InfoClear Internet Consulting

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Frequently Asked Questions



Frequently Asked Questions
ANSWERS
About InfoClear Services
  1. Are there any techniques that InfoClear will not do?
    YES! We will not do any techniques that we strongly believe will decrease the site's usability and attractiveness. For example: blinking text, mystery navigation, objects that move across the screen.
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  2. Do you offer special rates?
    YES!! We offer charities and not-for-profit organizations special rates on all of our services. Contact us directly for a quote.
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  3. Do you use subcontractors?
    Yes! We have a network of trusted specialists that we use for various projects. You as a client, will deal directly with InfoClear. All of our subcontractors have proven qualtity results, and they are trusted by us to be reliable and responsive to our client's needs.
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  4. Does InfoClear provide hosting or domain name registration services?
    Yes! As of April 2004 InfoClear has expanded into the fields of hosting and domain name registration. Our clients only wanted to have to deal with one company for their web needs, so we have obliged. Hosting starts at $9.95 CAD a month with no set up fees! Please visit our hosting page for more details about our packages.
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  5. Does InfoClear provide IT support or Networking services?
    YES! Through our partnership with JM Balch Computer Services, you can now deal with InfoClear for all of your computer needs.
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  6. How long have you been in business?
    InfoClear was founded in 2002 in Kitchener, Ontario Canada.
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  7. What is the process for custom designing a website?

    After your initial inquiry if you wish to continue, we will send you a no obligation intake questionnaire. The answers to these questions will assist us to determine your organization's needs, and allow us to quote you an accurate price. Once a price is determined we will contact you, and if you wish to hire our services we will sent you a letter of agreement. Once this is returned to us with deposit, the fun stuff begins!

    In addition to the questionnaire, we like to have an initial meeting with our clients either in person or by phone to discuss their vision. We use this opportunity to get a sense of the person or organization and an understanding of the business.

    If your company already has an established identity, then we will extend that identity to the website. If you select your colour preferences and give us an idea of how you'd like your site to look and feel. We also discuss domain names choices and web hosting options. InfoClear can register your domain and set up hosting and email accounts for you to use while the site is being designed.

    At this point, we go off and start creating a page template while you work on the content of your site. We usually provide clients with a minimum of 2 templates to view. Clients are then encouraged to provide feedback and suggest changes. Once a template is approved by you, we begin to add your content to the format. Once this is complete, the site is uploaded to your hosting company.

    Once the site is completed and uploaded our clients have 30 days to request changes in content, and ask for minor changes in layout.


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Domains
  1. How much do you charge to register a domain?
    We charge an annual fee per domain of: $20 (+GST) for .com .net .info .org and .name $30 (+GST) for .ca (All prices are in Canadian Dollars)
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  2. What is a domain name?
    A domain name is a system for how computers and people can interact to find your website. Computers understand numbers, whereas people remember names that mean something. So when you register for a domain name you are telling computers to associate your name (i.e. infoclear.ca) with a set of numbers (known as an IP address) that computers understand.
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  3. Who owns my domain name?
    YOU DO!

    We register the name you enter on our order form as the administrative and billing contact for your domain. This means that you own your domain.

    Webmasters: If you are regsitering a domain name for one of your clients, please send your customer's information and your contact information by fax: 519-942-0161 or email: info@infoclear.ca. We will be happy to register the domain with you as the technical contact for the domain.


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  4. Can I cancel a domain name?

    No. Once a domain name is registered for you it is yours until the end of the 1 year period.

    Even if you cancel your hosting account, the domain remains your property. You are free to transfer it to another host or to sell the domain as you see fit.

    You will still receive a reminder notice from InfoClear as your renewal date approaches to renew your domain. At this point, simply do not renew and your domain will lapse. Keep in mind, that if you let your domain name lapse and you later decide to try to reregister that domain name, it may no longer be available


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Simple Site
  1. Am I limited to how many updates I can make to my site each month?
    Absolutely not! You can make as many changes as you like each month. Including changing your layout, adding pages (within your package limit) and editing your content.
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  2. Can I host my Simple Site with someone else?
    Yes, you can. Simple Site comes with complimentary hosting, so you are not required to find another host to use Simple Site. If you do choose to use another host, you can notify us once you receive your confirmation email and provide the ftp informatation for your preferred host. We will change your ftp information in the system within 24 hours.
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  3. Can I search templates by colour?
    This is a feature that has been requested repeatedly. We are working on providing this feature, but it is not available at this time.
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  4. Can I upgrade my Simple Site package?

