Frequently Asked Questions
QUESTIONS
ANSWERS
Web Hosting (Pre-Sales)
  1. How long does it take to set up a new account?
    In most cases, within the hour!

    Between the hours of 8 a.m. and 10 p.m., we guarantee new accounts will be set up within 4 hours or less, provided there are no billing problems! In the unlikely event that account setup is delayed, we'll give you 50% off your first month's hosting fee!

    Once your account is set up, you will be emailed all the account and login information that you will need to get started.
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  2. Your prices seem too good to be true. What's the catch?
    We are very proud that are prices are so much lower than industry standard! But because of that, people become suspicious and mistakenly assume that there has to be a catch, like pop-ups, banner ads, or hidden costs and fees. There's no catch at all.

    We are so confident that you will absolutely love our hosting that we offer an unconditional, 30-day Money Back Guarantee. There's absolutely no risk to you to try us out!


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  3. How does the 30 Day Money Back Guarantee work?
    If you are not completely satisfied with our service within the first 30 days, we will refund your hosting fees, no questions asked!


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  4. How do you handle customer support?
    Our preferred method is by using a web-based support desk where support tickets can be tracked, time stamped and logged. That way we can generate performance reports to make sure we're doing what we promise-- answering your support tickets in four hours or less! To keep our web hosting at such a reasonable price, we don't have a 24-hour call center. But during the hours of 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. you can call us toll-free at 1-877-866-4108. Of course our support desk is available at all hours!


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  5. How much does it cost to register a domain name, and do I have to register it through you?
    The cost to register a new domain name is $12.95 per year. And no, you do not have to register your domain through us, but the benefit of doing so is that our DNS information is automatically entered when you register your domains through our site. That saves you the headache of going in and manually entering it yourself at another registrar!


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  6. How much does it cost to transfer a domain name?
    The cost to transfer an existing domain name is $12.95 per year.
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  7. What is No Hassle Hosting's DNS information?
    Because we have multiple servers, that depends on which server your account is set up on. You will receive the correct DNS immediately after setting up an account.


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  8. Can I upgrade my account later if I outgrow my current plan?
    Absolutely. Just login to the billing system or submit a support ticket letting us know which package you'd like to upgrade to, and we'll take care of the rest!


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  9. Can you customize a plan for me?
    Absolutely. Just let us know what you'd like to have and we'll give you quote.


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  10. Do you offer price matching with other companies?
    Often times, yes. If you are currently hosted with a company that offers a bigger plan at a better price, contact us to see if we'll match it. We can't promise that we will, but we do try. Send us your name, domain name, the URL of the webhosting company you are currently with, and which plan you are on. We will verify that you are indeed hosted with them and if we can, we'll match their plan and prices.


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  11. What happens if I exceed my monthly bandwidth allowance?
    If you enter your contact information in the Control Panel, the server will automatically email you once you reach 80% of your allowed bandwidth, to give you ample opportunity to upgrade your account. You can purchase additional bandwidth or upgrade to a bigger hosting plan very easily! Additional bandwidth can be purchased at a very reasonable rate of $1 per GB per month. We do not believe in price gouging customers for bandwidth.


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  12. Will I have access to a secure server to sell products online?
    Yes. We have a shared ChainedSSL Web Server Certificate that you can use free of charge. You can also purchase your own SSL certificate, if needed. Contact us for details.


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  13. I don't have a credit card, do you accept checks?
    Yes, we will accept checks and money orders if you purchase an annual plan. If you live outside the United States, you must send a money order instead of a check because of the conversion rates.

    If you would like to pay by check, please contact us, tell us which plan you would like to purchase, and we will email you an invoice. Your hosting account will be set up once the check is received.


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  14. What is the difference between multiple domains, add-on domains, and pointers?
    "Multiple domains" will allow you to host multiple websites, each with their own separate control panel. This is handy if you have a personal site and a business website and want to keep them completely separate for privacy reasons.

    "Add-on domains" are different domain names that share the same hosting account and control panel. The Standard, Silver, and Gold plans all allow up to 10 "add-on" domains. Add-on domains share the same space, but you can set up a subdirectory and add a different domain to it. For example, say your primary domain is domain1.com. But you have a completely different site called domain2.com. You can set up a /myothersite subdomain, and then from within the Control Panel, point domain2.com directly to /myothersite. That way the sites appear to be completely separate but you are actually sharing the same disk space, bandwidth, FTP account and control panel. Note: You can set up email accounts for each domain.

