KnowledgeBuilder

Top Level Category

Contents of Top Level Category
1. Additional Services
2. Advanced
3. Control Panel
4. Domains
5. Dreamweaver
6. Email
7. Frontpage
8. FTP
9. Getting Started
10. Mambo
11. osCommerce
12. phpBB
13. Pre-Sales FAQ
14. Site Studio
15. Tutorials
16. Wordpress

Top Level Category

Parent category to all other categories

There are no articles in this category.

Additional Services

Additional services

Go here to order any of the following additional services (existing account holders only).

128 bit SSL Certificate - £60/yr - Secure your webserver and conduct safe e-commerce over the internet with our cost effective SSL Certificates. Our Certificates are compatible with 99% of browsers making them as equally trusted as Certificates from Verisign and Thawte. For Ecommerce / Professional / Partner/ VPS account holders only.

Additional web space - £50 for each extra 1000mb. (see note below)

Additional mail boxes - £50 for each extra 50. (see note below)

Additional bandwidth -
- Extra 5gb per month for 12 months - £60.00 (£1.00/gb).
- Extra 10gb per month for 12 months - £96.00 (£0.80/gb).
- Extra 20gb per month for 12 months - £144.00 (£0.60/gb).
- Exceeding included bandwidth per gb (or part thereof) - £2 (£2/gb).

Go here if you already have a hosting account at Blackfoot and you would like to order any of the above additional services.

navigate to My Services

click the small button with the arrow to the right of the account you wish to enable the additional service on to proceed to the product detail page

click the Click to view available addons button towards the bottom of the page to choose your addon.

Note: It is often more cost effective to upgrade the account when more web space/bandwidth is required. This can also be done via the product detail page within your billing account.

Bandwidth

1gb bandwidth per month can mean 1000's of hits to a site each month. (100,000 website hits @10kb each!).

If you exceed your hosting account's bandwidth allowance the current charge is £2 (plus vat) per gb or part thereof per month.

An email is sent out automatically when an account reaches 80% of its bandwidth allocation for the month so you can plan the best course of action.

Please note that accounts are automatically suspended when they exceed their bandwidth allocation so if you expect to exceed the allocation before the end of the month you may wish to consider one of the following options:

Pay for an extra 1gb of bandwidth as needed for £2 plus vat via your billing account
Purchase an annual package (extra 5gb, 10gb or 20gb per month) via the same route.
Upgrade the account to an Ecommerce or Professional account which come with 40gb or 60gb bandwidth/month respectively plus more web space, mailboxes, mysql databases etc. If the account is not already a Professional account you can process an upgrade via the billing system.

Bandwidth should not be confused with 'Data transfer' because like many other hosting companies Blackfoot offer unlimited data transfer which simply means that you can transfer files using FTP 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

Upgrading your account

Accounts can be upgraded at any time.

If you would like to upgrade your hosting account please login to your billing account

navigate to My Services
click the small button with the arrow to the right of the account you wish to upgrade to proceed to the product detail page
click the Upgrade Package button at the bottom of the page to upgrade.

Your account renewal date will remain the same.

When the account has been upgraded you will see the extra resources and features in your control panel. All your web site files and control panel settings will remain in place and it will not be necessary for you to upload your site again.

Advanced

406 errors

If when visiting / using your website hosted at Blackfoot you encounter a 406 error please submit a ticket. In the ticket please let us know the full details to reproduce the problem you encountered, for example

The URL of the page you were visiting -
The activity you were performing on the page at the time the error occurred

406 errors indicate that a "mod security" rule has been tripped. These rules are in place to prevent malicious requests being submitted to your website but may trigger incorrectly in rare instances. This may indicate that the scripting you are using requires an upgrade to the latest version, or that we need to modify the rule for you to prevent it triggering incorrectly.

Anonymous FTP

Anonymous FTP is not enabled on any of our servers for security reasons

Audio / Video Streaming

http Streaming with realmedia

To stream your audio or video (.ra or .rm) files on the server you must first create a .ram file.

A .ram file is merely a plain text file that has the URL to the .ra or .rm file that you want to be played. You should only have one line in the .ram file with only the URL to the file.
Example .ram file:

http://www.yourdomain.com/~Path/to/the/file.rm

You can have a .rm file without the accompanying .ram file; however, when a user clicks on a .rm file the entire file will have to be downloaded before it starts playing (in other words, it won't "stream").

The metafiles (.ram) must be uploaded in ASCII mode while the clips (.ra or .rm) must be uploaded in BINARY mode.

CGI

What is CGI?

