Grapevine frequently asked questions
6. Grapevine web hosting FAQ
6.1 About actewagl.net.au domain closure 30 Nov - new website address details for customers
For details please view http://www.grapevine.com.au/documents/New_emailweb_address_FAQ.pdf
6.2 About web hosting and domains
What is web hosting?
Web hosting (also known as 'Website hosting' or 'Hosting') is the business of housing, serving and maintaining files for one or more websites and providing internet access (bandwidth). Hosting provides individuals or organisations with the systems to store information, images, video or other content accessible to users of the web. In a sense, you rent space on a computer to hold your website.
What does virtual hosting mean?
Virtual hosting simply refers to the fact that your site is on one server, and that this server hosts multiple sites. Your site will not be the only site on this specific server. Very few sites would actually need the power of a dedicated server, so for most websites virtual hosting is a reliable and cheap solution.
What is a domain name?
A domain name is a technical term for the 'address' of a particular website on the internet. The domain name tells your browser where to look to access the pages you want to see. The domain name for this website, for example, is 'grapevine.com.au' and you arrived at this page by clicking through one webpage to another, moving from one domain name to another, or by typing the exact address into the address bar of your browser.
What are subdomains?
Subdomains allow you to segregate different areas of your website while still using only one domain, for example www.seniors.footy.com and www.juniors.footy.com Subdomains are usually treated as separate sites from the main domain site.
6.3 Hosting with Grapevine
How do I sign up?
Signing up online will take around five minutes. Just follow these steps.
In order to host with Grapevine, you will first need a domain name or access to your current domain name. Grapevine offers affordable domain names, including .com.au and .com (a domain name is a web address like www.grapevine.com.au). For information on domain names that are available and pricing, please click here.
If you have an existing domain name and are able to transfer it to Grapevine, proceed to 2.
If you wish to register a new domain or require our assistance in transferring your existing domain name, please call us on 13 35 00 during Grapevine support hours. For a small fee our Commercial Sales staff will assist you in choosing and registering, or transferring a domain name.
If you have an existing domain you will need to have:
- Your domain password (this can be obtained from your current domain hosting service).
- Details of all email addresses configured with your current domain host and the registered contact email address for notifications to be sent to. You can check what this email address is by using a WHOIS product.
If you wish Grapevine to register a new .com.au or .net.au domain on your behalf, you will need to:
- Have your registered ABN or ACN details ready.
- Be prepared to confirm that you have the authority to set up the account.
Domain name registration can take up to two business days. Domain name transfer can take up to four business days.
- Select a username and password, and enter the required contact details for your new account.
- Choose your direct debit payment method. You can choose from two options to pay for your Grapevine account:
- Direct debit from your credit card account;
- Direct debit from your savings or cheque account. This method may take up to five working days to be set up.
The full amount of your Grapevine account payment will be deducted from your nominated credit card or savings/cheque account on the Payment Date.
- Read and agree to our Grapevine terms and conditions. This will explain our terms and conditions of service and other applicable policies.
- Configure your new Grapevine web hosting account using the Hosting manager tool.
- Transfer your existing website, if you have one, across to your new Grapevine web hosting account using file transfer software. This software is available for purchase or for free use on the internet through software download websites such as http://www.download.com
6.4 Setting up your domain
Domain name pricing
Grapevine offers the following domains:
Top Level Domains
| asn.au |
2 year(s) |
$24 |
 |
| com.au |
2 year(s) |
$38 |
|
| id.au |
2 year(s) |
$32 |
|
| net.au |
2 year(s) |
$38 |
|
| org.au |
2 year(s) |
$17 |
|
| com |
1 year(s) |
$18 |
|
| com |
2 year(s) |
$36 |
|
Other
How do I register a domain name?
To register a domain name with Grapevine, simply follow this process.
- Open the domain name registration page
- Enter the domain name you want to register in the 'Domain name search' box.
- Click search. The domain name search results page will be displayed.
(Related domain names you might also want to register will be displayed here too).
- Choose the domain name you want to register and click 'View details or buy'.
- Follow the prompts to continue.
Please note that if you wish to buy a '.com.au' or '.net.au' domain name, you must be a commercial entity and possess either an ACN or ABN. For more information go to the .au Domain Administration Ltd website.
What is WHOIS?
The Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) 'WHOIS' Database is an official record that contains information regarding organisations that hold IP address resources and Autonomous System (AS) numbers in the Asia Pacific.
Anyone who registers a domain must provide information on who the legal owner of the domain is. WHOIS lets you look up that information. For example, the WHOIS for GMail.com will show Google Inc as the owner, along with their corporate address.
Users querying the database can also determine if a desired domain name is available.
Search the WHOIS database for a domain name.
Or to search for a specific IP address, visit the APNIC WHOIS website:
http://wq.apnic.net/apnic-bin/whois.pl
What is Domain Parking?
Domain parking is a term to describe a situation where a person purchases a domain and then does not place a complete website on it. It is common to have a 'coming soon' page constructed and placed on it, however this is not needed. If a domain is not 'parked' it will simply be inaccessible.
What is DNS and how does it work?
DNS stands for 'Domain Name System'. The computer where your website files are stored links a DNS address for your files to your domain name so that anyone can find your website on the internet by typing your domain name into their browser.
The DNS serves as the "phone book" for the internet by translating human-readable computer hostnames, for example www.grapevine.com.au, into the IP addresses that networking equipment needs for delivering information for example 66.230.200.100.
It also stores other information such as the list of mail exchange servers that accept email for a given domain, for example yourname@yourdomain.com.au
What is an IP Address?
An IP address is a string of numbers in the format xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, where xxx ranges from 0 to 255. An IP is used to represent a computer on the internet. In the context of web hosting, an IP address specifies where your website is hosted. The name servers of your domain are used to find this IP address. It is possible to host multiple websites on one IP address. This is referred to as virtual web hosting (multiple domains resolve to one virtual address). A dedicated IP implies that an IP address (or computer) is allocated to only one domain.
Why would I need a dedicated IP address?
For most people, a dedicated IP is not required. But for people that want to provide anonymous FTP or a website using SSL, a dedicated IP can make that easier. For more information, please contact Grapevine.
6.5 About our web hosting plans
What is storage space?
Storage space refers to the maximum amount of space your emails, databases, logs and website files can take up on our server. Every single letter on your website has to be stored somewhere on Grapevine's servers. Each letter may be one byte, and a megabyte is roughly one million bytes. Standard HTML pages are usually very small, but it is the extra images, scripts, and even databases that can take up large amounts of disk space.
What is monthly data transfer?
Monthly data transfer refers to the maximum amount of data (in gigabytes) you can send or receive each month, including emails and web traffic. Transfer is usually measured in gigabytes - billions of bytes. Once you go over your monthly limit, a host may slow traffic to your site to a minimal speed, shut your site down for the remainder of the month or charge you overruns. To avoid unwanted charges, Grapevine chooses to slow traffic to your site.
What are email inboxes?
Email inboxes are the maximum number of personalised email inboxes you can have on your selected plan, for example yourname@yourdomain.com
What is DIY website builder?
DIY website builder is a content builder that you can use to create and manage your website. Templates are also supplied to help you get underway.
What are mailing lists?
Mailing lists are the number of different email lists you can have on your selected plan, for example a footy club may have a juniors and seniors mailing list.
What is uptime?
Uptime refers to the amount of time your site is online throughout the entire month.
The best uptime would be 100%, but because things can break, Grapevine offers 99.9% uptime guarantees. This means that if your site is not accessible for more than 43 minutes in a single month, Grapevine will reimburse you, in line with the terms and conditions.
What is the difference between Linux hosting and Windows hosting?
Grapevine offers both Windows and Linux hosting options. The choice between Linux and Windows hosting depends on the requirements of the website you are building.
Windows would be the best choice if you are comfortable with IIS and do not have an understanding of how Linux works. Windows is also appropriate if you need to support Microsoft products such as ASP, MS Access or VBScript.
Using a Windows system at home will not affect your ability to communicate with a Linux server. Linux is much more common with web hosts due to its superior stability and because it is free.
6.6 Setting up your Grapevine hosted site
How do I upload my website to the internet?
Uploading your site can be done in many ways, but the most popular is file transfer protocol (FTP). FTP allows users to copy files between their local system and any system they can reach on the network
When your hosting account is created with Grapevine, you will also be provided FTP login details. Using software such as CuteFTP or WS_FTP, you can log into your host. You are then able to drag and drop files onto your web host. These files become live online instantaneously.
