Welcome!

We hope this Getting Started guide is going to be useful in setting up your website and email.

How to Get Support

If you run into any problems or if you have questions while setting up your site, do not hesitate to contact our 24/7 support team for assistance. Our experienced team will gladly (and quickly!) help you get going.

How to Manage Your Account

The Control Panel is the main administration tool that allows you to manage every aspect of your hosting account, including the DNS configuration of your domain names, your mailboxes and email settings, as well as files, databases, backups, and other hosting services.

Please refer to the Welcome email for the exact URL of the Control Panel for your hosting account. You can use your account details to log in.

Domain Name Setup

If you just purchased your domain name and your hosting account together, the DNS configuration of your domain name is already configured correctly and you can skip this section.

For domain names that you manage on your own, there are two ways to point them to your hosting account:

1. Point the domain name to the name servers of the hosting account. This can be done at your domain registrar. The name servers in question are listed in the Welcome email. We recommend that option because it is the most straightforward one.
2. If you have to use third-party name servers for your domain name, you have to edit its DNS records to point them to the correct IP address. This is the most complex way to do this, and you would have to maintain the DNS records yourself.
   In order to use your hosting account for your website and email, your apex domain (e.g., “example.com”, without the “www” part), the “www” subdomain (e.g., “www.example.com”), and the MX record of your domain should ultimately point to the IP address of your hosting account. This IP address is also listed in the Welcome email.
   If you are not sure how to do that, please contact our support team for assistance. They can give you the exact DNS records you need. The administrators of the name servers of your domain can then help you set them up.

Parked Domain Names

Any additional domain names that you want to use should point to your hosting account as well. They have to also be added on the Domain Parking page of the Control Panel.

Setting Up Your Website

If you have a website already, you should upload it to your hosting account to have it published. You can move an existing site from another hosting provider to your account as well.

It is also possible to create a brand new website with the tools available in the Control Panel, for example using WordPress.

WordPress

WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that you can use to easily build your website.

Our hosting service is designed to work seamlessly with WordPress. You can use the dedicated WordPress administration tools in the Control Panel to perform otherwise complex and error-prone tasks safely and quickly with just a few clicks.

Security

Hacking attacks on websites are quite common, so it is important to keep your website secure. We would recommend that you review the various security measures you can take to protect your website. The most important things are to always keep the software of your site up-to-date and to use passwords that are hard to guess.

SSL Certificate

You can also easily make your website more secure for your visitors by setting up an SSL certificate for your site on the SSL/HTTPS page of the Control Panel. This way, connections to your site will be encrypted.

Email

Email is a comprehensive service with multiple settings you can fine-tune. Your mailboxes can be managed on the Mail Manager page of the Control Panel.

You can use an email program (such as Outlook, Mail, or Thunderbird, for example) to access your mailbox. Although the settings are very similar for all email programs, the configuration process of each application may vary. This is why we have detailed guides on configuring the most popular email programs.

Our servers are configured to use the following file names for start/main pages:

index.html
index.htm
index.shtml
index.php

The order above also shows the index files priority.
Let’s say for example you have index.html, index.php and index.htm in your account’s main folder.
The server will take as start page the index.html file, as it has highest priority.

You can change the default/main page priority or add other files to the list above by using .htaccess file. You need to create an .htaccess file in your site’s main folder and place the following line in it:

DirectoryIndex filename.html

Where filename.html will be the name of your default/startup page. You can define several pages by placing the names separated by spaces, for example:

DirectoryIndex filename.html otherfile.php mypage.htm

To copy text from a DOS prompt, right-click on the DOS window, and choose Mark:

Then, drag your mouse to select the text:

After you have selected the area of text that you want to copy, press Enter to save the marked area to your clipboard. You can paste it by pressing Ctrl+V.

The supported server-side scripting languages on our servers are PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, and Tcl.

Java, JSP, ASP, and ColdFusion are not supported on our servers.

