1. Wait for email confirmation that the account has been created.

If you just ordered a hosting plan and domain name the first thing to do is wait to receive an email notice that your account has been created (first you will receive an order confirmation email, then an account setup confirmation email to say your account has been created and is ready to use).

Account creation usually takes between 30 minutes and 3 hours within working hours (between 8am and 6pm Monday-Friday) during Australian Eastern Standard Time (GMT+10:00). Accounts are also created outside working hours and on weekends however in some cases account creation may take longer to complete during these periods.

2. Wait for your domain name to propagate with Marken Hosting details, and use the IP address supplied in your sign-up email in the meantime.

Marken Hosting will re-register/transfer your domain name during the creation of your account. After re-registering the domain name it may take up to several hours (or 1 working day in the case of .au domains) for the domain name to propagate (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dns for a description of how the domain name system works and why it may take several hours for a domain name to start working once it is registered).

Until the domain name propagates, you will not be able to access your hosting account using your domain name and no-one will be able to send email to any email addresses that use your new domain name.

While you wait for the domain name to propagate, you can access your new web site by going to:

http://63.247.129.200/~username/

(where "username" is replaced by the user name you nominated when you filled out the order form for the hosting account).

You can get to your control panel by going to:

http://63.247.129.200/cpanel/

You can check if your domain name has propagated by going to your web site address www.yourdomain.com (where "yourdomain.com" is replaced by the domain name you registered when you ordered your hosting account). If you see our hosting logo then your local name servers have updated with the new DNS information for matching your new domain name to our servers. Of course, other ISP's name servers may not update as quickly as yours, so if people using other networks claim your domain name is not working yet, allow a few hours for their name servers to update as well.

3. Log in to the control panel for your hosting account/website.

The control panel is where you go to view or change anything about your hosting account.

The type of account you have purchased will determine what options in the control panel will work (e.g. if your account does not include databases you will not be able to create databases using the control panel "MySQL Database" button).

Once your domain name has propagated, you can access your account control panel by going to:

http://yourdomain.com/cpanel/

(Where "yourdomain.com" is replaced by the domain name you specified when you filled out the order form for your hosting account).

If your domain has not propagated yet, go to:

http://63.247.129.200/cpanel/

You created your user name and password when you filled out the order form to order your hosting account. These details are also included in your account creation confirmation email. If you have forgotten these details and lost the account creation confirmation email, contact us at accounts@marken.com.au to request that the details be re-sent to the email address that you specified as your contact address when you ordered your account.

The control panel is divided into several sections. A description of each section is included below to help you identify what each section is used for. Take a look around the control panel to see what's there for future reference, then go on to the next step: "Set your account password".

Account Information

On the left you can see information about your account and the resources you have available.

Server Information

On the left under the Account Information section you can see version information about the web server that hosts your account.

System Paths

On the left under the Server Information section the directory paths where Perl and Sendmail are stored are displayed.

Assistance

This section on the left of the screen beneath the system path information contains links to the various support resources available for you to use.

Web Based Email

This button, located at the bottom of the column of information on the left side of the screen, takes you to a screen where you can select from several web-based email clients that can be used to read your account email.

General Account Management

The group of buttons in this section (at the top of the right hand side of the screen) allow you to change your account password (the password you use to log in to the control panel), park and point domain names (see the FAQ called "How do I host a second site on my account with its own web address" for an explanation of domain parking and the FAQ called "How do I associate a second domain name with my site" for an explanation of domain pointing), backup and restore your account, and redirect any emails sent to addresses at one domain on to another domain (click on the button "Domain Email Forwarders" in the control panel to view a description of how this feature works).

Email Management

This group of buttons (below the General Account Management section on the right hand side of the screen) allows you to control all aspects of adding, changing and deleting email accounts. You can also set the default account that messages sent to nonexistent accounts at yourdomain.com get delivered to, set up auto-responders (automatic "on vacation" -type responses to emails), set up email filters which delete or re-address emails that contain particular information, create email forwarders that forward messages addressed to a particular user on to another address, create, administer and delete mailing lists, set up and activate/deactivate SpamAssassin (a SPAM filtering tool), and run traces on email addresses to find out if there are any problems reaching those addresses.

Web Site Management

Below the Email Management section on the right hand side of the screen are the Web Site Management buttons. These buttons allow you to view the visitor statistics for your web site, upload, delete and manipulate files on your account, create your own customised error pages, password-protect web pages, redirect page visitors to another URL, create and edit databases, create sub-domains (e.g. mysubdomain.mydomain.com), create and manage FTP accounts to allow different users to upload files to your account, set directories on your account to be viewable via a web browser, prevent users with a particular IP address from being able to view your site, and view your disk usage.

