STEP BY STEP RESELLER GUIDE This guide is design to help new resellers to set up their reseller account easily and quickly. H Sphere is one of the most powerful reseller systems ever designed. Understanding it can be a bit challenging to newcomers. However, we guarantee once you master it; you'll enjoy the full range of features it offers. We provide assistance in setting up your reseller account. From the URL below you will find a necessary web form which we need you to complete and submit back to us: http://cp.varhost.net/reseller/reseller_guidance.html If you choose the method above, we will just duplicate Host Department s web hosting plans (in terms of resources your customers will get from the plans). You can name them differently to suit your company s motto or branding, or you can just use the exact name. Next you can set your own pricing. It can be the same pricing like ours, or you can set higher or lower pricing. On the other hand, if you like to feel in control, you can set up your reseller account yourself. On the following chapters, we will show you how you can setup your reseller account in less than 3 hours. H SPHERE INTRODUCTION H Sphere is a multi level and platform Control Panel complete with billing and support integrated into it. Host Department supports both the UNIX and Windows hosting platforms that H Sphere offers. That means as a reseller you can create plans and resources on both our UNIX and Windows servers. As a reseller you should know that there are 3 primary Control Panel levels in H Sphere: 1. Reseller Account CP Your main reseller account username. This is the control panel you will see when you first login into your reseller account from https://cp.worldispnetwork.com or https://secure.hostdepartment.com. It allows you to see basic information about your account, upgrade/downgrade, change your account's contact details as well as manage your billing information with Host Department. Everything in this CP pertains to your relationship with Host Department. 2. Reseller Administrative CP Admin account username for reseller. This is the control panel through which you manage your hosting business. It allows you to set up your name servers, hosting plans, merchant gateway, support, billing, etc. It also allows you to manage all your customer accounts and signup requests. You may login using this username from your reseller CP base URL that includes your service domain: e.g. http://cp.myservicedomain.com. 3. End User CP This is the CP through which each of your customers can actually manage their website from. Here customers can setup websites, mail boxes, databases, etc. You may also login using this username from your reseller CP base URL that includes your service domain: e.g. http://cp.myservicedomain.com. The Reseller Admin CP doesn't allow resellers to host their own personal websites. You as a reseller would need to sign up for one of your service hosting plans as a customer in order to setup your personal websites and access the end user CP. Hence, following all the steps in this guide is crucial before you can begin hosting any domains.
TABLE OF CONTENTS H Sphere Introduction... 1 Table of Contents... 2 Getting Started... 3 Step 1: Your Welcome Email... 3 Step 2: Logging into your account... 3 Step 3: Creating an Administrative Account... 4 Step 4: Entering your Administrative Account... 5 Step 5: Entering your Company Info... 6 Domain Nameserver Zone... 7 Step 1: Create a DNS Zone... 7 Step 2: Setting up Instant Domain Aliases... 8 Step 3: Creating your Name Servers... 9 Step 4: Create other Server Aliases... 10 DNS Zone Propagation... 11 Step 1: Creating Name servers... 11 Step 2: Verifying your DNS zone... 11 Step 3: Changing your Control Panel's URL... 12 Setting up the Service Account... 13 Step 1: Creating Service Account Plan... 13 Step 2: Disallow signups from outside your admin account... 22 Step 3: Signing up for Service Account... 23 Creating an Account with Billing... 24 Step 1: a Windows Plan with billing... 24 Domain name and other Resources Configuration... 32 Step 1: Setting up Domain Registration Prices... 32 Step 2: Setting up Signup Guard Feature... 33 Step 3: Managing Debtors... 34 Step 4: Setting up User Warnings Feature... 34 Step 5: Adding E Mail Notification Recipients... 35 Basic Account Management... 37 Step 1: Activating a Moderated Account... 37
GETTING STARTED STEP 1: YOUR WELCOME EMAIL After you finish the signup wizard for your new reseller account, and you have a valid data for both IP and account info, and also you don t have any issue with your payment transaction, your reseller account should be activated instantly. When your account is activated, you'll receive a welcome email like below. If you do not, please contact our billing support department at billingsupport@hostdepartment.com Dear John Doe, Thank you for choosing Host Department for your Web hosting needs. To access your account with the Control Panel, use the following information: URL: https://secure.hostdepartment.com/psoft/servlet/psoft.hsphere.cp Login: myaccount Password: mypassword Account ID: 12345678 We wish you success with your online venture and we are looking forward into helping you get the most of your account. Best Regards, Host Department http://www.hostdepartment.com STEP 2: LOGGING INTO YOUR ACCOUNT Click on the control panel link in your Welcome Email and you should see a screen like this: Type in your username and password and then click "Login". Once you have logged into your account, you'll see a "Quick Access" toolbox like this:
Click on the "Enter Admin CP" button under "Main" section. STEP 3: CREATING AN ADMINISTRATIVE ACCOUNT On the next page, you'll see a screen asking you to add an Administrative account. Fill out all the text boxes and click "Submit". Admin Login Any username to access your Administrative Account. IMPORTANT: Must be different from your Account username. Please do not specify "Admin", "admin" or "administrator" username. Using these usernames will result "the username is already existed" error. E mail Your email address. Preferably be an email address you won't be hosting with us.
