How can I use my site's control panel?

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This guide is useful for those who are using cPanel control panels for the first time.

After registering a new domain name, it may take up to three days before your domain name information gets propagated to all domain name servers' databases across the world.  Likewise, if you have already registered your domain name, any changes in domain information might take up to three days before getting propagated to all domain name servers' databases.  So, if for a short amount of time, you can't log into your cPanel, please be patient.  Usually, the control panel is accessible after the first 24 hours, but 72 hour delays have also been observed.

To log into your cPanel, it's enough to enter your domain name in the "Log into your cPanel:" field at the left of each page of our web site, and press the Login button.  Please note that you have to enter your domain name without any prefix.  A valid example is your-domain.com.

After that, you will be asked for user name and password.  Use the user name and password we have provided to you.  Make sure you enter the correct user name and password, considering the case (password is not the same as PASSWORD.)

1. The first things you will see are a lot of different icons, each of which allow you to manage a certain aspect of your site.  The first place you'd like to visit is probably the Mail section.  In the Mail page, select the third item (Default Address.)  This items lets you choose a default address.  Please change this item's value to the email address you'd like to use as the default address (for example, FirstName.LastName@domain.com.)  You should enter the full email address, including the @ sign.

2. After adjusting your default email address, return to the previous page, and select the second choice, Add/Remove Accounts.  In this page, enter the account name you used in the previous step (for example, FirstName.LastName.)  Please make sure you do not enter the @ and the domain name here.
   If you don't create any more email accounts, every email sent to an address at your domain name will go to your default address.  It's a cute way to have virtual email addresses.  For example, having only created the address info@domain.com, you can give your visitors addresses such as sales@domain.com and support@domain.com, and every email sent to those addresses will go to info@domain.com.
   Of course, you can create more email accounts if you would like, but it's not necessary for now.

3. Now, return to the main cPanel page.  On the fourth row of the second column from the left side, click on "FrontPage Extensions," and then on "Install Extensions."  This sets up your site so that you can build your site on your own machine using FrontPage, and then upload it to the server.

4. Now, return to the main cPanel page.  This time, click on "Change Password."  Change your site's password to something other than what we sent to you.  This is for the sake of additional security of your site.  Please remember this password, because you will need it each time you want to log in to your cPanel.

5. To configure the Outlook Express program (which you can use to send and receive email,) open it from Windows Start menu.  Select Accounts from the Tools menu.  Your account name (which will be used to log in) is your complete email address, as you've entered in step 1, all letters in lower case (example: firstname.lastname@domain.com.)  Also, enter the password for this email account.  Both your site's POP3 and SMTP servers are mail.domain.com.  After creating your email account, open its Properties window, and go to the Servers tab, and check the "My server requires authentication" option.
   If you use some other email program, the configuration should be similar to the above.
   Also, if you're using Internet Explorer on Windows, you can auto-config Outlook Express by pressing the Auto-Config Outlook button in your cPanel's Mail section, in front of each email account listed there.

Now, the only thing left to do is building your site's pages, and publish them on the server.  If you don't plan to publish your site at this time, at least create a single page for your site's main page, because unless you do this, every visitor of your site is automatically directed to our website, and it's most likely what you don't want to happen.  So, create a page named index.html, and publish it as the site's main page on the server.

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