Your home directory contains several default subdirectories. Their number and names will differ depending on your plan, yet some of them are common for all plans. Here are some of the directories that are automatically created and may not be deleted:

Directories that contain your sites
Each of your sites is put in a separate directory. The name of the directory is the same as your site's domain name. If you have more than one site, you will have several such directories. These are the directories where you will upload your .html files or any other files that you want to make accessible from the Internet. Each of these directories may contain their own /webalizer or /modlogan directories. Do not delete either of these directories! Your site is too valuable to lose at a touch of a button.

The Logs directory
It contains directories for every site with transfer log enabled. Each such directory contains its own set of log files that are required to write and read the data about all visits to your sites. Deleting the Logs directory will cause the loss of the web statistics accumulated in the course of your site operation.

The Virtual FTP directory.
Its name is the dedicated IP address. This directory is created when you enable Virtual FTP Server and can be accessed by virtual FTP users to list and download its content. There are as many such directories as dedicated IP addresses.
Deleting Virtual FTP directories will cause incorrect operation of Virtual FTP. However, you may harmlessly delete individual files in these directories.

The subdomain directories
When you make a subdomain, a new directory is created with the subdomain name as the directory name. If you delete a subdomain directory, internet visitors will get the 404 "File not found" error when attempting to access the subdomain.

The ssl.conf directory
This directory stores SSL pairs for all encrypted sites. Deleting the ssl.conf directory will result in incorrect SSL operation.
Warning: Don't delete ANY default directories in your root directory, as this will cause malfunctions of your acount. As a rule of thumb, you may delete only directories and files you have uploaded yourselves or that have been uploaded by any of your Virtual FTP and Anonymous FTP users.

Your hosting plan determines the services you get with the account and the prices for these services. Big sites with high hit rates and special services require more expensive plans; cheaper plans are suitable for simpler sites.

To change to a different plan:

• Go to your control panel home
• Click the Change icon next to your plan name in the left hand info/control area.
  
• Select your new plan and click Submit

Warning: Switching plans will disable the resources that are unavailable under the plan you are switching to.

This is what happens when you switch to a new plan:

• your current billing period is closed;
  
• your unused recurrent fee is credited to your account;
  
• you are charged any payable amount, including your usage (overlimit) fees;
  
• a new billing period under the new plan starts;
  
• you are charged the recurrent fee for this billing period.

If you don't see the plan of your choice in the list that appears, it means it is incompatible with your current plan. You can't change to an incompatible plan, but you can create a new account under this plan and then, if you want, you can delete your old account.

Plan Upgrade:

If you are switching to a 'higher' plan, your disk quota doesn't increase, but free units do. As a result, your disk quota may turn out to be lower than free units, so you can increase your disk quota without being charged. The same is true of other resources.

Plan Downgrade:

If you are switching to a 'lower' plan, the system reduces your quotas for free units. If you are using more than free units, the system reduces the quota to the amount you are using.

Your billing period determines how far in advance you pay. The bigger your billing period, the bigger the discount.

To change the billing period:

• Click the Change icon next to your billing period in the left hand info/control area.
  
• Select a different billing period and click Submit.

You need your control panel password to log into the control panel. Initially, this password is the same as your FTP password, but you can make these two passwords different.

To change the control panel password:

• Go to your control panel home.
  
• Click the Change Password icon in the main control area.
  

You need your FTP password to upload your site to the server. Initially, this password is the same as your Control Panel password, but you can make these two passwords different.

To change the FTP password:

• Go to your control panel home.
  
• Click the FTP Manager icon in the main control area.
  
• Click the Change icon next to Password.

Traffic limit is the gigabytes of transferred data you pre-pay for at the beginning of the billing period. Every month the system checks if you stay within the limit, and if you don't, it charges you for the excess. Then your traffic is reset.

Example: If your billing period is 2 months long and started on the 5th of October, the first billing month will end on the 5th of November, and your total traffic will be reset. However, if you change your total traffic limit on the 15th of November, your traffic will be reset and a new billing month will start.

Note: if you fail to run up all your quota resource, you are not returned the payment for the unused megabytes. If you expect to run up more traffic than comes with your plan, it's a good idea to raise your traffic limit.