CGI is short for Common Gateway Interface and is a self-contained program which you upload to your server. A commonly used script is the FormMail script available from www.scriptarchive.com which allows you to receive form details via email.
There are plenty of ready-written, free CGI scripts available. All of the Blackfoot hosting account packages include the facility to execute CGI scripts written in Perl. Perl programs are self-compiling and can be utilized immediately after transfer to your cgi-bin directory.

Useful links to perl scripts: www.cgi-resources.com

Where Perl is on the server

Perl is located in the following place on the server:

/usr/bin/perl

Where is Sendmail on the server

Sendmail is located in the following place on the server

/usr/lib/sendmail

Installing cgi scripts - Guidance notes

Read the readme file!
When FTP'ing your files always send ASCII files in ASCII mode. This includes: HTML, CGI, PL, TXT, LOG . . . Your FTP client should do this automatically, but if you run into problems please set it manually.
Upload all .cgi and .pl scripts to your cgi-bin directory.
Make sure your path to perl is correct: #!/usr/bin/perl
The path to sendmail is /usr/lib/sendmail
Edit the scripts with notepad or any other plain text editor.
When working on the configuration section of the file, it is important to CHANGE ONE THING AT A TIME! This way if you get an error in configuration, you know it is the last thing you changed. The most common errors are: missing quote ( " or ' ) at the beginning or end of string, missing semi-colon ( ; ) at the end of the line.
Many user difficulties are caused by incorrect path statements to the associated file(s). If a log file is in the same directory as the cgi, then the path would be: $variable = 'name.log'. If the file is not in the same directory, you should use an absolute path - like: $variable = 'home/username/public_html/file.log'.
Your FTP Program will tell you the path for the directory in the 'Remote System' area.
If you call the cgi file with your browser and all you see is the contents of the file, then the cgi does not have permission to run, or be executed by the server. It is suggested that cgi script permissions are set to 755 or rwxr-xr-x. File permissions can be changed by right clicking on the file in your FTP program and choosing permissions from the drop down menu or using the chmod command in Telnet.
If you are using a form such as a feedback form to pass data to the cgi, then you must change the path in the 'ACTION=' to match your directory structure. You should always use the full URL. ie http://www.mydomain.co.uk/cgi-bin/mycgi.cgi.

Configure MySQL

This article will walk you through how to setup a user, password and database that you can use to either develop your own mySQL powered PHP/Perl etc. scripts, or to install a script that requires a mySQL database yourself.

We will need to create a user, a database, and then give this user permission to access the database.
We will assume that your domain is domain.co.uk and that it is fully resolving to our servers.

Login to your control panel at http://domain.co.uk/cpanel/ using the username and password that you were sent in your welcome email. Then click the "MySQL databases" icon, roughly in the middle of the group of icons that make up the main menu.

Creating a database

First of all we will create a database - by entering a name for the database in the field in the Database section next to DB: - and then clicking 'Add Db'. For this tutorial we will call the database 'testdb'. Notice that after clicking 'Add Db' the database that is listed is named yourusername_testdb - our system automatically assigns a prefix of your username to your chosen database name. It is vital that you use this name with the prefix rather than the original name that you chose when using this database later in your scripts. The same principle applies to the users, which we will now create.

Creating a user

Scroll down to the 'Users' section and enter a username and password, in this tutorial we will use 'fred' and the password 'password'. When you are done click the 'Add User' button, and then 'Go Back' at the information screen that follows. Again, the user will have been given a prefix of 'yourusername_'. The username may also be shortened if necessary.

Granting access to your db

Now that we have created a database and a user, we need to give the user access to the database. Scroll down to the bottom of the 'Databases' section and find the two selectable boxes followed by the 'Add User to Db' button. Select the user that you have just created, and the database that you wish to give them access to. Then click the 'Add User to Db' button.

When you return to the mySQL menu there should be a new 'Connection Strings' section. This shows you the type of code that you will need to use in your scripts to connect to your database using a specified user - although if you do not wish to develop your own scripts you can ignore this. It does however show that everything should be setup correctly.

Using this information to install scripts

Most scripts will have either an install process, or a configuration file that you will need to edit. In this example, we would use the following when prompted. We will assume that our system username is domainco as would be standard on our servers - replace this with your actual username.

DB Database: domainco_testdb
DB Username: domainco_fred
DB Password: password
DB Host: localhost

Sometimes the 'DB Host' will be referred to as the database server or similar - you should always be able to use localhost here.

Some php scripts require that you edit the config files manually. They will often have something that resembles the following:

$config['database'] = 'databasehere';
$config['username'] = 'usernamehere';
$config['password'] = 'passwordhere';
$config['dbhost'] = 'localhost';

In our case we would change this to the following:

$config['database'] = 'domainco_testdb';
$config['username'] = 'domainco_fred';
$config['password'] = 'password';
$config['dbhost'] = 'localhost';

If you require any further assistance please feel free to submit a ticket at our helpdesk.