    You can also point multiple domains to the same account. For instance, if you have yourdomain.com, yourdomain.net, and yourdomain.org, we will set up those pointers free of charge and you do not need a larger plan to accommodate those. Note: You can also set up email accounts for each pointer.


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  15. Can I point multiple domains to the same account?
    Yes, if you have yourdomain.com, and you want yourdomain.net and yourdomain.org to point to the same account-- we will do that free of charge.

    Pointers are different than multiple domains because the former "point" to the same account. Plans for multiple domains allow each domain to have separate accounts, each with their own Control Panel.


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  16. Can I park a domain for now, until I am ready to use it?
    Yes, for $5/year. The charge is only if you wish to have a "coming soon" page on our servers. Just registering a domain so that no one else buys it before you are ready will incur no other charge than the cost of the domain name. If it is not parked on our servers, when someone tries to type in your domain an error message will come up and say that domain cannot be found.
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  17. Do you offer reseller hosting plans?
    Yes, please contact us for details.


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  18. What type of hardware do your web servers use?
    Pentium IV 2.4 GHZ CPUs or better with a minimum of two hard drives and 512 MB DDR RAM. We use only top quality hardware and all our servers are monitored 24 hours a day. Server loads are kept low to maintain speed and reliability.


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  19. What operating system is being used?
    All of servers are Unix. More specifically, Redhat Linux and Fedora.
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  20. What web server software do you run?
    Apache.
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  21. Is there support for Active Server Pages?
    No we do not support ASP. Our servers are Linux based and ASP is a Windows based component.
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  22. What are your network capabilities?
    Our servers are located in a carrier class data center called DV2. The DV2 Datacenter is located in one of the 2 main Telco Hotel vaults in Atlanta.

    24/7 Server Monitoring
    Staff members work around the clock to ensure that the network is operating at an optimum state.

    Connectivity
    All servers are connected via a dedicated 100mbps line.

    Redundant Internet Connections
    BG4 routed for automatic fall over redundancy.

    Current back bone providers
    GIGE to Verio, GIGE to Williams, GIGE to Abovenet

    99.999% Reliability and Redundant Power Supplies
    The main electrical room at DV2 provides clean, consistent power via switchgear, UPS systems, multiple feeds and generator backup to ensure a consistent supply of power to the facility.

    Environment control
    Consistent temperature and humidity ranges in the DV2 Data Center are maintained by redundant cooling systems.

    Security
    In additional to the on-site security staff, access is controlled by state-of-the-art identification systems, including a biometrics hand scanner and card reader.


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  23. Do you offer secure shell access (SSH)?
    Yes, we do, on the Standard, Silver and Gold plans.
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  24. Will I have my own static IP address?
    We use name-based hosting for all shared hosting accounts, meaning all sites share a common IP address. The sites are the same and work the same in every way as an IP based site. Sites can be addressed by IP number and username before propagation of the DNS is complete, so you can upload your files and access your site without waiting for the rest of the internet to catch up with you.

    We can provide a static IP address at an additional fee, please contact us for details.


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  25. Do you maintain backups of my data?
    Yes, the server automatically performs nightly backups to a second hard drive within the system, and if anything should happen to your site, it can be completely restored in minutes. However, we recommend you also keep regular backups of your site on your own hard drive as well. The control panel allows you to effortlessly download a backup file.


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  26. What limits do you place on the material that you host?
    Please read our Acceptable Use Policy.

    We do not allow any illegal material to be hosted on our servers, up to and including pornographic content, pirated software (WAREZ sites), IRC bots, and MP3 distribution sites. We also forbid our servers to be used to send SPAM email. If any sites around found in violation of our AUP, that account will be terminated immediately and no refunds will be issued.


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Web Hosting (Tips & Tricks)
  1. Get notified before you run out of disk space
    Be sure to set up a valid email address in the Control Panel right away, as this is how the server will notify you when you are running out of disk space or bandwidth.

