Domain Name Registration
Before you begin to set up a web site or sign up for a hosting plan, you need to
purchase
a domain name, if you haven't already. We recommend you transfer your existing domain name to our name
servers so you can take advantage of our Domain
Name Management Tools & Services If we register your domain name with
Commerce Blvd's Domain Management Services,
you will be assigned a user id and password to administer your domain
name information via a web browser. Customers who wish to register
a new domain name that is other than .com, .org, .net, .info, .biz, or
.us must do so at an outside Registrar that is authorized to register
names with those extensions (if you are registering a domain name that
belongs to a country outside the US, click
here for more info on non-US domains.) If you already have a
domain name with a Registrar other than Commerce Blvd, you may need to
contact that Registrar to initiate the "transfer" to our
hosting services. If you already have a user id and password to login
and administer your domain name, you may simply log into your record and
update the name server/DNS information to our name server information.
(You will be provided with Commerce Blvd's name server information by
email. If you were not sent this information, please contact us at support@commerceblvd.com.)
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Dedicated
IP Address
Commerce Blvd
provides each web hosting account with its own unique IP address. This allows
customers to access their accounts by FTP and via the Web during domain name
propagation periods or at other times when the domain name may be inaccessible.
Each customer's account IP address is "dedicated" to the single
account, meaning it is not being shared by any other accounts on the same
server.
Also,
dedicated IP accounts are compatible with all browser types, while name-based
virtual hosts (shared IP accounts) are typically only compatible with newer
browsers. Customers who have Dedicated IP Internet Web Hosting accounts also
enjoy the option of creating a site without a domain name (some types of
businesses or parties designing intranet websites prefer IP-only structures).
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Microsoft
FrontPage™ Extensions Support
Commerce Blvd is pleased to offer support for
Microsoft
FrontPage extensions. This allows you to access the easy-to-use
Microsoft FrontPage program to create and maintain your web site on
our server. You may request that FrontPage extensions be installed within your web
site, when placing an order for web hosting services. Our extensions
are backwards compatible to support previous versions of FrontPage as
well. Commerce Blvd does not charge a fee for this installation and
you may add or remove them anytime through your control panel.
Although we provide support for all FrontPage users regarding issues
experienced with the server extensions or particular server errors, we cannot support the software's functions.
Please consult Microsoft for issues regarding how to use the FrontPage
software. Extensive tutorials and help are available on Microsoft's
website.
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Unlimited
updates via your own FTP account
You will have unlimited
access via FTP 24-hours a day to set up and maintain your web site.
You can work on HTML documents, graphics, and scripts locally and then
upload files to your web site whenever ready. An FTP
tutorial and client software is available.
FTP
Tutorial
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Data transfer per month
In general, any outward bound traffic from a website
with the exception of email is considered to be data transfer. For
example, data
transfer is generated each time a web page or image is loaded, a file is downloaded
from your web site (not uploaded), or an audio file is requested. Each account
type has a limited amount of data transfer usage available. (For
example, the data transfer threshold is 6000 MB per month with the
Startup Plan.)
Our
experience has shown that 2000MB/month will usually allot more than
enough bandwidth for the average-sized website. Web sites that might
experience very high volumes of data transfer may have features such
as Flash movies, various audio files, or video files. Transfer used
over the amount allocated will incur additional
charges, or you may purchase blocks in advance
at a lower rate.
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Disk Space
The amount of disk space you are allocated pertains to
the actual amount of space on the server you are allowed to take up
with files, graphics, etc. Please note that any additional space
you use over that allocated amount will incur additional
charges, or you may purchase blocks in advance
at a lower rate.
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OC48
Fiber Optic Connection to the Internet
Commerce Blvd now has a fiber-optic OC48 pipeline leading into its server room,
which has a capacity of 4,976.64 Mb/Sec (4.86Gb/Sec), equivalent to 96
T3 circuits, or 2,688 T1 circuits! Connectivity is supplied to
multiple Backbone providers for speed, capacity,
and redundancy. Internet Backbone level routing: Commerce
Blvd uses top-of-the-line Cisco 12000 and 7500 Series Routers.
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Powerful
SUN Servers
Commerce
Blvd utilizes reliable Sun Microsystems servers for most of
its shared hosting plan customers. This ensures a quality
web hosting experience with minimal downtime and proven
performance.
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Top
of the Line Cisco Routers
Commerce
Blvd's Internet Backbone level routing uses top-of-the-line
Cisco 12000 and 7500 Series Routers.