Cron Jobs

The Cron facility allows you to run a certain script or program at intervals of your choice

In the control panel / Cron Jobs section you can put the absolute path to the script/program you would like cron to run. Please note this is the path on the server rather than www.yourdomain.com/yoursrcipt.php

The time a cron command is executed is controlled by the 5 numbers that precede the cron directive.

The first number is the minutes after the hour (0-59).
The second is the hour of the day (0-23, with 0 being 12 AM).
The third number is the day of the month (1-31).
The fourth is the month of the year (1-12).
The fifth is the day of the week (0-6, with 0=Sunday and 6=Saturday, etc).

A * in place of any of the values matches all possibilities (for instance, in the default value the script runs every day because the *'s for day of the month, day of the week, and month of the year match all values).

Multiple values are separated by commas. For instance, you might start with 30 1,3,5 * * * to run a script every day at 1:30, 3:30, and 5:30.

File Permissions

PERMISSION COMMAND
U G W
rwx rwx rwx chmod 777 filename
rwx rwx r-x chmod 775 filename
rwx r-x r-x chmod 755 filename
rw- rw- r-- chmod 664 filename
rw- r-- r-- chmod 644 filename

U = User
G = Group
W = World

r = Readable
w = writable
x = executable
- = no permission

Secure email

If you a have a form on your site you can make it secure by changing the link from http to https if you have an SSL certificate installed. We can supply and install a cost effective 128 bit SSL Certificate for only £60/yr. Our Certificates are compatible with 99% of browsers making them as equally trusted as Certificates from Verisign and Thawte. We can generate the Certificate Signing Request (CSR) and install the certificate for you - Ecommerce and Professional Account holders only. An SSL certificate can be ordered online here

This will send the information securely to the server but if the form data is also to be sent by email you will also need to secure this.

You can then simply modify your email client to use an SSL connection when retrieving mail from the server - While this does not encrypt messages themselves it ensures that not only is the information passed to the server via the contact form over an SSL-secured connection, it is then also retrieved by you over one, meaning the message is always secured when being passed to or from the server.

To switch your email connection to use SSL access the "Advanced" tab for the accounts' settings in Outlook Express, and tick the "This server requires a secure connection" box for your Incoming connection, and change the port in use to 995 if you use POP3, or 993 if you use IMAP. When you first re-access the account you will be prompted that the server is using a currently-unverified security certificate, simply verify this and you will be able to retrieve your mail securely.

SSL

Secure Socket Layers

SSL will enable your customer's browser to connect to your web site and transparently negotiate a secure communication channel. Once this connection has been made, information, like customer information and credit card details, can be transferred securely. Transferring information securely over the internet is the key to the ecommerce revolution on the web. We enable our Ecommerce and Professional hosting clients to have a secure server using SSL to allow your clients safe and secure transaction processing while doing business with you. They will visit your site as https://yourdomain.co.uk.

Please note that SSL does not include software to process credit card transactions. Although you can securely receive credit card information through SSL, actual processing of the credit card will require a "Merchant Account" or "Payment solution Provider".

We use Apache-mod SSL on all of our servers. In order for SSL to function for your domain, you must purchase a secure certificate. You can secure your webserver and conduct safe e-commerce over the internet with our cost effective 128 bit SSL Certificate for only £60/yr. Our Certificates are compatible with 99% of browsers making them as equally trusted as Certificates from Verisign and Thawte. We can generate the Certificate Signing Request (CSR) and install the certificate for you - Ecommerce and Professional Account holders only.

User Feature Manager

The Blackfoot control panel includes the User Feature Manager. This tool allows you to create additional control panel logins under your main login, so that non technical users can have only the control panel functions relevant to them such as statistics displayed when they log in, without being shown every item of functionality available.

Please bear in mind two things before enabling the User Feature Manager;

When feature manager is enabled, the user must first login with the main control panel login and then with their own sub-login.

Feature manager is intended for user convenience, not security, as each user has access to the main control panel login as described above. The purpose is to provide trusted users with a cleaner interface containing the functions they need most.

To enable the feature manager, login to your hosting account control panel and navigate to 'Preferences / User-Feature Manager'. If you wish to grant a developer or web designer access to the files on your account, we would advise creating them their own separate FTP account (under Files / FTP Accounts) or Web Disk user (under Files / Web Disk), which you can then disable or remove once their work is done.

Control Panel

Accessing your control panel

All of the Blackfoot Hosting accounts come with a hosting control panel.

When you place an order for a new hosting account you will receive a welcome email with all the login details for your account. You should use the username and password provided in this email to access your control panel.

