First thing to do is find out if it’s down for everyone – or just you.

www.isitdownorjust.me is the answer. Type in your domain name, and it will see if it’s down for everyone- or just you.

If it’s down for everyone- you probably aren’t on this site either- because our entire server is offline or under attack.

But, if it is just you- we need one critical piece of info- your IP address.

Go to www.whatismyip.com and get the IP address you are using. An IP address usually looks like this 192.168.0.1 or something similar.

Get the ip and email us from your gmail account- (because everyone should have a gmail account) or call us at 937-228-4433

More than likely what has happened is that your ip has been blocked after someone tried to access email or your FTP too many times with an incorrect password and the server security software blocked it.
Thanks.

One of the things you have to decide when getting your own site is how you want to handle your new email accounts. Now that you have your own URL, and can set up as many email accounts as you want with your own hosting, picking the right one for your devices is important.

One thing to remember, don’t go crazy creating new email accounts for your site- like info@ contact@ etc- a lot of that can be handled with forwarders to your main e-mail. Email accounts should really belong to people- who are responsible for responding- not to “the business” where no one is responsible.

All business correspondence by employees should be handled with company email- so don’t forward company emails to private accounts since you won’t be able to track them or recover possibly important email if an employee dies or leaves.

As to which protocol to choose, here’s some great information from our friends at DataYard:

You should be aware that the two protocols offer a different end-user experience. If you are used to POP and switch to IMAP, at first you might perceive normal IMAP behavior as problematic, but really you just have to get used to it. The main difference between the two is that, when using POP, all of your mail is downloaded and stored on your local hard drive, whereas IMAP stores everything on the server and the actions performed within your mail client are replicated on the server. IMAP is particularly useful in scenarios where you need to access mail from multiple devices, but you can leverage a POP account to allow you to do the same thing (though you will be taking up storage space on all devices used). With IMAP, the folders you create will exist across all devices you use, whereas you will have to manually create the folders across all devices with POP.

In a nutshell, POP is great for single-device use and can be used across multiple devices if you configure your clients to save messages on the server. IMAP makes e-mail across multiple devices much simpler, and you are not taking up storage space on your devices since the mail will only be saved on the server.

via Switch From POP to IMAP (Outlook 2010) | DataYard.

Note, as part of your NextWaveHosting solution- you have access to webmail at www.yourdomain.tld/webmail this is the mail that’s on the server and you have three different applications to access the same account: Horde, Roundcube and Squirrelmail. You could use any of these and keep all the mail on the server and never have to deal with an email client, and your mail would be sent from the server, never using your own IP address (which comes from your ISP – and can, on occasion get blocked).

However, most people want to access email on their smart phone and also on their computer as well as a tablet.

Remember, if you set up one device to access email as a POP account- it downloads and keeps the mail on that device (although it can be set to leave it there for a specified period). I keep my laptop as a POP account- and leave the mail on the server for up to 7 days before it gets deleted. I set up my iPhone and iPad with IMAP accounts- so I can view mail and still leave it for the laptop to download.

We recommend using Thunderbird for your email client because it’s open source and versatile. However, Apple mail is also good if you have a Mac. We’re not huge fans of Microsoft Outlook, although it is improving.

The video above will briefly explain how to quickly check your email in your browser. We recommend downloading and installing Thunderbird on your main computer(s), but the process shown in the video is a great way to quickly check your mail on any computer.

The video above will briefly show you how to create a new email account that features your domain.

The video above will briefly show you how to login to you WordPress and CPanel and explain what the difference is between them.

What is: a web site, hosting, dial-up, URL, search engines and meta tags, and all the other important questions- explained in English.

A web site is a lot like a yellow pages ad in a global phone directory. The difference is- there are no categories or single index- it’s a tangled web of different sites with many different interconnections.
Your site can be as simple as a yellow pages ad. A static page or pages, with pictures, copy and contact information. The other end of the spectrum is a database driven fully interactive site with constantly changing data. The difference between the two is driven by how much money you have and how well your customers needs can be solved on the web.

Most sites are found because someone saw it in an ad and went to the url (uniform resource locator) by typing it in- for example www.thenextwave.biz or by getting an e-mail with the url attached or a link from another site.

URL’s need a little explanation. The internet doesn’t really use letters to find your site- your site is actually a number- but remembering something like 66.96.238.136 doesn’t come naturally to most of us. So when you type in www.nextwavehosting.net your computer sends a message to a domain name server that keeps records of what numbers go with your name and quickly sends the number back to your computer so it knows where to go.

