• Chapter 1
  General Information
• Chapter 2
  Control Panel
• Chapter 3
  FTP and Fetch
• Chapters 4 & 5
  Telnet
  Pop 3 Email
• Chapter 6
  Email manager
• Chapter 7
  Microsoft Front Page
• Chapter 8
  Anonymous FTP
• Chapters 9, 10 & 11
  Site Statistics,
  Password Protected Directories,
  CGI Scripts
• Chapters 12, 13 & 14
  Secure Socket Layers
  Change Passwords
  PHP
• Chapter 15
  Policies and Guidelines
• Back To Hosting Manual Main Page

Alajoyn Hosting Manual
Chapter one - General Information

Overview
Technical Support
Account Billing Support
Down Servers
What are all the files and directories in my account?
How do I create my own "404 Not Found" error page?

Overview

Network Connection
Alajoyn Hosting Solutions Network Operations Center in Baltimore, Maryland is "OnNet" with Frontier Global Center (FGC), which means that we have a direct fiber optic connection between our Cisco 7200 router and theirs. Being OnNet with a Tier-1 provider means that we don't link to a backbone, we are actually on a backbone. We have no phone circuit, and do not use a Telecom link to get to the Internet; instead, we have an in-house connection directly to FGC's ATM fiber node, located a few floors below our servers in the same building. This fiber optic line can handle the bandwidth of a T3 or an OC3, and with FGC's Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology, it can handle several times the bandwidth of an OC3. This is one of the primary reasons we can offer superior bandwidth, especially for streaming media.

Multiple Backbones
We share the digital distribution architecture of FGC, which is comprised of more than 25 high-speed private peering connections to major Internet carriers such as MCI, Sprint, UUNET, AT&T, AOL, Best, Erols, and others. FGC also has high-speed links to 8 public exchanges including both MAE East and West and several NAPS. To use an analogy, the private peering connections allow data to travel from New York to LA on a nonstop flight, while the regular public exchanges require a stop over.

Technical Support

For support questions, please use email support@alajoyn.com. We will answer your email usually within a few hours, but always within the same day of your email.

We have added this manual to provide you with fast answers. Always refer to this manual before contacting technical support. We try to provide you with fast (within 2-4 hours) email replies. E-mail is the preferred contact method.

Account Billing Information

We accept Cash, Company check or money orders.
If you wish to mail payments to us you may do so by sending your payment to:
Alajoyn Unlimited
P.O. Box 723
Delton, MI 49046
We only accept payment in full for hosting at time of account activation for a minimum of 1 year. Domain registrations - for 2 years.

Down Servers

Well it happens and there is not much that can be done when it happens except to fix the problem, that is if the problem is on our side.

Once you've established an internet connection through your PC, your dial up travels through several points before the actual log in to our servers. If there are any problems, within or at any of those points, it will prevent you from logging into your account. This obviously is out of our control. Remember, your ISP dial-up provider is not a condition related to your hosting with Alajoyn Unlimited. However, regarding your email, your configuration settings for your out-going mail is related to your ISP. More details on this is available elsewhere in our manual.

However, in the event that one of our servers do go down, it simultaneously sets off an alarm, that sounds much like a fog horn, and tends to cause people within the general area to head for storm shelter's due to their loudness.

Our servers are configured to restart should there be a failure. The entire process takes approximately 10 minutes. If a server is down for more than 30 minutes, by all means call us!

When you do place a call for technical support you will often get our voicemail, even during normal business hours. This should not alarm you, it is simply an indication that our hands are full at the moment, so please leave a detailed message and your call will be handled promptly - either by a return telephone call or email, so PLEASE leave your account name and email address.

Remember, email is the most efficient means for providing technical support to our customers. We ask that voice support be reserved for emergency purposes only.

What are all the files and directories in my home directory?

Do not delete or change any of the directories or files that are located in your account other than uploading to your www directory with pages of your own design. The initial page of your site should be named index.html, this way when a user types in the url www.yourdomain.com, they are taken straight to the initial page of your site without any further input.

When you connect to the root or "home" directory of your account via ftp, you will see the following system files & directories/folders which are landmarks suggesting a successful connection:

File/Directory Name - Description

domain-anonftp - this folder is used for your anonymous users to download public files.
domain-web-logs - this folder contains all access logs of visitors to your site
domain-mail - this folder holds all POP mail accounts for your domain
domain-www - this folder stores all html files for your domain (same folder as the www folder)
www - this is where you put all your html files and subdirectories (same folder as the domain-www folder)
domain-secure - this folder stores all secure html files (same folder as www folder and domain-www folder) this is an aliases folder that is secure when the right URL path is called correctly. Example: https://secure-server.net/domain_name/file.name

Of these directories, the most important one is named "www". Every account has its own separate "www" subdirectory. Files placed in the "www" directory are visible to remote browsers over the Internet, so this is where you want to place all your html documents, graphics, sounds, files, etc. which you want people to be able to access from the world wide web. For example, when a browser asks for URL http://yourdomain.com/page.html, Apache looks for the file: /home/yourdomain.com/www/page.html and sends it out.

The system will automatically place any needed files in the other directories.

All your HTML files and subdirectories should be placed in the www directory. Your CGI-BIN is also located in the www directory.

REMEMBER - name your home page index.html or index.htm.

How do I create my own "404 Not found" error page?

Your first step is to create the HTML page you want to use as your error message and upload it to your www directory.
Next, create a text file and name it ".htaccess" and add the following line (the URL should point to your error page):
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yourdomain.com/yourerrorfile.html
Finally, upload your .htaccess file to your www directory. After you complete these steps, anyone trying to access a page that does not exist will be redirected to your error page.