Congratulations! You have taken the first step towards your presence on the internet with the purchase of a hosting plan with 3Essentials. This page will guide you through the steps needed to get your site up and running. If you are a new customer you should have received your welcome letter via email to the address you provided us when you signed up. If not, please contact support and ask them to re-send your welcome letter to you. Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL users, check your bulk mail folder as the welcome letter may have been delivered there.

NOTE: These instructions outline setting up your hosting account, you should already have a domain registered as this is required for your hosting account to function.

Setting up an Account for a Newly Registered Domain Name

Step 1 - DNS and Domain Registration
Once you register your domain name, you will want to delegate the name servers to 3Essentials name servers. The name servers are:

ns1.3essentials.com

ns2.3essentials.com

It can take up to 72 hours for DNS to update across the internet. Until DNS replicates you cannot access your website via your domain name. You will need to upload your files using the IP Address or the name of the server that is hosting your domain name. This is covered in Step 2 and is temporary until DNS replicates.

Step 2 - Uploading Your Files
To upload files to your account you can use your FTP client. Reference your welcome letter for the appropriate credentials and the server IP to use.

1. Open your FTP Client and configure it to use the IP Address or server name for your hosting plan. This information is found in your welcome email.

2. Once you connect to the FTP server with your FTP Client, change directory to the site's root diretory and upload your files.

On hosting plans with the Plesk Control Panel, this is httpdocs

On hosting plans with CPanel, this is public_html

Note: You must first change directory to httpdocs or public_html, then upload. You cannot upload into the FTP root directory.

3. Make sure to replace the index.html file that is located in the httpdocs folder with your own index.html file, as this is the default document for your web site.

To preview your site before DNS updates, you have several options. These are outlined in the Knowledgebase article below:

http://knowledge.3essentials.com/web-hosting/article/1314/Site-Preview-options-Accessing-site-before-DNS-points-to-hosting.html

Step 3 - Create Email Accounts
 

The steps can vary depending on the hosting plan. Please see the article below on how to create and manage mail accounts.

http://knowledge.3essentials.com/web-hosting/article/78/How-To-Create-and-Manage-an-e-mail-user.html

Once you transfer your domain over to us, you will be able to read email via the web at http://webmail.yourdomain.com

Configure Mail Client (Outlook, Android, iPhone, etc)

http://knowledge.3essentials.com/web-hosting/article/1798/How-To-Configure-my-e-mail-client.html

Moving From Your Current Hosting Provider to 3Essentials
The steps outlined below will guide you through the process of uploading your web pages and creating any mailboxes so that you can prepare your site before you transfer your domain name to us. This will decrease the chance of downtime while moving from your old hosting provider. Do not initiate a domain transfer to us until you have completed these steps.
 

Transfer Your Domain

After registering your domain, uploading files, and creating mail accounts, test your site.

Once you are satisfied that your site is showing correctly and you have created all mailboxes you can then transfer your domain name to us. This process usually takes about 72 hours to complete. Keep in mind that all DNS Servers on the internet have to replicate this change, so while some ISPs' DNS will have the correct DNS setting for your domain, others may not. Some ISPs may take longer to replicate their DNS changes.