Enter the address of your control panel in your web browser. The address needs to be in the form of

http://www.yourdomain.com/cpanel

http://www.yourdomain.com:2082

If your domain is not yet resolving to your new web space (ie it has only just been registered or it has not yet been transferred) then you can use the URL containing the IP address, as provided in the welcome email, to access your control panel.

Enter your username and password in the User Name and Password fields and click OK to login.

You can view the control panel documentation if you scroll down to the bottom of the 'General server information' section and click 'click to view'.

cPanel Documentation

Please see the official cPanel documentation here

cPanel Tutorials

cPanel Flash based tutorials.

Creating a POP email account - Watch movie

Creating a default (catchall) email account - Watch movie

Creating an email account in Outlook Express - Watch movie

Creating an autoresponder - Watch movie

Creating a subdomain - Watch movie

Creating custom error pages - Watch movie

Password protecting a directory - Watch movie

Creating a MySQL database - Watch movie

Managing a MySQL database in PHPMyAdmin - Watch movie

Installing FrontPage extensions - Watch movie

Using File Manager - Watch movie

Using Index Manager - Watch movie

Enabling Hotlink Protection - Watch movie

Redirecting a URL - Watch movie

Redirecting mail - Watch movie

Changing your control panel password - Watch movie

Parking a domain - Watch movie

Creating an add-on domain - Watch movie

Creating an FTP account - Watch movie

Backing up your site - Watch movie

Creating a mailing list - Watch movie

Domains

Addon domains

Addon domains are available on all Ecommerce and Professional accounts.

The addon domain feature can be used to add additional domains to your account. Each domain added will point to a subdomain of the main hosted domain and can therefore have a separate web site. Therefore if you wish a domain to have different content than your main account, you should use an addon domain. If you wish the domain to 'mirror' your main account, you should use a parked domain. The addon domain will remain in the browser address bar.

Please note that addon domains must all belong to the account holder and are not to be used for reselling web space. If you wish to resell web space, a Partner or VPS account should be used.

Setting up the domain

If the domain you wish to use is registered elsewhere, you will need to contact your current host and request that the nameservers are changed to match those applicable to the server your account resides upon. You can find details of these in your welcome email.

If the domain is registered through Blackfoot, we will have normally attempted to set the domain up correctly when it was registered in order to be used as an addon or parked domain for your account. Sometimes however if you have multiple accounts the domain may have been registered and set to use the wrong name servers, in which case you will receive an error at the next step and will need to contact our helpdesk.

Once the domain has been either registered or modified, it will typically take 24-48 hours for it to begin to resolve to our servers. As a security measure your domain cannot be added to our servers until it is resolving fully. Therefore please ensure that 24-48 hours have passed before attempting to add a domain.

You may now login to your control panel, at http://originaldomain.com/cpanel with your username and password. Once logged in, click 'Addon Domains'.

In the 'New Domain Name' box, please type the full domain without any www or similar. For example, if you wish to use www.yournewdomain.com with your account, you only need to enter 'yournewdomain.com' in this box.

In ' Subdomain/Ftp Username' please enter the username you would like to use to access this domain over FTP.

In 'Document Root home' please enter the directory that you wish the domain to be stored under in your main account. The files for addon domains are actually stored in a folder under your main domain, and this is the name of the folder you wish to store files in.

The 'Password' field should contain a password which you can use to FTP directly into the correct domain. Please note however that you may not wish to use this feature - you can login with your original username and password and upload to the correct directory.

Once the above has been completed you can click the 'Add' button. If the domain is added correctly and no errors are shown, the domain should become active instantly depending on your browser and/or ISP caching, and therefore you may have to wait a few hours. If at this stage you receive an error message, and you have waited for the domain to resolve to our servers, please complete a helpdesk ticket containing the error message, domain name and the original account, and we will resolve the problem promptly.

Domains - General

A domain name is your address on the World Wide Web. With your company's online image at stake, you should make sure your domain name includes your company name eg yourbusiness.com, then your e-mail address will also be specific to your company. Names, such as johnb@hotmail.com, appear unprofessional and may damage sales. Your potential clients may assume that your company isn't established if it doesn't have its own domain name. The domain name is very much the storefront of business today. There are tens of thousands of domain names registered every day. Reserve your name before it becomes the property of someone else.

As members of Nominet UK we can register UK domains - .co.uk, .org.uk, .ltd.uk, .me.uk and through our partnership with Enom who are accredited by ICANN as an official registrar of the .com, .net, and .org Top Level Domain names (TLD's), we register US domains for our clients.

You can also register your domain name with Network Solutions or any other registrar and use our Domain Name Server information to point your domain to a hosting account with Blackfoot.

We host all types of domains, foreign and domestic.