    To do this, log into the Control Panel and click on Account Management > Update Contact Info, and enter your email address in the box provided. Now you will never be surprised if you start to run out of space. Letting your account go over causes all sorts of problems -- the biggest of which is that you'll stop receiving all of your mail.


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  2. Having problems with spam?
    One of the quickest and easiest ways to minimize the spam sent to your domain is to set up a blackhole for all unrouted email addresses. Spam harvesters will simply choose anyname@yourdomain.com, and if you have a catch-all default address set up, you will end up with all of that junk. What the blackhole does is check your account to see if that email address is set up, either as a POP account or a forwarder, and if the account doesn't exist, the server will automatically filter it into the trash.

    To set up the blackhole, log into your Control Panel and click on "Mail Management > Set Up Catch All Address". At the next screen, click on "Set Default Address". The next screen will say "Send all unrouted e-mail for:" [select your domain from the drop down menu]. In the textarea box, enter this:

    :blackhole:

    Be sure to include the colons on either side of the word. No spaces. Then click "Save."

    That will do it! Once this is set, you will only get emails that are specifically addressed to you, and not spam sent to anyname@yourdomain.com.
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  3. Third-party spam filters
    Spam Assassin, the built-in filtering system in the Control Panel, is quite ineffective, unfortunately. It catches only about 25% of the spam sent every day, and even then, it does not delete it, but simply "tags" it as Spam, so you can set up a rule to automatically delete them. It's confusing for the end user. SA can be configured to be more strict on the server end, however, we feel this is not the best option as it will cause too many false positives. (Which means it will filter a lot of legitimate email you should have received.) For instance, Yahoo has a great spam filter, but the drawback is that a very large portion of email sent to Yahoo users is sent directly to the spam/bulk mail folder, and most users aren't savvy enough to know it's there, let alone to check it every day.

    We believe that third-party spam filters are the most effective, because they can be configured to each user's preferences, and can be as strict or as lenient as you would like.

    Here are some solutions that we have found:

    For Macintosh computers, the best spam filter we've found is called Spam Sieve. SpamSieve, by Michael Tsai, employs the Bayesian technology, and works with Claris E-mailer, Eudora, Entourage or Mailsmith or PowerMail. It includes extensive documentation on training the spam filter to recognize good mail and bad, as well as a detailed explanation of how exactly Bayesian filtering works. The features are very straightforward. After using SpamSieve for a few days, you will notice that it becomes gradually more accurate (provided you continue to train it), until you can almost completely trust the software to automatically remove your junk mail without your marked consent for each individual piece.

    • Requires Mac OS X 10.2 or later (10.3.2 or later recommended)
    • Works with Apple Mail, Emailer, Entourage, Eudora 5.2 or later (Sponsored or Paid), Mailsmith (bundled with Mailsmith 2.1), Outlook Express 5, and PowerMail (optional bundle with PowerMail 5)
    • Free Trial: fully-featured (30 days or 20 launches)
    • Price: $25

    For Windows users:

    Try Spamweed, an intelligent client-side anti-spam filter that blocks spam mail, quarantines email virus and protects against fraud. If you use several email accounts simultaneously, SpamWeed can manage all of them together with one single window. All you need to do is to give SpamWeed all your email accounts to be filtered. SpamWeed is an intelligent tool which never stops learning. If SpamWeed fails to block a junk mail or falsely blocks a legitimate mail, correct it by moving the mail to the right box, SpamWeed will remember its mistake and improve its judgment in the future. Therefore, the more you use SpamWeed, the better it performs.

    • Requires Windows 98/2000/Me/XP
    • Works with all POP3 email clients (including Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Incredimail, Mozilla Mail, Pegasus Mail, Becky!) and Hotmail/MSN.
    • Free Trial
    • Price: $29.95

    You can also try Spam Inspector, a powerful spam filtering engine quickly identifies and separates the hazardous and annoying spam from your legitimate email. Based on personal and global learning networks, Spam Inspector™ adapts itself to your email automatically, filtering out all of the junk mail with close to 100% accuracy. No adding rules, no complex training, no forcing your friends and colleagues to jump through hoops to communicate with you.

