Frequently Asked Questions

When you have questions pertaining to the Internet, web hosting, domain registration or website design and development, feel free to contact us. We will be happy to answer all of your questions.

The following represent the most commonly asked questions:

Pre-Sales Questions

Q: What is a Homepage?

A: A homepage provides basic information about you as well as navigational links to more information on your website.

Q: Why a website?

A: Having an Internet presence is essential to compete in today's global marketplace. You will benefit from providing even minimal information about your business such as contact information, a location map, and hours of operation. With an effective web presence you can improve communication to existing customers, expand your market reach, and provide customers with twenty-four hour, seven day a week access to your business.

Q: How do I get a website?

A: You will first need to reserve space on a web server. You will likely be paying someone a monthly fee to Host your web pages on their web server. Next, you will need to get a domain name or web address. You may choose to purchase one from InterNIC for approximately $35.00 per year. Now you (or a web developer) can create the content for your web pages using an HTML (Hypertext Mark-up Language) editor. This language (code) can be interpreted by web browsers. With your pages completed, you can now send them to your hosts web server using an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program.

Q. Will you place ads on my site?

A. Buffalo Web Solutions will NOT place ads on your site.

Q. Can I upgrade at any time and how does it work?

A. Yes you can upgrade at any time by contacting sales@buffalowebsolutions.com. It is free to upgrade and the only charge would be the price difference in the plan you upgrade to.

Q. Do you allow sites to advertise for money, on their web site?

A. Yes, we allow sites to have commercial advertisements.

Q. What forms of payment do you accept?

A. We accept Paypal, checks, money orders, cash, and bank transfers.

Q. Are your server's Unix, or NT?

A. Our servers are Linux Red Hat Red Hat 9.0

Q. What control panel do you use and do you have a demo?

A. The control panel we use is called cPanel. A demo of cPanel can be found on our homepage. Login with the username demo, and the password demo.

Q. How much is extra bandwidth and space?

A. If you need more bandwidth or disk space e-mail us to upgrade you to a higher plan. If you need more bandwidth or space then our highest plan offers please email sales@buffalowebsolutions.com for a custom plan.

Q. Do you offer telnet or shell access?

A. No due to security reason's we do not offer telnet or shell access.You are still able to unzip files on the server using our file manager as well as the ability to setup cron jobs.

Q. Can I password protect directories?

A. Yes you can password protect directory's within cPanel.

Q. How long does it take to get my domain working?

A. It usually takes 24-48 hours for a domain to fully propagate.

Q. Can I view my site even though my domain's name servers haven't propagated yet?

A. Yes http://youriphere/~yourusernamehere/

Q. Do you have a manual for our control panel?

A. Go to http://www.cpanel.net/docs/cp/index.html

Q. Where do I go to login to my control panel?

A. You go to http://www.yourdomain.com/cpanel

Q. How do I make sub-domains?

A. To make a sub-domain, login to your control panel and click "domain management" inside of domain management you will see a place to manage and add sub-domains.

FTP

Q. Where can I download a free FTP?

A. We recommend downloading WS FTP.

Q. It's not letting me upload my files what's wrong?

A. Make sure you are uploading to the right web directory which is the public_html folder.

Q. Why doesn't my ftp password change when I change my cPanel password?

A. Please allow 24 hours for your FTP password to sync with your cPanel password.

Paths

Q. What is the path to my users files?

A. The path is /home/username/public_html

Q. What is the local path to perl?

A. The path to perl is /usr/bin/perl

Q. What is the path to curl?

A. The path to curl is /usr/bin/curl

Q. What is the path to ImageMagick?

A. The path to ImageMagick is /usr/bin/

Q. What is the path to convert for ImageMagick?

A. Try the following paths till one works: /usr/bin/ >>> /usr/local/bin/convert >>> /usr/bin/X11/ >>

Q. What is the path to sendmail?

A. The path to sendmail is /usr/sbin/sendmail

E-Mail

Q. How do I create email accounts?

A. To create an email account login to your control panel and click add/remove email account's.

Q. What do I put for both incoming and outgoing mail server?

A. For both incoming and outgoing mail server put mail.yourdomain.com

Q. Where do I go to check my emails using my browser?

A. yourdomain.com/webmail/

Q. How can I setup webmail to go directly to horde, neomail or squirrel mail?

A. Login to the one you prefer to use after doing so copy the entire url from your address bar. You will now login to your cPanel and create a subdomain to go to the address you just copied.