How do I track how many 'hits' my website gets?
- Hits - refers to the number of 'elements' loaded on your site. If one page has five images in it, viewing that page once adds 6 hits (one page + five images).
- Impressions - the number of times all the pages on your site are seen (also simply called pageviews). Impressions are sometimes referred to as 'hits' which can cause confusion
- Uniques - the number of people that visited your site
If a customer visits your website to look at two pages, and each page has 5 images on it, then your stats increase by 12 hits, two page views and one unique.
Tracking on your site can be either done server-side or remotely. With server-side statistics, log files are used to generate visitor information. This is usually much more accurate than remotely hosted solutions. In such cases, you usually have to add some javascript to your site. This javascript is then used to track visitor data.
Grapevine provides webhosting customers with 'Webalizer'; a fast, free web server log file analysis program. It produces highly detailed, easily configurable usage reports in HTML format, for viewing with a standard web browser.
For more information please visit: http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer/
As an alternative to Webalizer, the Google 'Analytics' toolkit is also very easy to use and effective in providing users with information regarding website visitors.
For more information please visit: http://www.google.com/analytics/
6.7 Programming options for your website.
What are HTML, PHP, ASP, Perl, etc?
These are all programming languages which are referred to by their acronyms. To create and publish your own website on the internet, your first step should be to decide what type of website you would like to create and what web design language you would like to use.
HTML: Hypertext Markup Language
PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor
ASP: Active Server Pages
JSP: Java Server Pages. This is a mix of normal HTML with Java code embedded.
Perl: not an acronym
Each programming language has its own benefits and uses. It is best that you research which language best fits your needs.
What is MySQL?
MySQL "My Structured Query Language" is the most popular programming language for adding, accessing and managing content in a database. Using a database with your website allows you to create a central source of information for content that appears on your site. For example an online shop may hold a database of all its products with their descriptions and images all in one place.
MySQL is a key part of LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP / Perl / Python), the fast-growing open source enterprise software stack. More and more companies are using LAMP as an alternative to expensive proprietary software stacks because of its lower cost and freedom from platform lock-in.
6.8 Security and payment options for your website
SSL is the most widely deployed security protocol used today. It is essentially a protocol that provides a secure channel between two machines operating over the internet or an internal network. SSL is a protocol, and in order to use the SSL protocol customers need a SSL Certificate. A SSL Certificate is a small data file that digitally binds a cryptographic key to your business/organisation's details, typically:
- Your domain name or server name
- Your company name and location
- In certain cases your contact details
An organisation needs to apply for and install the SSL Certificate onto their web server to initiate SSL sessions with browsers. Depending on the type of SSL Certificate applied for, the organisation will need to go through differing levels of vetting. Once installed, it is possible to connect to the website over https://www.domain... as this tells the server to establish a secure connection with the browser. Once a secure connection is established all web traffic between the web server and the web browser will be secure.
You need SSL if:
- You have an online store or accept online orders and credit cards
- You offer a login or sign in on your website
- You process sensitive data such as address, birth date, licence, or ID numbers
- You need to comply with privacy and security requirements
- You value privacy and expect others to trust you.
Grapevine offers the following SSL Certificates:
| Digital Certificate Quick SSL | 1 year(s) | $129.00 |
| Digital Certificate Quick SSL | 2 year(s) | $229.00 |
| Digital Certificate Quick SSL Premium | 1 year(s) | $249.00 |
| Digital Certificate Quick SSL Premium | 2 year(s) | $449.00 |
| Digital Certificate True Business | 1 year(s) | $299.00 |
| Digital Certificate True Business | 2 year(s) | $549.00 |
| Digital Certificate True Business Wildcard | 1 year(s) | $999.00 |
| Digital Certificate True Business Wildcard | 2 year(s) | $1,799.00 |
| Multi Domain Certificate | 1 year(s) | $999.00 |
| Multi Domain Certificate | 2 year(s) | $1,799.00 |
For more information on SSL certificates please contact us.
What is PayPal?
PayPal lets anyone with an email address send money to anyone else with an email address.
Each user signs up with PayPal and then enters their necessary banking and credit card information. Once registration is completed, your email address is all you need to send and receive money.
PayPal is owned by eBay.