Domain names are pretty important, if you go to sony.com you expect to find Sony Corporation, makers of TV’s. computers etc. Your domain name is critical to your business- the shorter the better, the closer it is to your business name or a description of your services the easier it is for your customers to remember.

The suffix, .com, .net, .biz etc. are run by different registrars. We can help you find if your name is available, and help you register it for less than what most people can (we typically register names for $20 a year while others charge $35). You can have multiple names pointing to your site- and multiple suffixes. We don’t charge extra to point additional names- as many as you want to register — we’ll point. There is no difference to which suffix you choose except that some are reserved for special groups (.edu for education, .gov for the government etc). Be warned, there is one outfit called .new who have a whole bunch of neat suffixes available, but they aren’t understood by a majority of users (we only use universal urls).

Once you have a URL name registered with a registrar, you point it to a nameserver. Ours are ns.nextwavehosting.net and ns2.nextwavehosting.net The nameserver (ns.nextwavehosting.net) tells the domain name server (run by the registrars) where the your site servers are. Our servers are on the East Coast near one of the Internet’s main junctions.

The amount you pay to host your site each month varies based on the size of your site (storage space) and the amount of data (bandwidth) that is called by visitors. We have different sized packages for different requirements. We quote the prices monthly but bill annually because we don’t want to charge more for billing administration.

Hosting a site is not the same as Internet access. We do not provide access. Access is widely available from dial-up modem or high-speed access like DSL and cable modems. Access is your physical connection to the internet- and even though it usually comes with an e-mail account, we strongly recommend that you use e-mail through your site, here’s why.

Suppose you access the Internet through the phone company- your e-mail might be john.doe@Ameritech.net, or through the cable company, where it would be john.doe@Dayton.rr.net. When you switch access, you lose that e-mail address, or if they go out of business like excite@home did, you may be stuck with no way to get your e-mail. You may be in hundreds or thousands of peoples address books- with a dead e-mail. Another reason not to use their e-mail address is because you are missing an opportunity to promote your web site. If you are John@Doe.com, people may go see what the latest offerings of The Doe Company are.

Once you own a domain name, you control your Internet destiny.

One of the most frequently asked questions is what do I do if I have AOL?

AOL is a wonderful online community and very easy to use. AOL provides value added access – they are your access provider to the Internet and add a proprietary community that is easy to understand and use. A little known fact is that the original interface was designed by Apple Computer and licensed to AOL- that may explain why it is so easy to use.

AOL is not good for a business. While their interface has improved, they still provide a browser (that’s the software people use to view your site- others are Netscape and Explorer) that is not fully compliant with Internet standards. It also stops you from promoting your site with every e-mail (see above).
Having your own site doesn’t mean you have to give up your AOL account and the many features you may like. You can still chose to access the net through their modems, or you can use alternative access like DSL or cable, but then chose a “bring your own access” plan that is less expensive. For $4.95 a month you can keep your aol screen names with limited access as you start switching your friends over to your own proprietary e-mail address. One of the nice things about leaving AOL – less junk mail in your inbox.

With your own domain, you can set up different e-mail addresses and boxes for multiple people or even forward all your e-mail to another address.

The last part of having your own site is promoting it. Since the web doesn’t have one central index, people use search engines to find your site if they don’t have an ad, card or other prompt in front of them. Some of our favorites are google.com, hotbot.com and dogpile.com. These engines search by “crawling” the net and reading content on your page. Most are prompted to index your site by things called “meta tags” You can see a sites tags by calling up the page and then doing a view:source where you will see the actual code for the page. Meta tags and page descriptions are included on any well-designed site. All of our sites have them, and our hosting package includes a control panel to submit your page to search engines. We also have an advanced software package that we use to optimally tag your site and submit it to even more directories as an added service.

Yahoo is a different type of directory — an index that requires a manual submission. We do not do Yahoo submissions, but advise you to do it yourself. You can pay them for higher positions and faster submissions- we feel this model will fall by the wayside over time.

We have determined that clients who received the updates made available in Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-048 and do not have Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) installed might receive an error message – “Cannot Connect to Server” – when trying to send mail using any version of Outlook or Outlook Express.

If you are experiencing this error, please visit Windows Update and verify that you have Service Pack 3 installed. Clients were able to successfully send mail after it’s installation.

Please note that we do not support Outlook Express, because it does not integrate with our spam filtering software. For better support and a superior email experience, please use Mozilla Thunderbird, or the web mail system included with your Next Wave Hosting account.