To change the traffic limit:

• Click the Change icon next to Total Traffic in the left hand info/control area.
  
• Enter how much traffic you expect to run up throughout your billing period.

Disk quota is the total server disk space allocated to all your web sites. There should always be several megabytes of unused space in your account to ensure correct performance of statistics reporting utilities, such as Webalizer or Modlogan. Disk quota doesn't include mail and database quotas.

To get more web disk space:

• Click the Change icon next to Disk Quota in the left hand info/control area.
  
• Enter how much disk space you would like to have.

Different control panel skins have different navigation principles.

To change to a different skin:

• Click Select a New Skin in the left hand info/control area.
  
• On the page that appears, select the name of the skin in the Choose Design box and click the Choose button.
  
• Select the icon set and click the Set icon.
  
• Set Tooltips state. This option determines whether or not to show assisting hints at the top of each page.

To change the language of the control panel:

• Click Change Language in the left hand info/control area.
  
• On the page that appears, select the preferred language from the drop-down box and click Submit.

To add a new domain name to your account:

• Click the Domains icon on your control panel.
  
• Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the Add icon.
  
• Choose the type of domain you want to register.

You can choose out of the following options:
- Creating new standard domains
- Transferring existing domains or registering nonstandard domains
- Creating domains based on your provider's domain names (third level domains)
- Hosting sites without domain names
- Parking external domains
- Creating accounts without domains

Creating Standard Domains

To create a new standard domain (.com, .net, .org, etc.), enter your desired domain name into the field in the first form omitting the www part:

To its right, select the top level domain: .com, org, .net, etc., then enter your contact and billing information. Based on these data, the system generates a domain registration request and submits it to the domain registration company.

Transferring Existing Domains or Registering Nonstandard Domains

To transfer an existing domain or register a nonstandard domain with your account, use the second form:

If you are creating a regional domain (e.g. your_domain.uk) or would like to use a different domain registration company, no automation is provided. Thus, first you need to make sure that you have a valid domain name. Enter it into the lower box, omitting the www. part.

Following the registration you will get an e-mail notification with the information to send to your domain name registration company. They will make appropriate changes on the root DNS servers, and within a couple of days your domain will be accessible at the new IP address. In the meantime, your site will be available by the instant domain alias.

Domain registration is a standard procedure. First, you purchase a domain name from a domain registration company. Second, you register this domain name with your web-hosting provider and get your new IP address. Third, you send this IP address to your domain registration company, where it is set as the IP address for your domain name. It is only then that your site becomes available to all Internet community. This is true both of standard and nonstandard domains. In case of standard domain names, however, the registration process is automated.

Creating Domains Based on Your Provider's Domain Names (Third Level Domains)

Third level domains are registered on your provider's DNS server. You don't need to register a third level domain with a domain registration company. If you choose to create a third level domain, it will contain your provider's domain name. E.g. if your provider's domain name is providersdomain.com, and the third level domain you are registering is mythirdlevel, the fully qualified domain name would be mythirdlevel.providersdomain.com.

Third level domain registration is available only if it is allowed under the selected plan. Functionally, third level domains have same features as second level domains.
To register a third level domain name, enter the desired domain name in the Domain name field. From the box on the right, select provider's domain name where you would like to create the third level domain:

Hosting Sites Without Domain Names

You can also host sites without domain names (the so-called stop-gap domains). When you create a stopgap domain, you get no DNS zone, and you cannot use e-mail service. However, you will be able to access and manage your site using the instant domain alias you get at signup.

Stopgap domains support web site management and FTP services. Also, you can have IP-only access if you get a dedicated IP.
To create a stopgap domain, just click the Submit button in the Stopgap domain registration form:

Parking External Domains

This feature allows you to use H-Sphere DNS server to map IPs to domain names serviced and hosted on other servers (not those of H-Sphere). In this case, a DNS zone is created with a custom DNS A record for the domain name and its IP is entered in the form below:

Creating Accounts Without Domains

At signup, you can create an account without any domain. If you choose this option, your account won't have the following:

• Disk space and account on the web server
  
• FTP
  
• DNS zone
  
• Virtual and Anonymous FTP
  
• Mail service
  
• ODBC support
  
• You can create a domain to this account later in the future.