Questions
about eSmartStart:
Q. How
can you offer this service for free?
A. eSmartStart is able to offer its services for free because, like radio, the
costs involved are covered by advertising instead of subscriptions. eSmartStart inserts
a banner advertisement at the top of each webpage when it is displayed. We also have
a pay version of our service for a low monthly subscription cost.
Q. How
fast of an internet connection is eSmartStart
using?
A. eSmartStart is sitting on an OC3 backbone with redundant paths. This
gives us ample room for growth and expansion for years to come.
Q. How
secure is my data?
A. Our servers are located in a secure
facility and we do all in our power to prevent breeches of network security by hackers. Keep in mind, however, that
servers can crash and hardware can fail. While we do regular backups of crucial information such as
your account login and password, we simply cannot back up everything; it
is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you maintain current backup copies of all your files where
you can get at them easily... just in case!
Questions
about Logging into your Account:
Q. What
is my "login" or "username" to get into my account?
A. Your "login" or "user name" is your full domain name (without the www). If
you signed up for johndoe.esmartguy.com, then your login would be "johndoe.esmartguy.com". Your FTP login
is just the first part of your domain name (i.e. "johndoe").
Q. I've
lost my password, how can I find out what it
is?
A. CLICK HERE to have your password
emailed to you. If that does not work CONTACT US.
Note: your password can only be sent to your primary e-mail address (i.e. the one we have on
file for your account).
Q. Why
can't I log in?
A. Make sure you are using the correct username and password. Our system is case sensitive.
All usernames must be in lower case characters. Your password will be in whatever case you originally
typed it in. For example, if your password was "MyPaSsWoRd" then you would have to type it in
exactly that way. You MUST have cookies enabled on your browser to use the File Manager. Cookies allow the File Manager
to tell if you have logged in or not. Also, make sure you are using a fairly recent web
browser.
Q. I typed the correct
login and password; why can I still not log in?
A.
The most frequent reason is that you never activated your account. When you first sign up, you are sent an
email with a code to activate your account. If it is not activated within a few days that code is deleted from
our servers and the account is never created. Another common reason is that your site has not received any
activity for over one month. When we do "house cleaning" we remove sites that have not been accessed
in the past 30 days. Finally, if your account has been terminated for a violation of our terms of
service, such as "hotlinking", hosting warez or porn, etc, you will no longer be able to log into your account.
Q. Why can I log into
the my account through the web, but not through FTP?
A. To start using the FTP service you must log into your account and click on the "Enable FTP Access" link.
You can also click on the above link to re-syncronize the web login password with the FTP server password if they
get out of sync. If you are still having trouble logging in with FTP, make sure you are using the correct FTP
server address, username, and password. If you know all three are correct and still cannot log in, it is possible
that you are coming from an ISP or IP address that has been banned from using our FTP service because of excessive
abuse. If this is the case there is nothing you can do. You will have to use the File Manager to upload your
files. It is unfortunate that the actions of a few can ruin things for everyone else.
Questions about Uploading Files to your Account:
Q. How
do I upload files to my account?
A. You have two ways to upload files to your account: (1) You can use the
eSmart File Manager. Simply log in with your user name and password,
click on "File Manager", click on the "Upload" button, and browse to the file you want to upload.
(2) If you have multiple files to upload, it may be easier to use
"FTP", the second method of uploading files. For this method you
will need an FTP client such as wsftp or cuteftp, freely available from shareware sites
such as download.com (search for "ftp"), or you can use your web browser as
an FTP client.
| TIP: Use your web browser as an ftp client
To
use your web browser as an FTP client, point your browser to:
ftp://YOURSITE@ftpserver.YOURDOMAIN.com
(e.g.
ftp://joe@ftpserver.esmartkid.com)
You will be prompted for your password. Once you log in you can drag and drop files into your account.
For this method you may need to enable Passive FTP connections. In Microsoft Internet Explorer you can do so by
doing the following: open your browser and select Tools / Internet Options / Advanced. Make sure the boxes are checked
next to "Enable folder view for FTP sites" and "Use Passive FTP (for firewall and DSL modem compatibility)". |
Windows 95/98/2000/XP have a simple FTP client built in, but it is not as easy to use. To
access it, click on the "Start" button, select "Run" from the menu,
and type "ftp ftpserver.esmartdomain.com". Type "help" once you have
logged on for a list of commands. The most common commands you will be using are "put filename" (to upload files) and
"get filename" to download files. If you are uploading or downloading binary files as opposed to text files,
type "bin" at the prompt before you upload or download.
Q. I've uploaded my files to my account; why do my links not work and why are my images not
displaying?
A. The most common reason is that your html links do not match the case of your files themselves. Our system is
case sensitive. If, for example, you upload a file named "MyImage.JPG" (mix of upper and lower case) then the link to
that image must be exactly the same. The files "MyImage.JPG" and "myimage.jpg" would not be considered the same file
and could co-exist within the same directory. To fix this you can either edit your html to make the case match the file
or you could use our File Manager to rename the file to match the case used in the link.
Q. I've uploaded my files to my account; why do I still get the default "This page is under construction"
page when I visit the site?
A. Your main default page MUST be named "index.htm" or "index.html". The server looks for files by those names
when someone types in your URL without specifiying a complete path to a particular file.
Q. Why is my page not displaying anything? I know the requested file is not empty.
A. Our banner ad software is sensitive to the <head> and <body> tags. If you have more than one set
of those tags (even if they are within javascript code) or if they are not using correct html syntax, it confuses the system, resulting in nothing being
displayed. Make sure you do not have a <head> or <body> tag without the corresponding "</head> or
</body> tag or vica versa.