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UPS
Power Backup, Alternative Power Sources
Commerce Blvd's facility operates off of a high-capacity
power grid. In the instance of power grid failure, an
alternate power grid is immediately available. In rare
circumstances in which power grids are unavailable, our
servers will be supported by a battery array with enough
power to last as long as 30 hours, while the 2 megawatt
generator starts up and powers the facility. These are
just the first levels of power restoration, while additional
precautions are also in place.
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Unlimited mail forwarding to a default address
Once your domain name is active worldwide, you can
receive all email addressed to your domain such as webmaster@yourname.com,
sales@yourname.com, etc. (you may setup the POP email addresses that
you prefer in your Control Panel).
By
default, all email addressed to your domain will forward to the email
address that you provided to us in your order. For your
convenience, unlimited email forwarding options are available if you
need specific addresses to be forwarded to different email address
that you currently use. This will allow you to check all of your email
from one place, instead of having to check two or more separate email
addresses. For example, email
addressed to webmaster@yourname.com could forward to an account that
you currently use at AOL (such as myname@aol.com ). You would then
only need to check email from your AOL account in order to read both
email addressed directly to you at AOL, and email addressed to webmaster@yourname.com.
This
feature is setup in the Control Panel.
Click on the Email Setup icon and you will see the Email
Forwarding/Aliases set up link.
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POP3 Accounts
In addition to mail forwarding,
users have the option to retrieve email directly from POP3 mailboxes
on the Commerce Blvd mail server using a Program like Outlook, Netscape Mail,
or Eudora. Each POP account can be assigned a unique username and
password to ensure privacy for individual email users. An Internet
connection is needed to check email from your POP account.
Additional POP3 accounts may be purchased at an additional cost.
Instructions
to setup POP3 email
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Email Auto- Responders
Auto-responders" reply to
incoming e-mail automatically with a pre-determined message. An
autoresponder could be used to send a standard text file to persons
addressing a particular email address. For example, anyone who sends
an email to info@yourdomain.com will automatically receive a return
email containing general company information and pricing. Autoresponders are easily setup in your account's online
control panel.
Instructions to
setup an Auto-Responder
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Group Email
Forwarding
Group email forwarders are similar to regular
forwarders, except email can be sent to more than one person. For
example, you may assign a Group Email forwarder: sales@mydomain.com,
with staff1@mydomain.com and staff2@mydomain.com on the list. When an
email is sent to sales@mydomain.com both staff1 and staff2 will
receive the same email. Group email forwarders are easily setup in
your account's online control panel.
(Note
that Group Forwarders are NOT mailing lists. They are limited to a
certain number of characters, usually allowing up to approximately 25
email addresses in your list. If you are interested in
implementing a mailing list to your account, keep in mind that you
have the ability to use a custom mailing list script. These
types of scripts are popular and should be easy to find on the web.
Keep in mind, however, that Commerce Blvd does take its
"Spam" policy seriously. Please read our AUP
for the details of this policy.)
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Custom CGI
Script Support Via Your Own cgi-bin Directory
Our customers have access to a personal cgi-local directory
which is reserved for custom
CGI scripts. CGI scripts are often used to accomplish tasks which
are not supported by basic HTML such as a "hit" counter or
guest book. Commerce Blvd makes a number of CGI
scripts available, but this directory can be used to set up
scripts that you write or locate elsewhere on the web. In
addition, click
here to view some cgi scripts that we recommend.
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Detailed
Web Usage Statistics & Access to Raw Log Files
We use a program called http-analyze
to track web usage statistics such as who is accessing your web site,
how many "hits" you are getting, how much data is being
transferred and more. Commerce Blvd uses a multi-processor SUN server to
crunch these numbers. For a detailed chart describing the various
statistic types in this program, visit: http://www.netstore.de/Supply/http-analyze/results.html.
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24
Hour Account Access
All of our Internet Web Hosting plans provide constant FTP
access. Commerce Blvd does not impose limitations on how often
a customer may FTP to the website to upload, download, and
edit files.
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Online
Account Control Panel Via Your Browser
All users have access to a web-based Control Panel which allows you to
set mail forwarding options, enable/disable anonymous FTP access,
assign additional FTP access, change your password and more. It also
allows access to other features such as web-based FTP, password
protect directory, and assign new FTP accounts. Users can also update
account contact information at anytime without having to contact
customer support. Control Panel Guide
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Multiple
FTP Accounts
Commerce Blvd customers have the
ability to control anonymous FTP settings for their accounts. Enabling anonymous FTP allows visitors to access your web site to
upload and/or download files without a unique id and password.
