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FAQs

CDN

The short answer is no, the Content Delivery Network takes care of caching for you. The CDN caches static content and stores it until it’s purged via the Edge Caching section in i.weball.co.uk.

This means you shouldn’t use any additional caching plugins such as W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache.

In addition, we handle optimisation via the Website Acceleration Suite. The module improves website load times by automatically implementing web performance best practices to a website. This includes optimising images, JavaScript minification and combining CSS – all to improve website load times.

Therefore, you don’t need plugins such as WP Smush, Lazy Loading, EWWW Image Optimizer or Autoptimise.

The CDN is quick and easy to use.

Head to the package you want to enable our CDN for and locate the CDN section.

To activate the main Edge Caching element of the CDN, select Edge Caching – select the toggle to activate it (Manage Hosting -> Manage -> Edge Caching).

There’s nothing more you need to do! All static content on your website will now be cached automatically and served from the CDN node closest to its location.

Purge Cache
To purge the cache that’s stored at the CDN node head to the Edge Caching section and select the Purge Everything button.

With the eWeball- Affordable Hosting CDN, you can get an understanding about the traffic and requests accessing your sites.

Detailed data sets are collated and presented in charts for each of your sites at eWeball- Affordable Hosting, giving you insights about your site’s performance.

Accessing site Statistics

You can access the statistics for each site you host from the package overview page with your eWeball- Affordable Hosting account.

Select the package you wish to view the statistics for by selecting Manage.
Select Statistics
You’ll be presented with the CDN Statistics overview with the option to switch to the Traffic Distribution view.

Total Bandwidth – This refers to the amount of data (in bytes) sent through the eWeball- Affordable Hosting CDN to the client. This is split between data that’s been served from the origin server (uncached bandwidth) and served from the CDN nodes (cached bandwidth).

Total Hits – This refers to the number of files and sessions that have been transferred using the CDN network, it’s important to note that this isn’t the same as ‘unique visitors’.

You can filter the statistics by a time period using the toggles at the top-right of each section.

Traffic Distribution

The statistics also show a geographic overview of incoming requests to your side. This can also be toggled between Last Hour, Last Day and Last Week.

You can hover over a country to see figures for that location.

Total Bandwidth

Total Bandwidth – Total amount of bandwidth (sum of bytes) served by eWeball- Affordable Hosting’s CDN network
Cached Bandwidth – Amount of bandwidth for requests considered as “cached”, i.e., the response is served from eWeball- Affordable Hosting’s CDN Cache
Uncached Bandwidth – Amount of bandwidth for requests considered as “uncached”, i.e., the response is served directly from backend server

Total Hits

Total Hits – Total number of requests captured by eWeball- Affordable Hosting’s CDN network.
Cached Hits – Number of requests considered as “cached”, i.e., the response is served from eWeball- Affordable Hosting’s CDN Cache.
Uncached Hits – Number or requests considered as “uncached”, i.e., the response is served directly from the backend server.

SSL Hits vs Non-SSL Hits

This graph shows the number of requests that are encrypted via the HTTPS protocol as opposed to the unencrypted HTTP protocol. If requests to a site such as http://example.com are made, this would constitute an insecure request.

You’ll want to ensure that as much as possible requests to your sites are made over HTTPS. Most often, this can be achieved using a 301 redirect, WordPress plugin, or ensuring the WordPress site and home URL utilise HTTPS. You will also need an SSL certificate to cover the site.

HTTP Successful Requests vs Error Requests

Successful Request – These requests are defined as being all HTTP requests in the range of 200-399, such as ‘200 OK’ requests or 301 Redirects.

Error Requests – These are defined as being HTTP requests ≥ 400, such as 404 Not Found requests or 503 Internal Server Errors.

It’s important that the amount of successful requests is maximised. If you’re seeing a higher rate of error requests, you should consider checking the access and error logs for any data about requests.

Databases

MariaDB is a fork of MySQL.

The database structure and indexes of MariaDB are the same as MySQL. This makes MariaDB a backward compatible, drop-in replacement for MySQL.

We currently run MariaDB version 10.2.29

To check the version of MariaDB:

Head to Manage Hosting, then phpMyAdmin.
Select the database in the left-hand panel.
Select the Query tab at the top.
Type the query: SELECT VERSION(); and select Go.
The version of MariaDB will then be outputted.

You can use phpMyAdmin to import an .SQL file with your database information. To do this:

Log in to your database via phpMyAdmin (https://i.weball.co.uk > Manage Hosting > [select package] > phpMyAdmin)
Choose the database you want to import your .SQL file to from the left hand side.
Click the Import tab at the top of the page.
Select Choose File and locate the .SQL file on your device or computer.
Click Go
The .SQL file will be uploaded and imported to the database you’ve selected.

eWeball- Affordable Hosting’s shared web hosting offers 1 GB MySQL databases.

No, you would need to set the database hostname as the server that it’s on at eWeball- Affordable Hosting.

You can find this by going to the MySQL Databases icon within a package. The hostname you’ll need to use will be something similiar to ‘shareddb1b.hosting.stackcp.net’ although it’s likely the database name on your package will be different.

‘localhost’ generally means the MySQL databases are hosted on the same server as the websites, which is quite common in the web hosting industry with hosts that have a ‘single-server’ approach where all services run from the same machine.

It’s different at eWeball- Affordable Hosting as we split all services and have a strict ‘one server, one rule’ policy.

At the eWeball- Affordable Hosting data centres, web traffic, MySQL traffic and storage are all physically different machines, so ‘localhost’ doesn’t work.

At eWeball- Affordable Hosting, each MySQL database you create can store up to 1024 MB (1 GB) of data. As databases comprise of only text, this is a lot of space in real terms; to put it into perspective, a eWeball- Affordable Hosting customer’s average database size is just 10 MB.

In the rare event that you need more than 1024 MB, you’ll need to add an additional database. You aren’t able to add more MySQL databases to websites hosted on our WordPress hosting platform; you would need a Linux package for this.

You can create MySQL databases in seconds directly from your eWeball- Affordable Hosting control panel.

This option is unavailable for packages hosted on our WordPress platform due to its WP-optimised nature. If you need to create a MySQL database, you’ll need to move the website to our Linux platform.To create new MySQL databases:

1. Log in to i.weball.co.uk and select Manage Hosting.
2. Choose Manage next to the hosting package you wish to create a MySQL database for.
3. Under Web Tools, select MySQL Databases. Here you can complete the following actions:

Create new MySQL databases. Each MySQL database has a maximum size of 1024MB (1GB).
Manage existing databases.
Add additional MySQL users to databases.
Manage your additional MySQL users.
4. Under Add a new MySQL Database, choose a name for your database. Database names must be between 6 and 20 characters long, and we automatically add a suffix to avoid name collisions with other users.

5. Once you have chosen a name, click Create Database. Your new MySQL database will automatically appear in the Manage MySQL Databases section underneath.

From here you can change the automatically generated password, monitor usage, remove your MySQL database, or log in to your database.

Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system (RDMS) developed by Microsoft. As a database server, it is a software product with the primary function of storing and retrieving data as requested by other software applications. These applications may run either on the same computer or on another computer across a network, such as the internet.

A relational database management system means two things. First, data stored inside SQL Server will be housed in a ‘relational database’, and second, the SQL Server is an entire ‘management system’, not just a database. SQL itself stands for Structured Query Language. This is the language used to manage and administer the database server.

We encrypt all FTP, email and database passwords so they are not visible as plain text inside your control panel.

The exception is the very first FTP account: this password is visible on the right hand side when you manage your hosting. You’re able to change all passwords and changes are usually processed immediately.

Please note: the majority of database passwords will be saved in the configuration or connection strings for your website. For example, for WordPress, the database password is visible inside the wp-config.php file.

We recommend using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) for managing your Microsoft SQL databases. 

This industry-standard software provides a comprehensive environment for Microsoft SQL database creation, access, configuration, development, and other management features. It includes a variety of components including visual database tools, code and text editors, object management, boilerplate text management, and more. With SSMS you can deploy, monitor, and upgrade the data-tier components used by your applications, as well as build queries and scripts.

SSMS also helps you download and back up your MS SQL databases, which we recommend you do at regular intervals in the interests of best practice security.

You can download the software for free on the Microsoft SSMS download page.

To connect remotely you will need to use Server ‘mssql.stackcp.com‘.

Domain Names

Registrars may ‘lock’ domain names to prevent unauthorised changes from being made to the domain.

This is often referred to as ‘Domain Locking’ or ‘Client Transfer Prohibited’. This status may be shown if you perform a WHOIS lookup on a domain name.

Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited

If your registrar does not give you access to unlock the domain name for transfer, then you should be able to contact them to request this. Once a domain has been unlocked you should then be able to transfer it to eWeball- Affordable Hosting.

What is the 60-day transfer lock?

When a new domain is registered – or if you transfer a domain name – then it’ll be subject to a 60-day transfer lock which can’t be bypassed.

The 60-day transfer lock is also placed on domains that have had their Registrant contact information updated. You may request the transfer first, and then update the contact information when the transfer to completes to ensure you can transfer your domain.

To create a subdomain:

You can then add your subdomain into the Subdomain field and select Create Subdomain. You’re also able to change the Document Root so that you can direct the subdomain to the folder of your choosing.

What is the document root?

The document root is the folder which the subdirectory will use, for example, you may have a directory within your web space located within public_html called support (i.e. public_html/support), you could point your subdomain to this location by adding public_html/support in the Document Root field. 

If you’re unsure whether DNS has fully propagated for you, you should check the IP address your requests are resolving-to. The easiest way to do this is to ‘ping’ the domain name from your local computers. On Windows, you should open a Command Prompt and on macOS a Terminal, and then type:

ping domain.com

Replacing domain.com with the website you wish to check. The IP address returned will show you which server you’re reaching when typing that domain into your web browser. It’s a good idea to check both ‘www.domain.com’ and ‘domain.com’, as each record will have its own cache. 

To tell if this is the server at eWeball- Affordable Hosting, you should make sure the IP address returned by the “ping” matches the IP address displayed down the right-hand side of our control panel. If this isn’t the case, and you have recently created a new hosting package, manually changed your DNS records, or updated your nameservers on the domain, it’s likely DNS is still propagating for you. 

If you manage your domain name with eWeball- Affordable Hosting and have access to it via i.weball.co.uk you can view the nameservers the domain is using by following the steps below. 

  • Log in to i.weball.co.uk
  • Select Manage Domains and locate the domain you’d like to check, select Manage.
  • Select the Nameservers icon to view what nameservers the domain is pointing to.

You can edit and update them here.

Please note that nameserver changes usually take between 6-8 hours – but can take up to 24 hours. 

Our control panel allows automatic configuration of DNS Records to configure your domain name for G Suite (Google Apps). This can be done via i.weball.co.uk.

  • First, select ‘Manage hosting’, choose the hosting package you wish configure and select ‘Manage’. 
  • Once on the DNS Management page, you will see two links towards the top of the page, one labelled ‘G Suite’ the other ‘Gmail’. The configuration you should use depends on the services you want from Google. If you’re using Google just for mail under your own domain name (MX records) use the ‘Gmail’ link. For all the other G Suite applications, including records for Docs, Chat, Calendar, and services like Hangouts, use the ‘G Suite’ option.

The control panel will show you the records that will be automatically added as a result of this change, allowing you to save them.

Please bear in mind that DNS changes can take up to 24 hours to fully propagate worldwide.

You can use phpMyAdmin to import an .SQL file with your database information. To do this:

  • Log in to your database via phpMyAdmin (https://i.weball.co.uk > Manage Hosting > [select package] > phpMyAdmin) 
  • Choose the database you want to import your .SQL file to from the left hand side.
  • Click the Import tab at the top of the page.
  • Select Choose File and locate the .SQL file on your device or computer.
  • Click Go

The .SQL file will be uploaded and imported to the database you’ve selected. 

eWeball- Affordable Hosting’s shared web hosting offers 1 GB MySQL databases.

FQDN stands for Fully Qualified Domain Name.

It refers to a complete domain name consisting of a host and domain name.

The domain name itself is comprised of two parts: the second-level domain and the top-level domain.

So, for the example of www.exampledomain.com, ‘www’ is the host, ‘exampledomain’ is the second-level domain and ‘.com’ is the top-level domain. 

If you intend to transfer your GTLD domain elsewhere, you’ll need its authorisation/EPP code. The following guide details how to obtain this from your eWeball- Affordable Hosting control panel.

​Please note, domain names that have been registered or transferred within the last sixty days may not be transferred to or from eWeball- Affordable Hosting. This is a registry restriction.

  • Log in to i.weball.co.uk.
  • Once logged in, head to Manage Domains
  • Select Manage on the required domain name.
  • Under Domain Management, select Transfer Away.
  • If the domain name is locked, you should then be presented with the following: ‘To unlock the domain, you will need to select the green arrow.’ Doing so will unlock the domain. If the domain is unlocked, proceed to the next step.
  • Your authorisation code will then be presented to you.

