2 Important Web Hosting Account Elements

You've already bougt your new webhosting account and is ready to publish your website to the world, right? NO, before trying to upload your website pages to your hosting server, you must first check these 2 important factors and which will affect your website managemnt with the time.

1- Test Your FTP Account.

The first and most important issue is to to chek if you will be able to upload your website files to your webhosting space or not, try uploading any webpage to your hosting space by FTP. to do that, you will need any FTP program.

You simply can make a test page by openning any text editor and just write "this is my website!". Save it as index.html. Regarding the FTP program, you have a lot of choices. There's many solutions for everyone, some good free programs to consider are Cute FTP (cuteftp.com), Smart FTP (smartftp.com).

Once you've created your test web page, open the FTP program and ask it to connect to your host's FTP server. This is usually ftp.yourhost.com, although you might also now be able to access it through your own website by using ftp.yourdomain.com. Once you're connected, you can browse through your website folders looking for any existing index.html file, it'll be in a folder called something like 'public_html'. Upload your created index.html over this one, and click 'yes' when you're asked if you want to overwrite it.

Now, go to your web browser and try to access your website. If everything's as it should be, then you'll see what you wrote in thee test home page right there on your website home page! You can then write real content to replace that little bit of text – it's always exciting when you realise that your new website beacame live on the web. If you don't see the text, on the other hand, then you might want to refer to your hosting support pages.

2- Set Up an Email Address.

Most - of not all - web hosting providers allow you to configure your hosting account using a program called cPanel. After receiving your hosting account information, this welcome email should tell you how to access your webhosting control panel, it'll usually be something like http://www.yoursitename.com/cpanel.

To access your web hosting control panel, you'll be asked for your username and password, and then you'll find a screen full of icons. The icons you have will depend on which features you got with your web hosting account. Look for the icon called 'email', and then create any email address accounts you need there.

To check your email, you will need to add an account in your email program. This should be easy, just look for an option in your email program's 'Tools' menu called 'Accounts', and follow the instructions to add a new email account. You'll be asked for POP3 and SMTP servers (provided by your hosting provider), as well as the email address and password you just configured in cPanel. Try sending an email to your new emaill address from one of your other accounts, to see if it works.