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FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

The Frequently Asked Questions page contains a list of common questions and solutions to hosting and programming related issues. This list will grow as more solutions are documented.

Q. What are some of the merchant/credit card services you recommend?

A. We have found that for web delivered products or services, the best solution is a company located in Columbus, OH called http://www.2checkout.com

Another very good one, but does cost you at least $50 a month in fees is

Q. How do I use STREAMING MEDIA on my site?

A. There are basically two types of media recommended for viewing/listening to from a website. RAM files and WMF files are the most popular. To create RAM files, you need the RealAudio software (expensive) from them to do RAM files. I would recommend using Windows Media (it's free) and they are WMF files....it is supported by more people anyway because everyone that has IE will be able to use it.

Go to Microsoft and get the Media SDK

MP3 files are very popular, but they don't stream. This means that the website visitor will need to download the entire file before it starts playing. A file that streams, is a file that will start playing the second you click on it....downloading while it is playing.

Q. Where can I view my website statistics?

A. Reports are generated daily (or less if desired) for the current month accumulative.

Please let me know if you want them turned on for you. We need to set this up for you one time.

Q. Why do I not see changes to my website even after I made a change?

A. First, if it is the homepage you are updating, make sure that it is called DEFAULT.HTM. The server will take this page if you don't specify a page name when you load the site in your browser. http://www.mydomain.com will automatically load the page on your site called default.htm. If there is no page with this name, it will then look for default.html. If this doesn't exist, it will look for default.asp. If this doesn't exist, it will look for index.htm. So, if you are making changes to a page, either view the page directly via http://www.mydomainname.com/mypagename.htm or make sure that the page is called default.htm.

Q. I am still not seeing changes to my pages.

A. This problem could also be a dirty browser cache. Now, what is happening is that your browser is caching the last page you accessed. Your browser thinks that it has the latest and greatest page from your site, so it does'nt bother to go to the website to get a new copy. This is called CACHING. Caching is good because it prevents your internet connection from downloading stuff it already has seen once. But this is a DIRTY CACHE. A dirty cache is when your browser has incorrect info stored.

To fix this NOW, go to the page. Press CONTROL and click on the REFRESH button at the same time. This will clear the cache for this site. To prevent this from happening again follow the directions below:

1. Open Internet Explorer.
2. Click on TOOLS menu item
3, In the tools list, click INTERNET OPTIONS....
4. On the GENERAL TAB, click SETTINGS button.
5.Check the option that says "EVERY VISIT TO THE PAGE"

Q. Every time I try and view a page on my site, it pops up a login window.

A. When you copied your content using FTP, you must have put your content in the FTP root, and then MOVED it to the WWW folder. This causes the content to retain the permissions that are set on them....which were the permissions of the FTP root. This is a good feature if you want a page that is password protected. To prevent this in the future, you need to FTP your content from your PC DIRECTLY to the WWW folder. So, to fix it, delete the pages/images that ask for a password and re-copy them DIRECTLY from your pc to the WWW folder.

Q. Why can't I send email but I can receive it just fine?

A. Some ISPs (like MSN, earthlink, juno, prodigy, etc) block ALL smtp traffic except smtp traffic destined to their own servers. This is to prevent their ISP customers from sending out spam. So to solve the problem, you need to make the following changes in your Outlook email client:

instead of using the mail.domainname.com server name that we assigned to you for sending email via your domain, you will need to use your ISPs smtp server instead. So on the line that asks for SMTP outgoing mail server, put in the smtp server name that your ISP gave you.

Q. Why can't I log into the webmail or email administration?

A. AOL Browser will not work for some strange reason. Open Internet Explorer and go to the web email instead.

Q. How do I get my domain name to look at your servers? How do I change the DNS records?

A. Do you have the login info to change the host records? You need the userid and password TO THE PLACE YOU BOUGHT YOUR DOMAIN NAME to be able to change this info. If you want me to do it for you, let me know the userid and password, I will make the change, and then you can go back to the site and change the password for security purposes.

If you want to do it yourself, here is our info:

Primary Name Server: DNSA.HWHOSTING.COM
Primary Name Server IP:

Secondary Name Server: DNSB.HWHOSTING.COM
Secondary Name Server IP:

Q. What if I don't have my login info, and can't get it since my email address has changed since I bought the domain name?

A. You are going to have some problems if you don't have access to the admin contact email. Unfortunately, because the email address on the domain is the same domain as you are trying to move, it is impossible to approve the change. You will need to contact Network Solutions or your registrar, and have them change the email address for you.