Parked domains

Parked domains are available on all hosting accounts, excluding our 'Home' package.

Parked domains point to the main account, and are used to 'mirror' the content of the main account through the parked domain. A typical example of using a parked domain would be if you had .co.uk and .com versions of the same domain, and required them both to show the same site. If you require a domain to show different content to the main account, you will need to use an 'Addon Domain'.

Setting up the domain

If the domain you wish to use is registered elsewhere, you will need to contact your current host and request that the nameservers are changed to match the server your account resides upon. You can find details of these in your welcome email.
If the domain is registered through Blackfoot, we will have normally attempted to set the domain up correctly when it was registered in order to be used as an addon or parked domain for your account. Sometimes however if you have multiple accounts the domain may have been registered and set to use the wrong name servers, in which case you will receive an error at the next step and will need to contact our helpdesk.

Once the domain has been either registered or modified, it will typically take 24-48 hours for it to begin to resolve to our servers. As a security measure your domain cannot be added to our servers until it is resolving fully. Therefore please ensure that 24-48 hours have passed before attempting to add a domain.

You may now login to your control panel, at http://originaldomain.com/cpanel with your username and password. Once logged in, click 'Parked Domains'.
In the 'New Domain Name' box, please type the full domain without any www or similar. For example, if you wish to use www.yournewdomain.com with your account, you only need to enter 'yournewdomain.com' in this box.

Once the above has been completed you can click the 'Add' button. If the domain is added correctly and no errors are shown, the domain should become active instantly depending on your browser and/or ISP caching, and therefore you may have to wait a few hours. If at this stage you receive an error message, and you have waited for the domain to resolve to our servers, please complete a helpdesk ticket containing the error message, domain name and the original account, and we will resolve the problem promptly.

Transfer your domain away from Blackfoot

If you wish to make any changes to a domain name, including transferring the domain to a new host, we require authority from the registered owner of the domain.

If you are the registered owner or you have authority from the registered owner and you can login to the billing system account for the domain then you can request changes by navigating to "My Domains" and clicking the icon to the right of the domain name, on the following screen you can change the name servers in use by your domain to those provided by your new host.

It is not necessary to transfer your domain name registration away from Blackfoot to use it with another host, however if you wish to do so please submit a ticket in the usual manner to our helpdesk.

Alternatively a signed instruction on your letterhead should be printed and sent to Blackfoot Admin either by fax to 08701 334832, attached to an email to domains at blackfoot.co.uk or by post to:

Blackfoot Hosting Ltd,
PO Box 465,
Fareham,
Hampshire,
PO15 5WY,
UK.

If you have any questions regarding domain transfers, please feel free to submit a ticket to our help desk.

Transfer your domain to Blackfoot

If you have signed up for an account with Blackfoot, and chosen to use your existing domain, you will need to transfer this domain to our servers in order to begin fully using your account.

The process to do this varies depending on the type of domain that you wish to transfer.

All domains

Using this method will allow you to use a domain with your blackfoot account, but the billing of this domain will still be done by the company that you registered the domain with, or your previous host.

In order to use your domain with Blackfoot, you will need to change the name servers for your domain. If your previous host/registrar has some form of control panel for your domain, you may be able to change these settings there. Alternatively you will need to contact them and ask them to make the changes for you.

The name servers for the domain should be changed to those given to you in your welcome email. They will be of the form ns.somedomain.com and ns2.somedomain.com - the actual domain will vary depending on which of our servers you are hosted.

Once you have changed the name servers, it will take some time before the domain starts to 'resolve' to our servers - as it takes time for the internet to accept and refresh all the new domain name changes. When these changes have been accepted the account will be fully accessible. These propagation times are as follows:

.com .net .org : Upto 24 Hours
.co.uk .org.uk .ltd.uk : Upto 12 Hours

Domains ending in .uk (Nominet)

If you wish to transfer a UK domain to Blackfoot, you can release the domain's registrar / IPS tag, and we will then be responsible for billing you for the domain when it next comes up for renewal. Please let us know if you want us to update the domain to direct to your hosting account on our service. There is no charge from Blackfoot to transfer a domain fully to us - we will simply invoice you for the renewal in due course.

To do this you will need to contact your previous host/registrar and request that they release your domain to our registrar / IPS tag, which is BLACKFOOT (all uppercase). Once we receive notification that this has been done, we will modify the domain as necessary, and your site should begin to function correctly within 24 hours.

Domains ending in .eu (Eurid)

To transfer an .eu domain to Blackfoot so that we are responsible for invoicing you for renewal costs £11.75 including VAT. Note that when transferring .eu domains you will lose any remaining time on the registration. The domain expiration date is then extended one year from the date of transfer or trade. Please place your transfer order via our website.

