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CactuShop hosting
Question
How do I use the hosting info I've been sent for my CactuShop hosting?
Answer
When hosting is setup with us, we generally send through the IP, username and password in an email with a link to this knowledgebase article. This explains how to access the various features of your hosting using the provided information.
First, a key for some of the explanations below:
[domain] = your domain, e.g. mysite.xyz
[ip] = the IP address, e.g. 217.69.37.188
[username] = the user name sent to you
[password] = the password sent to you
The first thing to remember is that although your hosting is setup, it won't be accessible in a browser using your domain until you have changed the name servers for the domain to point to our hosting. There is a workaround for this to allow you to view the web space prior to pointing your domain to our hosting - that will be dealt with further down.
Name Servers / DNS
To point your domain at our hosting, you will need to access the control panel for the domain (i.e. your domain registrars control panel, not our hosting control panel) and change the name servers to:
ns0.eechost.net (217.69.32.4)
ns2.eechost.net (217.69.32.8)
Note that once you do this change, it will take several hours to propagate through the worldwide DNS system. Even once you can see the 'new' site by typing the domain into a browser, some other people connecting via different ISPs may still see the 'old' site if the DNS cache they're using has not yet updated. If this happens, just be patient - within a day, everyone should be seeing only the new site.
FTP
These are the details to allow you to access your web space to upload files:
[ip]
[username]
[password]
IMPORTANT! Make sure you set your FTP package to 'active' mode, otherwise you will find that it can login but not list and access the files. This is generally not the default setting, so you will have to make sure you change this.
Control Panel & Stats
http://dcp.[domain]
[username]
[password]
Note that the address above uses your domain and so will only work once the name server change has been made. If you need to set up email accounts prior to the domain move, you can use this:
http://mailsetup.cactusoft.com/
[domain]
[username]
[password]
For each client that connects to the mail system, you will need to use the email address as the username, the password you set for that account as password, and these server settings:
pop.[domain]
smtp.[domain]
Viewing your site prior to pointing the name servers at our hosting
If you want to setup and test the hosting prior to the domain move, you can do this by editing your computer's hosts file. This file is generally located here:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc
Open it with notepad and add a new line with your domain and IP, separated with at least two spaces:
[ip] [domain]
For example, it might look like:
217.69.37.188 cactushop.com
Once this is done, you should see the new hosting when you type http://[domain] into a browser (without the www). Note that this only affects you - everyone else will see the 'old' site until you do the nameserver change at the top of this mail (and then wait a few hours for this change to propagate throughout the web). You are just telling your computer where to find the web space.