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| Can I use my existing domain name with DotNetted |
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| Yes you can, you can either leave your domain name with your
current registrar and change the nameservers to point to ours
( ns1.dotnetted.com / ns2.dotnetted.com ) or do a full transfer
of the domain to DotNetted. |
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| Does DotNetted charge for domain transfers |
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Dotnetted do not charge for transfers - either incoming
OR outgoing.
The only situation in which payment is required is if you
do a full transfer of a non .uk (.com .net etc.) domain to
us as these domains can only be transferred at the same time
as renewing the domain for an extra year.
There will be a charge of £15 +vat to transfer in a
non .uk domain BUT a year will also be added to the life of
the domain. |
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| Can DotNetted host all domain names types |
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| We can host most types of domain names, if you have a particularly
unusual requirement or need advice on your domain name please
contact us |
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| How soon will my new hosting account be set
up |
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| Generally account setup is completed within 3 - 4 hours of
payment being received though it could be slightly longer
if the order is received outside of normal office hours. |
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| Can I use my new account immediately |
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Yes, you can begin using your account immediately setup
is completed - when creating accounts we also create a temporary
URL and FTP login so that you can start uploading and testing
your account whilst your domain registration or transfer propagates. |
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| Do you have an Acceptable Use Policy |
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| We do, the full document can be read here.
Basically we do not allow any adult or illegal material to be
hosted on our servers and have a zero tolerance policy on SPAM,
we enforce these policies rigorously. |
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| How reliable is your network |
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Our network and servers are robust and extremely reliable, averaging over 99.99 % uptime over the past year (this can be verified by an independent tracking service here).
Our servers are located in Manchester and also Northampton and also Bletchley/Milton Keynes.
All critical hardware, such as routers and firewalls are duplicated assuring that failure of an individual piece of hardware will have little or no impact on the overall running of the network.
The facilities are all full specification data centres with full resilience and back up (ie enterprise level UPS systems and generators and back up cooling etc).e.
Our backup servers are hosted in a separate facility and all servers are backed up fully each night with seven days retention for changed or deleted files.
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| How long have DotNetted been in business |
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DotNetted was originally started
as a web design and development agency back in 1998 under
the name 'Bulldog Web Design' by proprietors Lee and Tara
Davison.
Frustrated by the lack of reliable Windows / asp based hosting
available to host our clients sites we commissioned our first
dedicated server (then running Windows NT 4.0 !) in 1999 to host our own customers. Due to
the high quality of the service provided word spread and we
were soon being asked to host third party sites - over the
course of the next two years the hosting side of things became
the largest part of the business and the company name changed
to invectis as we ceased to offer web design services.
Invectis continued to grow and concentrated exclusively on offering Windows / Microsoft
based hosting packages, in August 2004 the company was again renamed to DotNetted to better reflect the fact that we specialise
in .NET hosting services.
On 01/04/2011 dotnetted was acquired by Nuco Technologies Ltd who trade as Host-it who are a long established hosting company which also owns and operates its own in house data centres ensuring that we can offer the very best in terms of reliability and service. |
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| What software is running on the servers |
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| The Operating System on our servers is Windows 2003 server or Windows 2008 server,
web servers also include IIS 6 / IIS 7, ASP.NET 1.1 / 2.0 / 3.0 / 3.5 / 4.0, ASP Classic 3.0 plus a
number of commercial components. Our statistics servers run
SmarterStats, mail servers run either SmarterMail or Host-it's own mail server software solution and database servers
run SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005 and also SQL Server 2008. |
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| How do I upload my web site files to my account |
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| You can publish your files to your account via FTP, this is a built in publishing option in most development environments such as DreamWeaver or Visual Studio but you can also use any other FTP client program to upload your files. For Windows 2003 / IIS 6 accounts we can also enable Frontpage Extensions on your site to enable you to publish via the Frontpage publishing protocol. |
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| Can I easily upgrade my account |
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| Very easily, our whole philosophy centres around providing
the customer with exactly what they need in as straight forward
a manner as possible. Upgrades (or downgrades) can be ordered from within your online panel very easily. |
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| What payment options do you offer |
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Our standard prices are based on payment via Credit Card/Paypal or Google Checkout. These payment options automate the process so a discount is included in the standard prices to reflect this however we can also accept payment by Cheque/Bank Transfer or Standing Order by removing the payment discount to cover doing this manually. Different payment options are presented on the sign up page so you can select the option you require. Payment instructions are included on each invoice to match the payment option selected.
