Information about hosting plans
The information below is presented here to help members understand how to best use the yourarthere.net server. For more information please visit our Support or Hosting information.
Pricing
Monthly rate
Charged monthly or annually via PayPal.
Setup fee
There are no setup fees to create a yourarthere.net hosting account.
Limits
Disk space
This is the amount of space allotted to you on the yourarthere.net web server for all of your HTML and related website files, emails, log files, and stats.
- 1mb = 1024kb
- 1gb = 1024mb
Monthly transfer
This is the total amount of data (eg. HTML and related website files, emails, etc.) sent to and from your web server in a given month (often referred to as 'bandwidth').
Note: Should a site owner exceed their monthly transfer, visitors to your website will see a message explaining that you have gone over your allotted amount. All allotted amounts have been set by what is estimated to be needed based on an artists' website popularity. If you consistently go over your allotted amount then you should consider upgrading your account. Yourarthere.net does not fine site owners for exceeding their network transfer.
Subdomains
Subdomains are popular for hosting unique content at a URL similar to "http://thisartproject.yourdomain.com/". Subdomains are folders on your webserver that you set up with Plesk and can be accessed similar to other folders on the server.
Domain pointers
You can buy additional domain names to point to your existing web site. For example, you start an online art project called artforthemasses.net and think that people may be confused and go to artforthemasses.com. You can buy that domain name and use a domain pointer to automatically direct visitors to your real site; artforthemasses.net. This is an excellent way to increase your visibility and bring more visitors to your site.
Total domains
This is the total number of domains you are allowed to host with your yourarthere.net hosting account. This number equals your main domain + additional domains. Additional domains and websites use a sub-directory on the server. Additional Domains can be used to host sites for clients, prototype sites, or sites for friends and family. Additional domains can also be used as "pointers" or used to host additional fully functional websites, and email accounts. For example, the Basic plan allows only one domain to be hosted per account, while the yah250 plan allows two domains total to be hosted per that account.
Email accounts (POP)
POP (Post Office Protocol) is a way of retrieving email from an email server (called a POP server). It's like an electronic mailbox or street address so that your computer knows where to get your email from. Our email contains, Anti-SPAM filters, Web based email (Squirrel Mail), SMTP Authentication, Multiple Aliases, Forwarders, and Auto-responders. All email settings are configurable online using Plesk.
Email forwarders
Forwarders allow you to redirect incoming mail to another email account.
Mailing lists (Mailman)
Mailing lists can be used to send emails to large groups of people at once. Yourarthere.net does not tolerate spamming (sending emails to people who do not request, or "opt-in," to recieve them). Those caught will lose access to their account and their website will be taken down with no refunds given. Please see our web hosting agreement for more information.
The server uses the popular Majordomo mailing list software. There is a Graphical User Interface (GUI) provided via Plesk where users can create and manage lists and subscribe or unsubscribe users.
Email autoresponders
Autoresponders are e-mail robots that reply to all incoming messages with a standard outgoing message. The autoresponder will reply to all messages received, regardless of their content. For example, if you would like to provide prices upon request only, you can set up an email account called prices@yourdomainname.com and set up a link your site so it will autorespond to those who email to request the prices.
Spam filters
Filters allow you to block certain types incoming mail. Filters are universal; that is, you cannot set a filter for specific e-mail accounts. However, our filters allow you to block incoming email based on the email address it's from, the domain name it's from, words contained in the body, or filesize of the email.
Webmail (Squirrelmail and Uebi Miau)
Accessed via the url http://yourdomainname.com/webmail - Users can login and use SquirrelMail or Uebimiau.
Vacation messages
Vacation messages are simlar to autoresponders in that they tell others that you are away. A common vacation message may sound like: "I have received your e-mail message but I am away on vacation until June 21. I will respond to it then." Vacation messages are used in conjunction with already existing POP3 accounts and can be set to respond during certain dates.
Modify an MX entry
Please see the advanced section below to learn more about MX Entries.
Disk quota control
Site owners can allot certain amounts of email storage to their users with Plesk.
Developer features
PHP
PHP is a server-side scripting language for adding functionallity to your website. When a visitor opens the page, the server processes the PHP commands and then sends the results to the visitor's browser, just as with ASP or ColdFusion. Unlike ASP or ColdFusion, however, PHP is Open Source and cross-platform. PHP runs on Windows NT, Macintosh, and many Unix servers.
In addition to manipulating the content of your pages, PHP can also send HTTP headers. You can set cookies, manage authentication, and redirect users. It offers integration with various external libraries that let you do everything from generating PDF documents to parsing XML.
PHP goes right into your Web pages, so there's no need for a special development environment or IDE. You start a block of PHP code with <?php and end it with ?>. (You can also configure PHP to use ASP-style <% %> tags or even <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="php"></SCRIPT>.) The PHP engine processes everything between those tags.
PHP's language syntax is similar to C's and Perl's. You don't have to declare variables before you use them, and it's easy to create arrays and hashes (associative arrays). PHP even has some rudimentary object-oriented features, providing a helpful way to organize and encapsulate your code.
Perl modules
Perl is a server-side scripting language for adding functionallity to your website.A Perl module is a self-contained piece of Perl code that can be used by a Perl program or by other Perl modules. It is conceptually similar to a C link library, or a C++ class.
CGI-BIN
CGI files use server-side scripting to add functionallity to your website. CGI stands for "Common Gateway Interface." In short, CGI defines how web servers and web browsers handle information from HTML forms on web pages. In the broader sense, however, the term 'CGI' is often used to mean "any program that runs on a web server and interacts with a web browser". You may hear someone ask, "Where can I get a CGI script to handle this form?" or "Use CGI to do what you need". What they are referring to is a program of some sort that runs on your web server. A CGI-BIN is a special directory that allows files to be executed for added functionallity. CGI (.cgi) and Perl (.pl) files must reside in a CGI-BIN and be called from a separate web page.