    • Requires Windows 98/2000/Me/XP/Windows NT® 4.0
    • Works with Outlook 2000/2002/2003, Outlook Express 5/5.5/6.0, Incredimail, Eudora 5.1,5.2,6.0, and even MSN Hotmail (through Internet Explorer 6.0, Outlook, Outlook Express, and Incredimail).
    • Price: $29.95

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  4. The Internet Backbone: Explained
    One morning, you fire up your computer and point it to the website you want, only to find...

    Could not open the page "http://whatever.com/" because the server "whatever.com" could not be found.

    Hmm...could it be your computer?

    So, you go to Yahoo. It's fine. You go to Google...it's fine, too. So, your computer and your Internet connection must be just fine.

    Oooh, that darn server is down. Right?

    So, you get on the phone to your friend who lives just across town. You ask them to look at your site and they can pull it up just fine.

    Huh? If your computer is fine, how is it that your friend can see your website, but you can't?

    The Internet Backbone.

    Ask any knowledgeable geek and he or she will tell you that the Internet is a vast collection of network pathways. Presumably, you are not a geek, so let's compare it to something familiar: roads. You know that if you get into your car and want to drive from your home to the grocery store, there will be some direction involved. For example, you'd have to turn left out of your driveway; go two miles to a stoplight; then a right turn at the light, another five miles and a right turn into the parking lot.

    Well, your computer does the same thing when it goes on the Internet. You tell your computer to go to a website, let's say "nohasslehosting.net." Now, the computer needs to go from your Internet connection (provided by your Internet Service Provider) to No Hassle Hosting's servers, which may be halfway across the country.

    In either case, the length of your trip and the complexity of your direction will depend on how far away your destination is from your origin. If the grocery store is just down the road, your trip is very simple. If the grocery store is across the country, well, hope you have a fridge in the trunk.

    Let's examine some common Internet trips:

    Here's a really short trip: e-mail from your Internet service provider. Let's say that you are a happy subscriber to Earthlink. In that case, your email address would be something like "me@earthlink.net". So, your computer connects to the Internet via Earthlink and goes and gets your email from Earthlink. This is very similar to living on the same road from the grocery store.

    How about a much longer journey? Let's go visit a website. Most of the time, hitting any website is like going from New York to Los Angeles. There are a lot of turns and highways there.

    The computer starts out in its "neighborhood." It quickly gets to an intersection and needs to decide if it's going to go left, straight, or right. Your computer gets a little help from an Internet appliance called a "router." A router is a lot like a friendly traffic cop. It looks at where your computer is trying to go and tells it which way to turn. After leaving your neighborhood, the computer may hit the on-ramp to the Interstate highway. There will be another router there to provide more directions. Once on the highway, your computer will pass many different exits and interchanges, and at each one, a router tells it which way to go. Finally, the computer arrives in the town it's trying to reach, and another router points out the grocery store. And once it has what it's after, the computer makes its return trip through all those routers on the way home. That path is what we tech-heads refer to as "the internet backbone."

    What happens when there's an accident on the highway and you can't get through? Nothing happened in your neighborhood, nothing happened to the grocery store. But, you're not getting from one to the other. This is what we computer nerds mean when we say there's a problem on the backbone.

    It doesn't affect everyone; like your neighbor who could get to your website when you couldn't. Geographically, they may live across town, but if they use Cable when you use DSL (or vice versa), they have a different starting point and go through different routers to get to where they want to go. So, they may have avoided the problem area altogether.

    We techies use a tool called "traceroute" to tell when the backbone is at fault. Traceroute goes and talks to each of the routers along the way and reports back to you whether they are working or not. Here's an example of a good traceroute:

