Support - Frequently Asked Questions
Pre-Sales Questions
Need a new website but don't know where to start?Do you need a new website created and don't know where exactly to start? Answering the following questions may help you get the ball rolling:
- Do you already have a website template design in mind on how you want the website to look? If so, what colors and other requirements do you have?
- What type of information would you like to have on your website?
- Would you like to sell items on your website?
- Do you already have content ready to place on the website (pictures/bio/text/etc)? If so, can you provide all of the content to us?
- What would you like people to do when they visit your website?
- How soon would you like to get started?
- Do you have a budget set?
- Do you already have a website or have you ever had a website before?
- Do you have any other questions or comments regarding your new website?
What services does your company provide?
Cirkuit Networks can provide you with a wide range of services for your business. We specialize in Dedicated Hosting Services, IT Management Solutions, E-Commerce Solutions, Search Engine Optimization & Marketing, and Custom Programming Services.
Can I register a domain name with you?
Sure. While registering your domain through us is certainly not required to use our hosting service, we do offer a domain registration option for an extra $15.00 USD a year.
Do I *have* to register my domain name with you?
Not at all. You can register your domain name with any one of the domain registars that are available on the net.
What payment methods do you accept?
Our order system accepts Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover. In addition we also allow payment via Paypal Subscriptions.
How long will it take to get my account up and running?
Time till activation can vary. Once you sign up for an account and payment has been recorded, you should receive an email welcoming you to Cirkuit Networks and detailing how to access your new account within 12 hours (Usually within moments!).
Please note that once your account is active on our servers, there is still the matter of your domain name propagating out to all the various name servers on the Internet before your site is globally accessible, which can take 72 hours or longer.
How are your servers connected to the Internet?
Our Peering relationships with major carriers and content providers means Cirkuit Networks customers always maintain the fastest possible server-to-network performance. Fully redundant OC-192 networks means always on connectivity. In the event your infrastructure needs to grow, Cirkuit Networks is ready to follow your lead. We can start from a small server setup and scale to handle multiple servers, or entire IT data systems. You can view more information on our Hosting Fact Sheet
How many accounts do you put on each server?
No more then it can handle. We know this sounds extremely vague, but there's no way to feasibly say "we put XX sites on one server." Sites come in various shapes and sizes, it is entirely possible that a large corporate e-commerce Web site may require its own dedicated server due to the amount of traffic and load they place on it on a daily basis, whereas a server that hosts nothing but smaller static personal pages may be able to adequately host several hundred sites. There are simply too many variables in the entire process to say "X sites per server, that's the target." We constantly monitor the performance and load of each of our servers, making adjustments where we can to provide all of our clients with the best possible performance. When the time comes that a given server reaches a point where we feel it 'has enough on its hands,' then we simply obtain a new server.
Will I be able to FTP to my account on the server?
Web Hosting (shared) accounts come with FTP, SFTP, and SCP access. This is done as a security precaution to protect your data and the server's data. SSH and other protocols are available if you have your own dedicated or co-located server.
What limits are there to what I can host on my account?
Aside from the amount of drive space you are limited to, you can pretty much store anything you like on your Web site, with one rule: It must be legal to distribute within the United States of America. This means: No Pirated ("Warez") files, no Child Pornography, no stolen credit card numbers, etc. If it's legal to have / distribute in the US, it's safe on your website. Please see our Web hosting Terms of Service / Acceptable Use Policy, or contact our sales department if you have further questions on this matter.
Can I ping/trace one of your servers to see what the connectivity is like?
When pinging or tracerouting our servers for informative purposes only, please run these programs on www.cirkuit.net.
What if need to upgrade/downgrade my account down the road?
No problem. Accounts can be be ugpraded or downgraded at any time by contacting us, and they will get you all squared away.
There is no additional fee or service charge to change your plan, aside from the new plan's cost.
I have a country specific domain (.uk, .au, etc), can you host that?
Country specific domain names are no problem for us, be it a .uk, .ru, or any other Country specific top level domain. The only requirement is that you must be able to 'point' your domain to use our nameservers.
In addition, we can also host domains in the new ICANN TLDs, such as .biz, .info, and .name, and soon .mail
How is bandwidth usage calculated?
Bandwidth usage is calculated on the 95th percentile. You will be contacted by a representative to upgrade your account if you go over, or expected to go over, your bandwidth limit. Additional bandwidth can also be purchased for your account.
How long of an agreement do I have to sign up for?
All of our web hosting plans and other shared hosting packages are based on a month to month basis. Yearly and quarterly options may also be available. This decision is up to you.
Do I have to own a domain to host my website with you?
No, even though using a domain to host your website with us is strongly encouraged, it is not required.
Do you offer any Unlimited Bandwidth Hosting Accounts?
