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The way in which your email program needs to be set up is slightly changed in the new environment. Here are the basic things you need to know, and how they differ from the old way:

Full email address

We are pleased to offer you a completely new, modernized and feature packed control panel. The New control panel system called Cpanel will be accessed for the most part in the same way with one minor difference:

Currently, you can access your control panel by going to  www.yourdomain.com/menu to log into the Control Center.

in the new system you will access the control panel by going to: www.yourdomain.com/cpanel (substitube your real domain name of course).

If your domain name is not yet pointed you can use the server name or IP with /cpanel at the end and use your login information.

There is a new ftp address and publish to folder that you will need to modify when publishing your website:

- FTP Address:

In many ways, this has not changed. To publish your site via FTP, just use ftp.yourdomain.com (substitute your real domain name). If you are publishing with FrontPage, make sure you install/activate the FP Extensions (there's an icon for it in cPanel) and then you should be able to publish right to the domain name as you are used to. If your domain name isn't pointed over yet, you can actually FTP to either the server name or IP, and when you use your login info you'll be placed in the correct folder.

- Publish Folder:

One big difference is in the naming of the folders. On the old system, the 'web root' was called $domain-www (where $domain was your domain name without the extension), and a shortcut called 'www' was also there. The 'www' is still available, but the web root is now called 'public_html' in your account. If you've been publishing to 'www' then no changes are needed!

Note: if you have any scripts that use the full server path (i.e. home/$user/$domain-www) you'll need to swap out $domain-www for the new 'public_html'.

• MAILING LISTS
  The mailing list program, "MailMan" on the new system is much improved from SmartList. The biggest question we imagine you'll have is "how do I put my current subscribers on the new list?" Well, this one's actually quite easy. In the old account, you will find a file containing all the email addresses on your list, neatly arranged one per line. This file is located in $domain-mail/$listname/dist. Download this file (as ASCII if you use FTP!) or copy & paste the contents into Notepad. Then in cPanel, select "Mailing Lists", create your list and once you are logged in to MailMan, click on "Membership Management" and then "Mass Subscription". There's a box there, just waiting for you to drop in your addresses, one per line - just like the 'dist' file! Just paste in your list - or use the handy 'upload' feature to pull in your Notepad plain text file, and you're good to go. You can choose whether or not to send a 'welcome letter', but you probably won't at this point since these folks are already subscribers of yours.

• WEBMAIL
  The same way you access your webmain now, you will get to WebMail using www.$domain.com/webmail - only this time you can choose which of 2 popular programs you like best. We offer both Horde and SquirrelMail to you, and there's even control over what the end users can and can't do inside of WebMail (e.g. reset passwords, etc). You can export your address book from the old WebMail program and/or an email client and import into the new programs as well.

• "DEFAULT" EMAIL (Catch-all)
  In accordance with good mail server practices, the use of a 'catch-all' email address is disabled. A 'catch-all' account will accept mail for any address at your domain, and is a magnet for spam and dictionary attacks. Any mail sent to your domain to an address you have not established will be bounced back to the sender. This will save you an enormous amount of junk!  Any legitimate sender who misspells your email address will get a polite bounce notice, and spammers trying to get through to you any way they can will be turned away at the front door.

• NEW SPAM PROTECTION
  Previously we offered SpamGuard, Quaranteen Manager and MXLogic as spam protection tools. Effective with the transition, powerful anti-spam tools come standard! You will get a new, updated version of SpamAssassin, along with anti-virus scanning and user-level filtering capability. The new "MailScanner" interface gives you control over all the settings for your domain in a convenient spot - right in your cPanel! Also, the servers have been quite improved with fraud/spoof protection and server-wide inbound filtering. The new system will cut more than 90% of your spam without any additional tools or services needed.

• FORMMAIL
  A new version of formmail is available, the path of the script has been duplicated on the new system, so the current script will work (/cgi-sys/formmail.pl) but the new path is /cgi-sys/FormMail.cgi. There are 2 main differences you need to be aware of with this script:
  
  1) The script will not allow the 'recipient' to be an incomplete email address (no aliasing). You must therefore use a fully-qualified email address in the 'recipient' variable. You can 'obfuscate' your email address so it's not easily picked up by spam-bots. Here is one URL where you can do this: http://alicorna.com/obfuscator.html

2) The script will not send mail to any address that is off the server. You *must* configure the 'recipient' variable to be an address within your domain. You can use a forwarder from there, but the variable on the form must be in that format or the script will exit with an error. This is very good spam-protection for all of us!

• UPDATING DOMAIN REGISTRATIONS
  After your account has been transferred to the new server we will notify you to update your  name servers:

  • If your domain name is registered through us (SuperNova Domains) we will automatically make the name server switch for you and notify you once it has been done so you can modify your email settings to receive your email at the new server.
     

  • If your domain name is not registered through us, you will need to contact your registrar and change your name servers to the name servers listed below. Note: if you do not modify your name servers after the transition is complete, your site will not point to the new server environment.

