This document covers the following topics:

• Creating Sub Domains
• Switching Between Shared and Local IP's
• HTTP Traffic
• Adding New Domain Names (separate document)
• Domain Alias/Domain Stacking
• Network Troubleshooting/Trace Routing
• Submitting Sites to Search Engines

To change any settings connected with your domain name, select the Domain Settings menu:

If you have more than one domain name, you will get the list of your domains to choose from. Otherwise, the first window to open would be the Edit Domain page:

where:

• Domain Name: the front door address used by visitors to enter your site. Click the View icon to enter the site.
• Subdomains. If your plan allows, you can create subdomains to your domain. For more details see below.
• IP address: Choose between a shared or a dedicated IP address. You need to have shared IP to create an FTP Virtual Host. See
• below for more on IP addresses.

• Name Servers: The name of the Master server, where your domain is registered. The Name Servers field can also list one or more slave servers that are revoked when the traffic becomes too heavy for the Master to handle.
• DNS Configuration: Add custom DNS records to your DNS zone. For help on configuring DNS please click here.
• Mail Service:
Configure settings for your mail service. Click the Edit icon to view or change configuration of your mail resources. By clicking the On/Off button you can enable or disable mail support.
Warning: disabling mail service will permanently remove all your mail resource settings. After that, you will have to configure them from scratch. For help on mail service please click here.
• Web Service: Configure settings for your web site performance. Click the Edit icon to view or change your server configuration. By clicking the On/Off button you can enable or disable website support.
  Warning: disabling web service will permanently remove all your server settings. After that, you will have to configure them from scratch. For help on web service please click here.
• Transfer HTTP: this is the place to set HTTP Traffic limit. For more details, see below.
• HTML directory name: the path to the directory on the server where your site is located.
• FTP: 
• click the ON/OFF button to create a Virtual FTP server. Disabling this feature will remove all Virtual FTP settings, so you will have to configure them from scratch.
• click the Edit icon to view or edit the Virtual FTP settings on Virtual FTP host page.
• By clicking Disable, you will remove all FTP settings; after that, you will have to configure them from scratch.
• Domain Aliases: If your plan allows, you can create Domain Aliases to your domain. For details see below.
• Contact and Billing Info: Applicable only if you have a standard domain registered with OpenSRS. All updates to your Contact and Billing Info will be submitted to OpenSRS. This feature is not available for domains registered with other registrars.
  

Creating Subdomains

A subdomain is a lower level domain. You can create as many subdomains as it is allowed by the plan. Domains and subdomains have equal functional capabilities, including web site management, e-mail service, FTP, etc., but subdomains do not have their own DNS zones.

To create or add a subdomain to your domain, go through the following steps:

Step 1. In the main domain settings, switch to the dedicated IP.

Step 2. Click the OFF button in the FTP field to create a Virtual FTP host. In the window that appears, enter parameters to this Virtual FTP host.

Step 3. Click the Add icon in the Sub Domains field. You will be asked to enter the subdomain name:

Enter the name of the new subdomain. It will show on the left of your main domain name. For example, if your domain name is mydomain.com, entering mysubdomain will make your full subdomain name look like mysubdomain.mydomain.com. Newly created subdomain will be displayed in the Subdomain entry on Domain Settings page.

Step 4. Go to the FTP Virtual Host page. Click the Add icon in the Virtual FTP Users field and create a new user for this subdomain.

Step 5. Click the Add icon in the Virtual FTP Directories field. In the Directory field of the page that appears, enter full subdomain name ending with a slash (e.g. subdomain.domain.com/). On the same page, set appropriate permissions to this directory and add authorized users, if appropriate.

To create still another subdomain, just go through steps 3 to 5.

Switching between Virtual Hosting (Shared IP) and IP Based Hosting (Dedicated IP)

The system offers 2 kinds of IP:

1. Shared IP - one IP address is assigned to several domains and access to a domain is available only by its domain name;
2. Dedicated IP - one IP address is assigned to one domain. To access a domain you can use either its IP address or its domain name.