STEP 4: ENTERING YOUR ADMINISTRATIVE ACCOUNT Once you create your Administrative Account, you'll see a screen like this: Click the "Login" button. You'll then be logged into your Reseller Admin CP:
STEP 5: ENTERING YOUR COMPANY INFO The first thing you must do once you have entered your Administrative Account is to enter your company information. From the top navigation menu, click on "Look and Feel" and select "Company Info". Let s assume you are the owner of MyCompany Inc; and your hosting/corporate website is www.mycompany.net. Fill out your company details: IMPORTANT: Hostmaster Email Fill out any email address as your hostmaster email here. Note that you must use "." instead of ""@". So if your website was mycompany.net, your hostmaster email could be webmaster.mycompany.net or admin.mycompany.net. A phone number should be entered in the following format: +CCC.ZZZZZZZZZZ/YYYY Where, CCC is a country code up to 3 digits (+1 for North America), ZZZZZZZZZZ is a phone number inside the country (up to 12 digits). YYYY is an optional extension (up to 4 digits). If you are from the USA, and your phone is (555) 1234567 the format would be: +1.5551234567 Once you have filled out the form, click on "Save". You have just completed step 1.
DOMAIN NAMESERVER ZONE STEP 1: CREATE A DNS ZONE In your Administrative Account, click on "E.Manager" from top navigation menu and select "DNS Manager". On the right, you'll see the DNS Manager: Click on "Add DNS Zone". You'll then see a screen like this: Fill in your DNS zone details: Name must be the host name of your new DNS zone. If mycompany.net is your hosting company site and you want ns1.mycompany.net and ns2.mycompany.net to be your name servers, enter mycompany.net as your DNS host name here. You can however put in any registered domain as your DNS host name. Some resellers prefer to put a host name different from their corporate site (such as mycompanydns.net). It really makes no difference technically. Admin Email The admin email address for your DNS zone. Replace "@" with ".". If mycompany.net is your DNS host name, enter webmaster.mycompany.net or admin.mycompany.net here. Master Server Leave it as it is. Slave 1 server Leave it as it is. Once you have completed the step, click on Submit to create your DNS zone.
STEP 2: SETTING UP INSTANT DOMAIN ALIASES Instant Domain Aliases will allow your customers to access their website before their domain is actually pointing to your name servers. You need to set them up in order for customers to be able to use them. Once you have created your DNS Zone, you'll see a screen like this: Click on "Edit" button under "Action" section. Then you'll get a screen like this: Click on "Add instant alias": Prefix Enter any letter that you prefer. For instance: "u". Shared IP Tag leave as it is. Press Submit. Once done, you'll see a screen as follows indicating Instant Aliases have been configured properly.
STEP 3: CREATING YOUR NAME SERVERS From the top navigation bar, click on "E.Manager" and select "Server Aliases". Under Reseller's DNS Server aliases, fill out the aliases you'd like for your name servers. It's advisable to keep them the same. Once done, press "Submit". You'll see a screen like this then: You'll notice that now you have been assigned IPs for your name servers.
STEP 4: CREATE OTHER SERVER ALIASES Once you have created your name servers, move down to the Server aliases. Click "Submit". You'll see a screen like this then: Done! You have just completed your reseller DNS zone setup.