Note that JavaScript is different from Java, and is not related to the software on the hosting server. JavaScript code is executed by the web browsers of visitors locally on their own computers.

page.htm

There are several directories at the topmost level of your hosting account. They are:

• /awstats – This directory contains the processed information that AWStats generates when parsing the Apache logs. Note that if you have not enabled AWStats from the Site Statistics section of the Control Panel, this directory will not be present.
• /backup – This directory contains the backups of your hosting account that you may have created from the Backup section of the Control Panel. The backups stored in /backup/temporary are going to be deleted automatically three days after they have been created.
• /logs – Here you will find the raw access logs of the Apache web server. These files contain unprocessed information about who has visited your site.
• /private – This directory is accessible only via FTP and the Control Panel. It is not directly accessible to the web server, and its contents cannot be viewed with a web browser. However, your scripts can use it to store sensitive data, for example.
• /stats – The statistics software, Webalizer, keeps in this directory the information it generates when parsing the access logs of the web server.
• /www – Your web content is in the subdirectories of /www. For instance, the files of your main web site, www.example.com, should be in the /www/www directory; if you have a subdomain like “family” (family.example.com), the files should be in /www/family.

These directories cannot be modified directly. They are readable by FTP, but you cannot rename or delete them. You can directly modify the files in the subdirectories of /www and the ones in the /private directory. This can be done by using either the File Manager of the Control Panel or an FTP program.

On the Backup section of the Control Panel you can manage your backups. The Restore section can be used to extract data from a backup.

You can change your domain name by following these steps:

1. Log into your Control Panel.

2. Go to the Domain Parking page:
   
   

3. Add the new domain name to the list of parked domain names there.

4. Allow several minutes for the parking procedure to complete.

5. If you have purchased the domain name at a third party registrar, you will need to update its nameservers there. The nameservers will be e-mailed to you once the domain name is parked.

6. Use the set as primary button next to the parked domain name to switch the main and the parked domains. This way, the new domain name will become the main one for your hosting account, and the previous one will become parked.

Changing the main domain name of the account will not affect the email users that are set up. All mailboxes will still work in the same way for both domain names.

If needed, you can remove the first domain name from the Domain Parking page.

Please note that this procedure will not change the username for the account. Once your hosting account is created, the username for the Control Panel cannot be modified.

The timezone setting on our hosting servers depends on the physical location of the particular server.

• Our servers in the Hong Kong data center are in the HKT time zone (UTC/GMT +8 hours).

• Our servers in the US data center (Boston, MA) are in the EST time zone (UTC/GMT -5 hours). During the summer, when Daylight Saving Time is in effect, the time zone is changed to EDT (UTC/GMT -4 hours).

• Our servers in Europe are in the EET time zone (UTC/GMT +2 hours). When Daylight Saving Time is in effect, the time zone is changed to EEST (UTC/GMT +3 hours).

You can check our Changing the server timezone in PHP scripts article for more details on how to change the server timezone for your PHP scripts.

If you wish to change the timezone for your MySQL sessions, please refer to our Setting MySQL session time zone article.

You can block IP addresses and ranges via your Control Panel’s Protection section. You can find details at the Block by IP section.

To manually block a specific IP address from accessing your site, you should add the following line to your .htaccess file:

deny from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP address that you want to block. If the .htaccess file does not exist, you can simply create it.

For example, if you want to block 1.2.3.4, the line in your .htaccess file should be:

deny from 1.2.3.4

To prevent a range of IP addresses from a given network (123.234.0.0) from reaching your site, you can do that in the following way:

deny from 123.234.

This way all addresses that start with 123.234 will be blocked.

You can add as many such rules as you want. You should note that if your .htaccess gets large, it may slow-down the loading of your site, as the file is being processed on each file request.

iCal uses the WebDAV protocol to publish your calendar to the server. However, WebDAV is not supported on our servers.

In order to publish your calendar, you can use the iCal FTP application. It is available at https://download.cnet.com/iCal-FTP/3000-2124_4-26973.html. iCal FTP does not require the server to support WebDAV, and it will allow you to publish your calendars to your website via FTP.

You can access the window/menu that allows you to delete your browser cache (cached data and files) in the most widely-used web browsers (Firefox/Chrome/Safari/Internet Explorer/Edge/Opera) quite easily. All you need to do is press the following combination of keys on your keyboard simultaneously while your browser is active and on focus:

Ctrl+⇧ Shift+Del

If you are using a Mac keyboard, you should press:

⌘ Command+⇧ Shift+Del

In the window/menu that appears, you should choose to delete ONLY your cache (cached data and files).

