FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Why did my FTP connection disconnect or time out?

The server will automatically disconnect you if your FTP session remains inactive for a period of time (usually 3-5 minutes). If your FTP connection timed out without connecting, check your FTP settings to make sure you have specified the correct host or IP address.

Why did my FTP connection abruptly drop while I was in the middle of an upload?

This can happen if, while uploading to your account, you approach to within 3-5% of your maximum disk space. This is initiated by the server as an emergency precautionary measure.

Site Management

How do I access the site management console for my website?

Make sure that you enter the correct site admin URL, http://www.yourdomain/admin and that you are the Site Administrator for the web site. If you experience difficulties, please contact support@alsonetworks.com.

How do I access my statistics?

Make sure that you enter the correct statistics URL, which should be https://<your IP address>:8080 and that you are a Site Admin (only Site Admins have access to web statistics). By default, web usage statistics are set to generate every evening, so if there has been no activity during a given period, statistics may not be available for that timeframe.

Email and Webmail

What does Also Networks do to prevent spam?

Also Networks takes the problem of spam very seriously. In addition to a virus scanner that is automatically updated once per hour, Also Networks uses a combination of known spammer blacklists and SpamAssassin (see www.spamassassin.org for details) to prevent both incoming and outgoing spam. Be aware that if you are spamming, you’re in violation of the terms of service agreement and you will be disconnected.

Spam prevention isn’t an exact science, and you’re likely to receive spam even with prevention measures in place. But based on the web logs we know that Also Networks spam prevention measures block or mark much of the spam before it reaches your mail box.

My email has the word {Spam?} in the subject header. Why is this there?

Also Networks runs SpamAssassin (www.spamassassin.org) in conjunction with MailScanner (http://www.sng.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailscanner/). These processes automatically scan each incoming and outgoing piece of email (your privacy isn’t violated, it’s a computer program) for certain characteristics indicating that the mail might be spam. When a certain score is reached, the program adds {Spam?} to the header. You may choose to automatically delete such mail upon receipt by making use of email filters.

We often work on tweaking the rules so that they are better at detecting spam and not rejecting legitimate email. If mail comes to you marked as spam and it is not spam, please forward a copy of the mail to spam-filter@alsonetworks.com and put “this is not spam” in the subject line. We will analyze the email manually and try to accommodate you.

My email has the word {Virus?} in the subject header. Why is this there?

Also Networks runs Clam AntiVirus (http://clamav.elektrapro.com/) in conjuction with MailScanner (http://www.sng.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailscanner/). These processes automatically scan each incoming and outgoing piece of email (your privacy isn’t violated, it’s a computer program) for viruses. If a virus is detected, the program adds {Virus?} to the subject line to alert you to the danger. Depending on the virus found, it may quarantine the virus or render it harmless before delivering it to your mailbox, but when you see that warning, be careful.

How do I login to the POP server to retrieve my email?

Your POP server should be set to mail.yourdomain.com. Your user name should be the same as your email address, or if your mail program doesn’t like that, use this syntax: username#yourdomain.com

How do I login to the SMTP server to send my email?

Your SMTP server should be set to mail.yourdomain.com. If you’re using Outlook, make sure you check the box for “My Server requires authentication”. DO NOT check “Log on using Secure Password Authentication”. In Eudora check the “Authentication allowed” box on in the email properties.

I can receive but not send email. The settings look right, what could be the problem?

Double check to make sure the SMTP and POP settings are the same, and you’ve checked the “authentication” box (not SPA). If it looks right to you and you can receive but not send, your SMTP port may be blocked by your ISP as a spam prevention measure. In this case you’ll need to set the SMTP settings to the SMTP server provided by your ISP. The email will still come “from” your server, but someone examining the headers will see your ISP’s SMTP server. This almost never matters.

I get a 'password' error when trying to retrieve my email

Make sure you either typed it in correctly or specified it in your settings. If you’ve forgotten your password and you are an end user, check with your site administrator, they can change your password (but they can’t tell you what it was, this isn’t stored in clear text on the server). If you’re the site administrator and you’ve forgotten your password, please contact support@alsonetworks.com

Publishing your site

I’ve uploaded my web site, but I still see the default placeholder page, what’s wrong?

There are a number of reasons this might happen:

You might have uploaded your pages to the wrong folder. When you first log in to FTP, you’ll see two or more folders. One is called mainwebsite_html, and another is called mainwebsite_cgi. If you don’t see those folders when you log into the main FTP site, write to support@alsonetworks.com. You need to upload your web pages (the HTML content) into the mainwebsite_html folder. For the technically minded, this is the same as the /var/www/html folder. Any CGI scripts go into the mainwebsite_cgi folder (a.k.a. /var/www/cgi-bin). A common mistake is to upload the entire site to the root folder upon logging in to FTP. That won’t work. FYI, you can create folders in the root, but the content won’t be visible to the public. Content should be in the correct HTML folder.

You might have uploaded your pages correctly into the right folder, but forgot to make a default page. If your default page is not called index.html, delete the index.html page that’s there. The server will first look for index.html, then index.htm, index.shtml, index.cgi, index.php, index.php3, index.php4, index.pl, and index.jsp. If your home page isn’t coming up, make sure it has one of the names listed above.

You might have a valid home page name different from index.html. This will work, but unless you delete the placeholder page, index.html (make sure it’s not yours!) your page won’t be seen.

When I publish my site, none of the FrontPage extensions work, what can I do?

Be sure you published your site using the FrontPage Web Publisher. Regular FTP programs tend to corrupt the FrontPage extensions. If you’ve corrupted your FrontPage extensions, write to support@alsonetworks.com and we will reinstall them for you.