DNS ZONE PROPAGATION STEP 1: CREATING NAME SERVERS Once you have created your name servers in the Control Panel, you will be assigned unique IP addresses for each of them (refer to step 3: Creating Your Name Servers, under chapter 2). In order for your name servers and DNS zone to work, you must create these name servers with the Domain Registrar you have registered your dns zone domain with. Most domain registrars provide some provision to allow you to create your own name servers with them. Please contact them or read their Help guides to find out how. On the other hand, if you registered your DNS zone domain with us as your registrar (from http://www.hostdepartment.com/dnr this is recommended), click on "Register Name servers" for your domain to create the name servers in the member area of your DNR account. Or you can also contact our DNR support at dnrsupport@hostdepartment.com for assistance in this regards. In the case above (if mycompany.net was your DNS host name), you'd have to create all the listed name servers for mycompany.net at your domain registrar, pointing to each of their corresponding IPs. i.e.: ns2.mycompany.net > 205.209.98.15 ns1.mycompany.net > 205.209.98.226 IMPORTANT: (your actual IPs may vary). Once you have created the name servers at your domain registrar, you must then point your DNS Zone domain to its authoritative DNS servers so your server aliases (such as cp.mycompany.net) would work. Once you complete these steps for your DNS zone host name, you'd have to wait 24 to 72 hours for DNS zone propagation to complete. STEP 2: VERIFYING YOUR DNS ZONE Once you have waited 24 to 72 hours for your DNS zone to propagate, you'll have to verify that you can "ping" your name servers as well as server aliases. Try pinging cp.mycompany.net to see if your DNS zone has propagated correctly. If you have not yet waited for 24 to 72 hours, please skip this and the next steps, and come back here again once you have waited for 24 to 72 hours. From your Operating System, go to your command prompt (Terminal if you are using Linux). Then type in "ping cp.mycompany.net" (where mycompany.net is replaced with YOUR DNS host name) from the command prompt. If you see a screen like below where cp.mycompany.net is resolving into an IP, your DNS zone has propagated properly:
You can also use this method to ping and check your name servers and other server aliases (tulsa.mycompany.net, watson.mycompany.net, mail.mycompany.net, etc.) If you do not see a screen like this and instead, the Window closes immediately or you get "Host cannot be found", then your DNS zone hasn't propagated correctly. Please contact resellersupport@hostdepartment.com for assistance. STEP 3: CHANGING YOUR CONTROL PANEL'S URL After DNS zone propagation has been completed and you can ping cp.mycompany.net (where mycompany.net is replaced by your DNS host name), you can change your control panel s URL. If your DNS zone has not propagated yet (if you have not waited for 24 to 72 hours), please skip this step and move to the next. You can come back to this step when propagation is complete. Login to your reseller account like before from the control panel URL sent to you in your Welcome email: http://secure.hostdepartment.com/psoft/servlet/psoft.hsphere.cp After logging in, go to the "Info" dropdown menu, select "Change URL". Make sure: 1. Protocol is http:// and NOT https:// (Use HTTPS only when CP SSL is enabled refer to Reseller Documentation). 2. Given control panel URL is cp.mycompany.net (where mycompany.net is replaced by your DNS host name). 3. Use port 80 or just leave it blank. Do NOT use port 443. (Use 443 only when CP SSL is enabled). Once done, click "Change". You'll be taken back to the same screen. Now you can access your control panel from http://cp.mycompany.net (where mycompany.net is replaced your DNS host name). You can now directly use http://cp.mycompany.net to login into your Administrative Account. Just enter the username and password you entered while creating the Administrative Account.
On the next following chapter, you will start creating your service account. SETTING UP THE SERVICE ACCOUNT STEP 1: CREATING SERVICE ACCOUNT P LAN In order to host any website in your reseller account, you must first create a hosting plan/package and then have yourself or your customer signup for an account under that plan. For security reasons, it is recommended that you create a separate hosting plan to host your corporate website and other personal related websites. From the Info menu, select "Plan Creation Wizards" so that you see this screen: C HOOSING BETWEEN UNIX AND WINDOWS SERVICE PLAN IMPORTANT: Please note that you will not be able to utilize the reseller Instant Website Builder to create your corporate website, if your service domain is hosted under a Windows Hosting plan. The reseller instant web builder is only applicable for service domain which is hosted under a Unix Hosting plan. Here is a sample setup on a UNIX plan:
And here is the figure on Windows plan: For Plan Name, name it as "System", or "Service" or any other plan name that you prefer. Later you can change the plan name in the Plan Settings. Some of the options are explained below: Summary Disk Usage: Leave this option checked. An explanation will be provided later. Domain: Check this box to allow domain transfer and domain registration from the user control panel. Domain Registration: Allow users to create new standard domains through your reseller System. Please note that we use Enom as our upstream domain registration provider. Domain Transfer: Allow users to transfer domain from other registrar to their control panel. Make sure to always leave unchecked, as this feature is currently not supported. Leave registrar prices as they are: Check this box to skip the second step of the wizard and use the default prices. To enter custom domain registration prices, don't check this box. Sub Domain: Allow users to create sub domains. Sub domains have the same functionalities as regular domains. Stop Gap Domain: Allow you to create a random domain in the form of abcd.u12.mycompany.net to host a temporary site if you don't own a domain. Third level Domain: Will allow you to host domains in the form anyname.mycompany.net. Domain alias: also referred to as stack domain, an extra domain name that points to a 'primary' domain. For example, the owner of the domain name mycompany.net can register another domain name, e.g. mycompany.com and have it point to the location of mycompany.net. This means that every Internet user who goes to mycompany.com will land in mycompany.net. Domain alias can have its own DNS zone, custom DNS records and their own mail service. Parked domain: Allow your customers to use H Sphere DNS server for designating IPs to domain names serviced and hosted on other servers (not those of H Sphere). Service Domain: Very important. Make sure this is checked. To enable users register third level domains with the second level domain name of your corporate site, register it as a service domain. If mycompany.net is the DNS Zone you set up in step 2 & 3, this option will allow you to host a website for it. This option should only be selected on your Service Account plan which you are creating.
