| Domain Registration Answers to FAQ |
| What is a domain name? |
| A domain name is a friendly name for a server (computer) on the Internet. For example, in the URL http://www.genesiswebstudio.com, the domain name would be "genesiswebstudio.com". |
| What is a URL? |
| Short for Uniform Resource Locater, a URL is the global address for a particular website. This is the address typed into your browser to view your website on the Internet. For example, you would type in http://www.genesiswebstudio.com to access our home page. |
| What are nameservers? |
| A nameserver is a computer server that implements a name service protocol. It will normally map a computer usable identifier of a system or host to a human usable identifier for that host, and vice versa. For example, a Domain Name System (DNS) server might translate the domain name genesiswebstudio.com to a Internet Protocol address (IP Address). |
| What is mail forwarding? |
| Mail forwarding allows you to forward all email addressed to anything@ yourdomain.com to any destination email addresses of your choice. |
| What is domain forwarding? |
| Domain Forwarding is used to forward any visitors to your domain name to any destination of your choice. |
| What is managed DNS? |
| Managed DNS services allow you to manage DNS Zone records for your domain name. You can Add / Modify / Delete A, CNAME, MX, NS and SOA records for your domain name. |
| Web Design Answers to FAQ |
| How much does a custom website cost? |
| There are quite a few factors that affect the ultimate cost of your project. These factors include how many pages you are going to have on your site, if you will sell products, the graphic work involved, and how interactive your site will be. Web hosting and domain name registration is also required. |
How long does it take to design a website? |
| The time frame is determined by the size of your website, the complexity of your site design, and our current client design schedule. |
| Why can't I find my website in the search engines? |
Once your site has been submitted to the top Search Engines they may require several weeks, or even months to actually spider and list your website in their directories. How fast your site is listed, depends on each individual Search Engines database update schedule. We can assist you in all of your search engine marketing needs. (Additional charges may apply) |
| What screen resolution do you design the websites for? |
| Most sites are designed for an 800x600 computer screen resolution. However, the sites are optimized for viewing on larger resolutions. |
| Web Hosting Answers to FAQ |
| Where is Genesis Web Studio and its servers located? |
|
Genesis Web Studio LLC is based in Milford just northeast of Cincinnati, Ohio. However, Genesis Web Studio's servers are physically located in the Miami Exchange, a state-of-the-art datacenter in Miami, Florida.
We are physically connected to multiple tier-1 providers. We also have a support office in Miami where our hosting technicians operate from. Our web hosting support is staffed 24x7x365.
|
| What security measures do we have in place? |
| Physical security is managed by Miami Exchange. Only authorized personnel can access our cage. Online security, we keep our servers regularly patched, we have also hardened all our servers significantly and we regularly monitor for any sort of security threat to them. Passwords, security keys are all encrypted or hashed. We have implemented port-blocking, IP-blocking etc to reduce the number of access points on the servers. |
| How are you connected to the Internet? What type of connections? The type of backup connections? |
| We have a connection with InterNap, and all our bandwidth is served by InterNap. They are known for their reliability. The connection is BGPed with other providers in case of network downtime at InterNap (has never happened for us). These are all gigabit connections to the providers. |
| What uptime can I expect and is there any service guarantee? |
| Genesis Web Studio guarantees 99.9% uptime. Uptime is covered under our Service Level Guarantee (SLA). |
| Can I host more than one independant website? |
| Our Silver Plan allows you to host 3 websites. Higher plans allow more websites. All these websites are managed using one Hosting Control Panel (CP). CP allows you to create multiple mailboxes for each of these websites and enable spam and anti-virus feature individually. CP also allows you to activate various features for each of these websites. The control panel can have only one user. |
| Which hosting plan should I use? |
| When choosing a hosting plan you should take into consideration all current and possible future page file, image, database, and email account sizes. Choose a plan that also includes the features that you are looking for. Remember, files with an .asp extension, Microsoft Access and MS SQL databases require a Windows hosting plan. |
| How long does it take for an account to be activated? |
| Currently, all web hosting account activations are moderated due to security reasons. Once a payment is made, it may take up to 12 hours for your account to be activated. You will be notified by email once your account is activated with all the necessary details to log into your Control Panel and begin using your account. |
| For hosting my site with Genesis Web Studio, am I required to transfer my domain to Genesis Web Studio? |
| No, you are not required to transfer your domain to us. You need to just change the Domain Name Servers (DNS) setting with your current domain registrar. Genesis Web Studio DNS information is emailed to you when you add a domain during signup. |
| Can I test my website before changing nameservers to Genesis Web Studio? |
| Yes, for each domain you add to the control panel, you'll be given an Instant Access domain alias through which you may test your site before it's actually resolving. |
| What is Summary Disk Space? |
| Summary Disk Space is the total amount of space you can use across our servers. It is inclusive of web space (for your website files), mail space and database space. This space is based on average usage and not allocation. Every 24 hours, our system calculates how much total data you are storing on our servers (web + e-mail + database). At the end of a 30 day month, it would have 30 readings. The average of these 30 readings would be taken and that would be your actual summary disk space usage for that month. |
| If my database or website files become corrupt, can you restore them from a backup? |
| Yes, we will do so for free. |
| Can CGi Scripts be ran outside the CGI directory? |
| CGI/Perl scripts will have to be run inside the CGI directory. You can configure them from the Control Panel. |
| How does web hosting billing work? |
At the start of each billing cycle, our systems emails customers an invoice with a link to pay their balance. However you have an option to make a payment of any amount at any time. You can do this by the following steps:
- Login to your Hosting Control Panel.
- Select Billing from menu.
