4. Be sure to change your Login username to match your subdomain. Use a Login password that you can remember. You Login username must be at least 5 characters and a maximum of 8 characters
5. Print and keep the Welcome mail that you receive. You will need these details to login to your account.
6. Your account will remain open while you are enrolled in the Web Development Program. When you leave the program you must move your files to a new server because your account will be closed. Your instructor WILL NOT make backups of your files, you are responsible for copying your files from robinshosting.com to a new server or to your hard drive at home before you exit the program.

You can sign up for an account by visiting http://www.robinshosting.com. You must read the Terms of Service before you can sign up for a hosting account. Accounts will be activated withing 48-72 hours during business hours. Be sure to check your spam folder for a Welcome mail message from robinshosting.com

For example, I have three sites that I manage, a photography site, a recipe site, and a baseball site. I could purchase three hosting packages to host the sites, but that’s expensive and I would have to use different CPanel interfaces to manage each account. I already pay for one hosting account with 500 megabytes of space. That’s really a lot of space for one small site, so instead of purchasing three hosting accounts I can use the larger account to host all three sites.

So how do I do that? The first step is to create folders for each of the sites. Site folders can be created with an FTP program, Dreamweaver, or by using CPanel’s File Manager (Flash SWF – 367kb). For the sites mentioned above I would create three folders: photos, recipes, and baseball to store the individual site’s files. Then the site files need to be uploaded to the appropriate site folders.

When a user wants to access the sites that are in these folders they would have to type http://robin.robinshosting.com/photos, http://robin.robinshosting.com/recipes, or http://robin.robinshosting.com/baseball. What I really want is to give each of these sites their own domain names. I already purchased three domain names for use with these sites: http://www.photosbyrobin.com for the photography site, recipesbyrobin.com for the recipe site, and robinlovesbaseball.com for the baseball site. I also changed the nameservers at the domain registrar to point to my hosting company. Using Addon domains, a CPanel function, allows me to point my different domain names at the appropriate folders.

Here are the steps:

1. Open CPanel.
2. Click the Addon Domains icon.
3. Type your domain name without the http://www. in the ‘New Domain Name’ box and press the tab key. When you press the tab key the ‘Username/directory/subdomain Name’ box will automatically be filled with the domain name. Click the image below to see a screen capture.
   
4. Change the ‘Username/directory/subdomain Name’ that was automatically filled out when you completed the previous step to the desired folder name. For this example I will use photos. Click the image below to see a screen capture.
   
5. Click Add Domain!

That’s it; your domain name (photosbyrobin.com) will now point at the specified folder (photos) and display the folder’s contents. For example, if a user was to type the URL photosbyrobin.com in their browser the site will appear. You can repeat the process for each domain/folder that you would like to associate. Please keep in mind that it will take up to 48 hours for the domain to propagate.

If you would like to see a demonstration of this process view the Flash movie tutorial How to Addon a Domain (Flash SWF file – 243kb).

Domain Name: www.mydomainname.com – this is the address that people will use to access your web site.

Domain Name Registrar: A service that leases domain names to the public. Many registrars are also hosting companies.

Hosting Company: A company that provides server space for you to store your web site.

Nameserver: The server that associates domain names with the web hosting company’s servers.

So you’re ready to get your first domain name? Terrific! Before you get to excited you will need to be sure that the domain name you want is available at a domain name registrar. There are many popular registrars available, but my personal favorite is Godaddy.com.

At the domain name registrar you can search for available domain names and order your site’s domain name if it is available. Keep in mind that your first choice for a domain name may already be taken. If your desired domain name is taken, check Domains Bot for alternative domain names. At Domains Bot type in a keyword that relates to your site content in the search box and click Search. Domains Bot will return a list of suggested domain names, their availability, and purchasing information.

Once you have the domain name selected and you’ve determined that it is available you can then lease the domain name at the registrar. Yes, I said lease; you don’t really own the domain name, instead you lease it for a period of one to 10 years.

Once you’ve gotten your new domain name you have to point your domain name to your hosting company’s servers. This process is called updating nameservers. When you purchase your domain name from a domain name registrar the nameservers are usually pointing to the registrar’s servers and to a temporary “coming soon” page.

You will have to get the nameserver addresses (there are typically two) from the hosting company. The nameserver addresses should look something like: NS1.YOURHOSTINGCOMPANY.COM and NS2.YOURHOSTINGCOMPANY.COM. Once you have the nameserver addresses from your host, visit your registrar’s home page and log into your account. From the account or domain manager you should look for an option to update or manage the nameservers. If you have used GoDaddy to purchase your domain names you can watch this Flash Movie – Updating Nameservers (Flash SWF – 1094kb) to see a demo of how to update your servers.

Once you change the nameservers it will take 24-48 hours for the domain name to propagate. This means that your new domain name may not work for up to 48 hours. Be patient.

If you do not have a hosting company here are some tips for finding a hosting company.

Free web hosting is available to students who are currently enrolled in the ROP Technology Center’s Web Design Program. This hosting program will be available to students for the duration of their course.