Q. None of my cgi scripts are working on the server. How do I get them to work?

A. Make sure that they are chmoded to 755.

Q. How do I create databases and manage them?

A. Login to your cPanel and click MySQL Databases. After your database is created you can manage it from phpmyadmin. This can be found at the very bottom of the MySQL page.

Software Versions

Q. What version of php are you using?

A. We are using version 4.3.7

Q. What version of perl are you using?

A. We are using version 5.8.0

Q. What version of MySQL are you using?

A. We are using version 4.0.18

Q. What version of JSP are you using?

A. We are using version 5.0.19

Q. What version of cPanel are you using?

A. Our servers automatically stay up to date with the most recent stable cPanel version.

SSL

Q. How do I purchase a private ssl from you and what type is it?

A. We sell Comodo 128 bit certificates for $125 a year and include free installation.

Q. Can you tell me a little about Comodo SSL's?

A. Comodo SSL's are trusted by over 99.3% of internet browsers (equal to Verisign and Thawte certificates). The only difference between one ssl type and another is the browser recognition. You can rest assured the Comodo SSL certificates we our selling are among the highest browser recognition in the industry. To name a few of the browsers.. all Internet Explorer 5.00 and above, Netscape 4x and above, AOL 5 and above and Opera 5 and above and comes pre-installed with all Windows 98SE, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Mac OS 8.5, Mac OS 9.x, Mac OS X operating systems.

Q. I'm going to purchase my own ssl what do I need to know?

A. Our servers are Apache + Mod SSL If you require assistance from us to install it there will be a $75.00 installation fee. We will need both the key and the csr.

Q. How do I transfer a ssl?

A. Every place that sells ssl's has a different transfer procedure. You will need to ask the supplier you purchased it from.

Subdomains

Q. READ THIS BEFORE SETTING UP A SUBDOMAIN

A. To create a sub domain cPanel asks for the name you wish to use. MAKE SURE the subdomain name you give it doesn't have a folder already named that name. If it does the sub will not work. Example... I want to create the subdomain test.buffalowebsolutions.com so my sub name is going to be test. If I already have a folder in my ftp named test I need to delete it or rename it to something different before I create the subdomain with the test name from cPanel.

Q. What is a subdomain?

A. www.domain.com is a domain name. A subdomain is anything that replaces the www in a domain name. forum.buffalowebsolutions.com is a subdomain. www.forum.buffalowebsolutions.com is not a subdomain.

Q. What is an addon domain?

A. An addon domain is a fully functional domain that will work out of a folder in your main sites ftp.

Q. READ THIS BEFORE SETTING UP AN ADDON DOMAIN!

A. You cannot create an addon domain if your dns hasn't proprograted to the server already. So after you change the sites dns you are trying to add you will need to wait 24-48 hours before attempting to create your addon domain. There are three fields cPanel asks for when creating an addon domain.

1. "New Domain Name:" You will put in the newdomain.com do not put www in the name!

2. "Username/directory/subdomain Name:" This will be the folder cPanel creates in your main accounts ftp. MAKE SURE that the name you give it doesn't already have a folder. Example... If you want to give it the username chris. You cannot have a folder in your account named chris already. If you do and still try creating the username for the addon domain to be chris you will mess a lot of things up!!!

3. "Password:" fill in any password you want here.

Q. Help I added an addon domain why did it say subdomain added?!!?

A. It creates it as a subdomain by creating the folder within your main sites ftp. Please ignore this! It is a fully functional domain name. It is only called a subdomain when in fact it is an addon domain.