Q. How do I know if I am getting close to my quota on diskspace?
A. Simply log into your account and go
to the eSmart File Manager. Near the top
of the page it tells you how much space you
have used and how much you have left.
Q. What is my
FTP login information?
A.
This information is emailed to you when you sign up since it is different for each account. But if you lose it or did
not receive it, the following example should be sufficient for you to figure it out. If you had signed up for
"johndoe.esmartguy.com" then your
FTP information would be as follows:
FTP Hostname: ftpserver.esmartguy.com
FTP Username: johndoe
FTP Password: [whatever you used when you signed up]
You generally do not need to make any changes to FTP Port number (21), server type (Unix), or directory root (/).
Before you attempt to use our FTP service for the first time, make sure you that enable FTP for your account by logging into
your account at www.esmartstart.com and clicking on the "Enable FTP Access" link.
Q. Why
can't I use FTP or the File Manager to transfer large
files?
A. eSmartStart has size limits for uploaded files based on the type of service you have signed up for. This
ranges from 512k to 10 MB (CLICK HERE for more details). Files that exceed these limits
are automatically removed.
Questions about 'Disappearing' Files:
Q. Why have the files I recently uploaded
disappeared?
A. Most likely the missing files violated our terms of service and were
automatically removed. We have scripts that
regularly comb the directories looking for accounts that are abusing our service. This
keeps our service fast for everyone. Remember, no individual file may be larger than specified by the
service you have signed up for (ranges between 512k to 10 MB).
On free accounts, all non-html content, such as images, music files, etc. must be linked to real web pages.
Sites with little html content that use our free service, whose sole purpose is for serving files for download, are
liable to have all their files removed without notice. Likewise, sites that promote illegal
activities or infringe on Copyright or Trademark laws are liable to have all files
removed. Non-HTML content such as images, music files, movies, etc, should be
uploaded AFTER your html files to ensure that they don't get automatically
removed for not being part of the web pages of your website.
Q. Why can't I remote link directly to the files on my website from external websites?" What is "hotlinking"?
A. Remote linking to non html files on your website is commonly known as "hotlinking". Hotlinking occurs when non-html files, typically images, are linked to directly from other websites, forums, web boards, or from services like eBay, etc. According to our terms of service, external sites must first link to your html files and not directly to your images or other non-html files. Even if it is something beyond your control, it steals bandwidth from all the other users of our service and gives us no compensation because banner ads are not being displayed. This restriction is only placed on free accounts. If you need to "hotlink", upgrade your free account to one of our paid services.
Questions
about the Banner Ad:
Q. Can I remove the banner Ad or
or place it somewhere else on the page?
A. Yes and No. The banner ad allows advertisers to pay for the service instead
of you. We host thousands of websites and use a tremendous amount of bandwidth
which is not cheap. Moreover, we are constantly needing to upgrade our servers
with huge harddrives, fast processors, and "gobs" of memory. Without the banner
revenue we would not be able to offer this service. The banner ad is inserted at
the top of your web pages automatically. There is no way to move it to another part of your
web page unless you want to use a popup banner ad instead (see below).
You may, however, remove all advertising on your site by upgrading your free account to one of our paid
services. Rates start at $4.99 per month. CLICK HERE for more details.
Q. Can I have a popup banner ad instead
of having it automatically inserted into my web page(s)?
A. Yes. This is especially useful if your site is too complicated for our banner ad
software and is not displaying correctly. Instead of the banner ad being displayed in your
page ("inline ad"), it is displayed in small popup window. To enable popup support simply
log into your account on our main website and click on the "Change from Inline to Popup Banner Ads"
link.
Questions
about Frames:
Q. How
can I get Frames to work correctly? I'm getting unsatisfactory results.
A. To use frames your html code must be correct. Subtle problems in your
code can lead to conflicts with our banner ad, resulting in an unsatisfactory
display of your site. Also sites that use complex javascript or style sheets to build
pages "on the fly" may not display correctly. By default the system automatically inserts
an extra frame at the top of the screen which contains our banner ad. Please let us know what
problems you may be experiencing with frames so that we can improve our frames support.
Q. Can I change the background color
of the banner frame?
A. Yes. Simply add the following line somewhere between the <head> and </head> tags
of your framesrc page(s):
<banner_frame bgcolor="FFFFFF">
In place of "FFFFFF" (which is the hex code for white) put the color (e.g. red, blue,
yellow) or hex code of the color you wish the background to be. Do not put a "#" in front
of the hex code or it will not work.
Questions about CGI/PHP/ASP or Server-Side Scripting Support:
Q. Do you offer or allow server-side scripting such as php, cgi, asp, etc.?
A. We do not offer or permit any server-side scripting such as php, perl, cgi, asp, shtml, cfm, etc. This service is
for basic websites written in html. Javascript, which is client-side scripting, is permitted.
Questions
about Microsoft Front Page
Q. Do you support
Microsoft Front Page and Front Page
extensions?
A. While you may create your website on
your harddrive using the Front Page editor and
then upload your pages to your free web space
using our File Manager or FTP. We do not
support Microsoft's Front Page extensions.
Miscellaneous
Questions:
Q.Are
there any restrictions to using your service?
A. We do have some restrictions which
are spelled out in the Terms of
Service when you set up an account. In
short, we disallow sites that promote
adult/pornographic material, gambling, hate,
illegal, or unethical activities. There are also some individual filesize
restrictions and a requirement that all non-html files be linked into the web pages of your
site. Otherwise, you are free to use our services as you
please. You must be at least 13 years
old to use our service.
Smart
Free
Web Hosting!
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