Domains ending in .com, .net or .org

To transfer a .com, .net or .org domain completely to Blackfoot so that we are responsible for invoicing you at renewal time costs £9.99 inc vat and this extends the registration by 1 year. If you wish to transfer please place your order via the http://blackfoot.co.uk order form or via your billing account if you are an existing customer.

Please select the 'Transfer my existing domain' option.

Important: You must ensure that the domain is unlocked at the current registrar before we can initiate the transfer request. We will also require the auth / epp key relevant to the domain, this can be obtained from your current registrar.

Transfers can take several days and the domain contacts and losing registrar must approve the transfer before it will take place. Please ensure that the admin contact email address is valid because emails are sent to that address requesting approval of the transfer.

Please note that it is not compulsory to transfer your domain to use it for a hosting account at Blackfoot. You can simply modify the name servers instead and the existing registrar will remain responsible for domain renewals.

If you have any questions regarding domain transfers, please feel free to submit a ticket to our help desk.

Dreamweaver

Dreamweaver MX Tutorials

Creating and configuring your site Watch movie

Creating a simple page layout Watch movie

Creating a template Watch movie

Creating tables Watch movie

Creating a navigation bar Watch movie

Creating rollover images Watch movie

Creating a form Watch movie

Uploading your site via FTP Watch movie

Email

Creating an email account

This article will guide you through the process of setting up an email account for use with your hosting package. We will assume that your domain name is domain.co.uk and that the domain is resolving correctly on our servers.

First of all login to your Control Panel by visiting http://domain.co.uk/cpanel/ - you will be prompted for your account username and password, which you can find in your welcome email. Enter the username and password (this is case sensitive) and login, and you should be presented with a main menu.

Now click the 'Mail' icon in the top left corner of the menu, and then 'Add/Remove Accounts'. You will then need to click the 'Add Account' link found towards the bottom of the page.

You can now enter the details for the account. Enter the part that you wish to appear before the @domain.co.uk in the Email box, and ensure that your domain name is selected in the drop down box to the right. For this example we will create an email address for fred@domain.co.uk, and therefore will enter fred in the box. We can then enter a password in the password box, you should ensure that this is secure and ideally contains a mixture of letters and numbers.

You can then enter a quota for the account - this is the maximum amount of space on your hosting package that you wish this account to fill up. This needs to be large enough to allow you to receive attachments - but you should make sure that you clear out your inbox from time to time if you are not downloading your mail as it will eventually reach the quota and this will prevent you from receiving further email. The default is '10' megabytes - which will normally be fine.

You should now be able to click 'Create' and the account will be created for you, and should show up on the following page. In the future you can change the password or quota of the account via this menu.

If you require any further assistance please feel free to submit a ticket to our helpdesk.

How to deal with spam

Introduction
Unfortunately anyone with an active email address will more than likely encounter spam at some point. Spam is a word that has come to describe unsolicited email, normally of a commercial nature, the electronic form of junk mail. This article aims to suggest some methods of dealing with spam, using the services that we provide with all of our hosting accounts.

Enable Spam Assassin
Spam Assassin is a useful tool that we provide to attempt to either mark spam as being possible spam, or to filter this out of your inbox entirely. Spam Assassin runs a series of tests on incoming messages, and these tests result in extra points being added to a total 'score'. You can then define what number this total must be over for the message to be classified as spam.

First of all log into your Control Panel at http://yourdomain.co.uk/cpanel - using your account username and password, and then enter the Mail menu. There should then be a "Spam Assassin" option towards the bottom of the list, if you click on this you will be taken to the section of your Control Panel where you can configure Spam Assassin.

You should be greeted with a screen telling you that Spam Assassin is disabled. If you wish to enable Spam Assassin we can now click the 'Enable Spam Assassin' button. After doing this you should be shown a success message, and the original screen should now show Spam Assassin as being enabled.

Configure Spam Assassin
We provide a number of options for you to configure how Spam Assassin behaves and what exactly it does. If you click the "Configure Spam Assassin" button you will be taken to the configuration page.

The first option that will be of interest is the "required_hits" value. This determines the total points an email must receive before it is classed as spam - remember that each test that an email fails, making it more likely to be spam, adds points to this value. A high value means that email will almost certainly be spam if it is marked as spam, and a low value means that there is a possibility of some normal email being caught in the filter (however hopefully very little spam will slip through). There is no set value for this - and we provide this option so that you can adjust it as you wish, it will vary depending on the type of email that you receive, along with the general type of spam.

The next option, rewrite_subject, will most likely need to be turned on (set to 1). This allows Spam Assassin to modify the Subject of emails so that you can identify that they are possibly spam, and allows you to filter messages with this subject out into a seperate folder using your email client if you wish to. If this option has been enabled, you can change the subject_tag option to define what Spam Assassin adds to the subject.

