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SUPPORT : FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
GENERAL QUESTIONS Why is e50 better than the other guy? e50 offers MUCH, MUCH more than anyone that we know of on the Web. Our services go far beyond just hosting. We promote you on major search engines, help you make changes to your site, give you deep discounts for pre-payment, offer SUPER fast connections to the Internet and provide complete technical support. We even offer a free training course for our clients and their associates both in our studio and on the web! Do you have a newsletter? Yes! and we'll send you one via eMail, snail mail or both - let us know. It's quarterly and filled with informative and educational material. What is your referral plan and how can I benefit? Each time that you refer a new customer to us, we deduct a month of hosting charges. Refer 12 new clients and your entire year of hosting is free! Can I access my site to make changes? Yes! We provide you with a password which allows you to send changes to your site. Are you an Internet Access Provider also? Absolutely NOT! We pride ourselves on providing fantastic service with a prime focus on great Web Site hosting. It is a great benefit to you that we are not an access privider. If you decide to change your ISP, your web site does not have to be moved and re-established with costly set up fees and technical shafus. e50 Hosts web sites and we do this very well. It is our primary objective. How do I move my site to your servers? It's easy. We can take care of all the details. We can fetch your site from its current server very easily, or you can provide it to us on disk. What if I have CGI scripts that work with my site now? Most CGI scripts run variations of basic operations. We can have most scripts duplicated (or moved from their current location) fairly easily. Often times you may want to upgrade your scripts anyway. What type of safety precautions do you take? On the Web Serving side, we have a primary and backup server, each running simultaneously. In the event that the primary is interrupted (which has been a total of 14 minutes and 37 seconds over the past three years), our back up server kicks in instantly. Furthermore, all of your Web Site data is backed up daily on hard drive and tape, and floppy disk backups are performed twice a year for your records, if you wish. Will you host sites from around the world? Yes! We host sites from all over the globe. It doesn't matter where you are, near or far, we'll host your site. Remember, this is cyberspace. Access to the site and FTP uploads/downloads can be acheived with a computer, a modem and a phone line from anywhere in the world! Is it e-5-0 (zero) or e-5-o (letter o)? Well... we pronounce it like e-five-oh (letter o, long sound). However, we have found that 9 out of 10 persons, when asked to write it will put down e50 (zero, not the letter o). So... we made our web site address work both ways - just in case. You can type: http://e50.com or http://e5o.com Note: that's a lowercase 'o' by the way - not an upper case 'O'. How can I contact you? Phone: 323-466-9253 (USA) Fax: 323-466-9258 (USA) eMail: info@e50.com Mailing Address: e50 3727 W. Magnolia Blvd. #430 Burbank, CA 91510 SITE LAYOUT/CONTENT Where can I find the FTP, Telnet and/or ZIP software to update my site? Some or all of these packages are essential in maintaining your web site. After reading the descriptions below, check this site for utilities that are ready to download for your Mac or PC.
Use a good mix of graphics and text on your pages -- avoid long pages of just text! Many people are still on slow modems, so limit yourself to about 50K - 75K bytes of graphics per page. Your home page (the first page people see when visiting your site) should have a catchy graphic, a succinct paragraph on what you have to offer, and most importantly -- a clearly laid out set of hyperlinks (the underlined text on a web page which moves the person to another page and/or site). Effective use of links allows the visitor to ignore material they already know or are not interested in reading. Think of your home page as a combined magazine cover and table of contents, leading people through the rest of your site. What about graphics on my page? Realize that you cannot just take an existing product catalog, put it through an optical scanner, and transform it into a web page. Most magazines and "glossy" literature are printed at 1200 dpi (dots per inch), almost ALL computer monitors can display only 75-100 dpi. You may want to give your web page designer a 2 x 4 detailed photo of your product and ask them to give you a "perfect" reproduction on your page. They will be able to scan the photo in at 1200 dpi, but all those dots are going to take up a lot more room on your monitor -- the photo is now twelve times as large! Probably not what you wanted. The normal technique is to present a "thumbnail" version of your product on the web page, still 2-4 inches in size, but with much lower resolution (has a grainy look) and smaller size, maybe only 25K bytes. If the viewer is interested in the product the thumbnail is hyperlinked to a much larger version of the photo (150K bytes) -- if they are that interested, they won't mind waiting for it to load. How can people contact me after viewing my site? Always make sure you at least have an E-Mail button on your pages (called a "mailto" link. This allows a visitor who wants more information to press a button, have a form pop up on their monitor with YOUR address already filled in, and send you a quick message. You should still list a phone number, but most queries will come via E-Mail. Forms - you may want to use a form if you wish to collect some specific information from people visiting your page. You have two options when using forms on your page -- and they differ in what happens when the users presses the "Submit" button on the page. One of the options is FREE, the other will cost an additional $5/month (if you are a BASIC subscriber).
