1. I signed up with you a day or so ago and still can't see my website using my domain name. When will my domain work?
   
2. I published my website to the server but can't see it. I still see under construction page.
3. I changed my password and can't get to my Control Panel.
4. I am having problems sending email using mail.mydomain.com.
5. How do I renew my account?
6. Why has my domain 'temporarily been disabled?
7. What is a quota? Why am I at my limit? What is a grace period and why am I in it?
8. Why am I getting so much spam?
9. I can't get to my webmail.
10. I can't get to my website! Where is it?

1. I signed up with you a day or so ago and still can't see my website using my domain name. When will my domain work?

In most cases you either purchased your domain through us or you are moving your domain from another web host/service. If its a new domain purchase it can take 24-48 hours for the domain to propagate through the registration system and throughout the Internet. Please let us know if it takes longer than 48 hours for the NEW domain name registration by submitting a request.

Most often this question is asked when a user is transferring/moving a domain from another web host. The first step: Check to make sure you have submitted a request to your Registrar (The company with whom you registered your domain with) for a Name Server (DNS) change. Click here to see the most used registrars and the procedure for changing your DNS with that service. Our name server information is as follows:

Hosting Plans
NS.TEAMMEDIAONLINE.COM
NS2.TEAMMEDIAONLINE.COM

If you have done all the above (and have verified that the Registrar did make the change) and still can't see your website you may need to empty your computer's temporary Internet files and history, then shut your computer off for a few minutes, then restart. If you should have any further problems please submit a support ticket at our help desk.

2. I published my website to the server but can't see it. I still see under construction page.

This can be one of two things. The files were uploaded to the wrong directory or the main file to the site is not named index.html.

All files must be placed in the www directory. If you have verified that your files are in the correct directory the the next step would be to verify that your main file is index.html. If you are using FrontPage or Dreamweaver the program will typically set the files as index.htm. Here is a glimpse of the hierarchy:

index.html (Pole Position for you racing fans)
index.htm
index.asp
index.php

There is one simple way to correct this. Delete our index.html and your index.htm will take over. If you see any of the files above yours you will need to first delete it before yours will be seen. PLEASE read the Getting Started guide. You will aslo get other errors related to your site when your files are not named correctly or not in the proper directory. Linux Servers are case sensitive so don't use caps on your main file or you will get a permissions error.


3. I changed my password and can't get to my Control Panel?

First, you will need to wait at least 10 minutes for the change to take effect. Then, shut down the brower you were using to access your Control Panel. Open a new browser. The try to access the Control Panel again. NOTE: User names and passwords are case sensitive and are limited to 8 characters. So if typed 9 characters (i.e. BoBYY89j3), when you change your password, the server only validated 8 of those (i.e. BoBYY89j).

The most likely is that you are attempting to use "mail.mydomain.com" as your outgoing SMTP server. While we do make an SMTP server at your domain name available, we strongly advise using the SMTP server that your local ISP provides you instead, while using mail.mydomain.com as your incoming (POP) server.

The reason for this is that many ISPs have begun blocking access to SMTP servers off of their networks; sending through off-network SMTP servers is a technique often used by spammers and viruses, and by blocking this they help make the Internet safer for everyone. If your access to our server is blocked, you will have to send outgoing mail through their server instead.

In order to find out what your ISP's SMTP server is, simply visit their homepage and look for a support section, or call the phone number on your monthly bill. If you find you are unable to use your local ISP's mail server, it might be possible to get them to make an exception to the blocking for you.

If you have confirmed that your ISP is not blocking our SMTP server but are still unable to send mail, you may have an authorization problem.

To be able to send mail through the server you must first be authorized. How do you get authorized? Very simply! You must first log into the server through your pop (incoming email) account with your username and password using your favorite email client. After you logged in you have a period of 15 minutes to send mail. After this 15 minutes expires you will need to receive mail or authorize again. Here is a example:

POPAUTH is an addition to the current email system whereby sending of email through any given client server (commonly referred to as "relaying") is controlled by using the POP services to verify a user by username/password combination. This process is also known as POP-before-SMTP.

The following is a general overview of the operation of POPAUTH:

1) A user connects to their server to download their email. For this illustration, we will use user 'joe' on server 'myclient.com' with password 'joespassword'. The username/password/server information listed here is totally fictitious and used only for illustration purposes.

