From OCS Support Wiki

Here you'll find a categorized list of questions that we are frequently asked, along with their answers.

About OCS Solutions

How long have you been in business?

We have been in business since 1997 and hosting websites since 1999.

Where are you located?

We are located in the beautiful renaissance city of Florence, Alabama, in the northwestern part of Alabama. Our servers are co-located in several datacenters, geographically dispersed for redundancy, uptime, and distance to network backbones.

What is your business status?

OCS Solutions, Inc. is an incorporation in the State of Alabama in the United States. We are licensed by the state and the City of Florence.

Shared Web Hosting

General Questions

What is Shared Web Hosting?

Shared web hosting is our standard virtual web hosting service. We host your site on a server with other customers. This is the most economical way to host your site.

Do I need shared hosting, a VDS, or a dedicated server?

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is ideal for small to medium sites getting less than 1 million unique visitors per month who are served well by the features that come with our web hosting plans. Since shared hosting comes with full support, it is also ideal for people who do not have an IT staff or are not comfortable running their own server or VDS.

Since you are sharing a server with other people, you may be limited in some cases to certain configuration values that the system has set, or certain modules that can't be installed in the system due to problems they would cause for other customers. You are also more limited in RAM with shared hosting.

Virtual Dedicated Servers

Virtual dedicated servers give you control over the entire operating system, meaning that you can install whatever software you wish or run with different settings other than our virtual hosting ones. They are also ideal for people who need more than shared hosting but are not ready for or cannot afford a dedicated server.

Dedicated Servers

Dedicated servers let you enjoy the full control that a virtual dedicated server offers, but without having to share the server with anyone else. That means you'll get use of the entire hard disk array (starting at 80 GB of space) and the entire network connection and its monthly transfer limits (starting around 750 GB / mo).

What operating system do you use?

We use Linux almost exclusively. We use a mix of Debian and Ubuntu for our Webmin servers, and CentOS for our cPanel servers.

Do you offer Windows hosting?

For Windows, we offer:

We do not offer Windows shared hosting at this time.

Do you offer Java / Tomcat hosting?

No, we do not offer Java hosting at this time, nor have plans to in the immediate future. That said, we do have Java installed on all servers, which you are free to use in scripts and on the command line.

Do you allow SSH access?

Yes, all of our plans allow SSH access. It is enabled by default.

Do you limit network transfer rates?

No, we do not limit your network transfer on any of our plans. You are limited by the physical limits of our network equipment, but this is extremely high and it is very unlikely you can exceed this.

What happens if I go over my disk space, RAM, or network transfer limits?

We typically will ask that you go to the next hosting plan if the overage is going to be sustained. If the overage is brief and by a small amount, we generally waive any overage fees.

Do you create custom plans for shared hosting?

We typically only create custom shared hosting plans for very unique situations or for cases where the highest shared hosting plan doesn't provide enough resources. The packages that we have created have been very carefully balanced in resources, and while you may use a certain kind of resource more than another, the plans have been created with the goal of keeping the load on our servers low while providing you as much space, bandwidth, and RAM as possible. Since we do not oversell, we have to monitor and sell resources in a uniform way.

If you feel your situation is substantially unique enough for a custom plan, please contact us.

Can I get a static IP?

Yes, but only for SSL usage or DNS servers (on VDS's or dedicated servers only). The only reason on shared hosting you would need a static IP would be for an SSL certificate, and this is the only reason we can activate one. We charge $35 a year for a static IP.

Do you support Microsoft FrontPage Extensions?

No. Microsoft has not released nor made available Linux/FreeBSD versions of their Microsoft FrontPage extensions software since 2006. You can continue to use FrontPage without issue and publish your sites via FrontPage's FTP support.

We strongly recommend to clients using FrontPage that they upgrade to Microsoft's latest web design tool called Microsoft Expression Web. We have instructions on connecting it to your site in Using Microsoft Expression Web.

Billing / Payments

Can I change hosting plans easily?

Yes, you can upgrade or downgrade at any time. If you upgrade, you will be charged the prorated difference between your current plan and the new plan. We do not prorate on downgrades.

What forms of payment do you accept?

We accept:

Credit Cards (VISA, MasterCard, and American Express)
PayPal (VISA, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, and your checking / savings)
Purchase orders (with prior approval)
Business or personal checks

Is there a contract?

No, our service is month to month, and you can cancel at any time. You do have to agree to our Terms of Service, however.

How do I cancel?

We're sorry to see you go, but if you do wish to cancel, please fill out our cancellation form.

We will process your cancellation within 24 hours. You must submit your cancellation 24 hours before the due date on your invoice for cancellations to take effect. If you wait until after your invoice is due, you will have to pay for the next month of service.

We do not prorate cancellations. There are no refunds for any unused services on your account.