Every device on the Internet has a numeric IP address. The Domain Name System (DNS) keeps track of these addresses, much like a telephone directory. It allows the use of addresses that are easier to remember. For example, when you visit example.com, this address is being looked up in the DNS, and your browser receives the actual IP address.

• Apache: A popular open source web server software. It is characterized by excellent performance and reliable security. We use the Apache web server on our hosting machines.

• ASP: ASP stands for Active Server Pages. It is a server-side technology developed by Microsoft. It is not available on our servers.

• Autoresponder: A program that automatically sends a predefined response message to incoming email messages.

• CGI: CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface. It is a generic way to execute scripts on a web server. A CGI script is usually a program that processes data taken from the visitor of the page (for example from a form).

• Client: A client is a computer program that runs on the local computer. It connects to servers on the network. Examples of clients include web browsers and email programs. See also Server.

• Client-side: Running on the computer of the client. For example, a client-side scripting language is JavaScript. The JavaScript code in a web page is executed by the web browser, and is independent of the server that hosts the website. See also Server-side.

• Control Panel: The Control Panel of your hosting account is a web-based application on the hosting server. It allows you to administer your hosting account via a web browser.

• Cookie: A text file sent by the web server to a user’s web browser. Cookies are usually used to track and facilitate a visitor’s session on a website.

• Data Transfer: The total amount of Internet traffic of a website.

• Disk Storage: The amount of hard drive space on the server that is available to a hosting account.

• DNS: DNS stands for Domain Name System. It is a distributed hierarchical database used to translate domain names into IP addresses. Most ISPs keep local DNS servers with replicated information about the DNS records of domain names. This way DNS queries are served faster, at the expense of slow updates when changes are made to the global DNS (e.g., when changing the nameservers of a domain name).

• DNS A Record: An A Record, short for Address Record, is a DNS record that translates a domain name or a subdomain into an IP address. For example, the domain name example.com translates to the IP address 93.184.216.34.

• DNS MX Record: An MX Record, short for Mail Exchange Record, is used to define the email server that handles email for the domain name.

• DNS Propagation: This is the process of updating the global DNS records. This process can take up to 24 hours.

• Document root: The contents of the document root directory will be displayed to a visitor when they open your site. For example, if your domain is yourdomain.com, and the document root is /home/yourusername/www/www/, the contents of that directory will be available at http://yourdomain.com/. Respectively, you should place the files of your website into that directory.

• Domain name: A domain name is a human-readable name that is used to identify a host, or a network of hosts, on the Internet. Domain names are translated into IP addresses by means of the DNS system. An example of a domain name is example.com (without ‘www.’).

• Domain name registrant: The individual or organization that has registered a domain name. This individual or organization has the right to use the domain name in question for the registration’s period of validity.

• Domain name registrar: A company that registers domain names. A registrar is responsible for registering and updating the DNS information of the domains it registers.

• Domain Parking: A parked domain name is a domain name that is added to your hosting account. A parked domain name has no hosting account of its own, and points to the same website as the main domain name of the account.

• Dynamic web page: A dynamic web page interacts with the visitor, and changes the information that is displayed on it based on the visitor’s input. Examples of dynamic web pages are news sites where the visitor can choose the article they want to read.

• Email Client: A software application that is used to handle email messages. Commonly used email clients are MS Outlook, Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Eudora.

• Email Forwarding: When email forwarding is created for an email account, messages sent to its address are automatically forwarded to another address. For example, if you have set up forwarding for your.name@your-domain.com, so that it forwards to your.name@your-other-domain.com, email messages sent to your.name@your-domain.com will be delivered to your.name@your-other-domain.com.

• Email message headers: Email message headers are the lines at the beginning of each email message that contain technical information about the message itself. The email client program usually does not display them together with the body of the message. For example, the Subject, From, To, Cc, and Bcc fields of an email message are contained in headers.

• Firewall: A firewall is a software system that blocks unauthorized access to a computer or a network. A firewall can be running either on another computer on the network, or locally. Examples of local firewalls are ZoneAlarm and Windows Firewall. Anti-virus programs often feature firewall software, too.