2) Using his username and password configured in his email software, 'joe' is authenticated by the POP server. 'joe' does not need to have email to be downloaded.

3) As soon as 'joe' is authenticated, his remote IP from which he is connecting is noted by the POP server.

4) joe's remote IP is now logged with the current time to a POPAUTH database.
For the next 15 minutes, 'joe' is able to send email through the server freely.

5) At the end of 15 minutes, joe's IP is removed from the POPAUTH database.
'joe' is no longer authenticated to send email through the server. 'joe' must now check his email for download in order to re-authenticate himself with the email server in order to send email again. If 'joe' does not authenticate himself before sending he will receive a 'Relaying Denied' error message.

For the mobile user (a user who moves from place to place over any given period of time) this is a great advantage as complicated access files no longer need to be updated and maintained. The email server now maintains this information directly without any intervetion necessary. To send email after moving from one IP to another, the mobile user need only check for new mail to gain access to sending email.

The entire process is seamless and self-maintaining, further reducing maintainance overhead by the server owner

If your site has been suspended, call us at 877-726-4761. Once we resolve the issue that caused the suspension, we can usually have your website available again within ten minutes.

7.What is a quota? Why am I at my limit? What is a grace period and why am I in it?

Your hosting account comes with two quotas. One of these is for the amount of files you're allowed to store on your website and in your email folders, called your Disk Quota. Picture a floppy disk or a Zip disk--each of these disks can hold a certain amount of files. If you try to put anything more onto them when they are full, it will not fit.

Likewise, when you fill up your website and email space, you can't put any more files or email there--they won't fit. This can lead to you being unable to receive email, or even check it via webmail. For this reason, we send you a warning when your disk quota is almost full. (You can customize how much of a warning you wish to receive with the Account Settings icon on your website's Control Panel.) You can then use the File Manager to look in your email and web directories to see what is taking up the most space.

The most common causes of disk quota filling are spam accumulating in unused mailboxes such as the Default Mailbox (see the entry on spam, below), space taken up by mailboxes for defunct users that were not deleted when the users'
email accounts were (when an email account is deleted, the user's mailbox and webmail directories must be removed manually using the File Manager), and large Trash or Saved Messages folders building up in users' webmail directories. If you do not see any of these, give us a call at 877-726-4761 and we will find what the cause is for you.

The other quota is your Transfer Quota, and this refers to the amount of bandwith used by your site in one month. Bandwidth = file size x number of transfers. If you have a one megabyte file and it is viewed (downloaded) ten times, that is ten megabytes of bandwidth.

When you exceed your bandwidth quota, you must either add more or pay for additional transfer used. If you received an email stating you were in a "grace period," this means that you have this period make your selection:
either upgrade to a new plan or bandwidth package, or incur additional bandwidth charges. If you have not done so by the end of this period, your site will be suspended until you do. Note that since the bandwidth counter resets on the 1st of each month, if the month ends before your grace period runs out there will be no suspension but you will still be responsible for excess bandwidth charges.

Excess bandwidth is charged at a minimum of $6 per gigabyte as outlined in our policies at http://teammediaonline.com/policies.php . Unused bandwidth does not carry forward.

In most cases users who exceed their bandwidth in the middle of the month will need to purchase at least one gigabyte in 3 month increments, or to upgrade to a plan that offers more monthly bandwidth. Upgrading the plan is usually the more economical option.

Note that you can monitor your bandwidth usage from day to day by visiting your website's Control Panel; there is a bandwidth counter in the upper left-hand side. You can also click on "Site Statistics" for more detailed reports about what is taking up the most bandwidth and where visitors to your site are coming from.

If your bandwidth use is unexpectedly high, viewing Site Statistics can help you track what files make up the greatest percentage of your bandwidth use.
The most common causes of excessive bandwidth use are large files (such as audio or video files, or even large image files), or "bandwidth theft" (aka "hotlinking"). Bandwidth theft is when someone links an image file from your site on their own--as a message board signature, for instance. For information on how to prevent bandwidth theft, see this article.

If you are unable to determine where your bandwidth is going, give us a call at 877-726-4761 and we will help you figure it out.

8. Why am I getting so much spam?

Part of the reason you are getting spam is that spammers have very sophisticated techniques for gathering email addresses. If your email address has ever appeared on a webpage or USENET newsgroup, it is probably on a spammer's mailing list by now. This is why we offer formmail.pl service--so that you can set up an email form that does not make your address available to spammers.