Registrant name changes for a .uk domain name (.co.uk/.me.uk/org.uk/.uk) can only be performed via the .UK registry, Nominet.

This can be done using the online Nominet account for the domain. This can be accessed via the following link, provided you have the necessary Nominet login details (which should have been sent to you when registering the domain name):

https://secure.nominet.org.uk/auth/login.html

Nominet currently charge a fee of £10+VAT for ownership changes.

To transfer domain names ending with .uk you’ll first need to contact your current provider and request they change the Tag to STACK. Once the Tag change has been completed you’ll be able to complete the transfer over to us.

If you’re having any problems with changing your Tag we recommend contacting Nominet. Nominet are the ‘.uk’ registry and oversee all UK domain names.

DNS propagation defines the process of updating information across the internet. There are two forms of DNS propagation: the first is the changes made to the DNS zone and the second is the changes made to WHOIS information.

An change made to your DNS zone will only usually affect a few servers and is the fastest change. Making a change that affects your WHOIS information can take up to 72 hours to propagate.

After the order of a domain or transfer of a domain, there will be a period where you can’t see your domain. This is due to millions of servers having to update with the new information. Your website may not be visible for up to 48 hours.

A nameserver manages a directory of domains that match specific IP addresses, like a phonebook: with names and numbers.

It is where the DNS server records for your domain (e.g. ‘example.com’) are stored. Whenever you type a domain name into a web browser, nameservers provide the IP address, which is a string of numbers. If nameservers were not in place, you would need to memorise that string of figures for every website you want to visit.

When you type ‘www.examplewebsite.com’ into a web browser, your browser uses DNS to look up the nameservers for www.examplewebsite.com. The nameservers ns1.examplewebsite.com and ns2.examplewebsite.com are retrieved.

Your browser then uses the nameservers to look up the IP address for ‘www.examplewebsite.com’. Your browser will then receive an IP address which it will then send a request for. The web server hosting the website sends the requested page to the browser. 

Our nameservers make use of Google’s high-end DNS infrastrucutre, providing fully redundant and stable nameservers.

The restrictions imposed on domains vary depending on what extension you are registering and what country the domain is associated with.

Domains can be formed using only use letters and numbers from the ASCII set of characters e.g. (a-z) (A-Z) (0-9). Hyphens are also allowed but must be surrounded by characters, therefore not at the beginning or end of the domain. You’re not allowed to use special characters (like ‘#*%’) and spaces cannot be used. 

General Rules

  • Your domain must be unique, i.e. a domain name that is not already in use. 
  • .com .net .org and .info domain names cannot exceed 67 characters.
  • .info and .biz must have at least 3 characters not including .info and .biz
  • Other domain names cannot exceed 22 characters not including the extension. 
  • Domain names are not case sensitive.
  • 2 letter domains are not allowed.

Common Extensions

  • .com – used for commercial or personal sites
  • .net – recommended for companies involved in internet infrastructure
  • .org – recommended for not-for-profit organisations
  • .info – used for commercial or personal sites
  • .biz – restricted to commercial and business purposes
  • .mobi – implies the website is designed for mobile usage

Common Country-Specific Extensions

  • .ca – websites with a Canadian presence as defined by CIRA (Canadian Internet Registration Authority).
  • .cc – Cocos (Keeling) Islands, to be used for commercial or personal sites
  • .co.uk – United Kingdom for commerical or personal sites
  • .de – Germany, to be used for commerical or personal sites
  • .eu – websites with a presence in the European Union
  • .org.uk – United Kingdom for charities and not-for-profit organisations
  • .jp – Japan, to be used for commercial or personal sites
  • .us – United States, to be used for commercial or personal sites

If you get this behaviour after a recent update to your website or a newly-created package, you’re almost certainly experiencing a DNS propagation delay.

It will resolve itself in a matter of hours.

The assumption is that when you previously visited your website you visited using www.domain.com and not domain.com (without the www). Thus, your DNS resolvers have the lookup of www.domain.com stored in their cache. When you try to view www.domain.com again, you get your DNS resolvers’ cached value which is the old IP address. However, when you checked the domain with just “domain.com” (no www) your DNS resolvers didn’t have an answer in their cache so fetched the new (correct) IP address for the domain. Hence “domain.com” works for you but “www.domain.com” doesn’t.

The only solution here is to wait for the cache to expire on your resolver, and then when you visit the domain again a fresh lookup with be made and the new IP will be stored.

If you’re using the our nameservers, this should take no longer than 1 hour.

The transfer process for domain names varies, dependent on the type of domain in question.

UK domains (all domains that end .uk)

Domains ending in .uk require 2 simple steps to be completed to transfer them in instantly:

1) Update the Tag to STACK.

2) Complete the transfer via the eWeball- Affordable Hosting control panel.

To do these steps: 

  1. Ask your current domain provider to change the Tag of the domain name to STACK (most providers allow this via their control panel).
  2. Login to your account at i.weball.co.uk and click Transfer a Domain.
  3. Enter the domain name and click Search.
  4. Add the domain to your basket and complete checkout. 
  5. The transfer will complete almost instantly. 

GTLD domains (ending in .com, .net, .org and most other domains)

  1. Ask your current domain provider for the domain name authorisation code.
  2. Make sure you are listed as the Admin Contact, as an e-mail will get sent here.
  3. Login to your account at eWeball- Affordable Hosting and click Transfer a Domain.
  4. Enter the domain name and click Search.
  5. Add the domain to your basket and complete checkout.
  6. An email will be sent – usually instantly but can take up to 6 hours – to the e-mail address listed as the Admin Contact.
  7. Follow the link in this e-mail and Approve the transfer by entering the authorisation code obtained earlier.
  8. Once authorised the transfer will complete automatically within 5 days.

CentralNIC domains (ending in .uk.com, .gb.com, .eu.com, .uk.net, .gb.net and .eu.net)

  1. Ask your current domain provider for the domain’s authorisation code.
  2. Login to your account at i.weball.co.uk and click Transfer a Domain.
  3. Enter the domain name and click Search.
  4. Add the domain to your basket.
  5. You’ll be prompted for the Authorisation Code. Please enter it here.
  6. Complete checkout.
  7. The transfer will complete automatically within 5 days.

A UK domain transfer is a 2 stage process. You need to:

  • Change the tag to STACK
  • Transfer this in through the eWeball- Affordable Hosting control panel

The best way to check the current tag for a domain name is via the Nominet WHOIS system. Once you’ve confirmed this is using STACK, complete the transfer following the steps below:

  • Login to your account and click Transfer a Domain
  • Enter the domain name and click Search.
  • Add the domain to your basket and complete checkout.

The transfer will complete almost instantly.

When setting up Google Search Console you will be asked to verify your domain. A recommended method which will work as long as you are using our StackDNS nameservers is to add the Google verification code as a TXT record for your domain.

To do this, go to the “Manage DNS” section of your control panel. Towards the bottom of the Manage DNS page you will see 3 inputs to allow you to add new records:

  • Leave the “Name” field blank
  • Select “TXT” for Type
  • You should now enter record given by Google in the “Data” input.

Save your changes and head back to Google to run the verification. DNS updates across our nameservers are usually done instantly, but in rare cases can take up to 2 minutes.

Changing the contact details for a domain that you have registered with eWeball- Affordable Hosting is usually done in either of two ways. This depends on what type of domain name you have.

For a .com domain:

  1. Go to Manage Domains, locate the domain name you would like to change the contact details for and select Manage
  2. Select Contact Details and you will be able to update the contact information for the domain name.

For .uk domains (including co.uk):

  1. You’ll need to login to Nominet. Head to https://secure.nominet.org.uk/auth/login.html and login or create an account by selecting First time logging in or forgotten your password?. Enter the email address you used to register the domain. You’ll then get an email prompting you to set up a password.
  2. Use the password you create to log in. You’ll be shown a list of your .uk domain names. Choose which one you want to change the contact information for and Edit.

DKIM, like SPF, is a standard that enables a specific aspect of the email sending process to be authenticated. The premise of DKIM is to check that an email is really from the domain or sender that it said it was sent from and if it has been altered in any way in transit.

Specifically, DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), provides a foundation for distinguishing legitimate mail. A DKIM signature is placed in the header of emails sent by our mail servers, so that the receiving mail server can then validate the signature using a public cryptographic key (2048 bit). It’s added as a TXT record in the Manage DNS section for the domain name.

DKIM does not outright mean all emails will be delivered. However, it does provide the receiving mail server with further information so it can make a more informed decision on the best way to handle the email. 

To add one:

  • Head to Manage Hosting and ‘Manage’ the package you want to add a DKIM record.
  • Select the DomainKeys icon.

Firstly, we’ll explain how to add a simple DKIM record to your DNS.

  • Ensure you’ve selected the domain you want to add the DKIM record-to.
  • Add a Selector. This can be any value or name you like. It’s simply a field to identify the DKIM record. Then select Add Signature.
  • If your nameservers are with us, we’ll automatically add the correct TXT record for you. 

The signature will be added immediately to emails sent from the mailboxes under the domain selected. We will have automatically added a DNS record to Manage DNS. You may wish to wait for this to resolve for DKIM to be effective.

From here you’re all done: your emails will use DKIM as a method to authenticate email.

You can also use the Advanced Options section.

Selector – This is a unique identifier for the DKIM record and can be set to any value you like. For example you could set it to indicate the name of an office location or the signing date (e.g. “october2019”).

Granularity/Identity – By default this is set to a wildcard value: ‘*’. You can use this field to set the DKIM record to be assigned to a specific mailbox, allowing you to constrain which mailbox can use this selector legitimately. For example, if you set the value of this field to be ‘sales’, only your [email protected] mailbox will use this DKIM signature. This field must match the local part of the signing address (mailbox).

Note – This field does not form part of the DKIM record or signature and is simply there so you can record any information about this record for your own information. 

Service Type – Currently, DKIM only supports signatures added to messages sent via ‘Email’ (i.e. SMTP). However, in the future the DKIM standard may add more service types such as IM or VoIP, which we’ll then be able to support. This field can be left to either ‘*’ or ‘Email’ – changing this won’t influence behaviour at present.

Canonicalization – Some mail servers and relay systems may modify an email in transit, potentially invalidating a DKIM signature. There are two options you can set: ‘Simple’ and ‘Relaxed’. If you expect your email to be modified in any way, you should select Relaxed which is more forgiving to changes made the header and body of the email.

Expiry Time – This is the time which, when elapsed, the DKIM signature will be invalidated in the mail header. By default it’s set to 86400 seconds (1 day). You may wish to extend this if you believe deliverability of the email will take longer than 1 day. 

Flags – There are two flags available: ‘Production’ and ‘Testing’. If you select Testing, you’ll still receive a response to the email and the DKIM signature from the remote mail server, but the email won’t be treated with different behaviour. Verifier systems may wish to track testing mode results to assist the signer. You’ll mostly want to use Production. 

As standard, any new package that is created or migrated into us gets given our default DNS. This will ensure the site and all its services such as email will function.

If you want migrate a package into us that has custom DNS then you’ll need to add these records before pointing the nameservers to our platform. This will ensure a seamless transition from your previous host.

MX records are the most common custom DNS that may want to be kept following a migration, so you’ll want to add these within our control panel before switching the nameservers.

To add custom DNS you’ll need to:

  1. Login to your control panel.
  2. Locate your package.
  3. Select Manage DNS
  4. Add any custom DNS that you want. It is best to refer back to your DNS on your previous host so you can add the correct records.

You can setup a domain redirect in a couple of ways. We’ll outline these below:

Using the control panel Redirects tool

  1. Login to your control panel  and head to either your list of packages, or list of domains and select to Manage the domain you wish to add the redirect for. 
  2. Select the Redirects icon, under Web Tools.
  3. Add the domain you would like to be redirected and then the destination address.
  4. In general, you’d want to use the 301 Permanent Redirect, but if you are planning on only temporarily redirecting the site then you can use a 302 Temporary Redirect.

The difference between the two types of redirects is down to how search engines handle them.

Search engines use the redirect type as a way to figure out if the old site needs to be kept indexed.

Essentially if you want the new site to be a replacement for the old site, you should use a 301 Permanent Redirect, if you’re developing a new website and your current website may be down for a short time, you may want to use a 302 Temporary Redirect. 

Using .htaccess

A .htaccess file is an important Apache configuration file usually resides within the public_html folder of your site, it’s a way to add specific rules on a per-hostname basis. A .htaccess rule allows for further configuration of your redirect should you need a more specific redirect. Below are some common examples you may need to add.

Redirect your website to a new domain

To redirect your website to another domain using a .htaccess rule you’d want to add the following rule to your .htaccess file and then save the file:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^oldsite.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.oldsite.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://newsite.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC]

Force www. instead of non-www.

You could achieve this by editing the site and home URL (if your site is WordPress), but it can also be achieved by using the following rule:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mywebsite.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mywebsite.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC]

Force HTTPS

You can use the Force HTTPS tool from within the control panel to always enable https://, however you can also add the following rule:

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}

Email

If you’re using eWeball- Affordable Hosting’s mail server but want to route emails via another provider – such as G Suite, Office 365 or Mailchimp – you may need to add a secondary sending server source to the SPF record.