NB: Card billing is handled through our payment processor SagePay
and payments are automatically processed on each billing date.
NB: All but the last four digits of your card details are encrypted in storage to ensure that your card details are secure. |
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| Is there a minimum term or contract |
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No, it's as easy to cancel as it is to sign up and you can
cancel your account at any time, even the day before your next
billing date. We have great confidence in our product and know
that customers stay with us because they receive a quality service,
not because we tie them down with contracts or long cancellation
notices.
You will however be charged to the end of the current billing period so if unsure we recommend selecting a shorter payment period/plan.
We offer the following payment period/plans:- Monthly / Quarterly / Semi-Annually / Annually / Biennially / Triennially.
* Longer payment periods/plans reduce the equivalent cost per month so if a longer period is committed to you will pay slightly less for the hosting in the longer term. |
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| Do you offer spam filtering and virus scanning |
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All DotNetted accounts include user configurable spam filtering
and also virus scanning of incoming e-mail as standard.
Our mail server has extensive spam filtering options and
performs a number of checks against incoming mail including
checking the sending IP against a number of public spam databases.
From these checks each mail is scored and you can set up
filtering on your account by domain or individual user mailbox
to perform actions based on this score such as moving the
mail to a spam folder or deleting outright.
Incoming mail is scanned as the massive increase in the number viruses
over the past couple of years this can no longer be considered
an option but an absolute essential on any web hosting account. |
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| How many e-mail accounts are included |
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Our base package allows you 100 mailboxes with 250MB of mail storage included for each account. Additional mailboxes / storage space can be ordered if required.
Note that legacy accounts with dotnetted prior to 01/04/2011 (when dotnetted was acquired by Host-it) have
250 MB of storage space that you can split between the accounts. |
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| How can I collect my e-mail |
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| You can collect your mail using any conventional pop3/IMAP e-mail
client, such as Outlook, Outlook Express or Pegasus, you also
have access to your mail through our webmail interface. |
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| Does my account include a web mail service |
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| All of your e-mail users have access to their own mailbox
via a webmail interface. Through this interface they can read,
send and delete mail complete with contact list and spell checker. |
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| How do I administer my e-mail accounts |
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| The webmail interface also doubles as an admin area and each
e-mail user can set various options
such as spam processing. The account administrator also has
additional options to enable them to add, delete and configure
mailboxes and other global domain settings via the online admin panel. |
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| Do you provide SMTP with hosting accounts |
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| Your preferred SMTP server should be that of your ISP (as this is the best way to send email)
but if they do not offer an SMTP server or it is not suitable
for any reason then you can purchase a range of outgoing SMTP accounts through Dotnetted starting at just £2.50+vat.
Please note that our mail servers are very closely monitored
and must not be used for sending unsolicited mail or bulk mail.
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| Can I include a mailing list in my site |
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Your site may include a small mailing list but you must be
able to prove that all recipients have actively opted into your
list using a 'double opt-in' system, i.e. they elected to join
the list and were sent an e-mail to which they had to reply
to confirm membership before being added to the live recipient
list. You must also provide a simple way to unsubscribe from
your mailing list and act on unsubscribe requests promptly.
This service is provided for small mailing lists only, if your
list has thousands of recipients or is mailed out very regularly
then you should be using a specialist mailing service. All mail
passing through our mail server is logged by domain and user,
if this service is abused you will lose the right to host a
mailing list. |
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| Can I host .mp3 files on my site |
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| Generally the answer is no, the only exception is if you can
prove that you own the copyright to the file or have written
permission from the copyright holder to host and distribute
the file. |
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| How much web space is included |
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| Our base package includes 1000 MB of web space which is enough
to hold approximately 20,000 average sized 50 KB web pages, additional
space can be added if required. |
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| How much transfer allowance is included |
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| Our base package includes 10 GB of data transfer monthly which,
based on a typical web page size of 50KB equates to 200,000 page
views, additional transfer can be added if required. |
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| Can I take credit cards securely |
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| Our accounts offer two options to allow visitor to securely
enter card details on your site, for £1 per month we can
provide you with use of a shared SSL certificate or for a £50
initial setup fee and £5 per month ongoing we can provide
your own secure certificate. Please note you will still require the services of a payment processor such as WorldPay to actually process the card payments. |
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| Can I add additional domains to my account |
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| You can add additional domains to your account for a one off
£10 setup fee, the extra domain(s) will be set up as an
alias of your main domain so that visitors can reach your site,
or send you mail at any of the domains aliased to your account.
