Frequently Asked Questions

I have more than one domain/website, can I have them both on one account?

You may park up to ten domains on any account; however you may only have one website per account, excluding subdomains. If you wished to have more than one site, you would need more than one account. Ease of domain management is of primary concern here.

Impressionist or higher accounts may have multiple "addon" domains enabled as per plan limits.

I've received my setup email, now what?

Login to the administrative interface at your domain registrar and change the name servers to point to ns1.positivefusion.com & ns2.positivefusion.com. You may begin uploading your content immediately by using the assigned IP address for your domain. Please remember to login to CPanel and change your default password. Please refer to below for ways to view your website before your domain points to your account.

How long does it take for my domain to resolve to your server?

Typically, once you've changed your name servers with your registrar it will take 24 to 48 hours for the changes to take effect.

How do I access my account before my domain is transfered?

You may access your account by using your assigned IP address, using that in place of your domain name for ftp. To view your pages before your domain is transfered you may use http://vangogh.positivefusion.com/~username/.

I can't reach my website (getting Cannot Find Server error) what should I do?

Provided it was working correctly (DNS setup correctly, etc) the Apache process may have crashed; this happens from time to time, but we have failsafes in place to restart any services such as Apache (the process that actually serves webpages). Please wait five minutes before reporting your site or server as "down" as these checking scripts run every five minutes.

How do I log into the control panel?

It is advisable to access the control panel securely via SSL. You may access the control panel via https://secure.positivefusion.com:2083 You may also substitute your domain (https://example.com:2083) or http://example.com/cpanel which will redirect to https://secure.positivefusion.com:2083.

How do I access webmail without going through the control panel?

You may access webmail directly by using a URL such as http://example.com:2095. Use the full email address and your password to login. The only instance you would use simply the username would be if you wanted to check your primary account based on your hosting account username. You then have a choice between several different webmail clients available.

You may also use Positive Fusion Mobile Email, located at http://mobile.positivefusion.com.

What methods of payment do you accept?

We accept Mastercard, Visa, Discover, AMEX, and Paypal.com. Paypal is our preferred payment method. We use Paypal's subscription service so your repeat billing is just as simple as if paying with a credit card directly.

I received an error while trying to change my password, what is wrong?

spawn /usr/bin/passwd Changing password for idesigns (current) UNIX password: New UNIX password: BAD PASSWORD: it is based on a dictionary word New UNIX password:

This means that your password is too simple to be allowed as a password to your primary account, please choose something more difficult that is not based upon a dictionary word. On our system, there are safeguards in place to prevent using a password that is too simple or easily cracked; you will receive that error until you choose a password that is not easily compromised. I admit it is somewhat of an annoyance, but it is important, by using a password that is not found directly within the dictionary it then makes a "brute force" type password crack attempt on the server much more difficult.

I can receive email but I cannot send, what's wrong?

Firstly, does your ISP require you to send email through their SMTP servers? This is becoming very common, and is particularly often if you use a "large" national ISP like Earthlink or MSN; this is the primary reason most clients cannot send email. You will need to send email out via your ISP in this case, please consult with their tech support for any questions regarding how to set this up.

Secondly: If sending email out via a third party SMTP server is allowed by your ISP but cannot send email you need to make sure that you are authenticating with our SMTP server prior to attempting to send email. The SMTP server is secured against acting as an "open relay" and thus requires you to login to send just as you would to receive email. Please consult the documentation for your email application if you are unsure how to setup authentication on sending email; due to the vast number of different email applications out there it is virtually impossible for our support helpdesk to explain how to do this.

I get an error that says the email account doesn't exist when I try to check the account via POP3, what's wrong?

Verify via the control panel that you have successfully created the email account (if this is a new account you're checking. Also, remember that you must use the full email address as your username when checking email via webmail or POP3. Most commonly username errors result when using only the first portion of the email address and not including the domain portion.

I can't connect via FTP using any of the secondary FTP accounts I created via the control panel, do I need to do something special to make them work?

No, you don't need to do anything special to make them start working. As with email you need to include the @example.com portion as part of the username. So, for example, if you created an FTP account for the "foo" directory your FTP login would be foo@example.com. If you attempt to login with just the first portion (foo) you will either receive an error stating the account doesn't exist (most common) or a password error if there is actually already a primary account using that login. We require the @example.com portion to log into email and secondary FTP accounts so that you may have complete choice in email addresses and secondary FTP logins versus requiring you to pick and choose between already existing system wide usernames.

Can I telnet into my account?

No, telnet access is disabled as it is a very insecure protocol. You are permitted to access your account via SSH. Linux and Mac OS X have ssh clients built in, but if you run a version of Windows you will need a third party client such as PUTTY (freeware) or SecureCRT (Commercial). SSH is "Secure SHell" and encrypts all information just as with SSL on secure webpages. Please be aware (and you are reminded of this upon login) that everything you do while connected via SSH is recorded and monitored to prevent abuse.

What kind of tech support methods are available?

We offer support through our support page or by sending an email to support. We prefer support requests to come through our email helpdesk for a variety of reasons. First, it provides an audit trail of communication so that all the facts can be passed on to whomever may be working your problem. Second, it allow us to focus on fixing problems instead of answering the phone.

Is it okay to use something like Movable Type, Greymatter, or B2 to maintain a journal/blog?

It certainly is fine to use such software on your hosting account. We also have all of the "extra" perl modules installed and available for using Movable Type. We do though recommend against Greymatter for larger journals, as the rebuild time could potentially stress the webserver, we haven't had a problem thus far with anyone using Greymatter, but on larger sites it may take up to twenty minutes to rebuild or perhaps longer; WordPress would be strongly recommended in this case as there is no rebuilding necessary.

Well, what about a forum?

We'd ask that forum software only be installed on Impressionist or higher level accounts, but we currently don't have such a restriction (and likely never will), but forums tend to be pretty traffic and resource intensive and need to be carefully considered before implemented. We do have a few restrictions about forum software though because of this fact; YABB and UBB are specifically prohibited from being used (see Resource Abuse Policy).