You can do this by specifying multiple includes within the TXT record within Manage DNS. Each include is separated by a space and if any one include should fail, the SPF mechanism will simply move on to the next one. Below are some common providers you may need to add to your SPF record. 

eWeball- Affordable Hosting’s default SPF record: v=spf1 include:spf.stackmail.com a mx -all

To include a secondary include, you can edit the record:

G Suite 

v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com include:spf.stackmail.com a mx -all

Office 365

v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com include:spf.stackmail.com a mx -all

Mailchimp

v=spf1 include:servers.mcsv.net include:spf.stackmail.com a mx -all

SendGrid

v=spf1 include:sendgrid.net include:spf.stackmail.com a mx -all

Here’s how to set up a eWeball- Affordable Hosting email on an Android phone or tablet:

  • Open the mail application on your Android device. 
  • Select Add New Account and enter the mailbox name and its password. 
  • Select Manual Setup and select IMAP Account.
  • The User name will need to be the same as the mailbox name.
  • Enter imap.yourdomain.com as the IMAP Server, change the Security Type to SSL, Port 993 should then be used.
  • Enter smtp.yourdomain.com as the SMTP Server, change the Security Type to SSL, Port 465 should be added.
  • The outgoing mailserver User name and Password are the username and password for your mailbox. 
  • Select Sign In and the mailbox will be added to your Android. 

To migrate your emails and mailboxes to eWeball- Affordable Hosting, you can use our in-house Email Migrations tool. This will let you migrate your IMAP mailboxes, your Gmail mailboxes and your Outlook mailboxes into eWeball- Affordable Hosting. 

To do this: 

  • Login to i.weball.co.uk
  • Select which package you want to migrate emails in to via Manage Hosting.
  • Select the Email Migrations tool that is within the emails section. 
  • Enter the relevant credentials and then select Sync.
    • Hostname – This will be the hostname of the mailserver that you are syncing your emails from. If you’re not sure what this is then it may be worth asking your previous hosting provider what this is. 
    • Username – This will be the mailbox that you are syncing. 
    • Password – This will be the password of the mailbox at your previous host and of the newly created mailbox at eWeball- Affordable Hosting. Please note: you’ll need to have set up the mailboxes within eWeball- Affordable Hosting first using the same password as currently used by the mailbox. 
  • If the sync fails to start, this is likely due to the credentials not being correct. You should confirm that the password you have used is correct and that the hostname is also correct before requesting support.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use the email migration tool more than once for the same mailbox?

Yes, you can use it as many times as you want. You may want to do this if you’ve recently switched MX records so mail now routes to eWeball- Affordable Hosting, to get the latest copy of the mail from the previous mail server you can simply redo a mailbox migration. This will then only migrate emails that are new, so you won’t have any duplicate emails. 

Does the email migration tool move or copy emails across?

The email migration tool copies the emails and folders across to eWeball- Affordable Hosting, so no emails are “removed” from your old mailserver/mailboxes. 

Can I only perform one mailbox migration at a time?

Yes, you can only perform one mailbox migration at a time per package.

Where can I find my hostname?

Your previous host will be able to tell you your hostname. It is worth trying mail.yourDomain.co.uk as that is a common hostname that is used. 

To set up your eWeball- Affordable Hosting mailbox on an Apple iPhone or iPad, you need to:

  • Head to the Settings icon and locate the Accounts & Passwords option.
  • Then select ‘Add Account’.
  • Select Other from this list.
  • Input the information requested:

Name: Anything
Email: [email protected]
Password: Mailbox Password
Description: Work, Business…etc

IMAP:

Incoming Mail Server
Host Name: imap.yourdomain.com
Username: [email protected]
Password: Mailbox Password

Outgoing Mail Server
Host Name: smtp.yourdomain.com
Username: [email protected]
Password: Mailbox Password

  • Finally, select the mail account and go into the Outgoing Mail Server settings. Select Primary Server, make sure SSL is switched on and the port is set to 587.

Email should now be set up on your iPhone or iPad. 

There are various methods of connecting to mailboxes on our platform. We always recommend IMAP as that helps keep messages in sync between various devices and our webmail system. This is our recommended configuration for Thunderbird mail clients.

Incoming Server (“Account Settings” > “Server Settings”)

Server Name: imap.yourdomain.com
Username: Your e-mail address
Port: 993
Connection security: SSL/TLS
Authentication method: ‘Normal password’

Outgoing Server (SMTP)

Server Name: smtp.yourdomain.com
Port: 587
Connection Security: STARTTLS 
Authentication method: ‘Normal password’
Username: Your e-mail address

Getting a ‘mailbox does not exist’ message can be frustrating, we know. You just need to give it half an hour.

Mailbox password changes, webmail access and sending/receiving email via a mail client are all available as soon as your mailbox has been created.

However, it can take up to 30 minutes for our MX servers to accept new email for your new mailbox. If you receive a “Mailbox does not exist” bounceback to a new mailbox within 30 minutes of its setup, this should be nothing to worry about. It should resolve itself as soon as our MX configuration updates.

For scale and redundancy reasons we operate each service from its own hostname. So we always recommend using the most relevant hostname for incoming and outgoing servers in mail clients. These are as follows:

  • IMAP: imap.yourdomain.com
  • SMTP: smtp.yourdomain.com

However, for compatibility reasons and to help ease migrations, we automatically setup mail.domain for each of your packages.

Any clients already using these hostnames can continue to do so when the account is moved to eWeball- Affordable Hosting, and any new accounts added at eWeball- Affordable Hosting will have the same functionality.

If you can successfully send email and view any new messages in your Inbox, but aren’t able to view additional subfolders, then it’s likely that you have an incorrect IMAP Path Prefix setting on the device.

To correct this, take the following steps:

  • Go to Settings > Mail > Accounts > Select your e-mail address > Account > Advanced
  • At the bottom of this screen, you should see ‘IMAP Path Prefix’. Leave this blank or, try entering ‘INBOX’
  • Save the changes, and then navigate back through the Email Account settings pages saving as required

You’ll now be able to view all folders in the account. If that doesn’t help or it’s already set up like that, you may need to remove and re-add the e-mail account on your device.

We make use of ‘autodiscover’ technology so that in the majority of cases, Microsoft Outlook can set up your account for you with only an email address and a password.

Automatic Setup

  • In Outlook, choose the File tab
  • Under ‘Account Information’, choose Add Account
  • On the Auto Account Setup page, enter your name, email address, and password, and then choose Next
  • Choose Finish

Manual Setup

If automatic setup failed, you can choose Manual setup or additional server types to enter your settings manually. Use these settings:

Account type: IMAP
Incoming mail server: imap.yourdomain.com
Outgoing mail server: smtp.yourdomain.com
Incoming server port (IMAP): 993
Use the following type of encrypted connection: SSL
Outgoing server port (SMTP): 587 (or 465)
Use the following type of encrypted connection: TLS

When setting up your account, please choose More Settings > Outgoing Server and check the box for ‘My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication’.

If you experience any problems with the connection or receive a certificate warning, please disable SSL/TLS encryption and change the incoming server port to 143. 

SRV records – service records used in Office 365 – can be added via our DNS Management interface inside the control panel.

If the domain is registered with us, you can get to this from the Manage Domains area of the control panel. If the domain is not with us but is assigned to a hosting package, you can reach this interface via the Manage Hosting -> Select Package -> Manage DNS section.

We can automatically add these records for you using the Office 365 DNS record tool, please see the guide about that here: How do I add Office 365 DNS records?

Towards the bottom of the Manage DNS page you will see 3 inputs to allow you to add new records. To add one:

  1. Select SRV from the Type dropdown.
  2. In the Name field, type: _sip._tls
  3. In the Data field, type: sipdir.online.lync.com 
  4. Enter 100 for Priority.
  5. Enter 1 for Weight.
  6. Enter 443 as the Port.

For the second record, select Click to add another record. A new row will appear.

  1. Select SRV from the Type dropdown.
  2. In the Name field, type: _sipfederationtls._tcp
  3. In the Data field, type: sipfed.online.lync.com
  4. Enter 100 for Priority.
  5. Enter 1 for Weight.
  6. Enter 5061 as the Port.

Remember to save the records by clicking ‘Update DNS’.

That’s it!

Your SRV records are now added. Our nameservers will start answering with them almost instantly – but may take up to 2 minutes. If you’re running through the Microsoft setup wizard or DNS checker you will be able to continue shortly.

Email Account Limits

The following limits apply to all messages sent via authenticated SMTP. This will primarily be used for email sent via a mail client, but can also include mail sent via your website if configured to send via SMTP.

We impose a limit of 8,000 messages per e-mail address per 24 hours.

The following limits also apply:

  • No more than 10,000 recipients per day.
  • No more than 2,000 unique recipients per day.
  • A single email may not be sent to more than 100 individual addresses.

As an example, if you were to send 100 emails to 5 different e-mail addresses within a 24 hour period. We would count 100 messages, 500 total recipients and 5 unique recipients.

Web Server Limits

A limit of 500 messages per day is imposed on all e-mail sent by our web servers. E-mails sent by the web servers should be no larger than 50 MB in size. This applies to all messages sent via the PHP mail() function.

Autoresponders

An autoresponder only sends once every 8 hours per sender

Zero Tolerance Spam Policy

We take a zero-tolerance stance against the sending of unsolicited email, bulk emailing and spam. 

Please note: The distributed nature of our network means email can leave through different servers at different times. As a result, you may see periods when you can send a greater number of messages than the limits mentioned above. However, this behaviour should not be relied upon and is not supported. If you do wish to send a larger number of e-mails than any of the limits mentioned above, we would recommend looking at a specialist marketing email platforms such as SendGrid, Mailgun, or Mailjet.

New Mailbox Limit

When a new mailbox has been set up, the sending is limited to 50 per day for 7 days. This is actually an abuse rule to prevent new mailboxes from being set up and used immediately to send out high volumes of spam emails. To preserve the reputation of the platform and protect mail being sent from being spoofed as spam by third parties this rule was put place to protect that status.

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) records help to reduce the chance of your domain being spoofed in spam messages. It can also increase the deliverability of e-mail to external providers such as Gmail and Outlook.

We maintain an SPF record that is kept up to date with all IP addresses used to transmit e-mail from our network. This ensures that any e-mail sent from our services passes an SPF check. To use this on your domain, you need to add a TXT record in DNS.

Adding SPF records ‘manually’

Firstly, access the DNS Management interface for your domain name. If the domain is registered with us, you can access this from the Manage Domains area of the control panel. If the domain is not with us but is assigned to a hosting package, you can reach this interface via the Manage Hosting -> Select Package -> Manage DNS section.

Towards the bottom of the Manage DNS page, you will see 3 inputs to allow you to add new records. To add it:

  • Leave the Name field blank
  • Select TXT for Type
  • Enter v=spf1 include:spf.stackmail.com a mx -all as data

Then save the changes. Your domain is now protected by an SPF record. 

You can use the same record for all domains that use our mail services, however, it should be noted that the above record will tell external providers all of your e-mail should originate from our network. If this isn’t the case the record should be updated accordingly. 

Changing passwords for any mailbox can be done through the eWeball- Affordable Hosting control panel.

  1. Log in to i.weball.co.uk and select Manage Hosting.
  2. Select Manage on the hosting package that contains the mailbox you wish to change the password on.
  3. Choose Email Accounts under Email.
  4. Simply locate your mailbox and enter a new password and click Update. Your new password will have been successfully saved. 

Note: You will not be able to recover your old password for the mailbox. We do this to increase your security.

There are a few very common reasons why you may not be able to send emails. 

Are your email settings are correct?

Make sure the email account username and password that you enter in your email client are correct. The details you’ll need to be using are found below:

Account type: IMAP

  • Incoming mail server: imap.yourdomain.com
  • Outgoing mail server: smtp.yourdomain.com
  • Incoming server port (IMAP): 993
  • Use the following type of encrypted connection: SSL
  • Outgoing server port (SMTP): 465 (or 587)
  • Use the following type of encrypted connection: TLS

 Are email sending limits being hit?

Our mail platform has several limits in place in order to protect the reputation of the mail platform and prevent large quantities of spam emails being sent. Currently, our mail limits are as follows:

Web servers: 500 emails a day.
Mailboxes: 8000 emails a day.
Message size/attachments: our webmail system accepts attachments up to 32MB in size, and the maximum message size in our network is 50MB.

If any of these limits are breached, then it won’t be possible to send mail from that hosting package or mailbox. In the case of the message size/attachment limit, you’ll simply need to look at reducing the size of the email or the attachment being sent.

Where do the MX records point?

You can easily ensure eWeball- Affordable Hosting serves the emails by using the tool here: https://mxtoolbox.com/

If we host the emails then you’ll see mx.stackmail.com returned. If anything else is returned you may wish to contact the provider to determine the cause of the issue. 