There are also whitelist_from options that allow you to set addresses (such as somebody you often receive valid email from) that skip the filters and are allowed through, even if they would otherwise be marked as spam. The opposite to this, the blacklist_from, allows you to block a common spam sending address even if the messages received are not always marked as being spam.

Filtering/discarding messages on the Server
If you wish to filter spam messages to a different inbox, account or address, or completely discard the messages, you can filter Spam Assassin emails using the "Email Filtering" option in the Mail menu of your Control Panel. To do this click Add Filter, and then select "SpamAssassin Spam Header", "begins with", and then enter "Yes" in the box, and then a destination in the form of a full email address (or Discard if you would like to just delete them) in the Destination box.

You can also use these filters to filter on a number of different options, and filter specific spam containing set words/phrases out yourself if you wish. This can also be handy if you are being sent many copies of the same virus (as has been common recently) - if they have a common subject or text content you can filter these out to discard them using this feature.

Filtering Spam Assassin using your client
Most clients allow you to filter email. Therefore if you set Spam Assassin to modify the subject with say the content [SPAM] as detailed above, you could then create a filter to move this mail to a seperate folder when you receive it. In this case we would create a filter to move messages with a subject containing [SPAM] to a seperate folder. This will stop it filling up your inbox, and you will still have a local copy of all filtered spam incase you ever feel that a non-spam message may have been filtered incorrectly.

How to set up an email account in Outlook 2002

How to set up an email account in Outlook 2002 for Windows

Go to the Tools pull-down menu and select Email Accounts.
Add a new email account.
Click Next.
Select "IMAP".
Click Next.

Enter the following information:

Your Name - Enter the name that people will see when they receive email from you.
E-mail Address - Enter your email address.
Incoming mail server (IMAP) - Enter your incoming mail server: mail.yourdomain.co.uk
Outgoing mail server (SMTP) - Enter your outgoing mail server: mail.yourdomain.co.uk
Account name - Enter the full email address:
Enter "username@yourdomain.co.uk" as your username (changing username to the actual username that you entered in the control panel when you created the account and change yourdomain.co.uk to your actual domain name).
Password - Enter the password that you set when you created the email account in the control panel.
Make sure the "Log on using Secure Password Authentication (SPA)" option is NOT selected.
Click Next.
Click Finish.

Mailing lists

Mailing lists allow you to send email to a large number of contacts in a very efficient manner. Please note that we do not permit any form of un-solicited bulk e-mailing or spam.
All Blackfoot hosting accounts include the comprehensive mailing list program Mailman.

Learn more about Mailman here.

You can manage your Mailman mailing list(s) via the control panel--mail menu.

Reading your email with webmail

All of our email accounts have the ability to be read via any web browser in almost any location in the world with an Internet browser. This requires no special setup on the PC that you are accessing with - you can simply point your web browser to your web mail and read your inbox from any location.

We will assume that your domain is domain.co.uk - and that your domain is fully resolving to our servers. We will also assume that you have an email account setup in the control panel (please see this article if not) and you know the password for this account.

You can login to webmail at http://domain.co.uk/webmail/ - a box should pop up in which you can enter the full email address (for example fred@domain.co.uk) and the password for this address. Once you have logged in, you will be shown a screen with three choices (Horde, and SquirrelMail) - these are two different systems to view your email through - they each have slightly different features although they all serve the same purpose. You may wish to experiment to see which works best for you - however once you have decided it is best to keep to using one system as this is less likely to cause issues with your mailbox.

For the purpose of this article we will login using the SquirrelMail system. Click the SquirrelMail icon and you should be taken to your inbox - here you can view any messages that people have sent to you, and to send a message you can click the Compose

link in the top left corner.

To logout of the system you should click the Signout link, in the top right. Once you have done this you should close down your browser to ensure that the session is not carried on to any other users of the computer.

If you require any further assistance please feel free to submit a ticket to our helpdesk.

Receiving spam from your own email address

Occasionally you may receive spam messages that appear to have come from your own email address. It is most likely that these are forging your email address and were generated by a compromised third party PC and were NOT sent via your own email account. We can however check this for you. You will need to submit a ticket including the full headers of the spam message, the headers show the path the message has travelled and will allow us to determine where it originated. This can be done by forwarding the message to us in it's entirety (please be sure to forward the entire message and not just it's content). Alternatively to provide the headers alone:

In Outlook:

Open the message in it's own window.
Click the View menu and select "Options".
Right click in the Internet Headers box and choose Select All.
Right click again in the Internet Headers box and choose "Copy".
Paste into your email or helpdesk ticket.