W EB SERVICES Here is the figure on a UNIX plan: Some of the options are explained below: CGI Resource: Allow your customers to map file extensions as CGI executables. CGI BIN Resource: Allow your customers to create CGI BIN directory, so all the CGI BIN directory's content is treated as CGI executables which the server tries to run. FrontPage: Enables support for FrontPage extensions. Server Side Include: Allow your customers to use interactive real time features such as echoing current time, conditional execution based on logical comparisons, querying or updating a database, sending an e mail etc., with no programming or CGI scripts. PHP Module: Allow your customers to create dynamic web pages with PHP. Redirect URL: Allow your customers to redirect visitors from one URL to another. When an Internet user tries to connect to a URL that is redirected, he is taken to the address this URL is mapped to. Directory Index: Allow your customers to set their custom directory indexes or to set alternate home pages for their website. Server Side Imagemap: Allow your customers to have files with a specific extension regarded as map files. Throttle Resource: Allow your customers 'throttle' the use of traffic in their accounts by delaying or refusing requests to their sites. mnogosearch: Allow your customers to use H Sphere integrated search engine that searches their sites by keywords. phpbb: Allow your customers to use a Free bulletin board software called phpbb, H Sphere integrated, high powered, fully scalable, and highly customizable bulletin board package. Error document: Allow your customers to configure their own error pages that are shown when the requested pages fail to open. Logical Server Group: Appropriate resources under this plan will be created on a particular logical server group.
EasyApp Applications: This is a feature that allows you to install 20+ PHP/MySQL scripts from the end user CP. This feature is available on UNIX accounts only. And here is a sample option on a Windows plan: Some of the options are explained below: ASP resource: To enable your users maintain sites created by means of ASP. ASPSecured: To enable your users to manage access to their site resources creating their own groups and users. ASPSecuredLicense: To enable your customers to use ASPSecuredLicense for multiple sites. FrontPage: Enables support for FrontPage extensions. ASP.NET: To enable your customers to use.net applications. Cold Fusion Module: To enable your users to maintain sites created by ColdFusion. Directory Index: Allow you to set alternate home pages for your website. phpbb: Free bulletin board software. Error Document: Allow you to specify custom 404 or 500 error pages. Logical Server Group: From here you can select Win Servers, Custom DLL/Components, Cold Fusion MX, or.net & ASP.NET. If you select Win Servers or Custom DLL/Components, you MUST NOT enable Cold Fusion and ASP.NET on this Plan. If you select Cold Fusion MX, you must NOT enable PHP, ASP and ASP.NET on this plan. This means that you cannot host PHP, ASP/ASP.NET & ColdFusion on one plan and must create separate plans for them. If you enable ColdFusion on a plan configured to Win Servers, you'll get an account creation error. PHP is only available on Win servers & Custom DLL /Components. You need to define the logical server group accordingly. For example: a website that utilizes ColdFusion technology must be hosted under Cold Fusion MX logical group, otherwise the CF application will not work at all. EasyApp Applications: This is a feature that allows you to install 20+ PHP/MySQL scripts from the end user CP. This feature cannot be used on Windows accounts. Make sure to always leave unchecked, as this feature is currently not supported on Windows plans.
