Web Hosting & Domain Registration Service that Stands Out in a Crowd! 

Welcome... now what's next?

Okay, you've just signed up for an account at TLCWebHosting.com. Now you have several options. We're going to assume that you have little experience with the process of web site hosting. The point of this document is to give you guidance on what you should do first with your new account, not necessarily how to do it. Much of the how to’s are available in the control panel manual.

The Control Panel

Let's start with you account management tool, the Control Panel. The Control Panel is a simple web based interface between you and your account features. The welcome letter explained how to get onto the Control Panel (http://Your-domain/cpanel) and the online documentation tells you how to use each feature. Let's discuss about where to begin.

Documentation

First off, we provide a fairly in-depth set of instruction manuals to help you find answers quickly. This manual will take you through our Control Panel tools with step by step instructions. Please investigate our entire help section.

Changing Your Control Panel Password

Within the welcome letter was a computer-generated password. It might be a good idea to change the password to something a little easier to remember but keep in mind, your site is as secure as your password. Use the Change Password tool (see instruction manuals > Change Password for instructions) in the Control Panel to make this change.

It is important to make your password as secure as possible by choosing a password that is impossible to guess. The weakest link in any security system is the people using it. People tend to choose passwords that can be guessed, or they write them down near the computer. Then they're surprised that a hacker intent on breaking into and tresspassing on their system would stoop so low as to steal this information. Here are some guidelines to follow.

Choose a password that:

• is at least 6 to 8 characters long
• is not a word in the dictionary (a favorite hacker tool)
• is not a name
• has numbers or symbols as well as letters in it
• has cap and lower case characters for extra security

Creating Your First Email Box

When you first sign up for TLCWebHosting.com, it includes several email boxes that you can set up and use. In order to download the email you have to do two things; 1) Create the email box on the server using the Mail Manager tool, and 2) create an email account in your email software on your computer to download the email from your new email box.

You can add email boxes using the Email Accounts tool in your Control Panel. Due to the many different email programs out there we cannot document how to install each one, but we do include the information that you'll need to set up your email in the welcome letter and a brief tutorial on setting up email in our help section.

Upload your website

Typically, clients wish upload their new website that they've designed. To do that you'll need to use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to upload your files. This just means moving your files from your computer to the server. Many web design programs have FTP capabilities included. Or you can use a regular FTP program. Either way, here's a very basic tutorial on FTP to get you started.

What Next?

That about wraps up the beginning of your online to do list.

You should check out our How To Guides and Tutorials. There is a lot of information on some important topics that should interest you.

Depending on which package you've signed up for, there are many items within your Control Panel that you can discover. We truly hope that you will continue to explore and enjoy the hosting services which we provide. If you have any questions, please drop line: Ask A Question.

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Web Hosting & Domain Registration Service that Stands Out in a Crowd!

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