    YES!!

    You can upgrade your package at any time. You will be able to keep your same template and all of the pages that you have already created will be upgraded with your package.

    To upgrade your package, email us at info@simplesite.infoclear.ca


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  5. Can you register a domain for me?
    YES! We can register a domain for you when you sign up for our service. Just select the "I need to register a domain for my website" option. We will collect all of the required information and register your domain when we set up your Simple Site Service.
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  6. Do I have to already have a domain name to sign up for Simple Site?
    No. We can register a domain name for you as part of the sign up process! There is an additional annual fee for domain registration and it varies depending on the domain you choose: $20 CDN (+GST) for .com .name .info .org .net and .us domains $30 CDN (+GST) for .ca domains
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  7. How can I pay for Simple Site services?

    Currently, we accept credit card payments via PayPal, where your credit card will be automatically charged our monthly fee. You may also send a cheque or money order (in Canadian funds) to cover your service for a minimum of 6 months made payable to InfoClear Internet Consulting. Mail you cheque along with your full name, company name, domain name (please indicate if you need to register this domain), mailing address, phone number, email address, and the package you would like to:

    75 First St., Suite #129,
    Orangeville, ON
    L9W 5B6

    Your order will be processed once the cheque has cleared at the bank.

    Please note that if you want to pay for domain registration by cheque that your requested domain may not be available by the time your request reaches our offices. We will contact you if this is the case.


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  8. What happens if I want to cancel my service?

    If you decide to cancel, access to your Simple Site and your hosting will no longer be available within three days of us receiving your written cancellation request. If you want a copy of your website, you must pay the one time export fee and download the compressed HTML file from your Simple Site builder account prior to cancelling your account. If you cancel your account before you download the file, you will not have access to it.

    Please note, if you host your Simple Site with another service provider, some of your features may no longer work once your service with us is cancelled.


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  9. How do I access my statistics?

    Your Simple Site package comes with graphical web based statistics so that you can see which areas of your website are popular.

    To access your statistics

    1. Login to your control panel, http://www.yourdomain.com/cpanel
    2. Go down to the "Web/Ftp Stats" section
    3. Click on "AwStats Stats"

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    Email
    1. How do I create an email account?

      You can set up as many POP (Post Office Protocol) e-mail accounts as you require, up to your maximum limit. Each one of these is in the standard e-mail formation of address@yourdomain.com. As with your default e-mail address, you can access these accounts through web mail or through your own offline e-mail application.

      To add an e-mail account:

      1. Login to your Control Panel.
      2. Click on the Mail Manager Icon.
      3. Click on the Add/Remove Accounts link in the Mail area.
      4. Click on the Add Account link.
      5. Enter the first part of the e-mail address and the password for the account in E-mail and Password fields.
      6. Enter the maximum size limit of this mailbox in the Quota field, if required. The size limit is in megabytes. Not entering a number means that the mailbox size is only limited by the available disk space.
      7. Click on the Create button.

      Your new account has been added.

      Please note that your email login username is the first part of the e-mail address + yourdomain.com (sample+yourdomain.com)

      Remember when giving out your new email address that email addresses are case sensitive. jsmith@mydomain.com is NOT the same address as JSmith@mydomain.com or JSMITH@mydomain.com


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    2. How do I edit an email account?

      It is useful to occasionally change the passwords on your e-mail accounts to maximize your e-mail security. You should always change your password if you think someone else has access to your account.

      Note: Make sure that you change the password in your offline e-mail application as well, or you will not be able to upload or download e-mail to this account.

      To change the password of an e-mail account:

      1. Login to your Cpanel Control Panel.
      2. Click on the Mail Manager Icon.
      3. Click on the Add/Remove Accounts link in the Mail area.
      4. Click on the Change Password button next to the required e-mail address.
      5. Enter the new password in the New Password field.
      6. Click on the Change button. Your password has now been changed for that account.

      Your account has been updated.


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    3. How do I set up Outlook to pick up my Email?

      Outlook is an email tool you can use to send and receive emails with. Your hosting account comes with the ability to use both POP3 and IMAP accounts.