Note that once we process your cancellation, your account will be immediately deleted and inaccessible, so please be sure and save any data you will need before you request a cancellation.

What are your past-due payment policies?

If you feel you might be late with a payment, please contact us immediately. We can work out arrangements to keep your service active if you contact us BEFORE you miss a payment.

If your payment becomes past due, your account is subject to suspension at any time. We will generally try to contact you via phone and e-mail, but we reserve the right to suspend your account for non-payment after the due date.

With virtual dedicated and dedicated servers, your service will be immediately suspended if not paid by the due date.

A late fee of 10% may be applied to past due accounts. Repeated account suspensions may result in termination of service or adjustment of your account to quarterly, semi-annually, or annual payment.

Domain Names

How do I register a domain name?

There are several ways to register a domain name:

You can have us register a domain name along with your web hosting. This is the simplest option. Web hosting is required with a domain name if you want to host a website on the Internet. To browse our hosting packages and sign up, please visit our web hosting page.
You can register a domain name with us first before hosting it. You can do this on our domain registration page. Keep in mind that if you use this method, you will have to manage the domain's nameservers yourself. We can provide support for it, but cannot make the changes for you.
You can register a domain at another registrar. You can host any domain name with us that you register elsewhere.

Do I have to transfer the domain to OCS to host it?

No. You can use a domain that you've registered elsewhere with our hosting. You're free to do so however, and we charge $9.20 per year for this for most domains.

Control Panels

Should I use cPanel or Webmin?

Deciding on cPanel or Webmin may seem like a difficult choice, as both have their strengths and weaknesses, but it really boils down to these criteria:

Use cPanel if...

You are new to web hosting
Your website is HTML or PHP
You have a small Ruby on Rails website to host
You are not familiar with the command line (SSH) or do not want to use SSH to manage your site
You plan to use us for e-mail and you need extensive e-mail options

Use Webmin if...

You are familiar with Linux, at least in a basic capacity
You have a more robust Ruby on Rails website
You are at least somewhat familiar with the command line (SSH)
You are hosting your e-mail elsewhere, or have basic e-mail needs for the website

Can I switch between Webmin and cPanel easily?

We do not have an automatic account copier between Webmin and cPanel at this time. If you want to change control panels, you will have to move your files and databases manually. This generally isn't difficult, but isn't recommended without at least some basic knowledge of web design or Linux. If you do not want to attempt such a move yourself we can do this for you for a fee.

E-mail

General

How many e-mails can I have on an account?

We do not limit you to a particular number of e-mails. Each mailbox you create takes up a small (less than 1 MiB) of space. So in theory, you can't create "unlimited", but you can create many more than you would probably ever need. Keep in mind though that contents in the mailboxes can take up space and that is counted towards your overall space quota.

Receiving Mail

Double E-mails

If you are getting double e-mails, here are some things you can do to fix the problem:

Check to make sure you don't have two POP3 accounts in your e-mail client configuration. This is the most usual cause of this situation.
Make sure your e-mail client is set to delete mail from the server once it downloads it
Check to make sure you do not have a forwarder setup that is associated with your POP3 account. You can check this in cPanel's e-mail section or Webmin's mail/FTP users.

If all else fails, download all of your mail and delete the mailbox, then recreate it.

Ruby on Rails

Do all shared hosting plans support Ruby on Rails?

Yes, all of our shared hosting plans support Rails.

How many Rails applications can I run on each plan?

We don't limit the number of Rails applications you can run, but do limit the amount of memory they are allowed to take up. Each Rails application takes between 24 and 48 MiB of RAM on average.

Can I go over my memory limit temporarily?

Yes, we do allow for temporary memory overages. If they are sustained, you may have to upgrade your account or change settings to reduce memory usage.

Can I use Capistrano to deploy?

Yes, we support Capistrano. We recommend Webmin for this, but it is possible to deploy on cPanel with Capistrano.

Do you support Mongrel Clusters?

We do support Mongrel clusters on our Custom Rails Hosting service.

PHP

Do you support PHP 5?

Yes, all of our shared hosting servers have PHP 5.

Do you have PHP 4 support?

We do not have any PHP 4 servers for new customers and have no plans on offering this in the future, since PHP 5 is the version most used now and the announcement of PHP 4's end of life soon.

Do you support mysqli and PDO database extensions?

Yes, we support mysqli and PDO, both for MySQL and PostgreSQL.

Is register_globals turned on?

No, we have this turned off for security reasons. You can enable it per site or per folder, but we HIGHLY recommend you leave this off for security reasons. It is one of the biggest causes of security issues on PHP based websites.

Is safe mode disabled?

Yes, we do not use PHP's safe mode as it is too limiting for most PHP applications.

Can you show me your phpinfo()?

We can send this to you on a per-request basis, but do not have this information available on the web for security reasons.

Frequently Asked Questions