SSI (server side includes)
Server Side Includes are files that have some commonly used code that can be reused by many pages in your site. When you use an SSI file the server takes the entire content of the file and inserts it into the page, replacing the include code. The Yourarthere.net site uses 3 SSIs on every page: the top bar, the Announcements side bar, and the footer, in order to make changes across the whole site quickly and easily, as well as to save download time as all of those pieces of each page have already been cached by the browser.
.htaccess overide (Password Protect Directories)
Among other things, this file can be used to restrict access to other files and web pages. When a request for a web page is made, the web server first checks for an .htaccess file. The server begins this check by looking for .htaccess in the root of the current web directory, and on down the directory tree until it reaches the the directory where the requested file resides. The server then requests a password from the user.
FrontPage Extensions
Frontpage Extensions allow you to publish your web site using Microsoft Frontpage.
Database features
MySQL database(s)
The MySQL database is the world's most popular open source database. Databases allow lots of information to be maintain in a more efficient way than static HTML pages.
phpMyAdmin
PHPMyAdmin is a tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the Web. Currently it can create and drop databases, create/drop/alter tables, delete/edit/add fields, execute any SQL statement, manage keys on fields, manage privileges,export data into various formats and is available in 47 languages.
Plesk control panel
Plesk control panel
Plesk is a web server control panel. Its user friendly interface allows you to create and manage domains, email accounts, databases, and virtually all functions of your web hosting account.
Website statistics (Webalizer)
The Webalizer tool creates a graphical summary display of usage of your site. This is useful to give you a quick and clear overview of your web site activity or 'stats.'
Change password(s)
With the Plesk control panel site owners have the ability to change passwords at will.
Create/manage backups
Using Plesk, site owners can back-up and restore all data on their web server.
Remote daily backups
All web sites are backed-up at an off-site location daily at 3am.
FTP
FTP accounts
An FTP account allows external users that know the password to upload to and download files from their web server.
Note: Please be aware that all users with the correct password will be able to add, edit, and delete files from the directory that you specify for the FTP account, and any directories within the stated directory.
24/7 FTP access
Users can access their websites to upload or download files all day, every day.
Web-based FTP file manager
The File Manager allows you to manage your site through a web browser, rather than an FTP tool or other third-party application. You can upload, create or delete files, organize files in folders, and change file permissions. While not as sophisticated as most FTP tools, File Manager is free and gives you all the basic functionality necessary to manage your site.
Support
Tech support
Since the Your Art Here project is nonprofit, volunteer-run, users requiring support are encouraged to visit our support pages and hosting information pages before contacting yourarthere.net for technical support. This helps to keep our prices for hosting packages very low. All questions will be answered on a first-come, first-serve basis.
E-mail support
If your answer to your support question can't be found on our support pages, FAQ, and hosting information pages please login into Plesk and create a help ticket to which we will respond to right away or contact us.
Online support FAQ
Visit the Support section.
Tutorials and Support Documentation
In addition to this and other pages on the yourarthere.net site (mentioned above in Tech Support) there are many other online options to help you with your website. See the above section Developer Features for questions related to website creation.
Advanced features
Add/edit MIME types
You can add mime types to your .htaccess file with a line like:
AddType text/html .xyz (in this example a page titled "main.xyz" could be read by a web browser as a normal html page)
Add/Edit apache handlers
Handlers tell Apache (the web server software) what to do with certain types of files. For example, .cgi and .pl extensions are processed with Perl. You could make Apache process .scr files with Perl by using the appropriate handlers. To add a handler, simply type in the handler name and extension (without a period) and click on “Add.”
To access Apache handlers with Plesk, click on the "Advanced Tools" icon from the main control panel menu, then click the "Apache Handlers" icon.
Create cron jobs
Cron jobs are system commands that can be scheduled. For example, if you wanted a CGI script to run every Monday morning, you could do this through the cron jobs menu. Values that can be set are minute, hour, day, month, and day of week (Monday-Sunday; the numbers 0 or 7 represent Sunday). Any value can be ignored by placing an asterisk (*) in the text field.
To access cron jobs with Plesk, click on the "Advanced Tools" icon from the main control panel menu, then click the "Cron Jobs" icon.
Custom error pages
You can customize error messages (404 Not Found, for example) by creating a file called .htaccess and including the appropriate entries. This file should be uploaded to your root directory (i.e., the "public_html" folder for your account).
Some of the most common messages are as follows:
- Error in client
- 400 Bad syntax
- 401 Unauthorized
- 402 Not Used (Payment Granted)
- 403 Forbidden
- 404 Not Found
- Error in Server
- 500 Internal Error
- 501 Not Implemented
- 502 Overloaded
- 503 Gateway Timeout
Create the HTML page you want to use as your error message and upload it to your web directory (/public_html). Next, edit your .htaccess file (or create one using a text editor) and add lines which specify the substitution.
Here are three examples of specifying error documents which will be called for a given error condition (note that you can use relative "thisfile.html" or absolute addressing "http://www.yourdomain.com/thisfile.html"):
- ErrorDocument 401 http://yourdomain.com/nopassword.html
- ErrorDocument 403 /forbidden.html
- ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yourdomain.com/nofile.html
If you use FrontPage to publish your web page(s), custom .htaccess files cannot be used.
Modify an MX entry
Free e-mail services such as everyone.net require that MX changes be made in order for their software to work. This change allows mail destined for your domain to be directed to their server. Please note that changing MX records will prevent your current POP3 accounts, forwarders, autoresponders, and mailing lists from functioning.