Since many of you are approaching chapter four of the XHTML book it’s time to sign up for your free account. You can sign up for the free ‘Student’ hosting account at http://www.robinshosting.com. It is your responsibility to read all of the information presented on http://www.robinshosting.com including the terms of service. After reading the terms of service, select the ‘Student’ Plan under the Free hosting option and click Continue. Select ‘search for a desired subdomain’ and type the desired subdomain name (subdomain names must be eight characters or less) and click continue to see if the name is available, click continue again. Complete the account details making sure to change your username (I would recommend that you make your subdomain and username the same) Click continue when you’re done.

Once you sign up for your account and it’s approved you will receive an email with important details about your account (login information, FTP details, webmail login, and CPanel access). Be sure to save the account details email.

Your free account will be a subdomain of robinshosting.com. This means that the URL to your site will look like this: http://yourusername.robinshosting.com. I hope to have additional domain name choices in the future.

You should take the time to get to know the features of your new account. Review the guides and resources and the CPanel and Fantastico tutorials.

If you need to update your customer contact information once your account is setup you can visit http://www.robinshosting.com/host/customer.php. You can also submit support tickets from the customer support area. There is a support forum for you to use to post questions and share tips with your fellow students.

Paid Web Hosting Information

When you graduate from the program you can continue to have your accounts hosted on the robinshosting.com servers for a monthly fee, move your files to another hosting company, or close your account. The monthly hosting fee helps to support free hosting for future ROP students. At this time we have two paid hosting packages available:

• Graduate $6.00/mo – 300MB space, 7GB bandwidth, unlimited email and FTP accounts, PHP 5 – MySQL 4.1 (unlimited databases), CPanel, Fantastico, five add-on domains
• Alumni $8.00/mo – 500MB space, 15GB bandwidth, unlimited email and FTP accounts, PHP 5 – MySQL 4.1 (unlimited databases), CPanel, Fantastico, unlimited sub domains, 10 add-on domains

You can learn more about the features of these plans on the hosting plans page.

Both of these accounts support multiple domains. This means that you can host and control multiple web sites with one account. The ‘Graduate’ plan will support up to five domains and the ‘Alumni’ plan will support up to 10 domains. If you decide to upgrade your account to paid hosting you will not have to move files, the upgrade will be handled by me.

If you would like to sign up for paid hosting and upgrade your existing account, let me know which plan you would like and how often you would like to be billed. I will upgrade your existing account and send you an invoice for payment.

Alternatively, if you would like to sign up for a separate new paid hosting account with it’s own domain name follow these steps:

1. Visit the hosting order page
2. Select the hosting plan (Graduate or Alumni) from the ‘Paid Hosting’ drop down menu, select the desired payment cycle (monthly, quartly, half yearly, yearly, and click Continue
3. Select ‘Use a domain name you already have’. Note: If you do not have a domain name, visit GoDaddy.com and purchase your domain name. Type your domain name and click Continue.
4. At the customer information page select the ‘Existing Customer’ option and type the email address and password that you used when you signed up for the account. Click Continue.
5. Review the Cart Contents and select ‘PayPal’ under the Payment options. Payments will be reoccurring with PayPal. Click Submit Order. Login to your PayPal account and click continue. Make the payment.

Please take the time to review these tutorials. Learning to properly manage your hosting account is an important part of your training experience.

The tutorials are available @ http://www.robinshosting.com/faq.html. All of the tutorials are in Flash SWF format.

1. Password protecting a directory
2. How to change your password
3. Managing a MySQL database in PHPMyAdmin
4. How to redirect URL
5. Keeping your contact information up to date
6. How to use webmail
7. How to add a FTP account
8. How to addon a domain
9. How to add subdomain
10. Creating an autoresponder
11. How to backup your site
12. Creating a default (catchall) email account
13. How to set up a cronjob
14. How to redirect e-mail
15. How to create a POP email account
16. How create custom error pages
17. Using File Manager
18. How to install and uninstall Frontpage extensions
19. Enabling Hotlink Protection
20. Using Index Manager
21. How to create a MySQL database
22. Setting up an e-mail account in Outlook Express
23. Disk Usage Viewer
24. How to Trace an Email Address
25. How to Setup an Email Filter
26. Submitting to Search Engines
27. Setting Up the IP Deny Manager
28. Navigating Around cPanel
29. Raw Log Manager

You can find all of these tutorials on the new FAQs page on the hosting site. Additional tutorials for CPanel and Fantastico will be available in the very near future.

If you can’t find the answer to your question on the FAQs page, check the hosting forum and post a question. If you have a question about a feature, other students probably will too.

As an assignment for today, I would like all of the web development students to review the new CPanel movies. You need to get to know your account features and this is the best way.

I have also updated all of the FTP/Dreamweaver tutorials again. I would recommend that you review these tutorials; links can be found on the FAQ page also. The XHTML and Dreamweaver assignment sheets have also been updated.