S TATISTICS Here is the figure on a UNIX plan: And here is the figure on a Windows plan: Some of the options are explained below: Referrer Log: Check the box to have separate referrer logs written into user directories. Referrer logs contain the URLs from which visitors were referred to your customer's site. Agent Log: Check the box to have separate agent logs written into user directories. Agent logs contain data about visitors' browsers or any other Internet based software, and related data. Error Log: Check the box to have separate error logs written into user directories. Error logs store data about errors generated by the server (e.g. Page Not Found error) or by their cgi scripts. Webalizer Resource and Modlogan Resource: Check the boxes to install Webalizer and Modlogan into user directories. These freeware tools parse the transfer log and produce statistics reports in readable HTML format to be viewed through a browser. AWStats: Another free tool that generates advanced graphical web server statistics reports. AWStats is set up on each Unix/Linux and Windows web server with CGI resources enabled. Please note that AWstats will NOT work on Cold Fusion or ASP.NET plans. Transfer Log: Allow you to access raw logs. Check this box to have transfer logs written into user directories. Transfer logs include combined data about every visit to your customer's site, including: o Remote host IP (i.e. visitor's IP) o Time of request (i.e. when visitor requested the page) o First line of request o Error generated by request, if any o Size of message sent in response to the request o Referrer (i.e. from which page visitor was directed) o Agent ID (i.e. type of browser or another agent and related information, such as user's OS, etc.
M AIL SERVICES & E C OMMERCE OPTIONS Here is the figure on both UNIX & Windows plan: Some of the options are explained below: Email Auto Responder: To automatically reply to senders with a uniform response when mail arrives in a mailbox. Mail Box Alias: To have an alternative address to an existing mailbox. Mail Forward: To automatically forward all incoming mail to a list of remote addresses. Mailing List: To send mail to multiple recipients or to setup a Yahoo! group style mailing list. Mail Domain Alias: To have an alternative domain name to a mail domain. This is an obligatory resource for Email only plans, and therefore it's not listed as an option in their wizards. Important: Mail Domain Alias in the Email Only Plan is the same as Domain Alias. Mail Relay: This option to ensure incoming mail is kept on the mail relay server, if your primary mail server goes down. Make sure to always leave unchecked, as this feature is currently not supported. AntiSpam: To set spam filtering for user mail domains. AntiVirus: To set virus filtering for user mailboxes. Mail SPF: This is if you wish to use the Sender Policy Framework on your email. It will allow you to set rules for your correspondents' mail servers to determine whether e mails received from your mail domain are forgery or not. For more visit their website. Logical Server Group (Mail servers): Appropriate mail resources under this plan will be created on the particular logical server group. SSL Module: Enable your customers to use SSL (Secure Sockets Layer protocol) a standard for transmitting confidential data such as credit card numbers over the Internet. Shared SSL: Provide SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption and business authentication to Web business customers. It allows you to setup Shared SSL on any domain based on our certificate unless you have installed your own Shared SSL certificate. oscommerce: Free shopping cart system that allows your users to create online stores using an open source e commerce solution (oscommerce 2.1 release). For more information, visit www.oscommerce.com.
O THER FEATURES Here is the figure on a UNIX plan: Some of the options are explained below: FTP sub account: Allow or disallow your customer to create additional logins and passwords to his directory so his friends or colleagues can independently use it. Virtual FTP Server: Allow or disallow your customers to let their friends and colleagues download, upload or view files in the dedicated directories. Anonymous FTP Server: Allow or disallow your customers to configure anonymous FTP under this plan if needed, to let anybody else download, upload or view files in the dedicated directories. Custom DNS Record: Allow your customers to create new custom DNS records. Shell Access: Allow your customers to access and operate their accounts through Shell. Crontab: Enable your customers to clock and run their own UNIX shell scripts automatically. Kanoodle: Enable your customers to promote their website through Kanoodle. RLimitCPU: Checking the box will restrict the CPU usage by users' CGI scripts. Leave this option unchecked. RLimitMEM: Checking the box will restrict the memory usage by user' CGI scripts. Leave this option unchecked. RLimitNPROC: Checking the box will restrict the number of simultaneous processes per user. Leave this option unchecked. Site Studio: Allow your customers to use a powerful site construction tool enabling them to create a professional looking site in a matter of minutes. MySQL, MS SQL, and PGSQL: Allow or disallow your customers to create and use their own databases. These resources can be enabled on both Windows & UNIX plans since Database resources are hosted on their own database servers independent of the web servers. We do not recommend enabling MS SQL feature on UNIX plans.
