Web Hosting FAQ's

Mintarix Virtual Services Frequently Asked Questions

Question: What is a Domain/ Domain Name?

Answer: A domain name is a registered name with a domain name server program (DNS). The DNS allows people to use a proper name to find your site instead of an IP address (255.255.255.255). Ownership of a domain name gives you the sole rights to use the domain name on the internet.

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Question: How can I register a Domain Name?

Answer: There are domain name registration sites for Domain names ending in .com, .net, .org like Ours. For all others there are electronic forms to fill out and email to the country organisation you want to have a domain name with like .ca is at www.cdnnet.ca applications take a minimum of one week for Canada. Other countries registration period for domain names are longer. This is one reason .com, .net, .org are so popular. If you do not want to do the registration your host provider can help you register.

Note: When a site is registered and it is to be yours or your companies you should make sure of the following.

The registrants name is you or your company( not your hosting Company) the registrant is the owner and hold the rights to the name on the internet.

The Administration contact should be you or some one in your organisation who will be long term. this give you the ability to change things like billing address and if need be move from your host provider.

The Technical contact is the host provider you are using.

The Billing address should be yours or your companies ( not the host provider).

You can check information by doing a Whois Search which will give you all the above information for your domain once it is registered.

If any of these are not true ask your web host provider to help you get it straight. Note: if the registrant name is not correct it may take a notarized letter for the listed owner to change it.

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Question: How do I pick a Web Host provider?

Answer: It is much like shopping for anything today. The large companies have some things to offer and the small companies have other items to offer. But the general rule is to shop around.
For example on operator may offer a 50 meg site for $50US. bu another may offer a 5 meg site for $10US. The 50meg site may look good, but be careful you could be spending $40US for nothing. A majority of sites will require 5 megs to 10 megs or less this would be for a introduction, contact, company background, product information, if physical retail store maybe a sales page to advertise specials. Look for prices and check for add-on prices which boost your overall cost.
Also be aware if the company that is designing your pages (if you are not building yourself Hint a good start book is "Teach Yourself HTML in 24 hour" series available from Barnes and Noble) and you are hosting with them. Make sure they make the site as efficient as possible, so you do not pay for space which is unnecessary. You may want to split the design and hosting to prevent conflict of interest.

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Question: How do I load my pages onto my site?

Answer: You must have an ftp program installed on your computer. a windows based program is easier than text based. see downloads Or if you are a Mintarix client you can use MS Frontpage if you are using MS Frontpage to design your pages. From you FTP program Connect to your domain www.yourdomain.com log in with your siteadmin username and password.
If you are a Mintarix client. This will place you into your personal website directory. Showing web sub directory. You will want to go up to your root directory which shows directories log, users, web. You will go in to this web directory and add your pages here. Note your first page of your site has to be named "index.html"

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