      To setup Outlook:

      1. Open Outlook and click on Tools from the menu bar. Select Accounts from the drop down menu.
      2. Click on the Add button and select Mail.
      3. Enter your name and click on the Next button at the bottom of the window.
      4. Enter the email address that you would like people to send email to. In order to utilize the full functionality of the hosting service, you need to enter a registered email account. Please enter yourname@yourdomain.com.
      5. Select POP3 or IMAP from the drop down box. Enter mail.yourdomain.com in the Incoming mail field. The Outgoing mail server is mail.yourdomain.com. Edit yourdomain.com to be the domain name you have hosted with us.
      6. Now enter the full account name and password that was setup.
      * Note: account names are email+yourdomain.com.
      7. Click the Next button at the bottom of the window.

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    4. How do I set my default email address?

      Any e-mail that is sent to an unknown account at your domain name, such as unknown@yourdomain.com, gets automatically rerouted to your default e-mail account. All web site accounts are automatically assigned a default e-mail address - username@yourdomain.com - which you can change, if required.

      To set your default e-mail address:

      1. Click on the Default Address link in the Mail area of cPanel.
      2. Click on the Set Default Address link.
      3. Enter the complete e-mail address of the new default in the field next to your web site name drop-down list.
      Note: You can enter :blackhole: to throw away all incoming mail, or :fail: no such address here to bounce the e-mail back to the sender.
      4. Click on the Change button. Your new default e-mail address has now been set.

      Suggestion: We recommend that you choose :fail: no such email address to limit the amount of spam.


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    5. How do I access my email through the internet (webmail)?

      When you setup an email account you can access your email from any web browser. We currently provide you a choice of 2 different web mail tools to use for more information on these you can visit their site:
      * Horde
      * SquirrelMail

      To access your web mail:

      1. Open a web browser
      2. In the Address bar type in http://yourdomain.com/webmail
      3. You will be prompted for your username and password. Enter these as per your email account was setup
      4. You will see a screen with the 3 web mail tools (NeoMail, Horde and SquirrelMail). Click on one of them that you wish to use
      5. If this is your first time accessing your web mail you will be prompted to setup your email information. Fill in the form and click submit
      6. If you have already accessed your web mail then you will be taken directly to your inbox

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    6. How Do I Change Email Passwords Via Webmail?

      There are times, especially in small business, when it is necessary for an employee to change their email password, but to have the site adminstrator do this via Cpanel is a drain on his or her time.

      You can have your employees change their password as often as they like on their own via webmail.

      To change an email password using webmail:

      1. Bring up your webmail: www.yourdomain.com/webmail
      2. Log into webmail using the employee's username and current password
      3. Follow the link at the bottom of the screen there is a link to "Change Password"
      4. Type in the new password twice to confirm and click "Change Password"

      Your new password has now been saved

      Note: Make sure that you change the password in your offline e-mail application as well, or you will not be able to upload or download e-mail to this account.


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    7. Why am I having problems sending email?

      In an effort to combat spam, many ISPs (the companies who provide your connection to the Internet) are blocking the default port for sending email for email addresses that are not provided by them.

      If this is what's happening, you will get an error message like:
      The connection to the server has failed. Account: 'mail.yourdomain.com', Server: 'mail.yourdomain.com', Protocol: SMTP, Port: 25, Secure(SSL): No, Socket Error: 10061, Error Number: 0x800CCC0E

      You have 2 options:

      A) Change your outgoing mail (smtp) port to port 26. To Do This:

      1. Go into the email client on your computer
      2. From the "Tools" menu select "Accounts"
      3. Select the affected email account and click "Edit"
      4. In the Sending Mail section, click on "Click Here for Advanced Sending Options"
      5. Check the box that says "Override default smtp port" and enter the port number 26

      B) Use your ISP's outgoing mail server information

      To Do This:

      1. Go into the email client on your computer
      2. From the "Tools" menu select "Accounts"
      3. Select the affected email account and click "Edit"
      4. In the Sending Mail, SMTP server field enter the information provided by your ISP

      Please note that this method will not have an affect on your outside clients. Any email you send from this account will look as though it is coming from you@yourdomain.com to the average user. All mail sent to you@yourdomain.com will still reach your inbox.


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    8. How do I create an Autoresponder?

      Autoresponders are e-mail messages that are sent automatically when an e-mail arrives for a specific e-mail account. Autoresponders are most commonly used for an "Out of Office" style message to inform your correspondents that you are not available, without you having to reply manually. You can have more than one autoresponder on one account. You can use plain text or include HTML code in the autoresponder, and choose from a wide variety of character sets.