Account Backups: Allow your customer to backup web files and databases. Make sure to always leave unchecked, as this feature is currently not supported at this moment. And here is the figure on a Windows plan: Some of the options are explained below: MSSQL Manager: Provides a web interface for end users to manage their MSSQL database. ASP.NET must be enabled to support this feature. Using MSSQL manager is not possible on ColdFusion plans and you must directly use Enterprise Manager or visit its online version here: www.aspenterprisemanager.com. ODBC Service: Allow you to use ODBC services on Windows accounts. ODBC DSN Record: Allow end users to create data sources for their databases, on Windows accounts. CF DSN Record: This allows ColdFusion users to create ColdFusion data sources. S ETTINGS Here is the figure on both UNIX & Windows plan:
Since this is a Service Account plan and you will only host your sites from it, select "Without Billing" as your Billing Type. Leave rest as it is and click "Next". Billing options will be explained later in this tutorial. You should see this screen next: IMPORTANT: Please specify the quota for Mail Box quota, MySQL database quota, MS SQL quota and PGSQL database. Since this is a "Without Billing" plan, you can create unlimited quantities of these resources and change their quotas once the account has been created without being billed. Click the "Create Account button" so that you reach this screen: From here, turn on "Signup Access" for this plan. Once you have turned on Signup Access, you should see this screen:
STEP 2: DISALLOW SIGNUPS FROM OUTSIDE YOUR ADMIN ACCOUNT After you have created the service plan, you need to make sure that it is not used by your customers. As you can see on the above figure, a magnifying glass is generated on this plan which indicates that the signup access permission is full and accounts can be created from outside of the control panel ("from the street"). You must restrict a service/system plan access only to administrators. The following steps explain how to set permissions to plans, i.e. who can create accounts under given plans: 1. Select Plans in the INFO menu. 2. Click on Access (the padlock icon) under "Signup Access" column for the system plan to restrict access to. 3. On page appears, make sure only "Administrative account" is checked then click "Change" button. Here is the figure: Admin only: To make this plan available only to the administrator, check only Administrative account. For example, all Admin level plans should be unavailable to other users other than administrators. Registered Users: To make this plan available only to registered users under specific plans, check these plans in the list. Full access: To make this plan available "from the street", uncheck all plans in the list. IMPORTANT: To prevent any unauthorized automatic signup approval, please make sure that the plans with "without billing" type is unavailable for users to sign up from the street. Billing profiles won't be created, and users won't be charged for any resources or services including those provided by third parties, such as domain registration. However, we will charge you for the new domain registration fee as the upstream hosting reseller at reseller domain prices.
STEP 3: SIGNING UP FOR SERVICE ACCOUNT Now you can create an account for your service domain. To create your service domain account, you may go to your Administrative Control Panel, go to: "SIGNUP >> SignUp" on the top menu, and choose the service plan that you just created. It will launch account signup wizard. Fill out that sign up form with your information details and when you're asked for the domain info, choose "Register as a service domain", and follow the next instructions there. This will create a service account for your service domain, you will then receive a welcome email for this hosting account details. You should see this screen: If the primary domain you wish to host under the Service Account is the same as the DNS zone you setup previously (i.e. mycompany.net), select "Register a Service domain". If you want to host a different domain, select "Transfer an existing domain". You can add more domains at a later time once you have created this account. Complete the registration wizard and your account will be activated immediately. Your Administrative account page should refresh into the control panel of this new account. Press the back button (or relogin) to return to the Administrative control panel Congratulations! You have now successfully created your first account. Please press "Next" to proceed further in this tutorial.