Pre-installed Scripts

This group of buttons, below the Web Site Management section on the right side of the screen, allows you to easily add features to your web site using a web-interface, rather than requiring you to install and configure scripts manually.

The Fantastico Installer provides you with a wide range of applications for adding message boards, blogs, shopping carts, image galleries, guestbooks, CRM systems and all sorts of other features (note: only accounts that include a database will be able to install some of these applications). The CGI Centre provides a further range of applications that you can choose to install on your system, including a counter, clock, guest book and search facility. The third button in the Pre-installed Scripts group allows you to try out a web-page chat system that you can add to your web site by including a few lines of code in your HTML.

Advanced Tools

This final section at the bottom of the right hand side of the screen includes buttons that link to applications used by more advanced web site administrators. Here you can set up cron jobs (regularly scheduled tasks performed on the web server), set MIME types for your site (which determine how a web browser treats particular types of files), set Apache Handlers (which determine how the Apache web server treats particular types of files), perform domain lookups and traceroutes, access your account using SSH (only available upon request after SSH use is approved by the Marken Hosting helpdesk), install FrontPage extensions (allowing pages created by FrontPage to work properly on the web server), create and import GnuPG encryption keys for sending and receiving encrypted data, and protect web site files by specifying which web sites have permission to link directly to your images and files.

4. Set your account password.

Once logged in to the control panel (see the previous step), it is a good idea to change your control panel password, as your original password has been transmitted insecurely in your account creation confirmation email.

To change your password, click the "Change Account Password" button in the "General Account Management" section at the top right-hand part of the control panel screen.

Enter your old password in the first field. Enter your new password in the second field. Re-enter the new password exactly the same way in the third field.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Passwords must not be longer than EIGHT characters and Passwords are case-sensitive.

5. Set up your email accounts.

By default an email account is created when your hosting account is created. This email address is:

username@yourdomain.com (Where "username" is the username you nominated on the account order form - this username was also listed as part of your account details in the account creation confirmation email. "Yourdomain.com" is replaced by the domain name that you renewed/transferred when you filled out the account order form.)

By default, all email sent to anyname@yourddomain.com (where "anyone" can be any word) will be re-routed and delivered to your default email account.

If you do not want to use this default email address you do not need to, however it is not possible to totally delete the email account that was created from your user name and domain name when your hosting account was created.

You can however create other email addresses. You can specify that a different address should act as the "catchall" default email address. You can have all messages that are sent to the username-based email address automatically rerouted to another address, or have them automatically deleted.

To create another email address:

a) Click on "Manage Accounts (Add/Remove)" under the "Email Management" section of the control panel.

b) Click "Add Account" at the bottom of the screen.

c) In the "email" field enter the part of the email address you want to create that comes before the @ symbol (i.e. if you are creating an email address called john@yourdomain.com, where "yourdomain.com" is the domain name you registered when you ordered your hosting account, just enter john ).

d) If you have more than one registered domain name, select the domain name you want the email address to include from the drop-down box next to the "email" field that you just used in the previous step.

e) Enter a password for accessing the new email account. This password will later be entered into the email client that you use to collect and read email for this email address.

f) If you wish, change the number of megabytes that this email address may use on the server for storing messages in the "Quota" field.

g) Click "Create Account".

h) You will see a confirmation that the account was created. Click "Go Back".

i) You will now see a list of your email accounts, including the new account.

To change the default email address:

If you want to use the default email address as your own address and do not want to have the messages sent to invalid addresses at your domain name delivered to that default email address, you can create another email address and make it the default. This leaves you with the original default email address username@domain.com which can be used for sending and receiving email, and a second email address used for receiving email sent to invalid email addresses with your domain name.

a) Create a second email address as described in the section above.

b) Go to the main control panel screen and click the "Set Default Account" button, located in the "Email Management" section.

c) Click "Set Default Address".

d) Enter the full email address of the new email account in the blank field that appears after the word "to:". e.g. enter myotheraccount@yourdomain.com, not just myotheraccount.

e) Click "Confirm Change".

f) You will see a confirmation that the default account was changed.

To have all messages sent to invalid email addresses at your domain automatically deleted instead of delivered to the default email account:

a) Go to the main control panel screen and click the "Set Default Account" button, located in the "Email Management" section.

b) Click "Set Default Address".

c) Enter the following text in the blank field that appears after the word "to:":

:blackhole:

(Be sure to include the colon character ":" before and after the word "blackhole" with no spaces before or after the colons, or between the word and the colons.)

e) Click "Confirm Change".

f) You will see a confirmation that all unrouted email to yourdomain.com (i.e. email sent to addresses at yourdomain.com that don't exist) will now be sent to :blackhole: (deleted).