Is the mailbox disabled for suspicious activity?

If you’re receiving the following error when trying to send that the mailbox may have been disabled for sending suspicious emails. 

MX stands for ‘mail exchanger’.

It tells a ‘sending’ mail server how to find the ‘receiving’ mail server, given in order of priority, where the lower numbers are given higher priority. The MX records for eWeball- Affordable Hosting are ‘mx.stackmail.com’.

Both IMAP and POP3 are protocols that allow you to receive emails from a remote server. Your email client uses these protocol to connect to your mailbox server. You may have your email client on your smartphone, laptop and desktop, and this is where IMAP and POP3 have different uses. 

Post Office Protocol version 3 (POP3) downloads mail from the server and often deletes it from the server after it has done so. This means that depending on when your mail client checks for mail, you’ll only receive the email on one device or mail client. This also means that when you delete an email from one device, it will not be deleted from another. For example, if you receive emails on your smartphone, deleting them won’t also delete them on your desktop mail client, so you will have an email that you have viewed appear as unread. 

Since POP3 downloads emails from the server and saves them in a local storage area, losing or damaging your local storage may cause you to lose all of your emails. 

Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) on the other hand, is suited for people who want to receive email on more than one device, which nowadays is most people who carry a smartphone. IMAP stores email on remote servers rather than downloading them to local storage, which is how the emails can be viewed on different devices. When you read, download or make any changes to emails on one device, it will synchronise across any other device using the same account. IMAP has the ability to only download the header of an email so it can be much quicker. 

We recommend you use IMAP.

POP3 offers very few, if any benefits. When you are setting up your mail client, you will have the option to choose from IMAP or POP3. To set up either, you simply need to access your email account information through i.weball.co.uk.

SMTP or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is a TCP/IP used to send and receive email. The majority of email systems use SMTP to send messages from one server to another. Messages can then be retrieved using an email client using an email download protocol such as IMAP or POP3.

SMTP also delivers email from a mail client to a mail server, thus the need to specify both an incoming and outgoing mail server when setting your email client. 

SMTP uses ports 25 or 587 as some ISPs will block port 25.

Email forwarding refers to the operation of re-sending an email message delivered to one email address on to a possibly different email address. There are two types of email forwarding. Individual email forwarding and catch-all forwarding.

  • Individual email forwarding lets you create an email address that does not have a mailbox or apply forwarding to an already existing mailbox. 
  • With catch-all email forwarding, emails will only forward if there isn’t an existing mailbox or forward in place. Catch-all refers to a mailbox on a domain that will ‘catch-all’ of the emails addressed to the domain that does not exist in the mail server. Configuring a catch-all address can help avoid losing emails due to misspelling.

With eWeball- Affordable Hosting all mailboxes have a certain limit on data storage. It’s unlikely that you should ever fill this unless you’re receiving a lot of spam, or have a lot of emails with large attachments. 

All the emails and attachments you have in your mailbox are stored on a server, and each mailbox is given a specified amount of space on the server. Once that space has been filled by email and data, you will no longer be able to receive emails. 

To check your mailbox usage:

  • Log in to i.weball.co.uk and go to Email Accounts.
  • Locate your mailbox and the usage will be displayed next to it.  

To resolve this issue there a few options:

Order a Mailbox Quota Addon. You can increase the size of your mailbox in 10GB increments by ordering a Mailbox Quota Addon, available from the Mailbox Usage page.

Empty your trash within your mail client. When you delete emails from your inbox they go into the trash folder which means they are still taking up space on the server. Make sure there are no emails that you may need from the trash folder because to clear them from the server will mean permanently deleting them. Usually, you can right-click on the trash folder on select an option such as ‘Erase Deleted Items’ or ‘Empty Trash’. There are also settings in some mail clients that will automatically delete items when you send them to the trash, but if you accidentally delete an email it will be gone permanently.

Clear your sent messages. Similar to messages stored in the Trash folder, sent items will still remain on the server. Deleting your sent items will not mean they are deleted from the recipients’ mailbox, just the mailbox they were sent from. You can either go into the Sent Items folder and choose which emails you wish to delete, or you can right-click and select “Delete”.

IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol and is a protocol used to access emails via an email client on a remote server. 

IMAP is suited for people who want to receive email on more than one device, which nowadays is most people who carry a smartphone. IMAP stores email on remote servers – rather than downloading them to local storage – which is how the e-mails can be viewed on different devices. When your read, download or make any changes to emails on one device, it will synchronise across any other device using the same account. IMAP has the ability to only download the header of an email so it can also be much quicker.

POP3 stands for Post Office Protocol version 3 and refers to the protocol used to receive emails to your local email client from a remote server.

POP3 downloads mail from the server and often deletes on the server after it has done so. This means that depending no when your mail client checks for mail, you will only receive the email on one device or mail client. This also means that when you delete an email from one device, it will not be deleted from another. For example, if you receive emails on your smartphone, deleting them won’t also delete them on your desktop mail client, so you will have an email that you have already viewed appear as unread. 

Since POP3 downloads emails from the server and saves them in a local storage area, losing or damaging your local storage may cause you to lose all your emails.

DKIM, like SPF, is a standard that enables a specific aspect of the email sending process to be authenticated. The premise of DKIM is to check that an email is really from the domain or sender that it said it was sent from and if it has been altered in any way in transit.

Specifically, DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), provides a foundation for distinguishing legitimate mail. A DKIM signature is placed in the header of emails sent by eWeball- Affordable Hosting’s mail servers so that the receiving mail server can then validate the signature using a public cryptographic key (2048 bit). It’s added as a TXT record in the Manage DNS section for the domain name.

DKIM does not outright mean all emails will be delivered. However, it does provide the receiving mail server with further information so it can make a more informed decision on the best way to handle the email. 

To add one at eWeball- Affordable Hosting:

  • Head to Manage Hosting and ‘Manage’ the package you want to add a DKIM record.
  • Select the DomainKeys icon.

Firstly, we’ll explain how to add a simple DKIM record to your DNS.

  • Ensure you’ve selected the domain you want to add the DKIM record-to.
  • Add a Selector. This can be any value or name you like. It’s simply a field to identify the DKIM record. Then select Add Signature.
  • If your nameservers are with eWeball- Affordable Hosting, we’ll automatically add the correct TXT record for you. 

  • The signature will be added immediately to emails sent from the mailboxes under the domain selected. We will have automatically added a DNS record to Manage DNS. You may wish to wait for this to resolve for DKIM to be effective.

    From here you’re all done: your emails will use DKIM as a method to authenticate email.

    You can also use the Advanced Options section.

Selector – This is a unique identifier for the DKIM record and can be set to any value you like. For example, you could set it to indicate the name of an office location or the signing date (e.g. “october2019”).

Granularity/Identity – By default, this is set to a wildcard value: ‘*’. You can use this field to set the DKIM record to be assigned to a specific mailbox, allowing you to constrain which mailbox can use this selector legitimately. For example, if you set the value of this field to be ‘sales’, only your [email protected] mailbox will use this DKIM signature. This field must match the local part of the signing address (mailbox).

Note – This field does not form part of the DKIM record or signature and is simply there so you can record any information about this record for your own information.  

Service Type – Currently, DKIM only supports signatures added to messages sent via ‘Email’ (i.e. SMTP). However, in the future, the DKIM standard may add more service types such as IM or VoIP, which we’ll then be able to support. This field can be left to either ‘*’ or ‘Email’ – changing this won’t influence behaviour at present.

Canonicalization – Some mail servers and relay systems may modify an email in transit, potentially invalidating a DKIM signature. There are two options you can set: ‘Simple’ and ‘Relaxed’. If you expect your email to be modified in any way, you should select Relaxed which is more forgiving to changes made the header and body of the email.

Expiry Time – This is the time which, when elapsed, the DKIM signature will be invalidated in the mail header. By default, it’s set to 86400 seconds (1 day). You may wish to extend this if you believe deliverability of the email will take longer than 1 day. 

Flags – There are two flags available: ‘Production’ and ‘Testing’. If you select Testing, you’ll still receive a response to the email and the DKIM signature from the remote mail server, but the email won’t be treated with different behaviour. Verifier systems may wish to track testing mode results to assist the signer. You’ll mostly want to use Production. 

Here are the best ways to stop emails from being put in the junk mail folder.

Add an SPF Record

SPF – Sender Policy Framework records help reduce the chance of your domain being spoofed in spam messages. It can also increase the deliverability of e-mail to external providers such as Gmail and Outlook. You can add them individually by adding a TXT record to the domain with the data v=spf1 include:spf.stackmail.com a mx -all. This tells other providers that eWeball- Affordable Hosting is a confirmed sender of your domain’s emails.

 

Add a DKIM Record

DKIM, like SPF, is a standard that enables a specific aspect of the email sending process to be authenticated. The premise of DKIM is to check that an email is really from the domain or sender that it said it was sent from and if it has been altered in any way in transit.

You can add one by going to the hosting package for the domain and to the DomainKeys section. You then need to select the domain you wish to add on to and add a Selector. This can be any value or name you like. It’s simply a field to identify the DKIM record. Then select Add Signature. If your nameservers are with us we’ll automatically add this as a TXT record for you. If your name servers are elsewhere you’ll need to go to ‘Options’ for the newly created DKIM and copy the DNS Name and DNS Value to a TXT record with your current DNS provider.

 

Edit the Junk Mail Filters

If incoming emails are the issue then you can whitelist the mail in the Junk Mail Filters section of any hosting package. In the Junk Mail Filters section, you can set the general filtering level to tell us how strict we should be with incoming spam filtering.

If you just want to allow a particular address this can be done by whitelisting it for a domain or the mailbox on the package. If you want to white list a single mail address then you would need to whitelist ‘[email protected]’ and if you want to whitelist a whole domain then you would want to whitelist ‘*@thedomain.com’. This will allow mail from the address/domain to bypass our spam filtering.

To create an HTML or plain text email signature that will be appended to all emails:

  • Select Settings
  • In the left column, select Identities
  • In the next column along to the right, click on the email address for which you want you to create or edit a signature
  • Fill in signature details as necessary

There are a few common reasons why you may not be able to connect successfully via FTP.

1. Make sure you’re using the correct hostname

If you’ve not switched the nameservers to point to eWeball- Affordable Hosting, you’ll need to use a different hostname to connect via FTP:

  • For Linux and Windows, you can use: ftp.yourdomain.com
  • For WordPress you can use: wordpressftp.yourdomain.com

2. Make sure you have the FTP DNS record

If you’ve made any DNS changes you need to make sure that you have a CNAME from: 

 ftp.yourdomain.com -> CNAME -> ftp.yourdomain.com (or wordpressftp.yourdomain.com on the WordPress platform).

Without this CNAME you won’t be able to connect using ftp.yourdomain.com.

Please note DNS changes can take roughly 1 hour to propagate.

3. Make sure FTP is unlocked

At eWeball- Affordable Hosting we utilise an FTP lock system to ensure FTP can only be accessed when required which greatly reduces the risk of compromise to a hosting package. You’ll need to make sure this is unlocked to connect via FTP, to do this: 

  • Login to https://i.weball.co.uk
  • Select the hosting package you want to unlock FTP for from Manage Hosting
  • You can then select to unlock FTP by time, or by a specific IP address.

When FTP has been unlocked you’ll be shown the time the unlock expires and the option to lock it again.

4. Use the correct password

Make sure you are using the correct password! You’ll need to use the password that is located within the FTP Details section of the package.

We encrypt all FTP, email and database passwords so they are not visible as plain text inside your control panel.

The exception is the very first FTP account: this password is visible on the right hand side when you manage your hosting. You’re able to change all passwords and changes are usually processed immediately.

Please note: the majority of database passwords will be saved in the configuration or connection strings for your website. For example, for WordPress, the database password is visible inside the wp-config.php file.

DKIM, like SPF, is a standard that enables a specific aspect of the email sending process to be authenticated. The premise of DKIM is to check that an email is really from the domain or sender that it said it was sent from and if it has been altered in any way in transit.

Specifically, DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), provides a foundation for distinguishing legitimate mail. A DKIM signature is placed in the header of emails sent by our mail servers, so that the receiving mail server can then validate the signature using a public cryptographic key (2048 bit). It’s added as a TXT record in the Manage DNS section for the domain name.

DKIM does not outright mean all emails will be delivered. However, it does provide the receiving mail server with further information so it can make a more informed decision on the best way to handle the email. 

To add one:

  • Head to Manage Hosting and ‘Manage’ the package you want to add a DKIM record.
  • Select the DomainKeys icon.

Firstly, we’ll explain how to add a simple DKIM record to your DNS.

  • Ensure you’ve selected the domain you want to add the DKIM record-to.
  • Add a Selector. This can be any value or name you like. It’s simply a field to identify the DKIM record. Then select Add Signature.
  • If your nameservers are with us, we’ll automatically add the correct TXT record for you. 

The signature will be added immediately to emails sent from the mailboxes under the domain selected. We will have automatically added a DNS record to Manage DNS. You may wish to wait for this to resolve for DKIM to be effective.