CREATING AN ACCOUNT WITH BILLING STEP 1: A WINDOWS PLAN WITH BILLING For the purpose of this guide, you'll now learn how to create a Windows Plan with billing. We understand that you may have not yet decided on what plans to create and what prices to set but it is strongly recommended you continue with this tutorial and not skip this step as it also provides valuable knowledge on the system. Since you have learned to create a Service/System plan, only the new steps in the plan creation wizard will be explained. Please kindly be advised that there are 2 ways of creating an account: From the admin control panel. Directly from the signup link of your plan or "from the street". The registration "from the street" can be performed by the customer from your website, without admin's interaction. You may simply add the hosting plan signup links onto your website. Once a hosting plan is setup, you need to turn it on within your admin panel, and each of hosting plans will have its own sign up links to be used as the sign up process link for your customers. You can give these links to your customers or you can put them on your corporate website. You can also go to the admin panel of your reseller account and scroll down and find "Signup Links" button, click on it and you will see all the signup links of your reseller hosting plans. You can put these signup links on your main website, so that your new customers can sign up from these links. (See this Reseller Documentation). The registration from the admin control panel goes through exactly the same steps, but can be performed only by the administrator. Also, signup from the admin control panel is also the one and only way to create accounts that are unavailable "from the street", regardless of whether they are tagged available or unavailable for signup, for instance admin and technical support accounts. (See this Reseller Documentation). From the Info menu, please select "Plan Creation Wizards" so that you see this:
Select "Windows plan wizard": S UMMARY DISK USAGE H Sphere offers two resource allocation systems Fixed Quota and Summary Disk Usage. There are 3 fundamental quotas in any hosting account Web Space (for web files), Database space (for MySQL, MS SQL databases) and email space (for email accounts). In the Summary Disk Usage system, you can specify one big allocation of MB called Summary Disk Space and the customer can divide this allocation into web space (know as Disk Space or FTP space), database space and email space as he desires. In the fixed quota system (you must uncheck Summary Disk Usage), you will have to specify separate allocations for Web Space, Database space and Email Space. Customers cannot convert one allocation into another. In the Summary Disk Usage system, you'd have to specify the Summary Disk space quota and also the default quotas for Web Space (known as Disk Space or FTP space), Database and Email space quotas. The default web space, database space and email space quotas can be readjusted by the customer as he wants later (without being charged). You must not specify overage rates (i.e. rates for extra space) for any of these 3 individual quotas (i.e. web space, database and email space). If you were to specify overage rates for summary disk space and also database space then the customer may be charged double if he used extra database space and the used summary disk space (sum of web space, database space and email space) also exceeds the available summary disk space quota. In the fixed quota system, no Summary Disk Space quota has to be specified but only the Web Space (known as Disk Space), Database space and Email space quotas have to be specified. The customer would be charged for using more resources than allocated in any of these individual quotas. Overage rates for each of these individual quotas must be specified. It must also be understood that database quota and email quota are imaginary quotas. You actually specify the number of databases and the quota for each database. Similarly, you have to specify the number of email accounts and the quota of each email account. per database quota * number of databases would make up database quota. Same applies for email quota. In the Summary Disk usage system, the per database quota for any database and per mail box quota for any mail box can changed by customers without being charged (as long as the sum of the space used in the mail quota, web quota and database quota falls below the amount allocated as Summary Disk Space). The per database and per mail box quotas you specify while creating this plan are only the default quotas to
start with. It should also be noted that in the Summary Disk usage system, the database quota (per database quota * databases) and email quota (per mail box quota * email accounts) can exceed the summary disk space quota. What will actually be counted against the summary disk space quota is the MB used in the database quota and email quota. Similarly, you can specify a Disk/Web/FTP Space quota higher than the Summary Disk Space quota but what will actually count is the actual number of MB stored in this quota. None of this holds true in the fixed quota system. If more email accounts are created then allowed, or per mail box quota of an individual mail box is increased, the customer will be charged. Thus, the summary disk space system offers the customer the flexibility to decide how to use his single space allocation called Summary Disk Space while in the fixed quota system, the customer would have to deal with 3 individual quotas. For this demonstration, we will create a plan based on Summary Disk Usage. IMPORTANT: Service Domain: Make sure this is not selected! This option is for service plan only.
B ILLING SETTINGS Let's move down to billing Settings: Money Back Guarantee: Allows your customers to request a refund within the Money Back guarantee period. E mail order confirmation: Set the system to send e mail invoices to users with accounts registered under the plan. Billing Type: Both "Paid" and "Trial" Billing Type options enable billing on this plan. The "Trial" option allows your customer to try this hosting plan without paying anything while signing up. After the duration is over, the customer must pay in order to continue to pay their services with you. Please note that if the customer decides to pay, he or she will also have to pay for the Trial duration and any resources used during that period. Credit limit for the trial period specifies how much the customer can buy during his trial. Credit Limit: This specifies how much worth of resources the customer can buy without having to pay immediately. Once the customer's debt exceeds the credit limit, he cannot buy any more resources or use his control panel until he pays. You can optionally configure autosuspension and warning email (see Reseller Documentation). Default IP type: Specifies whether the domains on this account will be created with a dedicated or shared IP address by default. It's strongly recommended you leave this as Shared. Shared IP Tag: A digital "mark" that is assigned to all accounts created under this plan. Please DO NOT change this value and leave as is. Instant Alias appearance: Specifies the appearance of the instant access domain alias your customers will get for each of the domains they add to their account. This would allow them to access their website while their domain is not pointed to your name servers or while their domain is in propagation. Please note that the Instant alias will only start working after your DNS Zone (mycompany.net) has propagated (refer to chapter 3). IMPORTANT: Please DO NOT use dedicated IP as a default setting on your hosting plans. We provide free dedicated IPs to resellers, but dedicated IPs are limited in number. Once there is no available dedicated IP, you will not be able to create a new account. You must select the default setting to shared IP first, and once the account is created you can change it to dedicated IP only if you really need it.