However, another method that spammers use to reach people is called a "dictionary attack": they create a list of probable email addresses, called a dictionary, and add @(your site's address) to each one to create a mailing list. Since it costs them little to send thousands of email messages, they can afford to send messages they know mostly do not exist.

Your Team Media account includes what is called a "default" email address.
This address is where any message that was not sent to a currently-existing address on your site goes. For instance, if there is no "johnsmith" email address at your site, email addressed to "johnsmith@(your site's address)"
will go to the Default mailbox. If your site receives "dictionary attack"
spam, dozens of copies of the same message will go to the Default mailbox.

If you have not changed any settings in the Mail Manager, your Default mailbox may be set to forward to an email address with the same name as your site's login ID. Many users never use or check this address--which means that over time thousands of "dictionary attack" spam messages can build up in it and use up disk quota. Other users may unknowingly set this address to forward to their personal mailbox, or to a remote mailbox elsewhere--which means they could be receiving thousands of spam messages needlessly.

The best thing to do with the Default mailbox is to set it to reject messages and not send a bounce message. Do this by clicking on "Mail Manager" in your control panel, then clicking on "Default" in the list in the left-hand (gray) column of the screen. This means that the messages will not be received or passed on and will not take up space in any of your mailboxes. It will not take care of all of your spam, but will eliminate any dictionary attacks.

For the rest of your spam, our newest plans include excellent spam-filtering systems at no additional charge. Just go to your Control Panel to set them up.

9. I can't get to my webmail.

If you receive an error message about an "invalid session cookie" when you try to log in, the most likely cause is that you did not log out of your webmail the last time you used it, and the webmail system thinks you are still logged in from another location. This is easily resolved; simply call us at 877-726-4761, use the Online Chat, or fill out an on-line support ticket describing the issue and we will reset the cookie for you. To avoid this problem, remember always to click the "Logout" button at the top of the webmail screen when you are finished.

If you receive a different error, another likely cause is that your disk quota is full. Each time you open webmail, the system has to create some small temporary files to keep track of your webmail session; if you are completely out of space, it is unable to create those files. You will need to use the File Manager from your site's Control Panel to remove some files and clear space before your webmail will work properly again.

10. I can't get to my website! Where is it?

If you see a "This domain has temporarily been disabled" message, see #6.

If you see the "under construction" page instead of the pages you just uploaded, see the separate question on that topic.

If you get a "[domain name] could not be found" message, this could mean a number of things. Here are some troubleshooting steps to try before you call us.

1) Check your spelling. It is often easy to make a typo, and the computer isn't able to guess what you really meant. A surprising number of website "problems" are resolved when people take a closer look at what they typed.

2) Try to load any other website, such as www.google.com or www.cnn.com. If you are not able to load those websites either, that means the cause is something local to you. Check to make sure your ethernet cables are connected and that your router, cablemodem, and/or DSL modem is functioning properly.

If you see no obvious problems, try turning off your computer, router, and/or modem for a minute or so, then restarting first the modem/routers and then your computer. If this does not restore your connection, you will need to call your ISP to troubleshoot further. If you are able to load other webpages besides your own, proceed to step 3.

3) Check your DNS settings. When you register your domain name, you are asked to enter the addresses of the Domain Name Servers (DNS) associated with that domain. When someone tries to load your website, the Domain Name Servers tell his web browser whose computers are hosting that site and where to go to find it; if they're the wrong ones, they won't be able to find your website.

To check your nameserver settings, you will need to do a WHOIS lookup. Go to <a href="http://www.whois-search.com">www.whois-search.com</a>, type your domain name into the search box, and click "Search". Scroll down the results until you find the "Name Server" lines.

Depending on whether you're on a PremiereOne or VirtualOne plan, your name servers should usually end in teammediaonline.com or tmodns.com. If they do not, you may need to log into your domain name management account (or call your domain name registrar) and change them.

4) If the above troubleshooting steps do not work, or you are uncertain how to perform them, call us at 877-726-4761 and we will assist you further.

If you are one of our more technically-inclined customers, you may have tried a PING or TRACEROUTE to see whether your site is up. Note that our servers block all ping and traceroute traffic to protect our sites from ping-flood denial-of-service attacks, so these diagnostics will be unsuccessful even if your site is fully functional.