    Hop Sent Rcvd Sec IP Address Name
    1 YYY YYY 0.028 10.211.254.254 10.211.254.254
    2 YYY YYY 0.031 24.124.5.254 254.5.cm.sunflower.com
    3 YYY YYY 0.048 144.224.23.193 sl-gw10-kc-3-0.sprintlink.net
    4 YYY YYY 0.032 144.232.23.73 sl-bb21-kc-14-0.sprintlink.net
    5 YYY YYY 0.044 144.232.18.117
    sl-bb21-fw-10-2.sprintlink.net
    6 YYY YYY 0.116 192.205.32.69 sprint-gw.dlstx.ip.att.net
    7 YYY YYY 0.062 12.123.17.82 tbr1-p012101.dlstx.ip.att.net
    8 YYY YYY 0.080 12.122.2.90 tbr2-cl1.attga.ip.att.net
    9 YYY YYY 0.078 12.122.9.157 tbr1-p012501.attga.ip.att.net
    10 YYY YYY 0.080 12.122.10.69 tbr2-cl1.wswdc.ip.att.net
    11 YYY YYY 0.085 12.122.10.53 tbr2-cl1.n54ny.ip.att.net
    12 YYY YYY 0.081 12.123.214.185 gar1-p340.nwrnj.ip.att.net
    13 YYY YYY 0.087 12.119.140.26 att-gige.esd1.nwr.nac.net
    14 YYY YYY 0.092 209.123.11.213 2.ge-0-0-0.gbr1.nwr.nac.net
    15 YYY YYY 0.090 209.123.11.58 0.so-7-3-0.gbr2.oct.nac.net
    16 YYY YYY 0.087 209.123.182.243 209.123.182.243
    17 YYY YYY 0.094 66.246.88.177 server.nohasslehosting.net

    Take a look at the names of the routers. See how numbers 1 and 2 are my neighborhood (Sunflower Broadband is my Internet Service Provider). Numbers 3 through 5 are from Sprint and numbers 6 through 12 are from AT&T. That's the Internet backbone. Most of the Internet is maintained by major telecommunications companies and partially funded by government grants. At number 13, we start to get into No Hassle Hosting's neighborhood (NAC). And finally, we arrive at step 17: the server. Remember: since you start in a different neighborhood, your path will look different from mine. We may only have the last two or three items in common.

    Now watch what it looks like when the Internet backbone fails.

    Hop Sent Rcvd Sec IP Address Name
    1 YYY YYY 0.028 10.211.254.254 10.211.254.254
    2 YYY YYY 0.031 24.124.5.254 254.5.cm.sunflower.com
    3 YYY YYY 0.048 144.224.23.193 sl-gw10-kc-3-0.sprintlink.net
    4 YYY YYY 0.032 144.232.23.73 sl-bb21-kc-14-0.sprintlink.net
    5 YYY YYY 0.044 144.232.18.117
    sl-bb21-fw-10-2.sprintlink.net
    6 YYY YYY 0.116 192.205.32.69 sprint-gw.dlstx.ip.att.net
    7 YYY YYY 0.062 12.123.17.82 tbr1-p012101.dlstx.ip.att.net
    8 YYY YYY 0.080 12.122.2.90 tbr2-cl1.attga.ip.att.net
    9 YYY NNN x.xxx 12.122.9.157

    Notice how it stops at step 9 and the router at step 9 never replies back to our traceroute. Our Internet connection is working and the server is probably OK, too. There's a break somewhere on AT&T's network.

    What can you do? First off, don't call AT&T. Like the old television sketch, they are the phone company; they don't care because they don't have to. In actuality, they have an army of well-trained telecomm geeks on standby, just waiting to fix these issues. On top of that, many routers are smart enough to pick up on the fact that the backbone is down and send your computer on a detour until it's fixed. It will probably be fixed in no time. However, sometimes, it can take longer, but there's about zero that you or we can do, so, some patience is required. Another Internet Service Provider may have more pathways, so, if it happens often, that may be worth investigating. The easiest thing you can do is to perform your own traceroute.

    How do you do your own traceroute? From a Mac running Mac OS X, just open the Network Utility (in /Applications/Utilities). You'll see a tab for traceroute, where you can enter a server's address and see the results. Mac OS 9 users will need a third-party utility like IPNetMonitor from Sustainable Softworks (http://sustworks.com/site/prod_ipmonitor.html). In Windows operating systems, go to your Start bar and select Run. Type in the word "command," and hit return to open a DOS window. Type in "traceroute yourserver.com."

    So, the next time you have trouble visiting a website or checking your email, remember that it may not be your server, and it may not be your computer. Knowing that there are steps in the middle that will fix themselves can very reassuring.

    Written by Brian Best, Macintosh Consultant and owner of Best Macs, Inc.
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