      To add an autoresponder:

      1. Click on the Autoresponders link in the Mail area.
      2. Click on the Add Autoresponder link.
      3. Enter the address of the account that the autoresponder responds to in the Email field.
      4. Enter your name or address in the From field. You do not have to put anything in this field.
      5. Enter the subject line of the autoresponder in the Subject field.
      6. Click on the required character set for this autoresponder from the Character Set drop-down list, if required.
      7. Click on the HTML Message tick box if you want to include HTML code in the autoresponder.
      8. Enter the autoresponder message in the Body field. You can not use HTML code in this field - plain text only.
      9. Click on the Create button.

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    9. How do I block unwanted emails?

      You can block an e-mail using spam filters. There are many definitions of spam, but one particularly useful one is the following:

      Spam is the electronic version of junk mail, and has been around since the Internet was created. E-mail filters are a way of filtering your e-mail to remove unwanted mail based on a variety of criteria. You can block any sort of e-mail, not just mail of a commercial nature. Blocked mail can be deleted automatically or sent to another e-mail address or script. These filters are quite flexible - some examples are provided after the instruction on how to add a spam filter below. All filters are cumulative.

      To add an e-mail filter:

      1. Click on the E-mail Filtering link in the Mail area.
      2. Click on the Add Filter link.
      3. Click on the required header field in the first drop-down list. These are the various fields in any e-mail message.
      4. Click on the required filter action in the second drop-down list. This action will act on the text entered in the third field.
        • Equals - match the text exactly (whole words only). "Credit" will block "Credit".
        • matches regex - matches the text based on regular expression (regex) rules. Regular expressions are a powerful but complex area. You do not need to use regular expression filters for most circumstances.
        • Contains - match the specified text in any circumstance. "porn" will block "porn" and "pornography".
        • begins with - match the specified text when it is the beginning of a word. "Porn" will block "porn" and "pornography" but not "teenporn".
      5. Enter the filter text in the third field. This text is case sensitive.
      6. Enter the destination for the filtered e-mail in the Destination field. There are three separate types of destination:
        • Destroy the e-mail - Enter Discard in the field.
        • Redirect to another address - Enter the e-mail address to which to redirect the e-mail.
        • Redirect to a script - Enter the full script path on the machine that hosts your web site.
      7. Click on the Activate button.

      Example:

      • To redirect all e-mail from "john@paradise.net", enter: From, equals, john@paradise.net, david@corse.org.nz
      • To delete all e-mail from paradise.net, enter: From, contains, paradise.net, Discard
      • To delete all references to pornography, enter: Any Header, contains, porn, Discard
      • To discard all e-mail that Spam Assassin has marked as spam, enter: SpamAssassin Spam Header, begins with, yes, Discard

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    10. How do I create an email alias/forwarder?

      Forwards simply allow you to automatically forward e-mail sent to one account to another account. This is useful when you work at two separate locations, or have gone on holiday. To forward mail from one account to two or more accounts, just add two or more forwards for the account that is being forwarded.

      To add a forwarder:

      1. Click on the Forwarders link in the Mail area.
      2. Click on the Add Forwarder link.
      3. Enter the first part of the e-mail address that will be forwarded in the first field.
      4. Choose the required domain from the drop-down list.
      5. Enter the full e-mail address that the forwarder will forward mail to in the second field.
      6. Click on the Add Forwarder button.

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    11. How do I create a mailing list?

      Mailman is a popular mailing list script. Mailing lists are an ideal tool for communication between far-flung participants and can be about anything you want. Mailman allows you to set up a mailing list with a large number of configurable options, such as who is on the list, where mailing lists messages are sent, and whether you include welcoming messages to new subscribers. The Mailman documentation, which is incorporated into its Administration panel, is clear and helpful, and should be referred to for all questions about using the script. You can can also refer to the Mailman home page for more information.

      Note: It is a good idea to be aware of spam and its definition before setting up a mailing list - refer to Blocking Unwanted E-mail for more information.

      To add a mailing list:

      1. Click on the Mailing Lists link in the Mail area of your cPanel homepage.
      2. Click on the Add Mailing List link.
      3. Enter the name of the mailing list in the List Name field, the password for the list in the Password field, and the domain it is for from the Domain drop-down list.
      4. Click on the Create button.

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