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Frequently Asked Questions
Addon Domains
What are Addon Domains?
Addon
Domains allow you to host several independent websites using one
hosting account. To manage e-mail, databases, subdomains, and other
features of the addons you will use your primary account. The files for
addon domains are stored in a separate directory (ex:
mydomain.com/addon). When accessing the addon domain (ex: addon.com) it
displays all the files in that directory as if they were a separate
website. In other words, addon.com points to mydomain.com/addon, but
masks its location.
How many add on domains do I get with my account?
Each
account comes with a certain number of slots - check the shared hosting
page to see how many you get with your account level.
Are there any limitations to an addon domain?
An add on domain does not have its own cPanel.
How do I set up ad add on after I get the domain name?
To
setup an addon domain, login to the control panel using username and
password provided in the welcome e-mail. Go to "Addon Domains", fill
out and submit the form. The field "Username/directory/subdomain Name"
is the name of the directory where you want the files for the new
domain to go (ex: "addon" for mydomain.com/addon). Make sure that your add on points to ns1.sigmazeus.com and ns2.sigmazeus.com for
its DNS by changing the pointing in your registrar. If you purchase the name from us, this will already have been
done.
I installed my addon, but it's not resolving.
Remember
that before an addon domain is working, the domain itself must be
registered with SiGmAGamEHostinG! or a registrar of your choice, and it must have
our DNS (ns1.sigmazeus.com, ns2.sigmazeus.com) in its registration. You may also wish to give it time to propagate.
Is there a limit to how many addon domains I can have on an account?
Yes, each account has a certain limit that are allowed. For more, you may wish to think about upgrading.
Can I park a domain on top of an addon domain?
Yes, but it would be considered another add on domain, not a parked domain.
Authorized Users
Who is authorized to make changes to the account?
The
account owner is the person that placed the original order with SiGmA, and who is identified by name, original submitting email
address that came in with the order, and by the card submitted with the
order. This person is the only person authorized to contact SiGmA on
behalf of the account, and is the only person we will speak to by
default.
Can I add another authorized user?
You
may have only one additional authorized user on your account who can
only have access to our tech support, and that is only if they are the
contracted webmaster on the account. They may not make billing or
security changes to the account, or ask for password resets. There can only be one billing contact per account.
Backups
Do you do regular backups of my account?
Yes,
we perform weekly backups on all shared hosting accounts, but don't
count on our backups alone! Your website is important, and you are the
one ultimately responsible for ensuring that your data is backed up! We make every effort to back up all account data on a weekly
basis, but we can’t guarantee that our backups will be complete, up to
date or even available at all. We are not responsible in the event that
some or all of your account data and settings are lost. You should always keep an up to date copy of your website on
your local computer; by doing this you will always have a copy of your
site on hand in the event of data loss. You can easily download file,
database and settings backups from the backup area of CPanel.
If you have a VPS or a Dedicated Server, you are responsible for your
own backups unless you purchased our backup service, so the rest of
this section does not directly apply to you.
What backups are available?
We
have a fortnightly backup (taken on Friday evenings) and a monthly backup.
So, we have two separate backups available at any given time.
How do I request a site restore?
Simply email support and let us know whether you want a site restore, a site/db restore, or a site/db/mail system restore.
Please
note that this restore will restore all files, including ones that you
may have previously deleted. After a restore, you may wish to clean out
your web site for those files that no longer need to be there.
I don't need the whole site restored, just a few files/directories.
There
is a $80 charge to selectively restore files or directories manually.
Please email support with a list of what you need, and from which
backup.
Bandwidth
What happens if I go over my bandwidth?
We
do not suspend sites that go over their bandwidth - you will be charged
per the posted prices for the bandwidth that you use which is over your
allotment.
What are the 'start' and 'end' dates for bandwidth calculation?
Bandwidth
calculation begins and ends at the beginning and end of each calendar
month. Bandwidth usage statistics are updated once per day.
How can I tell where my traffic is coming from?
Our
site statistics programs show you many aspects of your site traffic in
detail, including where your traffic is coming from. They are available
from within your control panel.
What is leeching and how do I prevent it?
Leeching
(or "hotlinking") is the sneaky process of loading images from someone
else's web site in order to save on bandwidth. To help prevent this
from happening to our clients, we provide every account with a useful
tool in our control panel. Don't let others steal the data transfer
that you pay for!
Do my FTP and e-mail activity count towards my total bandwidth?
Yes.
My website gets a lot of traffic - will this be a problem?
This
depends on the type of site that you have. If your site is relatively
static (just html files, images, and the like) you will be able to
handle a greater amount of traffic that you would if you run an
extremely active forum or Wordpress blog.
Pre-Sales Questions (Shared-Hosting)
Are eggdrop bots allowed?
Nope.
Can I have Warez, Appz, Serialz and or commercial software on my homepage?
Nope. If we find them in your directory or links to them, your entire account will be subject to termination.
Can I host an XXX/adult site?
We do not host adult-oriented commercial pornography sites.
Can I order even though I do not live in the SG?
Yes,
, you can still order with us. We can host all international domain
names and also we accept credit card payments from international cards.
Can I resell space within my own account?
This
depends on which account you purchased. If you purchased a reseller
account, this is possible. However, if you purchased a shared hosting
account, this is only licensed for you only.
Do you have offsite secondary DNS?
Yes, SiGmA has it's primary DNS servers at the Network Operations Centre where we host, and
secondary DNS servers at a second Network Operations Centre to insure that should something
happen, web sites will stay up and functioning for all shared accounts.
Dedicated servers can purchase offsite secondary DNS from us for $30
per server.
Do you offer Ecommerce or a shopping cart program?
Yes! All web hosting packages come with the several cart system at no extra cost.
