New User Guide
From OCS Support Wiki
Contents |
[edit] Welcome
Before we start, I want to thank you for becoming an OCS Solutions customer! I want this experience to be as productive, trouble-free, and fun as it can possibly be for you. The entire staff of OCS Solutions is dedicated to ensuring that you receive nothing but the highest level of customer support available.
This guide is geared specifically to our web hosting customers, but all of our customers can benefit from the resources in this guide. We highly recommend all customers read it!
[edit] How to Get Assistance
We're here for you whenever you need it. The absolute best way to get in touch with us is by e-mailing support. You can reach us at support@ocstech.com. This e-mail address is monitored 24/7, 365 days a year. You can also call us at 1-800-672-8415. If you have free long distance or are from outside the US, you can dial 646-775-2828. Urgent issues can be either e-mailed in or phoned, as we monitor both constantly.
In the event of an outage (i.e. e-mail or site being down), we likely already know about the outage as we have monitors that detect these things. However, don't hesitate to let us know about the outage either, as in some cases it can help us identify customers affected. Either way, know that in the event of a service outage, we are working as quickly as possible to resolve the issue.
[edit] How You're Billed
We create an invoice 10 days before your account is set to renew. If you have a credit card on file, we attempt to charge it at that time. If not, you will receive the invoice via e-mail and can pay via PayPal or by mailing a check. If you choose to mail a check, the address will be on the invoice. PayPal payments can be sent to billing@ocstech.com. None of our hosting plans come with a contract, so you may cancel at any time. However, if you decide to cancel, you will need to cancel before your plan renews for the next billing cycle.
[edit] Keeping Your Contact Information Up to Date
Many people don't think of telling their hosting provider about a phone number change or a new address, but it is important for us to be able to reach you should there be a problem with your website. This isn't just a matter of billing, if there was a technical problem with your site, we may need to contact you for more information or to inform you of the situation. Please keep your contact information up to date by logging into our billing system with your client ID. Your Domain
If you registered your domain name through us, your domain registration fees will be taken care of for you if you payed for a year of service in advance. If you are on a monthly plan, you were charged for your domain registration as part of your initial payment. This registration, unless otherwise stated, is for 1 year. At the end of this year, you will be automatically invoiced for your domain renewal. Note that some domain extensions have more than 1 year registration periods.
If you have registered your domain yourself, it is important that you keep your registration current with your registrar. If you fail to do this, your hosting service will not function correctly.
[edit] Your Control Panel
The information needed to login to your control panel will be found in your welcome letter you received at signup. If you did not receive this information, please contact support and ask that it be resent.
[edit] Uploading Via FTP
Your welcome letter will contain the username, password, and temporary IP for you to use in your FTP client to establish a connection to our servers. Once your domain resolves to our servers (which can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 24 hours), you can use ftp.yourdomain.com as the FTP hostname (replacing yourdomain.com with your actual domain name).
We recommend using the FileZilla FTP client for Windows. You can learn more about it in Using_FileZilla. Any other FTP program will work as long as you use the correct settings.
If you encounter trouble connecting with FTP, try toggling your FTP client's "Passive" setting between On and Off.
[edit] Using SSH
All accounts come with SSH enabled by default. You can connect to it with the same username and password for FTP. You will find this information in your welcome letter. The SSH host will be the same as your FTP host, and like the FTP host, you can use the IP given in your welcome letter as a temporary address until your domain resolves.
[edit] Ruby on Rails
If you're going to use Ruby on Rails, please check out our technical support section guides pertaining to Ruby on Rails. They contain information on installing Rails, using popular Rails apps like Mephisto, and obtaining a Lighttpd / Mongrel port.
