Step 1: Log into your account control panel

The Cedant Administative Control Panel (http://yourdomainname.com/menu/) allows you to maintain and modify your account with ease. While your domain name is in the process of being transferred or registered, you may use your assigned IP Address that was provided in your account Welcome Letter in place or your domain name to access your account control panel.

When prompted enter your assigned account user name password to log into the control panel. Once you have logged into the control panel browse through the features to familiarize yourself with the tools available.

If you would like to change your password for your account you can do this using the Password icon and follow the instructions.

Step 2: Publish your website

FTP

To upload your files to your site you can use any ftp ready client or ftp enabled publishing tool. Until your domain name becomes active you can use your IP address to connect to your account. For instructions on configuring an ftp client please see our Technical Support Pages.

Upload your web files into the directory labeled "html". This is your web directory and any files that you wish to be seen via the web must be located in this directory.

The initial page of your site should be named "index.html", this way when a user types in the url www.yourdomain.com, they are taken straight to the initial page of your site without any further input.

Your CGI-BIN is also located in the "html" directory.

REMEMBER - name your home page "index.html" or "index.htm".

Our servers also fully support Frontpage 2002 and support most features of FrontPage 98/2000. If you intend to use MS FrontPage, you must first activate your FrontPage extensions by clicking the "MS Frontpage" button in your account control panel and installing the extensions. To publish your web from Frontpage, publish to:

http://yourdomain.com/

Once again, until your domain name is transferred you can use your IP address to publish your site with Frontpage.

Please note:  Before your site will be displayed after your publish, you will need to delete our default "under construction page". You can do this by logging into your account control panel and accessing the File Manager. Click on the "www" directory and delete the file named "index.html". You can also use any ftp client to perform this operation.

More information about using Frontpage 98/2000

Step 3: Setup your email

To setup your POP mailboxes you can log into your account control panel and select the "Mail Manager" icon. In this area you can setup all of your email items.

To check your email you can configure any email client to receive and send your mail. Here are the general settings to use for your email client:

Email Address = username@yourdomain.com
Mail Server user name = username@yourdomain.com
Outgoing SMTP Mail Server = The SMTP server of your Internet Service Provider
Incoming POP3 Mail Server = mail.yourdomain.com

More information about configuring email clients

Step 4: Enable other features of your account

SSH TELNET *

If you would like to enable SSH telnet for your account to allow you to log into a shell on your host, please submit an SSH telnet request

More information about setting up SSH telnet

* Not included with the Basic Account

If you would like to enable secure server access for your account to use our secure certificate to access pages on your website securely, please submit a Secure Server URL request

This will allow you to access pages using a secure URL such as: https://secure24.cedant.com/yourdomain/anypage.html

More information about SSL

Please refer to the information in your account control panel and our Technical Support Pages for information about other features of your account.

Step 5: Customize your account

Create your own "404 Not found" error pages.

Your first step is to create the HTML page you want to use as your error message and upload it to your html directory.

Next, create a text file and name it ".htaccess" and add the following line (the URL should point to your error page):

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yourdomain.com/yourerrorfile.html

Finally, upload your .htaccess file to your html directory. After you complete these steps, anyone trying to access a page that does not exist will be redirected to your error page.

Step 6: Submit your site to search engines



Bulk submissions don't tend to be as effective as they used to be; you may want to check out the following websites for some tips on getting better placement:

http://search-engine-secrets.com
http://searchenginewatch.com

Also, a decent book on getting listed is:

Maximize Web Site Traffic - Build Web Site Traffic Fast and Free by Optimizing Search Engine Placement by Robin Nobles and Susan O'Neil ISBN1-58062-369-7