Domain Management

For more information contact us at support@anweb.net

This document covers the following topics:

• General
• Creating Sub Domains
• Switching Between Shared and Dedicated IP's
• HTTP Traffic
• Adding New Domain Names (separate document)
• Domain Alias/Domain Stacking
• "Pinging" Internet hosts from your hosting server
• Submitting Sites to Search Engines

General Information on Your Domain

To change/view any settings connected with your domain name, select the Domain Settings menu:

If you have more than one domain name, you will get the list of your domains to choose from. Otherwise, the first window to open would be the Edit Domain page:

where:

• Domain Name: the front door address used by visitors to enter your site. Click the View icon to enter the site.
• Subdomains. You can create subdomains to your domain if your current plan allows that. For more details see below.
• IP address: Choose between a shared or dedicated IP address. You need to have a dedicated IP to create an FTP Virtual Host. See below for more on IP addresses.
• Name Servers: The name of the Master server where your domain is registered. The Name Servers field can also list one or more slave servers that are revoked when the traffic becomes too heavy for the Master to handle.
• DNS Configuration: Add custom DNS records to your DNS zone. For help on configuring DNS please click here.
• Mail Service:

  Configure settings for your mail service. Click the Edit icon to view or change configuration of your mail resources. By clicking the On/Off button you can enable or disable mail support.
  Warning: disabling mail service will permanently remove all your mail resource settings. After that, you will have to configure them from scratch. For help on mail service please click here.

• Web Service: Configure settings for your web site performance. Click the Edit icon to view or change your server configuration. By clicking the On/Off button you can enable or disable website support.
  Warning: disabling web service will permanently remove all your server settings. After that, you will have to configure them from scratch. For help on web service please click here.
• Transfer HTTP: this is where you set HTTP Traffic limit. For more details, see below.
• HTML directory name: the path to the directory on the server where your site is located.
• FTP: 
  • click the ON/OFF button to create a Virtual FTP server. Disabling this feature will remove all Virtual FTP settings, so you will have to configure them from scratch.
  • click the Edit icon to view or edit the Virtual FTP settings on Virtual FTP host page.
  • By clicking Disable, you will remove all FTP settings; after that, you will have to configure them from scratch.
• Domain Aliases: You can create Domain Aliases to your domain if your current plan allows that. For details see below.
• Contact and Billing Info: This feature is available only if you have a standard domain registered with OpenSRS. All updates to your Contact and Billing Info will be submitted to OpenSRS. This feature is not available for domains registered with other registrars.
  

Creating Sub Domains

A subdomain is a lower level domain. You can create as many subdomains as allowed by the plan. Domains and subdomains have equal functional capabilities, including web site management, e-mail service, FTP, etc., but subdomains do not have their own DNS zones.

To create or add a subdomain to your domain, go through the following steps:

Step 1. In the main domain settings, switch to the dedicated IP.

Step 2. Click the OFF button in the FTP field to create a Virtual FTP host. In the window that appears, enter parameters to this Virtual FTP host.

Step 3.

1. Click the Add icon in the Sub Domains field. You will be asked to enter the subdomain name:
   
2. Enter the name of the new subdomain (you will see it on the left of your main domain name). For example, if your domain name is mydomain.com, entering mysubdomain will make your full subdomain name look like mysubdomain.mydomain.com. Newly created subdomain will be displayed in the Subdomain entry on Domain Settings page.

Step 4.

1. Go to the FTP Virtual Host page. Click the Add icon in the Virtual FTP Users field.
2. Create a new user for this subdomain.

Step 5.

1. Click the Add icon in the Virtual FTP Directories field.
2. In the Directory field of the page that appears, enter full subdomain name ending with a slash (e.g. subdomain.domain.com/).
3. On the same page, set appropriate permissions to this directory and add authorized users, if appropriate.

To create another subdomain, just go through steps 3 to 5 again.

Switching between Virtual Hosting (Shared IP) and IP Based Hosting (Dedicated IP)

The system offers 2 kinds of IP:

1. Shared IP - one IP address is assigned to several domains and access to a domain is available only by its domain name;
2. Dedicated IP - one IP address is assigned to one domain. To access a domain you can use either its IP address or its domain name.

Shared IP is used by more than one virtual hosts. This approach is known as name-based Virtual Host Support, as opposed to the traditional IP-based Virtual Host approach. The traditional approach is hard to implement on some machines, so Shared IP is used to avoid assigning a dedicated IP address to every virtual host.