From here you’re all done: your emails will use DKIM as a method to authenticate email.

You can also use the Advanced Options section.

Selector – This is a unique identifier for the DKIM record and can be set to any value you like. For example you could set it to indicate the name of an office location or the signing date (e.g. “october2019”).

Granularity/Identity – By default this is set to a wildcard value: ‘*’. You can use this field to set the DKIM record to be assigned to a specific mailbox, allowing you to constrain which mailbox can use this selector legitimately. For example, if you set the value of this field to be ‘sales’, only your [email protected] mailbox will use this DKIM signature. This field must match the local part of the signing address (mailbox).

Note – This field does not form part of the DKIM record or signature and is simply there so you can record any information about this record for your own information. 

Service Type – Currently, DKIM only supports signatures added to messages sent via ‘Email’ (i.e. SMTP). However, in the future the DKIM standard may add more service types such as IM or VoIP, which we’ll then be able to support. This field can be left to either ‘*’ or ‘Email’ – changing this won’t influence behaviour at present.

Canonicalization – Some mail servers and relay systems may modify an email in transit, potentially invalidating a DKIM signature. There are two options you can set: ‘Simple’ and ‘Relaxed’. If you expect your email to be modified in any way, you should select Relaxed which is more forgiving to changes made the header and body of the email.

Expiry Time – This is the time which, when elapsed, the DKIM signature will be invalidated in the mail header. By default it’s set to 86400 seconds (1 day). You may wish to extend this if you believe deliverability of the email will take longer than 1 day. 

Flags – There are two flags available: ‘Production’ and ‘Testing’. If you select Testing, you’ll still receive a response to the email and the DKIM signature from the remote mail server, but the email won’t be treated with different behaviour. Verifier systems may wish to track testing mode results to assist the signer. You’ll mostly want to use Production. 

You can log in to webmail by going to our webmail URL here: mail.weball.co.uk

Or you can log in through your control panel.

  1. Head to Manage Hosting.
  2. Select the package you want to access webmail for.
  3. Select the Webmail icon.
  4. You can then login to webmail using single-sign-on. 
FTP

There are a few common reasons why you may not be able to connect successfully via FTP.

1. Make sure you’re using the correct hostname

If you’ve not switched the nameservers to point to eWeball – Affordable Hosting, you’ll need to use a different hostname to connect via FTP:

  • For Linux and Windows, you can use: ftp.yourdomain.com
  • For WordPress you can use: wordpressftp.yourdomain.com

2. Make sure you have the FTP DNS record

If you’ve made any DNS changes you need to make sure that you have a CNAME from: 

 ftp.yourdomain.com -> CNAME -> ftp.yourdomain.com (or wordpressftp.yourdomain.com on the WordPress platform).

Without this CNAME you won’t be able to connect using ftp.yourdomain.com.

Please note DNS changes can take roughly 1 hour to propagate.

3. Make sure FTP is unlocked

At eWeball – Affordable Hosting we utilise an FTP lock system to ensure FTP can only be accessed when required which greatly reduces the risk of compromise to a hosting package. You’ll need to make sure this is unlocked to connect via FTP, to do this: 

  • Login to https://i.weball.co.uk
  • Select the hosting package you want to unlock FTP for from Manage Hosting
  • You can then select to unlock FTP by time, or by a specific IP address.

When FTP has been unlocked you’ll be shown the time the unlock expires and the option to lock it again.

4. Use the correct password

Make sure you are using the correct password! You’ll need to use the password that is located within the FTP Details section of the package.

The maximum FTP upload/download size is 5GB, above which you’ll need to use another method to transfer larger files sizes.

One way we’d recommend is to enable SSH action and then use a client like WinSCP to upload over SSH. There are no limits in this case.

If you wish to access the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) service before you point your DNS to eWeball – Affordable Hosting, you can use the hostname of our FTP service directly.

For Linux and Windows, please use: ftp.yourdomain.com

For Managed WordPress, please use: wordpressftp.yourdomain.com

Each domain has at least two nameservers assigned to it and these nameservers hold the records for the domain.

If a server somewhere else in the world queries the nameservers for DNS records, it will most often take a local copy of the DNS record. This means that next time it needs to know what IP a domain resolves to, it will have the answer already stored.

Once the initial changes have been made to the two original nameservers, the changes will filter out through the rest of the servers in the world until everything else is up to date. It is this that can take 24-48 hours and is known propagation.

We encrypt all FTP, email and database passwords so they are not visible as plain text inside your control panel.

The exception is the very first FTP account: this password is visible on the right hand side when you manage your hosting. You’re able to change all passwords and changes are usually processed immediately.

Please note: the majority of database passwords will be saved in the configuration or connection strings for your website. For example, for WordPress, the database password is visible inside the wp-config.php file.

Connecting via FTP to your web hosting is quick and easy.

Ensure you have an FTP client available. We’d recommend FileZilla. 

  • Head to Manage Hosting
  • Select Manage
  • On the right-hand side of the control panel, you’ll see the FTP panel. You’ll need to unlock FTP by either time or IP address 
  • You’ll see the FTP Details section that contains your FTP Server (Host), Username and Password
  • Enter these details into FileZilla and select Quickconnect

You should now be connected to your web hosting via FTP. 

If you’re having trouble connecting via FTP, we’d recommend reviewing the guide called I can’t connect via FTP, what can I do? for common steps to diagnose what’s wrong. 

Migrations and Transfers

The best SMTP details to use when configuring an SMTP plugin within WordPress when you’re using eWeball – Affordable Hosting WordPress hosting are: 

Outgoing mail server: smtp.yourdomain.com

Outgoing server port (SMTP): 587

Use the following type of encrypted connection: TLS

Using these details will allow emails to be sent via SMTP from WordPress forms or allow any other SMTP-based plugins to send.

It’s not possible to rename a mailbox once it’s been created.

To get around this, you can create a new mailbox within eWeball – Affordable Hosting and use the Email Migration tool to sync one mailbox to the other, then remove the original mailbox.

You’d use the hostname imap.yourdomain.com within the Email Migration tool and set the mailbox password of the new mailbox to match that of the old mailbox. You can then copy emails from one to the other. 

Yes, you can import a contact list from a previous mail client into eWeball – Affordable Hosting webmail. To do so: 

  • Log in to Webmail for the mailbox.
  • Head to the Address Book.
  • Select the Import icon from the top-left.

You can then select either a .CSV file or a vCard file. 

No, the email migration won’t remove any emails from the mail server where emails are being migrated from or any emails on the eWeball – Affordable Hosting mail server.

It’s a ‘non-destructive’ form of migration, so emails won’t be duplicated or deleted. Changes will simply be added into the emails already at eWeball – Affordable Hosting. 

No, the email migration won’t cause any downtime to emails.

It doesn’t affect DNS or the ability to send or receive emails: it simply performs an IMAP sync to move emails from one server to another. There will be no downtime caused by the use of the email migration tool.

An email migration will usually take about 30 minutes to complete.

However, this can vary depending on the size of the original mailbox being migrated. For an average size mailbox of 1-2Gb, an email migration will usually take 30 minutes.

There are a few common reasons why you may not be able to connect successfully via FTP.

1. Make sure you’re using the correct hostname

If you’ve not switched the nameservers to point to eWeball – Affordable Hosting, you’ll need to use a different hostname to connect via FTP:

  • For Linux and Windows, you can use: ftp.yourdomain.com
  • For WordPress you can use: wordpressftp.yourdomain.com

2. Make sure you have the FTP DNS record

If you’ve made any DNS changes you need to make sure that you have a CNAME from: 

 ftp.yourdomain.com -> CNAME -> ftp.yourdomain.com (or wordpressftp.yourdomain.com on the WordPress platform).

Without this CNAME you won’t be able to connect using ftp.yourdomain.com.

Please note DNS changes can take roughly 1 hour to propagate.

3. Make sure FTP is unlocked

At eWeball – Affordable Hosting we utilise an FTP lock system to ensure FTP can only be accessed when required which greatly reduces the risk of compromise to a hosting package. You’ll need to make sure this is unlocked to connect via FTP, to do this: 

  • Login to https://i.weball.co.uk
  • Select the hosting package you want to unlock FTP for from Manage Hosting
  • You can then select to unlock FTP by time, or by a specific IP address.

When FTP has been unlocked you’ll be shown the time the unlock expires and the option to lock it again.

4. Use the correct password

Make sure you are using the correct password! You’ll need to use the password that is located within the FTP Details section of the package.

Programming Languages

Our WordPress platform has been specifically designed to offer the best security, performance and reliability for WordPress.

As a result, we have specifically tuned firewall rules and layers of protection to help keep WordPress sites secure. As part of this protection, a small number of PHP functions have been disabled, as we’ve found that they’re often used for malicious purposes. 

The following functions are disabled for security reasons:

  • exec
  • opcache_get_configuration
  • opcache_get_status
  • passthru
  • parse_ini_file
  • popen
  • proc_open
  • shell_exec
  • show_source
  • system

In our experience, it’s highly unlikely any of your plugins rely on any of the functions above. However, if you have a genuine use case for any of these functions, you can still host your WordPress site on our Linux platform.

ASP Parent Paths are disabled on our platform.

As a result, Classic ASP scripts using “../” notation for includes will not work correctly.

As an alternative to using parent paths in your ASP code, you can use virtual paths. Virtual paths need you to enter the full folder path from the URL root of your website. For example, changing:

<!–#include file=”../_fpclass/fpdblib.inc” –>

To:

<!–#include virtual=”/_fpclass/fpdblib.inc”–>

By default, Windows Server hides application errors from your website. You can override this by adding the following inside a ‘web.config’ file that will cause IIS to output any errors to your browser:

<configuration>
    <system.webServer>
        <httpErrors errorMode=“Detailed” />
    </system.webServer>
    <system.web>
        <customErrors mode=“Off” />
        <compilation debug=“true” />
    </system.web>
</configuration>

The availability of ionCube can differ between our different platforms and PHP versions.

Linux: ionCube Loader is available on our Linux platform for all currently support PHP versions. That’s 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 7.0, 7.1 and 7.2.

WordPress: ionCube Loader is available on our WordPress platform.

Windows: ionCube is not available on our Windows platform. If you are running PHP software and don’t need any of the Windows specific-languages like ASP.NET we recommend using our Linux platform.

As standard, we run PHP 7+. If you wish to switch version, head to i.weball.co.uk > Manage Hosting > [Select Package] > “Switch PHP Version”

Our Linux platform has the ability to run different versions of PHP:

  • PHP 5.3
  • PHP 5.4
  • PHP 5.5
  • PHP 5.6
  • PHP 7.0
  • PHP 7.1
  • PHP 7.2
  • PHP 7.3
  • PHP 7.4

Version changes may take up to 60 seconds, but are usually instant. 

On our Managed WordPress Platform we run PHP 7.0 (and above) and this cannot be changed.

Our web servers run PHP 7+ as standard. In this version of PHP the MySQL module has been replaced by either the ‘mysqli’ or ‘PDO_MySQL’ extension. Read more about the MySQL extension deprecation on PHP’s website. 

If you have a website using this module we recommend updating your code to use the latest modules. However, if this isn’t feasible or you’re using third party software, you can run older versions of PHP on our Linux platform. You’re able to switch between PHP 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6 – all of which support the older MySQL module – by using the ‘Switch PHP Version’ icon inside the control panel.

A common reason for this relates to the address not matching your site domain.

To help improve email deliverability and help prevent spam being sent from our network, the ‘Sender’ address for your message must match the domain name of the website used to send the message.

If this header is set to a domain not assigned to your hosting package, the message will not be sent. If you have any further issues please contact our Support Team.

Yes, you can.

This is available via the Manage Hosting > Select Package > PHP Configuration section of our control panel. Alternatively, you can create a custom file in your webspace with your desired PHP configuration. Please note that PHP will only read a custom configuration once every 5 minutes, so it can take a short time before the configuration changes appear on your website. This is always the case for our WordPress platform, as PHP-FPM caches the configuration quite aggresively. 

Control Panel

The PHP Configuration icon inside the control panel allows you to view and modify a list of the more common configuration options. You can also see our default values. To change one, simply enter your preferred value in the text input or make a radio selection and save.

File System (Advanced)

If you wish to set an option that is not listed in the control panel, you can just modify the ~/public_html/.user.ini file directly via File Manager. This file is parsed in addition to our standard PHP configuration by our web server, allowing you to change almost all the PHP settings for your website. If you’ve already made changes via the control panel you will see those in a .user.ini already. For example “max_input_time=500” would set max_input_time to 500 seconds.

Testing

The best way to confirm the settings are live is via phpinfo(). This allows you to see the current (local) and default (global) PHP configuration. To do this, use File Manager or an FTP client to create a file, for example “info.php”, with the following content:

phpinfo();
?>

Then visit your website via domain.com/info.php and you’ll see all PHP configuration settings. Please remember to remove the script when you’ve finished testing.