You
may setup additional FTP account(s) and assign unique
userids and passwords to enable each user to log in to a
specific directory/directories.
Example:
If you have created a sub-directory under your account named
/subsite, you can assign a new username and password
for a certain user to access this sub-directory directly.
When the user logs into the /subsite directory, it would be
his/her root directory and he/she may not access your
account's main directory. This is an added feature to
protect your main directory contents when assigning
different task for different users. FTP
Tutorial
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Commerce Blvd
customers have the ability to control anonymous FTP settings
for their accounts. Enabling anonymous FTP allows visitors
to access your web site to upload and/or download files
without a unique id and password.
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Commerce Blvd
provides Sun Chilisoft ASP support for Pro and higher
hosting plans. This ASP technology solution for Unix
allows webmasters to create .asp scripts in much the same
way these scripts are created for the Microsoft Windows
environment.
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Our
Internet Web hosting plans support various scripting
languages such as PHP 3 and 4, perl, and python.
Additionally, support for mod_perl allows programmers to
write modules for Apache web server in perl.
Webmasters/programmers find these tools convenient and
often vital for the site building process.
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Additional
FTP Accounts
You may setup additional FTP account(s) and
assign unique userids and passwords to enable user to log on to a
specific directory. Example: You have created a sub-directory under
your account call /sub-site, you can assign new userid and password
for a user to access directly to this sub-directory. When users log
onto this directory, it would be his/her root directory and he/she may
not access your account main directory. This is an added feature to
protect your main directory contents when assigning different task for
different users.
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Customizable
Spam Filtering Tools
Commerce
Blvd customers may take advantage of a user-configurable
filtering system to control the types of emails received at
certain POP3 email accounts. Each email account can be setup
to filter "spam" or other unwanted emails based on
a variety of criteria (such as by keywords) and by selecting
preferred RBL lists.
To
begin using this feature, simply email
technical support to request that spam filtering by
enabled for your account. Remember to include your domain
name in the request. Documentation
is available.
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Web FTP to your account
Under your account Control Panel, you may use our
online Web FTP program to upload, download and edit your files to your
account via your Web Browser.
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Access Control
You can assign unique userids and passwords to control access
to various web pages. Example: A software developer is making several programs available via the web, but only those visitors which have
paid for the service should be allowed access to the download page. To
control access, the page is placed in a directory which is password
protected. Instead of distributing a single password, unique userids
and passwords are assigned and removed as needed.
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Additional
Domain Pointer / Machine name
You can have additional domain names point to your existing
virtual domain web site account. For example, if you have an on-line
clothing store you may wish to have the domain names clothes.com,
shirts.com, and jeans.com all point to your account. This is an
excellent way to increase your visibility and bring more visitors to
your site! (Machine name is: machinename.yourdomain.com. When using
machine name, you do NOT need to register a new domain name, simply
add it on your existing domain name.)
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Server Side Includes
(SSI)
Server Side Include (SSI) commands are executed by the server
as it parses your HTML file. Server side includes can be used to
include the value of various server environment variables within your
HTML such as the local date and time. One might use a server side include to add a signature file to an HTML file or company logo.
Tutorial
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How
can I include RealAudio® or Real Video files in my home page?
Our Professional or higher
domain accounts also have the ability to use the more popular RealAudio®
server. Once you have created an RA file, follow these instructions to
incorporate RealAudio files into your home page:
You need to create a text
file with a ".ram" extension. This text file contains a URL
to the realaudio file in the following format:
Note the "pnm:"
prefix. Substitute your userid above. This file can reside in the
root directory of your account. The audio file name must have a ".ra"
extension.
The HTML file must reference
this text file; for example:
For Real Video files, the
same procedure applies, however your file extension will be the
appropriate movie file extension, rather than .ra .
More
Information
is available.
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How
can I include MIDI audio files in my home page?
You can add sound or music to
spice up your web site by embedding a MIDI file in your page. MIDI files
are typically only about 15k to 25k in size, so they do not take very long
to load. You can use MIDI files as background music on your page by adding
the following code to the section of your html file:
<embed src="yoursong.mid" hidden=true> <bgsound src="yoursong.mid">
Replace "yoursong" with the name of the MIDI file that you are
using. This code excerpt will support people using Netscape or Internet
Explorer.
To make a MIDI file play
"on request" in the foreground, you link to directly to the MIDI
file using a hyperlink.