• FTP: FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. This protocol is used to transfer files between a client and a server across the Internet.

• FTP Client: An FTP client is a program that connects to an FTP server, and is used to upload and download files. Examples of FTP clients are FileZilla, CuteFTP, WS_FTP, and Fetch.

• FTP Session Log: An FTP Session Log is a record of an FTP connection. It contains the history of commands sent to the server and the response. Such logs are very useful in debugging problems with FTP connections.

• Host: A host is a computer on a network that hosts services available to other computers on the network. Usually, one host provides several services at the same time. For example, a web server, a mail server, an FTP server, etc. can all be running simultaneously on the same host machine.

• HTML: HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. This is the language that is used to create hypertext documents on the web. It controls how web pages appear in a browser.

• HTTP: HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. This protocol is used to transfer data across the Internet. HTTP is the most commonly used protocol on the Internet, because websites are usually transferred over HTTP.

• IIS: IIS stands for Internet Information Services. It is a web server software by Microsoft that is required to run ASP and ASP.NET. It is not available with our hosting service.

• IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol): IMAP is a protocol for accessing and handling email directly on the mail server. See also POP.

• IP: stands for Internet Protocol. Along with TCP, this protocol is used to control data transmission over the Internet.

• IP Address: An IP address is used to identify a computer on a TCP/IP network (such as the Internet). IP addresses are extensively used in communication between computers and devices. An example of an IP address is 64.14.68.138.

• ISP: ISP stands for Internet Service Provider. ISPs are companies that provide access to the Internet.

• JavaScript: A client-side scripting language developed by Netscape. JavaScript code can be included within an HTML document, and is executed by the web browser. Since it is executed by the browser, it depends on the specific browser a visitor is using, not on the hosting server.

• JSP (Java Server Pages): A server-side scripting language developed by Sun Microsystems. It is not available on our servers.

• Local: Running on or pertaining to the same computer. See also Remote.

• MySQL: MySQL is a database server engine which provides fast access to the information stored in databases. It is usually used with PHP.

• Nameserver: A nameserver maintains a database of host names and IP addresses. It translates domain names to IP addresses.

• Perl: Perl stands for Practical Extraction and Report Language. It is a very powerful and popular scripting language, often used in CGI scripts.

• PHP: PHP stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. It is an open-source, server-side scripting language. It is often used to create dynamically generated Web pages.

• POP: POP stands for Post Office Protocol. It is an email protocol that mail clients use to download email messages from the remote email server. The main difference between POP and IMAP is that IMAP manages email messages directly on the server, while POP downloads them locally. See also IMAP.

• Protocol: a protocol is a set of rules that define the format for communication between computers on the network. Examples of protocols are HTTP, FTP, SMTP, IMAP, etc.

• Remote: Running on or pertaining to another computer on the network. See also Local.

• Server: A server is a computer program that runs on a host and provides services to other computer programs running on the same or other computers on the network. An example of a server is the Apache Web Server, and an example of a client is the Firefox Web Browser. The term can also be used to denote a computer that provides services accessible across the Internet. These services can include a web server, an FTP server, an email server, etc. See also Client.

• Server-side: Running on the server, independently of the client. For example, a server-side scripting language is PHP. PHP programs run on the server, and it does not matter what browser the client is using. See also Client-side.

• Shopping cart: A shopping cart is a web-based application designed to handle the e-commerce section of a website. Shopping cart software lets visitors browse for and purchase products online from the site.

• SMTP: SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. It is used by mail servers to send email messages to each other.

• SQL: SQL stands for Structured Query Language. A specialized language for sending queries to database engines which then return the matching entries from the database. The database engine available with our service is MySQL.

• SSH: SSH stands for Secure Shell. It is a protocol for secure access to a remote computer. See also Telnet.

• SSL: SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. It is an encrypted protocol designed to enable secure communication between two computers across the Internet. For example, URLs that begin with ‘https’ indicate that the connection will be over SSL. Online shopping sites frequently use SSL in order to safeguard private and sensitive information about orders, payments, etc.