SSH

At eWeball – Affordable Hosting we run multiple different versions of PHP.

On our SSH servers, the execution of commands like “composer” will run with our default, system-level PHP that is also used for internal tools at eWeball – Affordable Hosting. This is a thin version of PHP without all the modules you may be used-to on your website. To enable use of this command, you need to specify the full path to the version of PHP that you wish to run the script as. You can do this on the command line itself.

Here’s an example of using PHP 7.1 to execute Composer:

/usr/bin/php71 -f /usr/bin/composer

So the complete command would become:

/usr/bin/php71 -f /usr/bin/composer install

A list of available PHP versions is presented to you in the message of the day (MOTD) once you login to SSH.

To connect via SSH on a Mac you can follow the instructions below:

  1. Log in to i.weball.co.uk.
  2. Head to Manage Hosting and select Manage on the hosting package you want to connect to.
  3. Select the SSH Access icon.
  4. You’ll now need to generate a public key, on a Mac this is done via the Terminal utility. Open Terminal on the Mac.
  5. Enter the following command into the Terminal:

ssh-keygen

  1. Press Enter
  2. You’ll be prompted to enter the location that you want the public and private keys saving. In this case, we’ll keep this as the default location. Press Enter
  3. You’ll be prompted for a passphrase, in this guide we’ll just leave this empty. If you enter one, make sure you remember this as you’ll be prompted for this later. Press Enter.
  4. You’ll be asked to confirm the passphrase – since we’ve left this empty just press Enter.
  5. Your keys will have been generated and the public key will have been saved in a specified location, in our example, it has been saved in:

/Users/user/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

  1. Copy the path and enter the following command:

cat /Users/user/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

  1. The key will be outputted, copy the whole key from the start to the end.
  2. Paste the key back into the Public Key field in the SSH Access section. The handle should be added automatically. Press Add Public Key.
  3. Please note that can take up to 5 minutes.
  4. Head back to Terminal and enter the SSH username and hostname found at the top of the SSH Access section, it should be something like [email protected] You’ll need to prefix it with the ssh command as follows:

ssh [email protected]

  1.  You’ll be prompted to confirm you would like to connect, simply type yes and press enter.

You should have successfully connected via SSH from your Mac to your hosting package at eWeball – Affordable Hosting.

If you’ve set up SSH access for a package then you can run the following command-line instructions to import a MySQL database:

mysql -h hostname -u username -p username < databasefile.sql

The above command connects to your database with the -h (hostname) -u (username) -p (database name in this case) then the unzipped file < databasefile.sql

You will then be prompted to enter a password for the database. Input the password and press enter.

Compressed files

If the database file is zipped then you will need to unzip it first, then you can use one of the following commands:

For a .zip file you can use the unzip command:

  • unzip databasefile.sql.zip
  • mysql -h hostname -u username -p username < databasefile.sql

For a .gz file you can use the gunzip command:

  • gunzip databasefile.sql.gz
  • mysql -h hostname -u username -p username < databasefile.sql

It’s only recommended that you connect to your package via SSH if you’re familiar with the command line interface. 

Windows

If you’re using Windows, you’ll need to download an SSH Client to access SSH.

This guide uses PuTTY which is a free SSH client and can be downloaded here: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.html

  1. Once you have downloaded PuTTY, search for and open PuTTY Key Generator on your computer.
  2. Select Generate and move the mouse around in the gray box to generate some Randomness. This will generate a public key.
  3. Add a passphrase (password). This is what you’ll need to put into the command line interface.
  4. Log in to i.weball.co.uk, head to Manage Hosting and select the package that you want SSH access for. Then select, SSH Access from under the Security section.
  5. Then input the public key that was generated from PuTTYgen into the Public Key box. A handle will be generated automatically. Then select Add Public Key.
  6. Head back to PuTTY Gen and select Save private key. Save this as any name you want.
  7. Open PuTTY. Down the left-hand side, select to expand the SSH menu and then select Auth.
  8. Select Browse and add the private key you have just saved.
  9. Head back to Session using the left-hand menu and add the host name ‘ssh.i.weball.co.uk’ and select Open
  10. The command line interface will be show. Then login with your domain (e.g. domain.co.uk).
  11. You’ll then be prompted for the passphrase that you set earlier. Enter this.
  12. You’ll now have access to SSH for your site

It’s only recommended that you connect to your package via SSH if you’re familiar with the command-line interface. Here is how to connect using two-factor authentication (2FA).

Windows

If you’re using Windows you will want to download an SSH client to access SSH. 
You can download PuTTy from the following page: https://www.putty.org/

⦁    You will want to first download the Google Authenticator app which is available for both iOS and Android devices 
⦁    Login via i.weball.co.uk, and head to Manage Hosting and select the package that you require SSH access for. Then select SSH Access from under the Security section
⦁    Under Set SSH password, set the password and make note of this for later on. Then select Set up Authenticator and proceed to scan the QR code on your iOS or Android device

⦁    Open PuTTY. Enter the hostname ‘ssh.stackcp.com’ and select Open.  
⦁    The command-line interface will request you for a login. Log in with your domain (e.g. example.co.uk) 
⦁    You will then be prompted for a verification code. Open Google Authenticator and enter your code.
⦁    Enter the SSH password which was set-up earlier.  
⦁    You’ll now have access to SSH through 2FA.

SSL Certificates

No. To be able to apply the free SSL certificate, your site(s) need to use the eWeball – Affordable Hosting nameservers.

This is because the SSL certificates are installed locally to the eWeball – Affordable Hosting platform.

If you’re trying to access the temporary URL (i.e. example-co-uk.staging.com) you may get an ERR_SSL_UNRECOGNIZED-NAME-ALERT error. 

This will be because the temporary URL can’t load over SSL (via https://). To allow the temporary URL to resolve you’ll need to ensure it loads over http://.

  • Check the WordPress site and home URL and make sure it’s set to load over http://
  • Disable Force HTTPS in the control panel
  • Ensure you don’t have the Really Simple SSL plugin active, you can disable it to prevent it forcing https://
  • Remove any redirects in the .htaccess file.

You may need to try an incognito browser tab after making any corrections to ensure https:// is not cached in your browser

Yes: if you have an existing external or third-party SSL certificate you can install this at eWeball – Affordable Hosting.

Your certificate provider will need to provide the following sections for us to be able to install the SSL certificate:

  • Certificate
  • Private Key
  • CA Bundle / Intermediate Certificate

These details will need to be entered within the SSL/TLS section within a eWeball – Affordable Hosting hosting package: Manage Hosting -> [select package] -> SSL/TLS.

Please also note that SSL certificates can take up to 30 minutes to install on to the web server. If your A records are then pointing to the IP address of the hosting package then your site should show as secure.

If you don’t have an external SSL then you can either apply the free eWeball – Affordable Hosting SSL, or purchase a eWeball – Affordable Hosting SSL from i.weball.co.uk.

When ordering an SSL certificate, you’re often required to generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR). This is an encoded block of text that the Certificate Authority require when issuing an SSL certificate. It contains information about the organization, domain name and locality.

Using a CSR Generator

The easiest way to generate a CSR is to use the online generator here:

https://csrgenerator.com/

You will need to make sure that you keep a record of both the CSR and Private Key that are provided to you.

Every eWeball – Affordable Hosting hosting package comes with a free wildcard SSL certificate, enabling you to use the more secure ‘HTTPS’ protocol to keep your site users secure. To activate the SSL, you’ll need to make sure you’ve pointed the domain name to our nameservers.

With that done, you need to:

  • Within Manage Services, select Manage Hosting.
  • Within Manage Hosting, select Manage on the hosting package on which you wish to activate the SSL
  • Under Security, click on the SSL/TLS icon
  • You will then see your domain name and an option to Activate Free SSL next to it – select this and the SSL will be applied to your domain
  • If you’d like all your visitors to use SSL connections (i.e. for HTTPS to always be used), simply select the Enable option at the bottom of the page​

Once the SSL Certificate has been activated, it will take up to 30 minutes to secure your website. This is due to the changes needed to be made on our load balancers.

Using HTTPS instead of HTTP means that communications between your browser and a website is encrypted via the use of an SSL (Secure Socket Layer). Even if your website doesn’t handle sensitive data, it’s a good idea to make sure your website loads securely over HTTPS. It’s now becoming a requirement for many new browser features as well as potentially having an impact on search engine rankings.

To make sure your website loads securely, you need to make sure that it is prefixed with HTTPS instead of HTTP. This can be done in a few different ways. Outlined below are the most common ways to do this.

Use the Force HTTPS tool

  1. Login to i.weball.co.uk and head to Manage Hosting and select Manage on the package you want to force HTTPS for.
  2. Select the SSL/TLS icon.
  3. Select Enable Force HTTPS. This will redirect website users to HTTPS. As long as the website has an SSL certificate and all content loads via HTTPS, the site should show as secure.

Using a .htaccess file

Another way that has the potential for more specific configuration is to use a .htaccess file rule. If you don’t have a .htaccess file, you can create one via FTP or File Manager and then add the code:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{env:HTTPS} !on

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.example.com/$1 [R,L]

If you already have a .htaccess file then make sure you don’t duplicate the line:  RewriteEngine On

If after enabling force HTTPS the website shows insecure, then you’ll need to make sure that:

  1. You have an SSL certificate on the site
  2. You don’t have mixed content.

Please note that if you have recently activated a eWeball – Affordable Hosting SSL certifcate for your domain, it can take up to 30 minutes to be installed across our load balancers.

After an SSL has been installed, the website still loads with an insecure warning

If the website is now showing your certificate but still has an insecure warning, this is often caused by ‘mixed content’ on the website. This means there is content on the page that is being loaded through a ‘http://’ URL. For a webpage to be classed as secure, all content must be loaded over HTTPS. This includes external images, JavaScript and CSS. You should search the source code of your website to locate the ‘http://’ references and update or remove them.

Finding Mixed Content

When visiting an HTTPS page in Google Chrome, the browser alerts you to mixed content as errors and warnings in the JavaScript console. You can open the console either from the View menu: View -> Developer -> JavaScript Console, or by right-clicking the page, selecting ‘Inspect Element’, then selecting ‘Console’. You need to remove or update the ‘http://’ URLs listed in these errors and warnings in your sites source.

Alternatively, you can use the site ‘Why No Padlock?’ to identify mixed content: https://www.whynopadlock.com/

If the site is running WordPress, you can use the SSL Insecure Content Fixer plugin that should identify all mixed content and replace it with a secure version for you. You can find the plugin here: https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/ssl-insecure-content-fixer/

Once all references on your website are called using https:// URLs, your site will load securely in your browser.

Web Hosting

You can set up a cron job or ‘scheduled task’ in the Scheduled Tasks section of your hosting packages control panel.

Manage Hosting -> Manage -> Scheduled Tasks

These are commands or jobs that are set to run regularly. They can be set to run at intervals of minutes, or the same time every hour, day or month.

On the Scheduled Tasks page there are three things to consider:

1. What command you are wanting to run? This is usually something like a WGET to a certain domain name or a PHP script. If you want to run a particular file such as WordPress’s cron you’ll need to use the correct version of PHP for the website. To select a particular version of PHP to run the command you use the commands to the right of the screen.

2. How often you need your cron to run? This is selected from the drop-down boxes under where you enter the command. You can either use the first box to run it every 5, 10, 15 minutes or you can be more specific and select particular minutes in the hour, hours in the day or days in the month for the cron to run.

3. Would you would like to have emails sent to a specified address when a cron is run? An email will only be sent if the cron produces an output so if the cron doesn’t output anything no email will be sent.

The File Permissions Checker allows you to easily view and fix file permission issues which don’t match our recommended settings.

To use the File Permissions Checker:

  • Login to i.weball.co.uk, head to Manage Hosting and select Manage on the hosting package you wish to check file permissions for.
  • Select the File Permissions Checker icon.
  • To begin a scan of the file permissions, select Scan Permissions.
  • If any permissions are found to differ from our recommended settings, they will be presented to you in a list with the current permission level and our recommend level.
  • You can either select all files and select Fix Selected or fix files individually by selecting Fix Permission.

ImageMagick – the open-source image tool – is supported. We currently run Version 6.7.2. The path to the ImageMagick binary is:

/usr/bin/convert

Alternatively, some scripts may require just the directory path, in which case please enter:

/usr/bin

Imagick PHP Extension

While all customers have access to the convert command line program, unfortunately the PHP extension is not available on our hosting platform. 

Gzip is a great of compressing files for faster network transfers – helping them load faster, so improving site speed. It’s also a file format. 

We encourage the use of and enable Gzip Compression by default across all of our platforms. Compression is handled automatically by our Edge Cache systems, so no configuration is needed on your part.

Note: Our temporary URL system does not utilise our edge caching, so any external tests for compression against the temporary URL will show compression as disabled. This is expected and will not be the case when testing against your actual domain name.

Manual Configuration

If you’re experiencing problems or want to enable compression manually you can do so via a “.htaccess” file.

