How long will it take to Set Up My Web Hosting Account?

Your web hosting account will be set up within 48 hours. Every customer is assigned an Account Manager on the day they open their web hosting account. Your Account Manager will respond to your enquiries in a confidential and timely manner.

What Type of Servers do you Operate?

We only use rack-optimised Dell Servers. By standardising our technologies on these high-quality machines, we can raise our levels of expertise, keep a ready inventory of spares and be able to respond to faults quickly.

We currently provide Microsoft Windows Server and Redhat Linux Apache Server web hosting solutions. We do not provide Unix hosting, however, Linux is based on Unix, and thus they are very similar.

Do you provide Technical Support?

Yes - We provide technical support by telephone and / or email. We prefer our customers to contact us by completing our Support Area form, however, the choice is yours. Either way, we provide a friendly and helpful support service. Support extends to issues and problems related to your web hosting account. We do not provide support for web design and development related issues, unless you've employed us through our consultancy service.

Email support: Email support is provided from 8.00am to 6.00pm Monday to Friday (emails are answered in strict rotation and in the order received). Email support@bristol-link.co.uk

Telephone support: Please contact us by completing the Support Area form so we can provide a quicker service, or phone 0117 950 5012.

Do you provide Daily Back Ups?

No - However, all servers are monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, by experienced engineers to ensure your web site is on-line, and stays on-line. Web site owners / designers should always back up their web sites locally, on their computers, this is considered good practice. Our servers are protected by UPS systems in the event of a power failure.

Do you provide a Control Panel?

Yes - Personal Control Panels enable you to create unlimited email addresses, forwarders and auto responders. You can also create unlimited ODBC (database connections), and manage other aspects of your hosting account.

To access your Control Panel visit:

http://cp.your-domain-name.co.uk (or .com, .net, etc)

Then enter your username and password.

Control Panel is an optional extra service.

Do you provide Web Site Statistics Software?

Yes - We can set-up graphical web site statistics software that enables you to view both real-time and historical information about the visitors to your web site, including key-phrase use, search engine referrals, page views and total hits.

Web Site Statistics is an optional extra service.

Do you support Microsoft FrontPage Server Extensions?

Yes - We support Microsoft FrontPage Server Extensions 2002. However, we do not support Microsoft FrontPage Sub-webs or FrontPage Statistical Analysis.

It is important that you do NOT use the FTP protocol to publish your web site if the FrontPage Extensions are installed on your hosting account. If you do publish via FTP you'll probably corrupt the FrontPage Extensions. If you do, we will have to re-install the FrontPage Extensions and reset your web hosting account. Which may affect the performance of your web site temporarily.

Publishing Destination: ftp://ftp.your-domain-name.co.uk/htdocs (or .com, .net, etc)

Username: your-domain-name.co.uk (or .com, .net, etc)

Password: as provided.

Microsoft FrontPage Server Extensions is an optional extra service.

Do you support Microsoft FrontPage Subwebs?

No, we do not support Microsoft FrontPage Subwebs.

How do I Configure My FTP Software?

To login to your FTP account and publish your web site you will need to enter the following information into your FTP software / client.

Publishing Destination: ftp://ftp.your-domain-name.co.uk/htdocs (or .com, .net, etc)

FTP Hostname / Address: ftp.your-domain-name.co.uk (or .com, .net, etc)

Username: your-domain-name.co.uk (or .com, .net, etc)

Password: as provided.

Port: 21

We recommend you select Passive FTP, which you should find under Options or Settings, or something similar.

Do you support Microsoft Active Server Pages?

Yes - We support Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP) on our Windows servers. You can use either VBScript or JScript languages, and DSN or DSN-less connections to connect to ODBC databases.

ASP Modules include:

CDONTS and CDOSYS
JMail
ASP Upload
MDAC and ADO.

Do you support PHP?

Yes - We support PHP on both Windows and Linux servers.

Do you support PERL and CGI?

Yes - We support Active State PERL and you can use your own CGI programs developed in any programming language such as Visual Basic or Delphi. Custom compiled .exe CGI applications must be present in the cgi-bin.

Do you support Custom DLLs?

Yes - We do allow custom .dll components as long as they do not need to be installed on the server. Custom .dll components must be stored in the cgi-bin. Bristol Link reserves the right to disallow any DLL file that effects or harms any other web sites on the server. Windows hosting accounts support ISAPI DLLs, which must be stored in the cgi-bin.

Do you support Microsoft .Net Framework?

Yes - We support Microsoft .Net Framework on our Windows servers. PHP and ASP are scripting technologies, however, ASP.Net is a full-fledged object-oriented compiled application development technology. With ASP.Net, you can leverage the full .Net Platform and CLR (Common Language Runtime Library), and write unmanaged code that digs into the internal workings of your operating system if needed, and even share computing power across the Internet. Basically, the difference is this: PHP is a highly limited scripting language that can do a number of common things, just like ASP. ASP.Net is unlimited; it can do anything that can be done.