Here is some info from Network Solutions that you will need to do. Other registrars have their own way listed on their site:


Q. I get a 500 Server Error when viewing a page on my site, but it doesn't tell me what is wrong?

A. You need to enable error messages in your browser. In IE, go to TOOLS , INTERNET PROPERTIES, ADVANCED tab, UNCHECK "show friendly HTTP error messages"

This will allow your browser to show error lines and descriptions instead of the 500 Internal server error.

Q. How do I use ASPEmail component to send email from a webpage?

A. Create a form, and have the form post to another page called sendmail.asp. In this sendmail.asp page, put the following code:

Set Mail = Server.CreateObject("Persits.MailSender")
Mail.Host = "smtp.smtp-server.com" ' Specify a valid SMTP server
Mail.From = "sales@veryhotcakes.com" ' Specify sender's address
Mail.FromName = "VeryHotCakes Sales" ' Specify sender's name

Mail.AddAddress "andy@andrewscompany.net", "Andrew Johnson, Jr."
Mail.AddAddress "paul@paulscompany.com" ' Name is optional
Mail.AddReplyTo "info@veryhotcakes.com"
Mail.AddAttachment "c:\images\cakes.gif"

Mail.Subject = "Thanks for ordering our hot cakes!"
"Thank you for your business."

On Error Resume Next
If Err <> 0 Then
Response.Write "Error encountered: " & Err.Description
End If

You need to replace the data above to match your server and email info. This is a basic example, and you can find more by searching on Google for "ASPEmail code"

Q. Why can't I check email from Eudora or Pegasys Mail or Netscape Mail?

A. To check your email via Netscape, it is a little different than Outlook. Older versions of Eudora and Netscape do not support virtual email, so we have to fake it out.
Here are the settings:

Set the smtp and pop3 mail servers to

Set the userid to user%yourdomainname.com@HWHosting.com

Follow this rule for each of the other user accounts replacing the userid
and password where appropriate. If you have older versions of Eudora or
Communicator, the username may be too long. If so, please let me know and I
can add a fake domain name for your site so that you can enter the userid

like this: user%short-domainname@hwhosting.com

Q. What are METATAGS and how to I add them?

A. Metatags are code in a webpage that SOMETIMES is used to help search engines. They are highly overrated and many search engines don't use them, but they can be helpful on some. To modify the meta-tags on any page in Frontpage, open the page, click on FILE, PROPERTIES, click CUSTOM tab, click ADD in the USER VARIABLES section, for the name, type DESCRIPTION and for the value, type your page description. Click OK to save. Click ADD again, and for the name, type KEYWORDS, and for the value, type your keywords separated by commas. Click OK to save, and OK again to save the page properties. You should now be set! Do this for AT LEAST the homepage, and preferably, every page in your site....but vary the descriptions and keywords to allow each page to be indexed on the search engines.

Q. How do I set up email accounts?

A. Here are some notes on how to set up email accounts in your admin email control panel:

The info in [ ] is found on your signup email.
Manage your email from http://mail.hwhosting.com until the domain is ready and
after it is ready, http://mail.[yourdomainname.com]

Click on the Email Admin link and log into the system using [postmaster@domainname.com] with a password of [your password] and you will see your admin menu. NOTE: The username and email address was given to you on your signup form and is used to ADMINISTER your email accounts. It is best to not use this account for email, just to admin.

OUTLOOK mail client setup

Your smtp and pop3 server settings for Outlook and other mail software need to be mail.[domainname.com]
Each userid needs to be the full email address like [username@domainname.com] with pass of [your password] or whatever you set it up as. So, go into Outlook/Outlook Express, go to the TOOLS menu, then ACCOUNTS, then ADD a mail account. Use the above info to fill in the email address, the pop3 and smtp server names, username, password.


An GROUP is just an email account that can RECEIVE email but send it to a real account. You can't send email as an alias/group.

An group would be used if you want to give people an email address to mail to, but you want to receive it at one or more OTHER email accounts. Let's say you have an email account called david@mydomain.com. You want to give people an address called SALES@mydomain.com for sales questions, and you want to give people an address called SUPPORT@mydomain.com for support questions. This will give people the appearance that there are multiple people/departments handling requests/issues. Each group must forward to a real account, so you can tell the sales group to forward to david@mydomain.com and you can forward the support group to david@mydomain.com. One account gets the mail, but people THINK the addresses of sales@mydomain.com and support@mydomain.com go to two different people. Groups are also good for forwarding to multiple accounts. A group of support@mydomain.com could point to david@mydomain.com AND TO mariea@myotherdomain.com. This allows a group to go to multiple REAL email accounts.