  •  Create, or edit if one already exists a file named “.htaccess” in your public_html directory.
  •  Add the following line:

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript application/javascript

 3. Save your changes.

Occasionally, applications in your webspace may run checks to help ensure your website is secure. As part of these checks, the application reads the version number of various pieces of software on our servers. Sometimes, these version numbers are old and hence raise warnings. One of the most common examples for cURL is “You currently have version 7.19.7 of cURL installed. This version is known to have security issues. Please update to the latest cURL”. 

We understand how that could worry you! However, an update is not required and your site is still secure.

Our Linux/WordPress platforms run Redhat Enterprise Operating Systems, and Redhat use a process known as ‘backporting’ into slightly older, stable versions of software to ensure security and stability throughout the entire operating system. Put simply, while the version number may appear to be out of date, you can be assured any security fixes have been retrospectively applied to guarantee they remain secure.

To find out more about backporting, please see this article on Backporting Security Fixes on Redhat’s website.

Due to the distributed nature of our network, the IP address your site uses to make outbound connections will differ from the IP the domain resolves-to, and hence inbound traffic routes through.

External connections made by shared websites will appear as from either 185.151.28.62, 185.151.28.63, 45.8.227.175 or 45.8.227.176

If you have a Scheduled Tasks/Cron Job that requires external connections, these will appear from 185.151.28.61 or 45.8.227.174

However, the above addresses are subject to change. So if possible, we’d recommend whitelisting the IP range 185.151.28.0/24 and 45.8.227.0/24.

Your machine’s local hosts file allows you to overide DNS for a particular domain or subdomain name.

This is a great way to test the site ahead of changing real DNS: you’re able to test the website at eWeball – Affordable Hosting while the rest of the internet continues to use DNS to point to the existing website.

The way to modify this file and the location of it differs by operating system.

To modify your hosts file, you can add two entries to the file that contains the IP address that you want the site to resolve to and the IP address. Adding the following two lines, for example, would point www.domain.com and domain.com to the IP 1.2.3.4:

1.2.3.4 domain www.domain.com

For Windows:

  • Press Start and Search for ‘Notepad’
  • In the search results, right-click Notepad and select Run as administrator.
  • Use File -> Open and navigate to the following file: c:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts
  • Make the changes (below)

For Mac OS 10.0 to 10.6:

  • Open Applications > Utilities > Terminal
  • Type sudo nano /etc/hosts
  • Enter the administrator password
  • Make the changes (below) 

To save changes in nano, press Control+x and then y when prompted.

For Mac OS X 10.6 through 10.11:

  • Open Applications > Utilities > Terminal
  • Type sudo nano /private/etc/hosts
  • Enter the administrator password
  • Make the changes (below)
  • Type dscacheutil -flushcache in to Terminal and press enter.

To save changes in nano, press Control-x and then “y” when prompted.

For Linux:

  • Use your favourite editor to open /etc/hosts (i.e sudo vim /etc/hosts)
  • Make the changes (below)

Making The Change

The hosts file takes arguments of the format:

XX.XX.XX.XX domain.tld www.domain.tld

The IP address for the website is displayed down the right hand side of our control panel, under the ‘IP Address’ heading. They’ll usually start with ‘185.151.2x.xxx’:

185.151.2x.xxx domain.tld www.domain.tld sub.domain.tld

After you add this line and save the file, your system begins resolving to the specified IP address.

After testing is finished please remove these entries so you start using “real DNS” once again.

It’s important to ensure that when making this change you have entries for both your domain and all relevant subparts. For example, if you just add an entry for “domain.tld”, then “www.domain.tld” will point the original server. 

The type of platform you should choose depends on the software you plan to use to power your website.

Generally, you should choose Windows if your website is built in ASP, ASP.NET or requires an Microsoft SQL database.

If your website is built in PHP, Perl, Ruby, or Python then choose Linux. WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal and all other Web apps we provide through our one click installers are optimised for our Linux hosting platform.

If you’re only using WordPress, then we recommend using our WordPress hosting platform (it has WordPress-specific speed-boosting features). 

If you’re still unsure, we’d recommend choosing Linux as this platform meets the majority of our customers’ needs.

If you’re managing DNS elsewhere, or simply wish to know the IP address of a package, you can find this within your hosting control panel. 

  • Head to Manage Hosting and select Manage for the package you wish to know the IP address for
  • Down the right-hand side under Account Information you’ll find both the IP Address and the IPv6 Address
  • In general it’s only the IPv4 address you’ll need

When you create a hosting package you’re given a temporary URL.

There are a few reasons why you may want to use the temporary URL.

Viewing a hosting package when you have used a domain reference

At eWeball – Affordable Hosting you can create a hosting package using a domain reference. This means that the hosting package won’t be connected to a live domain name via DNS, so to view the files you’ve uploaded to the site you can use the temporary URL. It will display the site as if it were live, except it will be on our temporary URL servers and the URL is something like temporarydomain.com.

Viewing a site that you’ve migrated, before you switch the DNS to eWeball – Affordable Hosting

When migrating a site to eWeball – Affordable Hosting, we recommend the following process:

  1. Migrate the site files, emails and databases to eWeball – Affordable Hosting
  2. Check the site works at eWeball – Affordable Hosting via the temporary URL
  3. Point the nameservers to eWeball – Affordable Hosting.

Step 2 is where the temporary URL comes in. After you’ve copied all the site data to eWeball – Affordable Hosting, you may want to check that it works. Selecting the temporary URL will show you what the site will look like before you’ve pointed the nameservers to eWeball – Affordable Hosting’s.

Showing your client their site before making it live on the actual domain name

You may want to show your client a site that you’ve developed for them, without it being accessible on the live domain name. You can give your clients the URL:

temporarydomain.com

Alternatively, you create a redirect from the domain name to the temporary URL. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the temporary URL the same as a Staging Environment?

No, the temporary URL is not the same as a staging environment as it will always reflect what will be on the live site, so it’s not possible to perform work and then “push” changes to the live domain name.

Does the temporary URL support SSL?

The temporary URL does not support SSL, so if you have a hard-coded redirect that forces http:// -> https:// this will need to be removed. Similarly, when you are switching between the live domain and temporary URL, you need to make sure you add http and not https.

Are there any alternatives to using the temporary URL?

Yes, you can modify your hosts files. Your machine’s local hosts file allows you to override DNS for a particular domain or subdomain name. This is a great way to test the site ahead of changing real DNS: you’re able to test the website at eWeball – Affordable Hosting while the rest of the internet continues to use DNS to point to the existing website. 

Does my website perform the same on the temporary URL servers?

No, temporary URL servers are reduced capacity as they’re just for trialing a website on the platform before going live so they’re not intended to benchmark performance.

Not to worry! When a hosting package is created it’s essentially allocated to our standard platform. We can, upon request, move your website to our Kopage Pro Server which removes the upgrade message and gives you full access to the Pro licence.

If you get in touch with our Support Team they’ll be able to upgrade you automatically and for free. 

Please be aware that the upgrade process can take up to 30 minutes to complete.

Timeline Backups take an automatic daily backup of all your websites and databases and store them for 30 days.
If you have the Timeline Backups product you may want to view the most recent backups of your site.

To do this:

  • Log in to i.weball.co.uk
  • Select which package that you want to view
  • Select the ‘Timeline Backups’ option from the File section
  • Select ‘View Snapshots’

After selecting ‘View Snapshots’ you’ll see the ‘Snapshot Time’ drop-down, that will have all the snapshots from the previous 30 days. 

eWeball – Affordable Hosting impose a strict Acceptable Use Policy and Terms of Service which customers must adhere-to. These cover illegal activities, prohibit certain content hosted through us and includes a zero-tolerance spam policy.

A eWeball – Affordable Hosting customer breaking these terms and conditions could have our services withdrawn from them, and potentially be reported to the authorities for illegal activity.

If you suspect any eWeball – Affordable Hosting customer of abusing our rules, you should report to them to us.

Traceroute is a tool used for diagnosing network-related issues. It does this by displaying the route to the destination specified – a domain name or an IP address – and records how long it takes packets to reach that destination. Occasionally we may ask you to perform a traceroute. Here’s how to do it on our 3 hosting platforms:

Windows

  • Click ‘Start’
  • Type in ​Run and then click on the icon that appears (a box should open)
  • Type cmd and then press OK to open command prompt
  • In the window that appears, type in: tracert yourdomain.com (or the IP address depending on the issue) and then press ‘Enter’.

Apple iOS

  • Browse to Applications -> Utilities -> Network Utility -> Traceroute
  • Enter the domain or IP address you need to diagnose, then select Trace

Linux

  • Open a Terminal window
  • Type: traceroute yourdomain.com (or replace ‘yourdomain.com’ with an IP address if requested to do so)

There are a few common reasons why you may not be able to connect successfully via FTP.

1. Make sure you’re using the correct hostname

If you’ve not switched the nameservers to point to eWeball – Affordable Hosting, you’ll need to use a different hostname to connect via FTP:

  • For Linux and Windows, you can use: ftp.yourdomain.com
  • For WordPress you can use: wordpressftp.yourdomain.com

2. Make sure you have the FTP DNS record

If you’ve made any DNS changes you need to make sure that you have a CNAME from: 

 ftp.yourdomain.com -> CNAME -> ftp.yourdomain.com (or wordpressftp.yourdomain.com on the WordPress platform).

Without this CNAME you won’t be able to connect using ftp.yourdomain.com.

Please note DNS changes can take roughly 1 hour to propagate.

3. Make sure FTP is unlocked

At eWeball – Affordable Hosting we utilise an FTP lock system to ensure FTP can only be accessed when required which greatly reduces the risk of compromise to a hosting package. You’ll need to make sure this is unlocked to connect via FTP, to do this: 

  • Login to https://i.weball.co.uk
  • Select the hosting package you want to unlock FTP for from Manage Hosting
  • You can then select to unlock FTP by time, or by a specific IP address.

When FTP has been unlocked you’ll be shown the time the unlock expires and the option to lock it again.

4. Use the correct password

Make sure you are using the correct password! You’ll need to use the password that is located within the FTP Details section of the package.

Yes, eWeball – Affordable Hosting’s hosting is fully PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant and uses ISO 27001-approved data centres so will pass PCI compliance checks.

Our WordPress platform was designed and built exclusively for WordPress.

This level of platform to software exclusivity allows us to truly fine tune both hardware and software around WordPress. Each site is given its own PHP-FPM resource pool which is running the latest and fastest PHP 7 software with an inbuilt PHP OPCache.

Additionally, we run several edge caching systems that cache your WordPress content right at the start of our network to ensure the fastest load times for your visitors – no matter how busy things get. To manage this, each WordPress install comes bundled with our caching module which you can control via the WordPress admin interface. 

Unfortunately, not all plugins were designed to run at scale and may cause problems for you and your website. In order to provide a super-fast and secure platform for all customers, we do have some restrictions on the plugins you’re able to use on your WordPress package. 

Disallowed Plugins

The following plugins are not allowed on our WordPress platform due to excessive resource use:

BackupWordPress
VersionPress
Broken Link Checker
MyReviewPlugin
LinkMan 
Fuzzy SEO Booster

Caching Plugins

Our WordPress platform comes with various layers of caching built in. One of the most effective of these caching layers, especially at scale, is our edge cache system.

Unfortunately, most cache plugins will interfere with this and as a result, we don’t recommend running any caching plugins on your WordPress site.

This includes, but is not limited-to: W3TC, Super Cache, WP Rocket and Hummingbird.

Don’t panic! You won’t need them – all caching plugins are built for speed, and you can rest assured our caching plugin will do that hard work for you. 

What about your Standard Platforms?

While we discourage the use of the above plugins across all platforms, we currently have no restrictions on what plugins you can use on our standard hosting platforms.

Yes, Sellerdeck – the ecommerce toolset – is fully supported on the eWeball – Affordable Hosting web hosting platform, and runs really well! 

Overview

One of the major problems with malware is its persistence. This is why eWeball – Affordable Hosting’s Website Malware Scanner makes daily scans of all the sites within your hosting account. It uses a combination of commercial and in-house tools and provides reports detailing identified malicious content and its location within your site files.

When malware is located on a site, PHP mail is automatically disabled. We do this to preserve sender reputation across the platform and ensure that any sites that are compromised do not send large volumes of spam emails.

Best practices when dealing with malware and infected files

  • Check the Malware Report produced by the malware scanner to identify if there are any infected files
  • Clean and remove the infected files from your webspace
  • Identify any vulnerabilities within the site and secure them

Taking regular backups means that you’ll always have a restore point if you do find your site with compromised files. 

Checking the Malware Report

The Malware Scanner shows you a full list of sites that are currently infected within your account. To access this list: 

  • Login to https://i.weball.co.uk
  • Select the Malware Report icon. 
  • If any sites are currently infected they will show up here.

It shows: the package where the infection has been found, the time of the last scan and the number of infected files. To show a more detailed report, select View Report. You will now see the full list of infected files on the site. 

Infections found marked in red indicate that the file could be a risk to the site.