- Select Billing Profile and go down on this page.
- Enter the amount you want to pay in the format 00.00.
- Press select query button. This will take you to payment site.
- After your payment is received, our billing department will credit it to your account.
|
| What is HSPHERE? |
| HSphere is Control Panel software developed by Positive Software, Inc. (PSOFT.NET). We use their software to efficiently manage our servers and give our customers absolute control over their hosting. |
| If my bussiness expands can I upgrade automatically to a larger hosting plan? |
| From within your Hosting Control Panel, you can easily change your Hosting Plan. There is no fee and you can change at any time. When you change, the system credits payments you made for a billing period beyond the change date. It then charges your account for new plan fee starting from the change date. |
| How can I buy more add-ons once I've signed up for my account? |
| You can buy any sort of add-on, whether its a resource or a feature from within your Control Panel. If you want more disk space, you can click "Change" in front of the disk space indicator and increase your amount to the desired level. Similarly you can buy IPs, cold fusion accounts, etc. |
| How do I cancel my account? |
| Simply fill out this form. |
| SSL Certificate Answers to FAQ |
| What is SSL? |
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a security technology that is commonly used for encrypting communications between users and e-commerce websites, thereby securing server to browser transactions. The SSL protocol utilizes encryption to prevent eavesdropping and tampering of the transmitted data, and is used to secure information passed by a browser (such as a customer's credit card number or password) to a webserver (such as an online store).
SSL protects data submitted over the Internet from being intercepted and viewed by unintended recipients and as used by hundreds of thousands of websites in the protection of their online transactions with their customers, SSL is the de-facto industry standard Internet transaction security technology.
Contact us for help with all of your SSL Certificate needs!
|
| How do website visitors know if a website is using SSL? |
When a website visitor connects to a webserver using SSL they will see that the URL in the address bar begins with https:// rather than the usual http:// and also a small gold padlock will appear at the bottom of their browser.
Whenever a browser connects to a webserver (website) over https:// - this signifies that the communication will be encrypted and secure. The actual complexities of the SSL protocol remain invisible to the end customer.
In summary, SSL is the de facto web transaction security technology. Webservers have been built to support it and web browsers have been built to use it. SSL provides the ability to secure customers transactions transparently without the customer having to do a thing! |
| What is required for a webserver (website) to use SSL? |
| In order for a website to use SSL a SSL Certificate is required (also known as Web Server Certificates and Secure Server Certificates). SSL Certificates are installed onto the webserver hosting the particular website and allow access to the security functionality of the webserver itself. |
| How is a SSL Certificate installed onto a webserver? |
When SSL is first activated on the webserver, the webserver requires information about the identity of the website including the website domain name and company details.
The webserver then creates two cryptographic keys - a Private Key and a Public Key. The Private Key is so called for a reason - this key must remain private and secure, only residing on the webserver. The Public Key does not need to be secret and is placed into a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) - a data file which also contains all the website credentials.
The Private and Public keys are used in the encryption process, so that the data passing between the webserver (website) and the customer's browser remains confidential and secure.
The CSR generated is submitted to Certification Authorities during the SSL Certificate application process. The Certification Authority then validates the website credentials and issues an SSL Certificate containing the digital identity of the website, binding the domain name to the company details.
The webserver will match the issued SSL Certificate to the associated Private Key and allows the webserver to establish encrypted links between the website and customer's browsers. |
| What do I need to consider when purchasing a SSL Certificate for a particular application? |
Perhaps the most important differentiation between all the SSL certificates available on the market today, is the strength of the brand behind the SSL technology. SSL technology besides ensuring secure transmission of data, is an essential element in providing online customers with the confidence to buy or use a product or service.
For example, the greater the number of users visiting a website, the greater the probability that some customers may not complete a transaction, simply because they do not recognise or trust the brand behind the SSL technology.
Inevitably the well known brands from the credible long standing CAs are the most expensive SSL certificates on the market. If you have a low volume or development website and you decide that your customer's confidence is not affected at all by the brand behind the SSL certificate or the volume of customers that would have an issue are insignificant in number then the choice of CA and certificate is increased. Low volume websites can therefore enjoy significant savings on the SSL purchases by purchasing the lesser known brands of SSL certificates.
We suggest as a guide that if a website is performing more than 50 transactions per week then, it is advisable to use a known SSL brand.
Another important consideration is the typical or average transaction value that a website will process. If customers are expected to pay high amounts online the greater the probability that some customers may not complete a transaction because they do not trust the brand behind the SSL technology.
We suggest as a guide that if a website has an average transaction of greater than 50 USD, it is advisable to use a known SSL brand from a reputable CA.
Clearly for any SSL certificate to be taken seriously, it is important to ensure that the CA issuing the SSL certificate is well established and credible. The best way of determining the credibility of a CA is by simply establishing whether the CA in question owns its own trusted root.
You can examine trusted root ownership by double clicking the padlock seen in the browser during an SSL connection with a webserver. When the SSL Certificate appears, simply click the "Certification Path" tab to see which trusted root CA certificate issued the SSL certificate.
GeoTrust owns the Equifax root (Equifax Digital Certificate services became GeoTrust in 2001).
RapidSSL.com's RapidSSL and RapidSSL Wildcard product owns its own root. RapidSSL.com uses a different Equifax root (Equifax Secure eBusiness CA-1).
RapidSSL.com is owned and operated by GeoTrust, Inc. and GeoTrust is now owned by Verisign. Geotrust (www.geotrust.com) is the fastest-growing SSL Certificate Authority worldwide.
Contact us for help with all of your SSL Certificate needs!
|