The message arrives to you as one LONG line of text, not pretty, but readable. (2) Using a "cgi" script: This is the most complete approach. When the user presses submit the data in the form is sent from the browser to a special program we have available on our server. This program takes the data, formats a NEAT mail message and sends it to you -- it also sends a NEW html page to the browser which clears the screen and prints a confirmation message. The message arrives to you as formatted text. We don't get any kick-backs for this, but we have read good reviews about the "hot dog" editor and have gotten positive responses from people who have tried it. You can download an eval for free, along with some other nice tools, from: http://www.sausage.com The "Gold" edition of Netscape's browsers also supports creation of HTML, and has built in FTP capability to transmit the files to your site. Do you support Microsoft Frontpage(TM)? Yes! We support Microsoft FrontPage Webs. To use Microsoft FrontPage for publishing to your web area, please contact us and we will activate this capability for you immediately. Simply follow the instructions that come with FrontPage and you're all set Do you provide tech support to help me with setting up forms and CGI scripts? We support hundreds of sites and attempt to provide timely support to all our users; however, as part of normal support we cannot: debug a CGI script, explain UNIX commands, explain how CGI works. We do provide you with access instructions giving you the necessary path and login information so that you can manage your web site and CGI scripts. You can also try one of our CGI wizards, available via our We recognize some users need more help and we do provide Consulting Services (which are paid, current rate $40/hr, min charge $20). One of our staff can then install/debug a script for you, and leave you with detailed usage instructions. If we are debugging a script and find that the problem is at our end, "no charge". Most common scripts can be installed in an hour or less. If you are a NEW subscriber we can offer you custom setup at a more economical rate! Contact us. If you find yourself in a position where one of our support staff must actually read or execute your script to answer a question, you may be asked to okay a consulting charge. We normally find that after a few "settling in" questions, almost all sites run with little intervention from us. Please consult the following when attempting to troubleshoot a problem. It represents our "top 5" list:
Over 85% of all web transactions are paid for by credit card. You MUST be a credit card merchant, we cannot process credit card transactions for you. Be sure to shop around when looking for a merchant account, compare all the rates (especially "batch" rates, application/setup fees, and any special hardware/software you may be required to buy). Once you are a merchant we can help you by providing SECURE web service so that the credit card holders informations is always transmitted in encrypted form. SITE PUBLICITY Do I need my own Domain? The importance of having your own domain name (that part of the address just to the left of the ".com") can be overstated. It does not have an impact on your search engine scoring, which is concerned with page content, not the address, but it is a prestige item. Having your own domain does cost more, but it projects a bigger company image. This has to be balanced against advertising dollars for a small firm just starting out. Many times it is wise to have your page hosted in a cyber mall, or underneath another domain, e.g. http://www.mall.com/your_company. If business grows you can always move up to domain service, and a simple link at your old address will point people to your new site. What is a search engine, how do I get my site registered? If advertising is the meat & potatoes of bringing visitors to your site, the searches are gravy . If you get some activity generated, that's fine, but don't count on it being there. There are several large Internet Search engines such as Info Seek, Web Crawler, Alta Vista, which have special software that reads web site after web site and catalogs all the information it reads in a giant database. They "score" each site not only on what words are used, but where they appear, e.g. the words "car security" appearing in the heading of a web page are considered more important than the words "car security" appearing in paragraph text. When a person enters the specific keywords they are interested in, the software looks for matches in the database (we are talking about millions of web pages!).
There are also special parts of a page, not normally visible, called META tags, which must occur inside the HEAD tag. These allow the web page designer to tell the search engine what description to display and what keywords are important about this site -- a very useful tool. For the NAME part of the META tag you would use "keywords", for the CONTENT part you would give the words specific to your site. Use the word "description" when you are supplying the text you would like to see the search engine display in its report, e.g. if you were listing rooms for the olympics:
<HEAD> <META NAME="description" CONTENT="We offer a wide selection of rental rooms for folks going to the Olympic games"> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="olympic room rental sale"> <TITLE>Olympic Room Rental</TITLE> </HEAD> I registered my site, but it doesn't turn up in searches? Please allow about 2-4 weeks for the search engine's database to be updated. To determine if your site was cataloged do a very specific search based on your content -- if your site shows up then you know it was cataloged, but that you just don't score well for normal searches, (see faq above). If your site does not turn up, contact the search engine staff directly, most have "mailto" links from their home pages, and let them know. Many times they manually increase your score and/or double check to make sure your site is cataloged. What is an Entry Page? There is a conflict between what is a "good" home page, and what looks "good" to a search engine. Some engines increase your score based on the percentage of words on the home page that match the search criteria, e.g. user is looking for "used cars", and your site's title is "Used cars", and in your HTML text you have only the words "used cars", nothing else. This DOES NOT always make for a good home page. We coined the word "Entry Page" to describe a web page that will look good to a search engine, but just has a link to your real "home page". This allows you to have several entry pages, each emphasizing different keywords, but still keep a single home page. Remember stick to 3-5 words you think a user might enter when looking for your site, and order is important, e.g. "web site hosting" is different than "hosting web site". AT ALL SERVICE LEVELS you are free to create these types of pages on your own, place them on your site, and then list them with the search engines (we recommend