S ETTING THE MONTHLY PRICING & FEATURES Please click the "Next" button to proceed. You should see this screen: Here you can specify the prices of this plan and its resources. Some concepts explained: Free: Specifies how many free units of a resource a customer would get. If you want to allow unlimited units of the resource, leave blank and also leave blank setup, monthly and extra. Setup: Specifies the one time fee a customer would be charged for buying/activating more resources than allocated. To charge no setup fee, leave blank. Monthly and Extra: Many of the space resources have 2 columns called Monthly and Extra. Monthly specifies how much a customer would be charged if he bought extra amounts of that resource himself proactively and Extra specifies how much the customer would be charged if he used more of that resource during account operation. Normally "Extra" should be set higher than "Monthly" to encourage customers to buy additional resources in bulk, in advance. If only a "monthly" and no "Extra" field is available, it means that the customer will not be allowed to exceed this resource while in account operation but must buy beforehand to use more. Summary Disk Quota: Explanation provided above. Specify the amount you want to allocate to this plan and its "Monthly" and "extra". If you were using the fixed quota system, you would leave all 3 fields blank. Disk Space Quota: Specifies the default web space or FTP quota. This should be set to the same value as the Summary Disk Space quota. Only the actual usage of this quota would count towards Summary Disk Space usage and not how much you allocate. You could even allocate more disk space than the summary disk space usage and the customer could
increase or decrease this quota without being charged. In the fixed quota system, the customer would be charged for increasing this quota. Monthly for Disk Space should not be specified if you are using Summary Disk Space but should be if you are using fixed quota. E XAMPLE In the screen shot above, 5 free domains are given and 20 free sub domains. For each additional domain and sub domain, there would be a charge of $2.00/month with a $2.00 setup fee. By leaving the other resources blank (stopgap domain, third level domain, domain aliases, etc) you are specifying that the customer can use unlimited amounts of these resources. In the case above, we have decided to charge for ASP.NET. If you notice, there is no "Free" field in ASP.NET. Unless you specify Setup & Monthly fees for ASP.NET, the customer could activate ASP.NET on all his domains free of charge. In this case, we have specified a monthly charge of $1.50/month for each domain the customer activates ASP.NET on without any setup charges. We do not wish to charge for PHP Modules (PHP module refers to PHP support on a particular domain), Front page extensions, etc. so we have left all fields blank. Since Cold Fusion is a premium service, most resellers charge for it. In the above example, we have set a one time fee of $10 for each Cold Fusion module activated and a recurrent fee of $2.00/month. Cold Fusion module refers to each domain cold fusion is activated on. PHP entry and Cold Fusion entry refer to the number of extensions a customer can specify for PHP and Cold Fusion (.php,.php4,.cfm,.cfmx, etc.). In the above example, we have left all fields blank to specify unlimited usage of these two resources. Above, we have specified 50 free mail boxes for this plan where additional mail boxes come with no setup fee but a recurrent of $0.50/month. Since we are using the Summary Disk Space system, the "monthly" for mail box quota has been left blank.
Most of our resellers specify 0 free IP addresses and a recurrent fee of $2.00/month per IP for purchasing additional IPs. IMPORTANT: We provide free dedicated IPs to resellers, but please note that we may have only limited IP addresses available on the server, so give out IP addresses with care. In the above screenshot, we have given unlimited Anonymous FTP accounts, Custom DNS records and SiteStudio accounts to this plan. You can change them to your preferences. MySQL, MS SQL and PGSQL Users specify the number of users/logins the customer can create to access their database. An MS SQL Login is the same thing as a MS SQL user. If you wish to limit MS SQL users and charge for extra, limit either MS SQL logins or MS SQL users. Each MS SQL user requires a MS SQL login. MS SQL manager is a tool customers can use to access their databases online. You have to also specify the number of MySQL, MS SQL and PostgreSQL databases that you wish to give and the per database quota of each of these database types. In the Summary Disk Usage system, you must leave the Monthly and Extra fields blank for database quota. In the fixed quota system, you must specify rates.