• Subdomain: A subdomain is an individual address that can be defined within a domain. For example, subdomain.yourdomain.com is a subdomain of the domain yourdomain.com.

• TCP/IP: A widely used suite of protocols that controls communication over the Internet. TCP/IP defines how data is transmitted between hosts.

• Telnet: An insecure protocol for remote access to a host machine on the Internet. Telnet is not supported on our servers. See also SSH.

• TLD: TLD stands for Top Level Domain, the last part of a domain name. For example .com, .net, and .org are TLDs.

• URI: URI stands for Uniform Resource Identifier. It is a general form of identification for a resource. URI is a more general term than URL, as it includes URLs and other identifiers which are not URLs. For example, isbn:1594740232 can be interpreted as an URI; however, it is not an URL. See also URL.

• URL: URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. It is a specific type of URI which is typically used to refer to a resource (a file, for example) on the Internet, including the means to get it (usually, a protocol name). For example, http://www.example.com/ is a URL. See also URI.

• WAP: WAP stands for Wireless Application Protocol. It is a technology designed to provide access to the Internet for wireless devices, such as mobile phones and smartphones.

• Web-based application: an application program running on a remote server which can be accessed by means of a web browser. For example, the Control Panel of your hosting account is a web-based application.

• Web Browser: A program that interprets the HTML code of a web page, and displays the final result. For example, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Firefox are web browsers.

• Web Server: A program running on a network host that serves requests by clients, typically web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, etc. The term can also be used to denote the machine on which the web service runs. See also Server.

• Webalizer: A web-based application for analysis of the log files on a web server. It displays easily readable and detailed statistics about the visitors of a website over a given period.

• Webmail client: A web-based email client application. It can be used to access the email service on our servers from a web browser. It uses IMAP to connect to the mail server.

• WHOIS database: A database of information on domain name registrations. It is maintained by the registrars, and contains technical and registration information about domain names.

• WHOIS query: A WHOIS query, or lookup, is used to look up the domain name registration information and the domain name status in the global WHOIS database.

Windows 7/8/10/11

Please follow these steps to create a screenshot in Windows 7/8/10:

1. Open Snipping Tool by pressing Start, and type Snipping Tool in the search box.
2. You will be able to mark with your mouse the area you want to make a screenshot of. You can also use the drop-down menu button to make a screenshot of the active window or the full screen.
3. To choose the directory where you wish to save the screenshot file, select File, and choose Save as….

Windows XP

To create a screenshot on Windows XP:

1. Press the Print Scrn key on your keyboard to create a screenshot of the whole screen content, or press the Alt and PrintScrn keys simultaneously to create an image only of the content of the current window.
2. Open Microsoft Paint by navigating to Start > Programs > Accessories > Paint.
3. In Microsoft Paint, select Edit > Paste.
4. Select File > Save as…, and choose the directory you want to save the screenshot file in. Type the file name in the corresponding text field, and select the file type to be PNG (*.PNG).

Mac OS X

In Mac OS X, you can create a screenshot of the whole screen by pressing the Command, Shift, and 3 keys on your keyboard simultaneously. You can use the Command, Shift, and 4 keys simultaneously to mark with your mouse a custom area you want to make a screenshot of.

The new screenshot will be saved on your Desktop in a file named Picture # where # would be the number of the screenshot you have created. For example, if you have created just one screenshot, its file name would be Picture 1.

Android

On devices running Android 4.0 or later, you can make a screenshot by pressing together the Power/Lock and Volume Down buttons.

iOS

To create a screenshot in iOS, press together the Home and the Sleep/Wake button (on the top or side of your device). The screenshot will be stored in the Photos app by default.

Windows Mobile

You can create a screenshot on devices running Windows Mobile by pressing together the Power and Volume Up buttons. To find the screenshot, go to the Photos app > Screenshots folder.

This tutorial will show you how to clear your local DNS cache on:

• Windows
• macOS
• Linux

After you clear your local DNS cache, you should also reboot the network equipment (routers, modems, etc.) within your premises.

Clearing the local DNS cache on Windows

1. Press ⊞ Win+R on your keyboard to open the Run application.

2. Input the following command in the Run application window:

   cmd

3. Press ↵ Enter to open Windows Command Prompt. If your Windows account does not have admin rights, press Ctrl+⇧ Shift+↵ Enter.