<a
href="melody.mid">Click
to hear my MIDI tune!</a>
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Access Counter
You can place an odometer style counter on one or more of
your web pages. Although many vital statistics can be reviewed via the
stats program in your Control Panel, sometimes you may want to
advertise the number of "hits" to a specific web page.
Instructions
to setup an access counter
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Time Display
You can display your local time on your web pages with
a simple link.
Instructions
to setup a time display
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mSQL Database Server and Utilities
Selected plans provide database support. mSQL (mini SQL), mySQL,
and postgreSQL are lightweight
database engines designed to provide fast access to stored
data. In most instances, knowledge of custom programming
(commonly Perl) is needed to implement a fully functional
web-to-database interface.
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msql.pm
and W3-mSQL Support
msql.pm is the
mSQL perl adaptor, which provides a simple perl interface to
the mSQL database. W3-mSQL is the WWW interface for mini
SQL.
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Shopping Cart
System
Commerce Blvd's E-commerce Hosting
Plans bundle the power and ease of Mercantec's SoftCart and
PowerCommerce software. These "out-of-the-box" solutions for building an online store
include
web-based management tools for developing a product database and
maintaining an active shopping cart on your website.
Number
of Products Supported
Each of our E-commerce Hosting Plans includes a particular
version of either SoftCart or PowerCommerce software that supports a certain
number of products. For example, with the E-Pro Store plan, you can sell up to
20 unique products in your online store (each with its own
SKU number), E-Corp Store is suitable for up to 100 products; and
finally, the E-Enterprise Store plan supports unlimited products.
Some of our customers using the
E-Enterprise Store plan currently have several thousand products
offerings in their stores.
PowerCommerce
Features
SoftCart
Features
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SSL Secure Server
SSL (Secure Socket Layer) allows users to collect data such as
credit card information, in a secure environment. Information submitted
via a secure form is sent to the server in an encrypted mode.
Users may choose to research methods such as e-commerce software or
other solutions for retrieving secure information. You may use our
server's certificate or obtain
your own SSL certificate.
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Access to ClearCommerce
Payment Gateway
ClearCommerce
module is ideal for those who are in need
of a Merchant Account. It enables you to securely process credit card transactions 24 hours a
day, seven days a week in real-time. The customer is
able to apply directly through their online store manager for a Bank One (First Data) merchant
account at no additional set up costs. (Bank One will waive the set up fee.)
You only pay a low
per-transaction percentage to Bank One. The ClearCommerce module works
with all the popular browsers, as well as the SoftCart shopping cart
system included in our SoftCart
Ecommerce Hosting Plans. When your SoftCart store is built, you can easily
apply for a merchant account through the store site. After the
merchant account is approved, the payment gateway will be
automatically enabled in your store. To have the module added
on, there will be a $30 one-time set up
fee and $25.00/month additional to your hosting fee.
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Access to
CyberCash Payment Gateway
Due to changes made by the Verisign Corporation, CyberCash is no
longer available for new accounts. You may only use CyberCash features
with our hosting services if you currently hold an active CyberCash
account. Contact
us for more information.
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The
Web Mail feature allows site administrators to check and
send email from their domain name through a web browser. To
visit and use the web mail feature, simply visit webmail.yourdomain.com
and log in with your email user id and password. For more
information on how to use the web mail feature, please visit
the Web
Mail Support.
StartUp
hosting plans include Web Mail with a 3MB storage limit per
email account, while Pro and higher hosting accounts include
an increased 25MB Web Mail storage limit per email account.
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The
JDK feature mentioned on many of our hosting plans refers to
the Sun Java Development Kit, which is a development tool
that will allow you to compile Java applets and applications
on the server, but this is not the same as servlet
technologies such as Tomcat or JSP. The
applets/applications that your create and compile with JDK
still depend on client-side Java support.
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All
web hosting plans include access to a password protection
feature. This feature is located in your Control
Panel and allows you to specify userid and password
access to particular directories. When users attempt to
access those folders (or any documents within them) on the
Web, they will be prompted to login in order to view the
contents. Users who do not enter the correct password
will receive an error or "access denied" alert.
(This feature does not, however, affect FTP access.)
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On-line
Technical Support
Commerce Blvd offers extensive frequently
asked questions and documentation which will help
you get started, get you out of a bind, and provide you
guidance for setting up your websites. In addition, our
technical support staff is available by e-mail
24 hours a day, 7 days a week to assist you. Commerce Blvd's
technical support professionals may be reached by phone to
assist you with questions during normal business hours, or
during emergency situations.
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Hosting Features