it!). For those of you who may need help you can also have us do the page for you (we just need your input on the text to use). We can create and submit a series of entry pages for you (we recommend one pair of pages for each set of keywords). To order this type of work please submit the form at our web site. We will contact you for confirmation before any work is done. How do I increase activity at my site? Just having a web page (http://www.mycompany.com/) does not guarantee millions of people all over the world are going to visit your site. The primary means of bringing people to your site will be your paid advertising! Print advertising, small classified ads in the back or magazines targeting your audience, can be very effective! You should use your web site address or URL (Uniform Resource Locator) in the same places you would put your address or phone number: business cards, stationary, and print advertising. One of the powers of the web page is its ability to augment your present advertising, i.e. your web site can contain photographs and many pages of material on your company, all you need to do in your print ad is generate enough interest in the reader to visit your site. How do I get site statistics? Simply ask us to turn on full stats reporting and the following month you will be able to view your stats each month for the prior month. Ie: If we turn on Stats for May, then on April 5th, you will be able to view your May stats. Your stats can be viewed online with a web browser and show daily hits, views and visitor information in an easy to understand fashion. Graphics, charts and percentages, etc. will let you get a complete picture of how your site is doing. As the months go by, you will be able to view the HTML stats page for each month, building an archive of past stats information. If you would like this feature turned on, please email us your request, or call us directly at 323-466-9253. What do site statistics tell me? We have some valuable reports to help you better understand what your website is doing. For our customers these reports are sent to you at the end of each month. If you DO NOT get a report that could signify little/no activity, contact us if you have questions. HIT REPORT/REQUEST REPORT: This report shows you the number of requests/file at your site. This is VERY useful in determining what visitors are doing, and how deeply your site is being penetrated. Check the percentage of people loading your home page, versus the number of requests for other pages at your site. If you are getting at least 50% of your visitors to load another page you are doing pretty well in presenting your message. If you are getting a lot less people to load another page you may want to rethink your home page layout. It ALWAYS pays to have others visit your site and give you some feedback. If you are getting penetration, but not enough customers, you may want to review your product and prices, i.e. folks got your message, they saw your product, they understood what it was, and just don't want to buy it! At this point you need to rethink product/price. REFERRER REPORT: This report tells you WHERE people are coming from that are visiting your site. CAVEAT: not ALL browsers report this information. This will tell you how well you have been indexed by the various search engines, and what types of searches are being done. For subscribers, the minimum number of referrals a site has to make before appearing defaults to 5. Contact us and we can lower/increase the number to an appropriate level. SITE ADMINISTRARION How do I access my site after my account becomes active? Our customers will receive a welcome guide immediately upon signing up with us. The guide describes submitting files, important contact information, and site suggestions. I have a site, but no business, should I quit? If you have done the following:
How do I start using secure processing, what is SSL? If you are a domain service subscriber, you may setup your site for secure service through our A complete description of secure services is beyond the scope of this guide; however, we can try to give you a simple explanation. First - the use of "https" causes your browser to send the request to a different web server from a normal "http" request. This is the "secure" server. Second - the service is "secure" because instead of transmitting data between your browser and the server as plain text ( where potentially someone who had tapped your connection could read it ), the data is encrypted with special coding only your browser and the secure server understand. Anyone else intercepting the transmission would see gibberish. Third - just doing the encryption is NOT enough. For how do you know that your browser is really connecting with the "secure" server, e.g. evil space-aliens have taken over your ISP and are intercepting ALL your transmissions . Fourth - verifying that the secure server is really the one you want is done through verifying a "certificate". This is a complicated process, but third-party companies issues certificates (which are also encrypted) so that companies (secure servers) can prove they are who they say there are. This is why you must use the name "secure1.thebook.com", for this is a certified secure server. You can also have one for your own domain, but the cost is several hundred dollars to setup, and then annual costs to maintain. What about billing? Credit Card Payment When you give us your Credit Card Number you are authorizing us to make only ONE transaction for the amount you authorized. We do NOT continue to use your card number against future invoices without your express permission! Monthly Invoicing Procedures We have made some changes in your monthly statements. The most important of which is an accurate "Due Date". You should expect to receive your invoice, via E-Mail, app. one month prior to your current service expiration date. The Due Date will be approximately 15 days later. If we have not received payment on the Due Date, you will receive another reminder via E-Mail. If we have still not received payment you will receive a termination notice 3-5 days prior to service cut off. If no payment is received, service will cease and you may be responsible for setup fees to restart service. We also offer you a way to pay, via SECURE transaction, on the web -- contact us. PREMIUM DOMAIN CUSTOMERS NOTE: You should be especially aware of the "tight" monthly billing with Domain Service. Because we incur charges from our ISP for numbers of domains being serviced, we can allow no "grace" periods. If you find it difficult to remember to pay the monthly bill, you may prepay 3-6 months in advance and also get a discount. Call/write if you have questions. Invoices by Mail Due to the unique nature of our business and our desire to keep subscriber costs low -- we do not normally invoice by U.S. Mail. If you must be invoiced by mail, please contact us, there will be an additional $5 charge for each invoice generated. |
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