The benefits of using the new name-based virtual host support are:

• virtually unlimited number of servers;
• ease of configuration and use;
• no additional hardware of software requirements.

The main disadvantage is that the client must support this part of the protocol. Also, which is critical for H-Sphere, shared IP does not allow to create FTP Virtual Hosts.

Dedicated IP is a paid service. You need a Dedicated IP to create Virtual FTP. This service uses SSL on your web server. Switching back from Dedicated IP to Shared IP will remove any of your FTP and SSL resources.

By default every domain has a Shared IP. Shared IP is free. You can change the type of IP at any time as you work with the system. To change the type of the IP, click the Change to Shared/Dedicated IP link in the Edit Domain page.

You can use IP-only server. To create it, choose "no domain" item during signup. Following the signup, you should change type of IP to Dedicated.

Changing HTTP Traffic

Every user plan has a default traffic limit. If you exceed it, you will have to pay charges per each extra gigabyte of traffic.

Per-gigabyte charges are usually higher, so it is wise to set your transfer limit to the level you are expecting to have. To change your plans default, click on the limit value. In the window that appears, enter the HTTP monthly traffic that you think you will run up. The traffic that goes beyond this limit will be charged at a higher rate. HTTP traffic is calculated separately from FTP traffic, but works quite similarly.

Setting Domain Alias/Domain Stacking (version 2.05 or higher)

A stack domain is a server alias in terms of apache. A stack domain may have:

• its own DNS zone;
• custom DNS records;
• mail service.

In other words, a stack domain is a domain alias (i.e. your domain's alternate name) that points to a 'primary' domain. For example, if your domain name is company.com, you can register another domain name, e.g. company.net and have it point to the location of company.com. This means, every Internet user who goes to company.net will land in company.com.

A user plan can be configured to allow or disallow stack domains. Also, there can be a limit to the number of stack domains you can create.

To create a new domain alias, click the Add icon. The following window will appear:



Enter the name for a new domain alias (this must be a fully qualified domain name, e.g. company.com).

How shall I configure DNS?

• leave the box unchecked if the domain alias is registered on a different DNS server. In this case, your hosting services provider won't be able to maintain DNS for this domain alias. If you have a stack domains, you will only be able to access your account via HTTP. Mail Service will be inaccessible, and it will not appear as hypertext in the list of domain aliases.
  


• check the box if you want H-Sphere to create a DNS record for the domain alias on your hosting server to point to the IP address of the existing domain. H-Sphere will create an appropriate DNS record for this domain alias. In this case you'll be able to create and edit custom DNS records for this domain alias (which is not recommended unless you know how to work with DNS records), and Mail Service will be accessible for this domain alias. It has no DNS zone of its own and does not support virtual FTP or MySQL services.
  
  *REMEMBER to restart web server to enable the new server alias.
  
  Click the existing domain alias text link to view and/or edit its configuration. The following page will appear:
  
  
  
  
  • Name Servers: the name and the IP of the server the domain alias is registered on.
  • DNS Configuration: click the Edit icon to edit alias's DNS configuration. For more information check Viewing and editing DNS settings.
  • Mail Service: click the ON/OFF button to enable Mail Service. For more information check Managing your E-mail resources.

  
  

  
  

"Pinging" Internet Hosts From Your Hosting Server (version 2.05 and higher)

This net troubleshooting tool allows you to ping any Internet host from your hosting server (in other words, to test if a host can be reached and how long it takes)

• Select Trace Route in the Domain Settings menu. The following window will appear:



• Enter the host name or the IP address of the server to ping. If the tracing takes longer than the timeout period you specified, the process will be stopped and the tracing results will be displayed. For more information on traceroute, type man traceroute in the command line.

Submitting Sites to Search Engines (version 2.05 and higher)

This tool submits specified URLs to the most popular automatic search engines such as

• Northernlight
• Ebcrawler
• Hotbot
• Excite
• DirectHit
• Google
• Infomak
• Webwombat
• AllTheWeb
• lycos
• Whatyouseek
• WebTop

On the Submit sites page (Submit URLs, Domain Settings):

• Domain to submit: select the site you would like to be indexed.
• Contact Email: most search engines require an e-mail address to contact you if needed.
• Key Words: some search engines provide the possibility for entering additional keywords your site can be searched by.
• Timeout: set the timeout period. The timeout period is the time you allow for registering one site with all search engines.
  

You may have to wait a week or more after the submittal of your sites before some search engines start showing your sites in the search results.

Warning: Avoid submitting a large number of web sites at a time, or the browser will time out before the program has finished.