We also have a yellow ‘warning’ state which shows that the signatures found are unlikely to pose a high risk to the site. For example: logs files, SQL files and .zip backups files. Essentially a yellow warning state is for ‘information-only’ and won’t impact the sending of mail.

You can ensure that you’re notified of any newly-discovered malware by checking the Receive Daily Email Alerts? box.

Cleaning and removing infected files

In most cases the best way to resolve an issue with malicious content is to remove the compromised files and replace them with versions from a known clean download. That is, download the software again and replace just the files that have been infected from the initial install.

If the files are not needed, then you could also just delete the files completely.

Sometimes an infected file will just have the attackers script ‘injected’ in the first or last line within a specific file. Sometimes this can be very obvious, in which case you could look to simply remove the malicious script. 

You’ll want to do this for all the files that have been found by the Malware Scanner.

Further actions you can take

Remove unnecessary or unused plugins and applications from the site. Doing this will not only reduce the number of potential vulnerabilities but also make general site ‘house-keeping’ simpler.

You should also make sure that any plugins you’re using are always kept fully updated. Outdate​d software versions are much more likely to have security vulnerabilities – leading to compromised sites. 

Change passwords such as your database password and FTP password.

Note: Don’t forget to update any configuration files such as wp-config.php after making the changes. 

Rescanning the site

You can re-scan the site on demand. Once you believe you’ve removed the malware, head back to the Malware Scanner and select ‘Scan Again’.

If all infected files are removed, then PHP mail will automatically be re-enabled and there will be no infected files displayed. The scanner will continue to take daily scans of all your sites to ensure you’re always aware of any sites that have been compromised. 

To create a subdomain:

You can then add your subdomain into the Subdomain field and select Create Subdomain. You’re also able to change the Document Root so that you can direct the subdomain to the folder of your choosing.

What is the document root?

The document root is the folder which the subdirectory will use, for example, you may have a directory within your web space located within public_html called support (i.e. public_html/support), you could point your subdomain to this location by adding public_html/support in the Document Root field. 

If you’re unsure whether DNS has fully propagated for you, you should check the IP address your requests are resolving-to. The easiest way to do this is to ‘ping’ the domain name from your local computers. On Windows, you should open a Command Prompt and on macOS a Terminal, and then type:

ping domain.com

Replacing domain.com with the website you wish to check. The IP address returned will show you which server you’re reaching when typing that domain into your web browser. It’s a good idea to check both ‘www.domain.com’ and ‘domain.com’, as each record will have its own cache. 

To tell if this is the server at eWeball – Affordable Hosting, you should make sure the IP address returned by the “ping” matches the IP address displayed down the right-hand side of our control panel. If this isn’t the case, and you have recently created a new hosting package, manually changed your DNS records, or updated your nameservers on the domain, it’s likely DNS is still propagating for you. 

If you manage your domain name with eWeball – Affordable Hosting and have access to it via i.weball.co.uk you can view the nameservers the domain is using by following the steps below. 

  • Log in to i.weball.co.uk
  • Select Manage Domains and locate the domain you’d like to check, select Manage.
  • Select the Nameservers icon to view what nameservers the domain is pointing to.

You can edit and update them here.

Please note that nameserver changes usually take between 6-8 hours – but can take up to 24 hours. 

You can use phpMyAdmin to import an .SQL file with your database information. To do this:

  • Log in to your database via phpMyAdmin (https://i.weball.co.uk > Manage Hosting > [select package] > phpMyAdmin) 
  • Choose the database you want to import your .SQL file to from the left hand side.
  • Click the Import tab at the top of the page.
  • Select Choose File and locate the .SQL file on your device or computer.
  • Click Go

The .SQL file will be uploaded and imported to the database you’ve selected. 

eWeball – Affordable Hosting’s shared web hosting offers 1 GB MySQL databases.

Yes, you can.

This is available via the Manage Hosting > Select Package > PHP Configuration section of our control panel. Alternatively, you can create a custom file in your webspace with your desired PHP configuration. Please note that PHP will only read a custom configuration once every 5 minutes, so it can take a short time before the configuration changes appear on your website. This is always the case for our WordPress platform, as PHP-FPM caches the configuration quite aggresively. 

Control Panel

The PHP Configuration icon inside the control panel allows you to view and modify a list of the more common configuration options. You can also see our default values. To change one, simply enter your preferred value in the text input or make a radio selection and save.

File System (Advanced)

If you wish to set an option that is not listed in the control panel, you can just modify the ~/public_html/.user.ini file directly via File Manager. This file is parsed in addition to our standard PHP configuration by our web server, allowing you to change almost all the PHP settings for your website. If you’ve already made changes via the control panel you will see those in a .user.ini already. For example “max_input_time=500” would set max_input_time to 500 seconds.

Testing

The best way to confirm the settings are live is via phpinfo(). This allows you to see the current (local) and default (global) PHP configuration. To do this, use File Manager or an FTP client to create a file, for example “info.php”, with the following content:

phpinfo();
?>

Then visit your website via domain.com/info.php and you’ll see all PHP configuration settings. Please remember to remove the script when you’ve finished testing.

We encrypt all FTP, email and database passwords so they are not visible as plain text inside your control panel.

The exception is the very first FTP account: this password is visible on the right hand side when you manage your hosting. You’re able to change all passwords and changes are usually processed immediately.

Please note: the majority of database passwords will be saved in the configuration or connection strings for your website. For example, for WordPress, the database password is visible inside the wp-config.php file.

WordPress

There are a few very common reasons why you may not be able to send emails. 

Are your email settings are correct?

Make sure the email account username and password that you enter in your email client are correct. The details you’ll need to be using are found below:

Account type: IMAP

  • Incoming mail server: imap.yourdomain.com
  • Outgoing mail server: smtp.yourdomain.com
  • Incoming server port (IMAP): 993
  • Use the following type of encrypted connection: SSL
  • Outgoing server port (SMTP): 465 (or 587)
  • Use the following type of encrypted connection: TLS

 Are email sending limits being hit?

Our mail platform has several limits in place in order to protect the reputation of the mail platform and prevent large quantities of spam emails being sent. Currently, our mail limits are as follows:

Web servers: 500 emails a day.
Mailboxes: 8000 emails a day.
Message size/attachments: our webmail system accepts attachments up to 32MB in size, and the maximum message size in our network is 50MB.

If any of these limits are breached, then it won’t be possible to send mail from that hosting package or mailbox. In the case of the message size/attachment limit, you’ll simply need to look at reducing the size of the email or the attachment being sent.

Where do the MX records point?

You can easily ensure eWeball – Affordable Hosting serves the emails by using the tool here: https://mxtoolbox.com/

If we host the emails then you’ll see mx.stackmail.com returned. If anything else is returned you may wish to contact the provider to determine the cause of the issue. 

Is the mailbox disabled for suspicious activity?

If you’re receiving the following error when trying to send that the mailbox may have been disabled for sending suspicious emails. 

If you manage your domain name with eWeball – Affordable Hosting and have access to it via i.weball.co.uk you can view the nameservers the domain is using by following the steps below. 

  • Log in to i.weball.co.uk
  • Select Manage Domains and locate the domain you’d like to check, select Manage.
  • Select the Nameservers icon to view what nameservers the domain is pointing to.

You can edit and update them here.

Please note that nameserver changes usually take between 6-8 hours – but can take up to 24 hours. 

If you’re using WordPress, you may wish to make use of the WP Command Line Interface (CLI) to make changes to your installation.

It’s included by default with all WordPress installs.

The best SMTP details to use when configuring an SMTP plugin within WordPress when you’re using our WordPress hosting are: 

Outgoing mail server: smtp.yourdomain.com

Outgoing server port (SMTP): 465

Use the following type of encrypted connection: SSL

Using these details will allow emails to be sent via SMTP from WordPress forms or allow any other SMTP-based plugins to send.

There are a range of different WordPress form plugins out there such as WP Forms, Contact Form 7 and Pirate Forms.

In this example, we’ll demonstrate with the free to use Contact Form 7 plugin.

1. Install the Contact Form 7 Plugin

Log in to your WordPress Admin area and head to Plugins and select Add New. Search for Contact Form 7 and select Install Now and then Activate.

2. Add a New Contact Form

You’ll now see a new menu option called Contact down the left-hand WordPress sidebar. Select Contact to configure a new form. You’ll see a list of current contact forms, with a default form called ‘Contact form 1’ having already been added.

We’ll create a new one. Select Add New. You’ll see the default form that’s been added along with its default data. 

3. Configuring Your Form

Form tags are used as placeholders for a HTML form control. For example, you can add a drop-down menu using the drop-down menu tag. You can see our example below and how it effects the form on the site.

  • Field type – This sets whether the field being added is required in order to submit the form. 
  • Name – This is the name of the form tag being added. It’s only used internally so it won’t affect how the form field is displayed on the website. 
  • Options – As this is a drop-down menu tag, there needs to be various options for the user to select. In our example we’ve used various ages. 
  • Id attribute/Class attribute – If you want to customise your form further, you can assign a CSS ID or Class attribute.

4. Edit the Mail Settings

Now you’ve configured your form, you’ll want to configure where the form actually sends from, and where it sends to. The From address will always need to be an address that uses your own domain, e.g. [email protected], however you can set the To address to be any email address you want to receive the form to. 

You’ll be able to configure what information from the form gets sent via the email, in the example above, you can see the tags: [your-name], [your-email], [your-subject] and [your-message]. This will be the information the form user has entered into the form when they submitted it. 

5. Adding the Form To Your Site

Now you’ve configured the form, you can add it to a Post or Page on your WordPress site. To do this, you’ll need the form shortcode which is provided on the Contact Form page.

In our example, our short code is: 

Add the shortcode.

Once done, your form will display on the page or post you’ve added it-to. 

Update the password using WordPress Tools

If you would like to reset your WordPress User password, then you can use our WordPress Tools facility to do so. To reset your password: 

  • Head to your list of packages -> [select package] -> Users.
  • Find the user you’d like to reset the password for and select Manage -> Change Password.
  • Enter the new password and select Change Password.

You can then log in using your new password. 

Updating the password using phpMyAdmin

If you’d like to use the traditional method, or if your WordPress site is not on the eWeball – Affordable Hosting WordPress platform then you can update WordPress user passwords directly from the database using phpMyAdmin: 

  • Head to your list of packages -> [select package] -> phpMyAdmin.
  • Select Log In for the databse where the core WordPress installation is located.
  • Select to expand the database tables on the left had side and locate the wp_users table.
  • Locate the row with the user you wish to update the password for and select Edit.
  • Locate the row with Column ID user_pass, select MD5 in the function dropdown and enter your new password in the Value field. 
  • Select Go and your password will now have updated. 

Yes! All our platforms have full support for a WordPress Network (formerly Multisite). You just need to follow the Create A Network article from the WordPress codex to get this setup.

Additional Domains

As standard, we automatically map the ‘wildcard’ alias for your domains to your site. What this means is you can create subdomains such as sub.domain.com and sub2.domain.com without any additional configuration.

However, if you want to add additional domain names/subdomains to the package, you can do that inside your hosting control panel. From there, the ‘Domains’ icon allows you to map additional domains to your package. For WordPress Network to work, all domains must point to the same document_root when they are added – usually public_html.

Activating SSL on Subdomains

We automatically map *.domain to all your packages, so you won’t need to add new subdomains to the account to get them to point to your WordPress install. However this means they aren’t available for additional services like SSL Certificates and e-mail accounts.

You can take advantage of our Free SSL service for any subdomains by explicitly adding them to the package. To do this, go to ‘Manage Hosting’, follow the ‘Subdomains’ icon and add the subdomains you wish to activate SSL on. As above, for WordPress Network to work, all domains must point to the same document_root when they are added – usually public_html. Once added, head over to the SSL/TLS icon and activate your Free SSL.

Overview of WordPress

WordPress is a free and open source content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL. WordPress is installed on a web server, which either is part of an internet hosting service or is a network host itself; the first case may be on a service like WordPress.com, for example, and the second case is a computer running the software package WordPress.org.

WordPress is considered one of the easiest to use CMS, thanks to a user-friendly interface. It also has an amazing number of plugins which allows it to extend its functionality in many ways. 

Dedicated WordPress Hosting 

Our managed WordPress hosting is a dedicated platform that’s optimised for speed, security and reliability.​​​​​ 

The WordPress platform is still Linux-based but only hosts WordPress sites. It’s optimised for WordPress, and uses our caching plugin.

I installed WordPress on the temporary URL, how can I change it to my domain name?

If you’ve utilised the temporary URL and would like update it to your own live domain, then you can easily use the our WordPress tools facility to update this. To update the temporay to the live URL:

  • Head to your list of hosting packages -> [select package] -> Users. 
  • You’ll then see the Site URL and Home fields, currently they should have the following type of URL: http://example-co-uk.staging.com.
  • Update both of these fields to your live domain, e.g. http://example.co.uk.
  • Select Save Settings.

You should now be able to access your site at your live domain.

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