In Thunderbird

Open the message in it's own window.
Click the View menu and click "Headers", then "All".
There will now be more detail shown in the area above the message's content.
Right click on the line labelled "Received:" and choose "Select All".
Right click again on the line and choose "Copy".
Paste into your email or helpdesk ticket.
If there are multiple "Received" lines please copy them all into your helpdesk ticket.
Click the View menu and click "Headers", then "Normal" to put things back as they were.

Secure email

Frontpage

Frontpage - General

Note: Microsoft withdrew support for the Frontpage extensions some time ago. Whilst we continue to provide the extensions for your convenience we will not be able to do so indefinitely. We would advise looking into using alternative means to design and upload your website. Frontpage 2003 and onwards support publishing via Web Dav (Web Disk) which is a feature now available on all of our hosting accounts.

FrontPage extensions can be installed/uninstalled at your domain via the control panel. The extensions should be installed before you publish your web site.

If you are using FrontPage, you should NEVER use regular FTP to upload your files as this may overwrite important files and/or corrupt the extensions.

FrontPage has two separate interfaces.

The FrontPage explorer - which is used to manage the files within your web site
FrontPage Editor - which opens when you open a file. When you are connected to your web then all changes made to any file you edit will be saved to your web.

The Frontpage documentation says that you can create the site on your computer and then "publish" it to the web server but we do not recommend this for subsequent updates after your first web publish. When re-publishing to the server from your PC you can sometimes loose Interactive web bots features that you may have setup when designing your site on your local computer. It is recommended that you create your entire site by being connected to your web and saving directly to the server. This should pose no problem on a stable Broadband connection.

To move files already created on your web site use the Import command found under the File menu within FrontPage Explorer to select the files to import to the server. This is the best way to move files from your hard drive to the server. Do not edit .htaccess files because FrontPage uses these.

Frontpage 2002 Tutorials

Publishing your web via HTTP Watch movie

Publishing your web in live mode via HTTP Watch movie

Publishing your web via FTP Watch movie

Deleting files off your server Watch movie

Creating forms in FrontPage Watch movie

Password protecting a directory (subweb) Watch movie

Changing your password in FrontPage Watch movie

Publishing

FrontPage 2000

From the menu bar, choose File --> Publish Web

Click on the Options button and specify the location to publish your site to: enter the full URL for your site e.g. http://www.mydomain.co.uk
You may need to use the IP address if your domain is not yet available. The IP address can be found in the welcome email.
If this is the first time you are publishing your site, select Publish all pages...
Select Include subwebs.
Click the Publish button.
Enter your username and password and click OK.

The "Destination Web Name" box should be left blank. If you put any other name in this box it will create a subdirectory off your root web and copy all of your files into it. Your site will exist under a subdirectory instead of at the top level /public_html where it should be.

FTP

Cute FTP

CUTE FTP TUTORIALS

Setting your preferences in CuteFTP

Startup launch screen
Double-click action
Connection retries
Colors, fonts, sound
Firewall
Prompts

Top Level Category

Table of Contents

Top Level Category

Additional Services

Additional services

Bandwidth

Upgrading your account

Advanced

406 errors

Anonymous FTP

Audio / Video Streaming

CGI

Configure MySQL

Cron Jobs

File Permissions

Secure email

SSL

User Feature Manager

Control Panel

Accessing your control panel

cPanel Documentation

cPanel Tutorials

Domains

Addon domains

Domains - General

Parked domains

Transfer your domain away from Blackfoot

Transfer your domain to Blackfoot

Dreamweaver

Dreamweaver MX Tutorials

Email

Creating an email account

How to deal with spam

How to set up an email account in Outlook 2002

Mailing lists

Reading your email with webmail

Receiving spam from your own email address

Secure email

Frontpage

Frontpage - General

Frontpage 2002 Tutorials

Publishing

FTP

Cute FTP

General FTP Guide

Smart FTP

WS FTP

Getting Started

Accessing your control panel

Can I use my existing domain?

cPanel Documentation

File Manager

Formmail

Upgrading your account

Mambo

Mambo Tutorials

osCommerce

osCommerce Tutorials

phpBB

phpBB Tutorials - Admin

phpBB Tutorials - End User

Pre-Sales FAQ

Can I use my existing domain?

How do I contact you for more information?

How does your money back guarantee work?

How long after signing up will my account be available for use?

How long has Blackfoot been in business?

How will I configure my account?

I don't have a site and don't know how to make one, can you help?

Upgrading your account

What forms of payment do you accept?

What level of support do you offer?

What packages do you offer?

What type of servers do you use?

Where are your servers located?

Site Studio

Site Studio Tutorials

Tutorials

WS FTP

Smart FTP