To forward messages that were addressed to a particular email address on to another address, or to have those messages automatically deleted:

a) Go to the main control panel screen and click the "Email Forwarders" button, located in the "Email Management" section.

b) Click "Add Forwarder".

c) In the first blank field enter the part of the email address (that you want to forward email from) (i.e. if you want to forward any email sent to john@yourdomain.com on to another address, just enter john).

d) From the drop-down box select the domain name (the part of the email address that comes after the @ symbol) for the email account that you are going to forward email from.

e) In the second blank field, enter the entire email address that you want the forwarded messages to be sent to (e.g. anotheraddress@mydomain.com).

Alternatively, if you want all messages to the email address you specified in steps c) and d) to be deleted automatically, enter the following word into the second blank field:

:blackhole:

(Be sure to include the colon character ":" before and after the word "blackhole" with no spaces before or after the colons, or between the word and the colons.)

f) Click "Add Forward".

g) You will see a confirmation that the email forwarding rule has been added.

6. Set up your email client.

Once you have created any email accounts you want, set the default account for all unrouted email to go to, and created any forwarding rules, you can set up an email client to collect any messages for the accounts you have created. Remember though, your domain name transfer needs to complete (propagation needs to take place) before your email will work.

The following four settings are used with any email client to set the client to collect and send messages for your email accounts. See the FAQS on setting up individual email clients (Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora and Macintosh Mail) for more explicit instruction. The knowledgebase of FAQs can be accessed from:

http://helpdesk.marken.com.au/

Incoming (POP3) Mail Server: yourdomain.com

("yourdomain.com" is replaced by the domain name that you renewed/transferred when you filled out the account order form.)

Outgoing (SMTP) Mail Server: yourdomain.com

("yourdomain.com" is replaced by the domain name that you renewed/transferred when you filled out the account order form.)

Note: some ISPs do not allow you to send outbound email through any SMTP server other than their own. If you find you can receive but not send email, try setting the Outgoing (SMTP) Mail Server setting to the SMTP server name provided to you by your ISP for sending email from your ISP's server.

Username: enter the full email address that you want to send and receive email for. E.g. myaddress@mydomain.com. This must be a valid email address that was either set up for you when your hosting account was created, or which you created yourself using the control panel as described earlier.

Password: if you are setting the email client up to collect email for the email account that was automatically created when your hosting account was created, this is the same password that you use to log in to the control panel. If you are setting the email client up to collect email for an account you created yourself using the control panel, the password is the one that you assigned to the account when you created it.

If you find email does not work, see the FAQs for troubleshooting email problems.

7. Upload your site.

Before you upload any files, if you have used Microsoft FrontPage to create any pages, log in to the control panel, click on the "FrontPage Extensions" button under the "Advanced Tools" section (at the bottom of the right hand side of the screen) and then click "Install Extensions". This will enable your pages to work properly once uploaded.

You can upload files to your web site right away by using the following FTP details:

Server Address: 63.247.129.200

Username: the same username you use to log in to the control panel.

Password: the same password you use to log in to the control panel.

NOTE: Files for your site should be uploaded and stored in the public_html directory that already exists on your server account.

Once your domain name has propagated, you may use the following FTP settings:

Server Address: ftp.yourdomain.com (where yourdomain.com" is replaced by the domain name that you purchased when you filled out the account order form.)

Username: the same username you use to log in to the control panel.

Password: the same password you use to log in to the control panel.

See your FTP client program's help files for information on how to use that particular FTP client.

You can alternatively upload files to your web site by going to the control panel and clicking on the "File Manager" button, in the "Web Site Management" section (third section from the top on the right hand side of the control panel screen).

See the FAQ called "How do I upload, download, rename and delete files using my control panel?" for information on how to use the File Manager to upload your files.

8. Check your billing account.

The last thing you may want to do is check the system where your billing account information can be viewed and edited.

To see your billing details and a list of paid and due invoices, log in to your control panel and then click on the "Payments and Billing" button in the 'General Account Management" section.

On the screen that appears, enter the user name and password that you use to log in to your control panel and then click 'Login".

Once logged in to the billing system, move the mouse over the buttons at the top of the page to access menu options that allow you to view invoices, change contact information, update your credit card details, and so on.

When you are done click "Log Out" in the top right-hand corner of the screen.

9. More Information.

If you need more information or have a question point your browser to:

http://helpdesk.marken.com.au/

Here you will find a knowledgebase of frequently asked questions, a discussion forum where you can talk to staff and other hosting customers, and links to send us an email if you still have questions.