No, we do not. "Unlimited Bandwidth" as sold by some other hosting providers is a falsehood. There is no such thing as an "Unlimited Bandwidth" connection to the Internet. Even when you are buying high-volume lines such as OC-3s and Gigabit Ethernet, there is a limit to how much data can be 'stuffed' down that line in a month. Thus bandwidth does cost money, the more one uses, the more one has to pay to maintain the infrastructure they use. Many "unlimited" hosts sell their accounts with the logic that most folks will never use more then a trickle of bandwidth per month for their accounts. And the folks who actually have busy sites and start to take advantage of those "unlimited" accounts? Well, before your sign up with any "unlimited" host, do yourself a favor and read their Terms of Service very carefully, many times you'll find a loophole that allows the host to bill you an enormous fee for "overages" if they deem your site to be using too much bandwidth (sometimes as high as $10-20 per gig), or if your content doesn't meet their 'requirements' as to the types of files you can host in the account.
Do you charge a setup fee for hosting accounts?
No. All of our shared hosting account plans are offered with no setup fee. Aside from your first months payment, there is no additional fee collected at the time you sign up. There may be setup fees for our dedicated and co-located servers and e-commerce packages.
Domain Name Questions
What are your nameservers?
The Nameservers that clients of our shared hosting services need to 'point' their domains at are:
NS1.CIRKUIT.NET
NS2.CIRKUIT.NET
What is Domain Auto-Renewal, and how does it work?
Auto Renewal is for the convenience of having us renew your domains for you automatically within your account.
Email Questions
What information do I need to setup email client (Outlook, Eudora, etc)?
You can use mail.cirkuit.net for both your POP3 and SMTP servers for your e-mail client. Use your complete e-mail address for your username and the password that was given to you. Check here for additional settings and configuration options.
Where do I check my web based e-mail?
You can check your webmail at https://webmail.cirkuit.net/
Technical Questions
What kind of servers do you use?
The servers we use for our shared hosting consist of Dell Poweredge Mount Rackable servers for performance. We offer customized servers for our dedicated and co-located server hosting packages. Dedicated and Co-Located servers can be installed with Windows, FreeBSD, or any Linux based operating system you may require.
Will my site have it's own dedicated IP address?
For the shared web hosting plans we distribute our websites over specific IPs accordingly to balance out the traffic running through each IP. This method provides easier management and smooth redundancy throughout our web servers.
The e-commerce hosting packages and dedicated server packages come with their own dedicated IP address.
Will I be able to setup and alter my own CRON jobs?
Yes. If you need help setting up a crontab job, please contact a support representative.
Do your services provide Spam Filtering/Antivirus for my email?
Yes, all e-mail that goes through our servers is checked with ClamAV with qmail-scanner and also checked against spam lists such as SORBS and RBLSMTP. We also offer barracuda spam firewall service for additional spam filtering as an upgradable service.
Do you maintain backups of our websites in the event of a disaster?
Our shared servers are running RAID and are backed up on a rotating basis, there is a nightly, weekly, and monthly backup. Routinely copies of these backups are moved off of the server they reside on to provide a recovery point in the event of a server hardware failure. These regular account backups have been used by support personnel in the past to retrieve a clients website data in the event they have accidently deleted content from their account, However, we, as a rule, do not guarantee the integrity or safety of data stored on client accounts. It is the clients responsibility to maintain backups of all data stored in their account. (Web pages, code, databases, etc)
Backups can be packaged up/downloaded by the client at any time through your sftp or ftp account.
Do your hosting accounts support Email access via IMAP?
Yes. In addition to the standard POP3 method of email retrieval, clients can also use IMAP based email software to access their account.
Is there a size limit to email attachments I can receive?
No. The only size limit that applies here would be the amount of free disk space left in your account. However, there is a 2MB file size limit only through our web mail interface.
I'm having trouble sending email via my account, help?
A number of ISPs (MSN, Earthlink, Verio, and others) have recently been blocking or redirecting TCP port 25 from within their network. In these instances, when you try to send mail via your hosting account, your connections to mail.<yourdomain>.com are either being blocked, or redirected to your ISP's mail server. The practice of blocking outbound port 25 is an attempt by ISPs to keep spammers from signing up for their ISP service, and then using their access to send out spam emails via open third party mail relays. If you are using an ISP service that blocks/redirects port 25 in this fashion, you will need to contact them to discuss and alternative solution.
What types of activity count towards my monthly bandwidth limit?
Any traffic that runs through your unique user id is tracked. This includes, but is not limited to FTP, Mail, and Web usage.
Someone is hotlinking to images on my website, how can I stop them?
Please contact one of our support representatives if you are having problems with someone hotlinking images from your website.
How can I create my own custom error pages? (404, 403, etc)
You may create your own custom error pages through your .htaccess file in your web site public_html directory. An example of creating a custom 404 error page would be to add the following line to your .htaccess file:
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yourdomain.com/nofile.html
If you need help with creating a custom error page for your website, please contact one of our support representatives.