To determine who your registration service provider is, go to a free WHOIS lookup at sites such as Whois Results and the output will show you. If you see "Domain Services Provided By: SuperNova Domains - http://domain.supernova.net" you are registered with SuperNova and we will make the switch for you. Anything else will show the appropriate name and web site to visit to update your registration. Once there, you will need to replace the existing nameservers with the new ones:

NOTE: propagation can take anywhere from 0-24 hours, during which you will have access to both your new and old accounts. There is no downtime involved. You'll notice there are 4 name servers now. Make sure you enter all 4 of them after removing the 2 existing ones. Having 4 nameservers gives us some extra redundancy in case the primary and secondary are unavailable. The 3rd and 4th nameservers are hosted on separate servers from the first 2, giving additional protection against downtime. If you have questions regarding updating your domain registration, contact support.

• SHELL ACCESS (SSH)
  For now, we are not able to offer command-line access to the servers via SSH or telnet, even if you had it on the old servers. This is chiefly for security reasons. The tools in cPanel give you far greater control and flexibility than possible before, and if there is something you need done at the command line, contact support and we'll be glad to assist. Keeping the SSH restricted is another layer of protection against hacking and other attacks.

• IP ADDRESSES
  By default, hosting accounts on the new servers do not receive dedicated IP addresses. This does not affect your ability to access your account as you can still use the server name or IP followed by a slash (/) tilde (~) and your userid as follows: http://$servername.com(or $IP)/~$userid

The only really legitimate need for a dedicated IP is for those who will be purchasing (or have already) a domain-based SSL certificate and wish to use it. If you are in that situation, contact support and we will assign you an IP. As all IP addresses must be justified to ICANN, we can only assign one to those that truly need it. Note: not having a dedicated IP address does not in any way change your users' experience on your web site, nor affect your ability to publish, get email, etc.

• PHP & OTHER CORE PROGRAM VERSIONS
  The new servers are running much newer versions of most operating system and other core files. The O/S is CentOS Enterprise 4.5 i686, running Apache 1.3.39, and PHP 5.2.4 and 4.4.7 are running concurrently. If your code does not work under PHP 5 which is the default, a simple command will enable your site to use PHP 4. Just contact support.
  
  The PHP environment in the new servers has been "hardened" through use of both SUPHP and PHP SuHosin, programs designed to make it difficult for spammers and other "bad guys" to abuse your scripts and exploit vulnerable code. PHP is running as a CGI in this environment versus an Apache module. Together, these changes could mean that adjustments may be necessary to your code. See www.php.net for information.

• MySQL DATABASE DIFFERENCES
  The biggest difference here is in how cPanel names the databases. Instead of $domain_com_$dbname, your databases created in cPanel (or converted from the old system by our migration script) will have the format $userid_$dbname
  When moving over your pages and scripts, the MySQL connection string will need to be updated to reflect the new name note: (if we're moving your account we may be able to do this for you).

The MySQL version on the new servers is a newer 4.1, versus 4.0 on the old. (Note: we have not upgraded to 5.0 as there are still quite a few compatibility issues owing to the different structure of the databases in 5.0.)

MySQL storage usage is now tracked in the main disk quota instead of a separate resource limit, so one less thing to worry about, quota-wise.

• SITEXPRESS / CARTXPRESS / CONTENTXPRESS / URCHIN
  SiteXpress will not available on the new servers, We are working on finding a suitable replacement for the new environment. However, The current, published ("live") version of sites published with SiteXpress will be brought over and will be active, but the editing interface will not.

CartXpress powered by OSCommerce is not guaranteed to work on the new system. However, OSCommerce is part of the "Fantastico" package and you may be able to import your data into it. The same is true for ContentXpress powered by PostNuke. PostNuke is also available in "Fantastico" and importing may work as well.

Urchin stats will not be available in the new environment. Google has purchased Urchin and ceased development on the standalone product. Urchin will be replaced by two new web analytics software (AWStats and Webalizer) which are installed and ready for you at no extra charge.

•  ASP
  Unfortunately we will not be able to support ASP-coded pages in our new environment. Clients who are currently using ASP will need to either re-code their pages to use PHP or another supported language, or will need to seek out hosting that supports ASP (generally Windows-based hosting will handle this). With the widespread popularity and compatibility of PHP, it's worth considering re-tooling as it will make your site more portable, and you can stay with us!

If you are concerned about your site, ask us. Chances are if you don't fully understand what ASP is, you don't have it.

• PARKED DOMAINS/SUBDOMAINS
  The new cPanel servers handle additional domains a little differently than we're used to. Firstly, rest assured that whatever you have set up now will be moved over to the new environment as-is. Going forward, here are the differences you need to know:
  
  PARKED: a parked domain is one that simply redirects into your existing site. It's a second (or third, etc) name pointed at the 'master' domain in your account. These will continue to be offered at $2/mo , just as we do now.
  
  SUBDOMAIN: This is sometimes referred to as a "3rd-level" domain, in that you are adding something in front of your existing domain name, such as 'blog.yourdomain.com' and directing visitors to the 'blog' subfolder. It's an alternative to 'yourdomain.com/blog', and costs you nothing. You may add these right from your cPanel.