4. Execute the following command in Windows Command Prompt:

   ipconfig /flushdns

5. Press ↵ Enter, and you should receive the following output:

   Windows IP Configuration

   Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache.

Clearing the local DNS cache on macOS

1. Press Ctrl+⌥ Option+⇧ Shift+T or go to “Finder” > “Applications” > “Utilities” > “Terminal” to open Terminal.

2. Input the following command in Terminal:

   dscacheutil -flushcache;sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

3. Press ↵ Enter to execute the command.
4. Enter your Administrator password as this operation requires administrator privileges.

Clearing the local DNS cache on Linux

Not all Linux distributions use the same DNS service by default, and Linux allows you to install alternative DNS services, so please refer to the official documentation of your Linux distribution and/or alternative DNS service for instructions on clearing your DNS cache.

You can find instructions on how to clear the DNS cache on a default Ubuntu installation and few alternative DNS services (binddns, dnsmasq, and nscd) listed below:

• Ubuntu (default installation)
• binddns
• dnsmasq
• nscd

Ubuntu (default installation)

To clear your local DNS cache on Ubuntu, you need to:

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+T to open a Terminal window.
2. Execute the following commands:
   sudo /etc/init.d/dns-clean restart
sudo /etc/init.d/networking force-reload

binddns

To clear the binddns cache:

1. Open a Terminal window. The default keyboard shortcut is Ctrl+Alt+T.

2. Execute the following commands:

   sudo /etc/init.d/named restart
sudo rndc restart
sudo rndc exec

dnsmasq

Follow the steps listed below to clear your dnsmasq cache:

1. Open a Terminal window. The default keyboard shortcut is Ctrl+Alt+T.

2. Execute the following command:

   sudo /etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart

nscd

You can clear the cache of nscd by performing the following actions:

1. Open a Terminal window. The default keyboard shortcut is Ctrl+Alt+T.

2. Execute the following command:

   sudo /etc/init.d/nscd restart

This tutorial will show you how to edit your local hosts file, so you can view and test a website without changing the DNS of the domain.

What is the hosts file?

The hosts file is a system file on your computer that maps hostnames to IP addresses. You can consider it your computer’s local DNS. When you connect to a hostname, your computer checks for matching records in your hosts file. If no matches are found in your hosts file, your computer checks for records in the global DNS.

Editing your hosts file

To edit your hosts file, you will need to perform different actions depending on your operating system. You can find step-by-step instructions for the most widely used operating systems listed below:

• Windows (10/8/7/Vista/XP/NT/2000)
• macOS
• Linux (Ubuntu)

Windows

1. Press ⊞ Win+R on your keyboard to open the Run application.

2. Input the following command in the Run application window:

   notepad

3. Press Ctrl+⇧ Shift+↵ Enter to open Notepad with administrator privileges.
   Note: A pop-up window may appear asking you to confirm that you wish to grant administrator privileges to Notepad.
4. Open the following file in Notepad (File -> Open):
   %WinDir%\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
5. To add a new mapping to your hosts file, add a new line at the end of the file in the following format:
   __IP_ADDRESS__ __HOSTNAME_1__ __HOSTNAME_2__You will need to replace the variables listed above as follows:
   
   • __IP_ADDRESS__ with the IP address for your hosting account. More information on how to find your hosting account’s IP address/es is available in the “IP addresses and DNS service” article.
   • __HOSTNAME_1__ and __HOSTNAME_2__ with your website’s hostnames (i.e. your-domain.com and www.your-domain.com).
   Note: You can insert a comment to the hosts file by adding a hashtag (#) character at the start of a new line or after a custom mapping followed by your comment.
   
   Example: If your hosting account’s IP address is 123.123.123.123, and your domain is your-domain.com, you will need to add this line to your hosts file:
   123.123.123.123 your-domain.com www.your-domain.com
6. Press Ctrl+S to save your changes to the hosts file.
7. Clear the cache of your browser.
8. Clear your local DNS cache.