Please note these are aliases of the account only and not separate
hosting accounts in their own right. |
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| What components are available to use |
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With the advent of .NET the 'old' system of the host providing
many third party components has become somewhat redundant
as most of the functions that these components carried out
(e.g. sending e-mail, uploading files, creating graphics)
can now be done natively in .NET. Also .NET commercial components
are usually sold on a per site basis where you would own the
license and install to your site rather than the component
being installed server wide.
However, we do still provide a number of standard components
for backwards compatibility with your .asp scripts including
AspEmail for sending mail, AspUpload for uploading files,
AspJpeg for image processing and AspEncrypt to allow you to
encrypt files and send secure e-mail. |
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| Does my account include MS SQL server |
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| Our base package includes the use of Access databases - SQL Server 2000 / 2005/2008 can be added as an option for just
£6 per month per 50 MB database. |
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| Can I use Microsoft Enterprise Manager / SQL Server Management Studio |
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| If you have purchased an SQL Server database with your package
you can use MS Enterprise Manager / Management Studio to administer the database
remotely, you can in fact use any database administration package
compatible with SQL Server and able to connect on a non-standard
port. |
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| How can I see stats of my site visitors |
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| Comprehensive graphical visitors statistics are provided for
all accounts via our SmarterStats software which offers over
100 different reports covering everything about your visitors,
where they came from and what they did whilst browsing your
site. You can also create your own custom reports covering the items in which you are most interested. |
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| How can I access my raw visitor logs |
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| If you want to keep your raw site logs for future reference
or run further offline analysis of your visitors they can be
downloaded through SmarterStats. |
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| Do you support DreamWeaver |
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| We do, our hosting accounts support for Macromedia's
DreamWeaver design software and are compatible with both the
ASP and ASP.NET server models for DreamWeaver. Please note that we do not support PHP so the PHP server model is not supported. |
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| Do you support FrontPage Extensions |
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| FrontPage Extensions are a free option on Windows 2003 / IIS 6 accounts
and you can either request that they be installed installed
on your account at the time of ordering or contact our support
department to have them added at a later date. Please note that Microsoft no longer supports Frontpage Extensions (last updated in 2002) and Windows 2008 / IIS 7 does not support Frontpage Extensions. |
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| Do you support Visual Studio .NET |
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| Certainly, our web servers are based on Windows 2003 / 2008 and ASP.NET
1.1 / 2.0 /3.0 / 3.5 / 4.0as required by Visual Studio .NET 2003 / 2005 / 2008 / 2010. |
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| Can visitors see my site without the www. |
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| Yes, your site will be reachable using both www.yourdomain.com
and yourdomain.com - it's becoming more popular to omit the
www. in offline advertising as the domain alone is easier to
quote and remember. |
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| Do hosting accounts include a cgi-bin |
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We do not support CGI / PERL or offer a cgi-bin. CGI is an
antiquated and inefficient method of scripting, anything that
can be done in CGI / PERL can be done faster and more efficiently
in ASP / .NET. Your ASP / .NET scripts can be run from anywhere
in your account so a cgi-bin is not required.
However note that Host-it offer a wide range of hosting plans which include this and various other technologies/features. Click here to view the range of plans available if you need a feature or technology which is not supported by dotnetted. |
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| Do accounts support PHP scripting |
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We don't, as with CGI anything that can be done in PHP can
be done with ASP / .NET. We have
taken a conscious decision to install only native Microsoft
technologies on our web servers, this leads to improved performance
and much better reliability than can be obtained on a 'hybrid'
server.
However note that Host-it offer a wide range of hosting plans which include this and various other technologies/features. Click here to view the range of plans available if you need a feature or technology which is not supported by dotnetted. |
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| How do I contact DotNetted for technical support |
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| Our technical support area includes a large amount of information
which will cover most of the common questions you are likely
to have when using your account. If the information you need
can not be found there then you can open a ticket with our support
department from within your billing panel or you can contact us via our contact page, turnaround on support tickets is very quick and
queries are typically answered in under 4 hours. |
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| Will my site be backed up regularly |
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All servers are backed up offsite daily, however these backups
are for our use to restore the servers in the event of a hardware
failure, they are not generally available to clients and depending on the time involved there
may be a charge involved if restoring files is required due
to an error by the client. |
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| You should ensure that you always have an up to date local
copy of your web site, Access databases should be downloaded
regularly via FTP (some FTP software can automate this process
and run each night or similar) and data from MS SQL databases
should be downloaded regularly to your local development machine
using DTS - again this can be set up as an automated task on
your local PC. |
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