Shared IP is used by more than one virtual hosts. This approach is known as name-based Virtual Host Support, as opposed to the traditional IP-based Virtual Host approach, and is used to avoid assigning a dedicated IP address to every virtual host, which is hard to implement on some machines.

The benefits of using the new name-based virtual host support is a practically unlimited number of servers, ease of configuration and use, and requires no additional hardware or software. The main disadvantage is that the client must support this part of the protocol. Also, which is critical for WebHostingDirect, shared IP does not allow to create FTP Virtual Hosts.

Dedicated IP is a paid service and is required to create Virtual FTP and uses SSL on your web server. If you switch back from Dedicated IP to Shared IP, any your FTP and SSL resources will be removed.

By default every domain has a Shared IP. Shared IP is free. You can change the type of IP at any time as you work with the system. To change the type of the IP, click the Change to Shared/Dedicated IP link in the Edit Domain page.

You can use IP-only server. To create it, during signup you should choose "no domain" item. And after signup you should change type of IP to Dedicated.

HTTP Traffic

Every user plan has a default traffic limit, exceeding which implies charges per each extra gigabyte of traffic.

Per-gigabyte charges are usually higher, so it is wise to set your transfer limit to the level you are expecting to have. To change your plans default, click on the limit value. In the window that appears, enter your expected HTTP monthly traffic. The traffic that goes beyond this limit will be charged at a higher excess rate. HTTP traffic is calculated separately from FTP traffic, but works according to the same pattern.

Domain Aliases/Domain Stacking
(version 2.0.5 or higher)

A user plan can be configured to allow stack domains - additional secondary domain names that point to primary i.e. original domains. For instance if your web site is called company.com, you can have an alias company.net point to company.com.

To create a new domain alias, click the Add icon. The following window will appear:



Enter the name for a new domain alias (this must be a fully qualified domain name, e.g. company.com).

Configure DNS:

• leave the box unchecked if the domain alias is registered on a different DNS server. In this case your hosting services provider won't be able to maintain DNS for this domain alias. Stack domains will only allow HTTP access to your account. Mail Service will be inaccessible, and in the list of domain aliases it will not appear as hypertext.
  
• check the box if you want an appropriate DNS record pointing to the IP address of the existing domain to be automatically created for this domain alias on your hosting server. In this case you'll be able to create and edit custom DNS records for this domain alias (which is not recommended unless you know how to work with DNS records), and Mail Service will be accessible for this domain alias. It has no DNS zone of its own and does not support virtual FTP or MySQL services.
  
  *Please do not forget to restart web server in order to make the new server alias available.
  
  Click the existing domain alias text link to view and/or edit its configuration. The following page will appear:
  
  
  
  
• Name Servers: the name and the IP of the server the domain alias is registered on.
• DNS Configuration: click the Edit icon to edit alias's DNS configuration. For more information check DNS Management.
• Mail Service: click the ON/OFF button to enable Mail Service. For more information check E-mail Settings.
  

Network Troubleshooting/Trace Routing
(version 2.0.5 and higher)

This net troubleshooting tool allows you to ping any internet host from your hosting server. Select Trace Route in the Domain Settings menu. The following window will appear:

Enter the host name or the IP address of the server to ping. If the tracing takes longer than the timeout period you specified, the process will be stopped and the tracing results will be displayed. For more information on traceroute type man traceroute in the command line.

Submitting Sites to Search Engines
(version 2.0.5 and higher)

This tool submits specified URLs to the most popular automatic search engines. On the Submit sites page -

check the boxes against the sites you would like to be indexed, set the timeout period and click OK. The timeout period is the time you allow for registering one site with one search engine. After the submittal, some search engines may take a week or more before the submitted sites appear in the search results.

Warning: Avoid submitting large numbers of web sites at a time, or the browser will time out before the program finishes.