Linux

1. Open a Terminal window. The default keyboard shortcut is Ctrl+Alt+T.

2. Input the following command in Terminal:

   sudo nano /etc/hosts

3. Press ↵ Enter to open your “hosts” file with the GNU nano text editor.
4. To add a new mapping to your hosts file, add a new line at the end of the file in the following format:
   __IP_ADDRESS__ __HOSTNAME_1__ __HOSTNAME_2__You will need to replace the variables listed above as follows:
   
   • __IP_ADDRESS__ with the IP address for your hosting account. More information on how to find your hosting account’s IP address/es is available in the “IP addresses and DNS service” article.
   • __HOSTNAME_1__ and __HOSTNAME_2__ with your website’s hostnames (i.e. your-domain.com and www.your-domain.com).
   Note: You can insert a comment to the hosts file by adding a hashtag (#) character at the start of a new line or after a custom mapping followed by your comment.
   
   Example: If your hosting account’s IP address is 123.123.123.123, and your domain is your-domain.com, you will need to add this line to your hosts file:
   123.123.123.123 your-domain.com www.your-domain.com
5. Press Ctrl+O to save your changes to the hosts file.
6. Clear the cache of your browser.
7. Clear your local DNS cache.

Cloudflare is a global content delivery network (CDN) provider that also offers free protection from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. You can use their services to mitigate DDoS attacks against your website or if you want to use a globally available CDN to serve your content.

We will use “example.org” as the domain name for this guide. You should, of course, use your own domain when making changes.

Origin SSL Certificate

Before you enable Cloudflare’s service for your website, we recommend that you first set up an SSL certificate for your website. If your hosting plan supports free Let’s Encrypt certificates, you can enable one on the SSL/HTTPS page of the Control Panel of your hosting account.

You should have in mind that the wildcard option does not work when you use Cloudflare, and you should only enable certificates for the individual hostnames. Usually, this is “example.org / www.example.org”, “mbox.example.org”, and any additional subdomains you may use.

Setup at Cloudflare

First, you have to sign up for a free Cloudflare account on their website. After your account is ready and verified, you should click on the “+ Add Site” button.

Enter your domain (without the “www” part) and click on the “Add site” button:

On the next page, scroll to the bottom, choose the “Free $0” plan and click “Continue”:

Cloudflare will scan for your existing DNS records and will show you a sample configuration that you can modify further:

You should delete the default wildcard record (the one for “*” at the top). It could leak the IP address of your origin website on our servers, and this may allow hackers to bypass the DDoS protection of Cloudflare if your site is under attack. Instead, you should add separate A records for each subdomain that you use.

If your email is on our servers, you should now click on the “+ Add record” button and add an A record for “mail” that points to the IP address of the server:

The IP address is available on the left pane of the Control Panel of your hosting account:

In this example, the IP address is 192.252.159.138.

When you are done, you should click “Continue”.

You will now have to change the name servers of your domain. If your domain name is registered with us, you can use the administrative panel for your domain to change them. If you are not sure how to do that, please contact the support team.

After that, Cloudflare will ask you to make some additional security and performance-related changes. These changes are optional and you can skip them. If you want to take a look at those, here is a summary:

• Improve security
  • Automatic HTTPS Rewrites – You can safely enable this setting.
  • Always use HTTPS – You can safely enable this setting.
• Optimize performance
  • Auto Minify – We would recommend that you leave these settings disabled for the time being. They have the potential to break some things, and since your domain’s name servers were just recently changed, you may not immediately detect such problems. They would only occur for some visitors.
  • Brotli – It should be safe to enable Brotli compression.

Finally, review the summary and click “Finish”. If you have followed our recommendations, you should have the following options enabled:

• Automatic HTTPS Rewrites: ON
• Always use HTTPS: ON
• Auto Minify: NONE
• Brotli: ON

After you finish, you should see the Overview screen of your site at Cloudflare.

You should have in mind that the DNS configuration of your domain is now hosted by Cloudflare. If you want to modify your DNS records, you won’t be able to do so using the DNS Manager of the Control Panel. Instead, you have to make all DNS changes at Cloudflare.

DDoS Protection

If your site is currently under attack, or you have been advised to do so, you should now enable the “Under Attack Mode” toggle available on the Overview screen:

You are done!