We do allow custom .dll components as long as they do not need to be installed on the server. Custom .dll components must be stored in the cgi-bin. Bristol Link reserves the right to disallow any DLL file that effects or harms any other web sites on the server. Windows accounts support ISAPI DLLs, which must be stored in the cgi-bin.

Microsoft .Net is an optional extra service.

Do you support Telnet?

Yes - Our Linux servers support Telnet. Telnet is an application used to connect to remote computers, usually via the telnet port (23). Our Linux hosting accounts support Secure Shell (SSH). The version is OpenSSH, which encrypts all transferred data.

You only need to use SSH if you have to do something, which cannot be performed via FTP. Examples include: un-zipping or un-tarring files, setting permissions with chmod, creating symbolic links, or editing a file on the server.

Before you can connect using SSH, you must set a shell password via your Control Panel. You will need an SSH client. Most versions of Unix have SSH clients included. To login type:

ssh domainXXXXXX@<mydomain.com>

where domainXXXXXX is your shell username, and mydomain.com is your domain name.

You will be placed in your "home" directory, which is one level above the 'user/htdocs' hierarchy. To move to your document root, use the command cd user/htdocs.

Can you host Multiple FTP Accounts?

Yes - Your hosting account comes with a Default FTP account so you can upload your files. We can also create Custom FTP accounts. This process is often used to allow second or third party access to specific sections of a web site. For example we can set-up multiple FTP connections using the same login details, or even different usernames and passwords for each login. We can also set up multiple users with identical permissions to the same folders. Custom FTP account is an optional extra service.

Do you support Custom Error Pages?

Yes - We support Custom Error Pages. These pages enable you to specify a page on your web site that a user will see if they are presented with errors, such as 'The page cannot be found' or 'You are not authorised to view this page'. For example, to keep visitors on your web site you could present them with a 'Site Map' page when they mistype a URL or encounter a broken link. Simply create your Custom Error Pages like a normal web page, and then upload them to your web space.

You must ensure that any links to pages, images, stylesheets, etc, in your Custom Error Pages are absolute, for example:

http://www.your-domain.co.uk/images/image.jpg

Because if you have pages within a sub-directory and they experience an error, the Custom Error Page loads itself within the sub-directory. If you use relative links to images etc, then they will display as an error because the page is looking for them within the sub-directory.

Also, be a ware that if you are using ASP pages (or any script for that matter), the Custom Error Page will load itself slap, bang, in the middle of your page, if an error is encountered within the ASP script. For example, if you have a record-set on a page and there are no matching records in your database (and you haven't put in a Show If/If Not Empty behaviour) then the Custom Error Page will load itself on the page, where that error occurs.

To set up a Custom Error Page, follow these steps:

Design a Custom Page and upload it to your web site. This page can use any valid file extension and can contain scripts. The file should be uploaded to your /htdocs directory, or a subdirectory within /htdocs. A single page for all errors can be used, or separate pages to replace several standard error messages can be shown.

When you have uploaded your Custom Page, login to your Control Panel (Control Panel is an optional extra service) and browse to the 'Domain Settings' area, and click on 'Error Pages'. Select the 'Use your own Custom Page for all error types' option and click 'Update'. The page will ask you to specify a URL for your Custom Error Page. If your page is located at: http://www.your-domain.co.uk/error.htm, you would enter: error.htm. Click 'Next', and then 'Finish'.

Should you choose to use a specific file for each individual error message, you should select the 'Use a specific Custom Page for each error type' option. This will allow you to insert the URL for each individual error message.

The Default Error Pages are:

Error 400 - Bad request
This is a rare error, which occurs when a web browser makes a request that the web server doesn't understand.

Error 401 - Unauthorised
Some web pages require a user name and password for access. This error message appears when they have not been supplied, or have been entered incorrectly.

Error 403 - Forbidden
The most common cause of this error is the lack of a default index page, or a user trying to navigate a web site's folders directly. It can also occur if the web server prevents a script from running.

Error 404 - Not found
This is the error that most people see, as it is given when a web address is typed incorrectly or a particular web page no longer exists.

Error 500 - Internal server error
This is a non-specific error that can be caused by an error in a web script or a problem with the server itself.

Do you support Microsoft Streaming Media?

Yes - We support Microsoft Streaming Media, a content delivery system that allows your visitors to view multi-media content without downloading an entire media file. Visitor's browse to the media file, or a page with it embedded, and the audio/video is streamed directly to the browser.

We support Microsoft Windows Streaming Media format (.wma, .wmv, .asf).

To use Microsoft Streaming Media, you must first install a Mount Point. This will be the Folder / Sub Domain from where your visitors access your media content. The number of Mount Points governs how many people can view your media at any one time, and the speed of the stream.

Microsoft Streaming Media is an optional extra service.