Welcome to afmu.com
Welcome new user and thank you for choosing afmu.com as your web hosting provider. This page was copied over when your account was created and it will help you get started using your new web hosting account. This page is being loaded from under your account. Its file name is "index.htm". The web server will load this file when some one accesses your domain. After you are done reading through this guide, delete it off the server and upload your own default index.htm page. For more help on doing this see the section titled "Uploading your Web Site". This page will always be available to you. To view it again at a later date click the new user guide link on afmu.com
In addition to this guide we have an number of tutorials available to help you get your account setup. You can view the complete list by using this link.
http://www.afmu.com/all-tutorials.php
Contents
Access your sites control panel.
Creating and checking email accounts
Uploading your web site
Making DNS or "whois" changes to your domain.
Using Fantastico to install server side scripts.
Need more help getting your site going? feel free to contact us with any questions that you have have.
Access your sites control panel.
To login to the control panel use this link: www.yourdomain.com/cpanel
You will be prompted for your username and password.
If you are not prompted for your username or password then either your domain registration or transfer has not yet taken effect or your web browsers security settings maybe to high.
The control panel enables you to manage all aspects of your web site. Do not worry if you are unfamiliar with many of the available features, they are only there if you need them. The documentation link at the bottom of control panel can give you more information on how to use each feature.
There are also many tutorials available for the control panel on our tutorials page
Creating and checking your email accounts
After you have created some mail accounts under the control panel you can send and receive emails from each account. Many users find it easiest to create email forwarders to redirect all of a users email to their personal email account so they do not have to check multiple email accounts.
To check your email using web mail use the following link: www.yourdomain.com/webmail
You will be prompted for your username and password. Your login name is your full email address. (ie accountname@yourdomain.com). Some systems have problems with the @ sign. You may also login by replacing the @ sign with a + (ie accountname+yourdomain.com).
To check your email using a POP client such as Microsoft Outlook use the following information to configure your software.
inbound and outbound mail servers = mail.yourdomain.com
username = accountname@yourdomain.com or accountname+yourdomain.com
You will also need to enable "POP before SMTP". This forces your email client to login to the POP server before sending mail. This can be enabled on Microsoft Outlook under the Advanced > outing servers tab.
There is also a configuration utility under the control panel that will automatically set up Microsoft Outlook Express to use an email account. When you list your email accounts you will see the autoconfig link next to each email. By clicking the link you will be taken through a series of steps that will setup your Outlook Express client to use that particular email address.
Uploading your web site is best done using FTP. To use FTP you will need an FTP program. FlashFXP is a good one, and it can be downloaded for free at www.flashfxp.com. Many web design applications will allow you to publish your site directly from the program using ftp, but usually they do not include an interactive FTP session like FTP software will. For more information on using FTP in your design program you should read through the help files for your program. Most applications will display the help page if you press the F1 key on your keyboard.
We also have several uploading tutorials available on our tutorials page.
Connecting to the FTP server is simple. Just click on the connect button and enter the information that was included in your Account Activation email under "FTP Server Information". There are only three required fields, server or host name, (this is your domain), and then login and password.
If while attempting to connect you receive a time out message or DNS error, you probably have a hardware router/switch, some firewall or anti-virus software running that is blocking your connection. See the help documentation included with the device if this is the case, and ensure that port 21 is not being blocked.
After logging in you will be located in the root (/) directory. Your account is organized into a few directories to help keep your various documents categorized.
/public_ftp
This is for ftp files that you do not want accessible by your web site.
/public_html, /www
Both of these directories point to the same location, and they are the default location for your web documents. This help file is located there also. When you view the contents of either of these directories you should see this file listed as "index.html". Any user who attempts to view your web site will be sent to this directory. Your home page should be named index.htm, index.html or index.php, depending on how your site has been designed. The file index.(htm,html,php) is the default page on your web site. Any time a user types in your domain into a web browser, this file will be displayed. For example the index file for afmu.com can be seen here: http://www.afmu.com
This is where the server stores all of the email for your domain. You should not have to edit anything within this directory.
/tmp
This is where the server stores your sites access logs. These logs should be viewed by using one of the links within the control panel. You should not edit anything in this directory.
Making DNS or "whois" changes to your domain.
To change the contact information for your domain or to make DNS changes you must first login to our billing system. https://secure.afmu.com/modernbill
After logging you should see a section of the page titled Domain Stats: Here the current number of domains you have registered or transferred will be displayed. Click on the "view details" button and you will be taken to a list of all these domains. You may then click on any one domain you would like to edit and then change the various information.
Using Fantastico to install server side scripts.
Fantastico can automatically install and configure a number of popular scripts for your use. Message forums, shopping carts, image gallery's and more can be created very quickly by using Fantastico. To access Fantastico first you must login to your sites control panel (www.yourdomain.com/cpanel). Then click on the Fantastico button, located near the bottom of the page. You may then click on any script to get more information about it and install it. Most of the scripts will need to use a MySQL database.
If you are in need of additional help, please contact us and a member of our support team will be happy to answer any additional questions that you may have.