How long does it take to get my domain working?
If
you ordered a new domain name through us, it is generally resolving
minutes after installation. If you are transferring an existing domain
name, it will take 24-48 hours after you make the DNS change with your
registrar.
How many virtual hosting accounts are located on each server?
It
varies. The load on the host systems are monitored 24/7
so that we have a feel for what folks on the server are
doing, and all of our servers are high end, with a lot of RAM and quad
processors. No server has over 650 virtual accounts, or serves
over 350 Gigabytes of bandwidth, though they each have the
capacity for 2000 Gigs, so we try and keep resources
available and guard against being prepared for someone
getting slashdotted.
90% of the sites on any given server are not extremely active, high
traffic, or interactive, but we do constantly monitor and "baby" the
servers to make sure that resources are available at all times.
What forms of payment do you accept?
We
accept Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express. For a small
additional fee, we accept PayPal, Electronic Checks, Paper Checks, and
Money Orders.
What is your connectivity like?
Fiber
connectivity to our facility is supplied by an OC-48 diverse path
fiber optic sonet ring. Featuring level 7 path diversity our sonet ring
has multiple entry points into our facility as well as connectivity
directly to multiple carrier offices. There is no shared physical path
at any point in the entire sonet loop.
What is your policy on SPAM?
We
do NOT tolerate SPAM, if we find you sending junk mail your account
will be terminated and you will be banned from accessing or emailing
our servers in perpituity.
What kind of Technical Support do you provide?
We
will answer, help, fix any problems related to your web hosting
account. We will provide support for all the services and features that
we offer. We do not
provide technical support for 3rd party software, though if we are
familiar with the program we will give it our best effort.
Why is Raid 1 important?
RAID
1 is a particular type of RAID technology which ensures that all data
is duplicated on pairs of disks simultaneously. This ensures that in
the event of a hard drive failure, the server can switch to the other
disk with no interruption in service. Also, if multiple requests for
the same data are made, demand can be distributed between two disk
copies therefore decreasing response time for data access.
What is your Resource Usage Policy? If my site gets busy, will it be suspended?
In
shared web hosting, the ability to use your account is limited not just
by your space and bandwidth, but also by how much of your server's
resources (processor and RAM) you may be able to use at a given time.
Since you are sharing a server with many other clients, each must
operate their site within certain limits to ensure that all accounts
perform as well as expected.
If your usage on average is
between 20-30% of server resources, we will contact you to discuss your
options. Resource spikes are normal, and expected - it's only when the
average consumption begins to take up an inordinant amount of resources
that we get concerned.
We will not suspend a site unless that's site's usage is causing potential imminent harm to the performance of the server.
Will you match a competitor's price?
No.
We worked very hard on our pricing scheme - we are notbudget yet quality
PreSales Questions (Servers)
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What is the difference between a VPS and a Dedicated Server?
A VPS is a step above shared hosting, and a step below a Dedicated Server. With shared hosting, you share the resources on the server with everyone on it, and everyone gets in line.With a VPS, you get what looks to you, operationally, like a complete
server with root access and so on, but you are guaranteed a small
portion of the resources with burstable ability over that when you need
it. With a dedicated server, everything is all yours.
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If I don't get cPanel, what comes on the server?
The
hardware, and the operating system - what you do with it from there and
what you install within the acceptable use guidelines is up to you.
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How secure is the server when I get it?
It's
not. It's *your* server and you get to secure it, install things, and
do all sorts of stuff to it - there are drawbacks to that, and benefits
to that. If you don't secure it and it does horrible things to other
people on the Internet, you could lose it.We can harden the server for you if you're using cPanel, and we do offer full management for a monthly fee. We do not harden or offer management on non-cPanel servers - frankly,
our opinion is that if you're not getting a control panel and you don't
know enough to secure your server, you really shouldn't have it in the
first place (unless you've hired an outside management company to take
care of it, in which case you don't need us to mess with it, anyway!)
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If I pay for the cPanel license, do I own it?
No, the license is held only for the span of time when you are hosting, and if you leave, you don't get to take it with you. This is the same for any hosting company. Wanna FULLY own a license? Try tens of thousands of dollars and maybe yea...
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Who backs up the server?
You
do, or you pay us a hefty fee to. The standard price of the server
without a backup add on service purchased does not cover backups. There
are numerous backup services available much cheaper than what we offer
that have a minimum of set up, and if you have a cPanel server, the
cPanel forum contains lots of different set ups and suggestions.
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I read the TOS and my eyes glazed over - what can I or can I not do?
Do NOT spam. We don't like it, and our NOC will yank the box and charge us to deal with it, which we will in turn charge you.
No commercial pornography sites - art sites and so on, ok. We're not
prudes - what we are is vigilant about not having to deal with hacked
boxes and password protected porn sites get hacked more often than
other types of sites. We simply don't want to deal with it.
Your backups are your responsibility - we'll replace broken hardware, but we won't recreate it as it was when it went down.
If you don't pay for a reboot port, and your server goes down, you have
to submit a ticket for it to be rebooted. If Apache's up but running
slow, we may not catch it because the monitoring won't set off an
alert. Reboot ports are handy, and the lack of them may expand the lag
time in getting the server back up if you blow it out.
Realize this isn't shared hosting - much responsibility is taken off
us, and much more is put on you. These are semi-managed, but not fully
managed, boxes. Since you have a lot more control over the box, we have
a lot less responsibility for things like troubleshooting individual
sites. If you won't or can't do some of the things that fall into your
purview, you may be charged hourly fees for us to do them for you.
We don't want to scare you, but we don't want to put some kind of a
golden shine on it and tell you it's easy and you don't need to know
anything to manage a server, as that's not the case.
With great power comes great responsibility, or so says Spidey's Uncle Ben
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