Frequently Asked Questions
If you have any other questions please dont hesitate to mail us.
What are the setup fees and monthly costs involved?
Mydedihost does not charge a setup fee for any of its packages except the Freehost package.
The full rate charts for available hosting packages are shown on the Web Hosting pages.
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Are there any special conditions for the Freehost package?
The Freehost package differs from the other packages by having no ongoing fees.
The only charge is an initial setup fee of US$5.00.
A full list of the features provided with the package is available on the
Web Hosting page.
Mydedihost reserves the right to cancel inactive Freehost accounts. If a Freehost account has no activity for 90 days,
Mydedihost may, at its discretion, remove the account and all its files.
Freehost accounts must be used to host websites only; accounts may not be used primarily as file storage.
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How do I set up my email?
Mydedihost web hosting clients can set up POP Accounts, Forwarders/Aliases, & Auto-Responders in the Web Browser Control Panel that comes with every Mydedihost web hosting package. This can be done by yourself, and without any assistance from the Mydedihost staff.
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How do I upload my files?
All Mydedihost web hosting packages allow the usage of FTP, Telnet, SSH, File Manager, MS FrontPage™, and other web development publishing programs, to upload files to your website.
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Is there a trial period or money-back guarantee?
Mydedihost offers a full 30 day money back guarantee. No questions asked. If you are not happy for any reason, cancel your Mydedihost service within 30 days of signup and your full setup fee and monthly costs will be refunded. The only exception to a refund, is if you violate Mydedihost Terms of Service(TOS). Violations of the TOS usually are due to spamming, hacking, and illegal content.
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How fast are websites set up?
Mydedihost strives for a setup time of no more than 60 minutes per order. If an order is placed during normal business day hours, orders may be processed in only a few minutes.
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Does my website get a control panel?
Yes. Every Mydedihost web hosting package comes with a web browser based control panel. The control panel includes many features including; email configurations, chat rooms, mailing lists, pre-installed cgi scripts, databases, and much, much, more...
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How am I billed?
Mydedihost invoices you via email. You can request a monthly statement via email as well, at any time. Hard copy invoices can be mailed for those resellers that request such. You will receive an invoice for each service/account order every month on the same day the service was ordered (if it is a monthly sevice). Special arrangements can be made for custom billing requirements. Mydedihost accepts Visa, Mastercard and American Express cards. You can opt to not have your credit card charged every month, until you specifically submit a payment form each month.
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How much assistance do you provide for my website?
Mydedihost will assist you with all support for services provided directly thru Mydedihost . Mydedihost will help you with basic settings for your email software and ftp client, as well as assist you with using the web browser control panel. Mydedihost is not responsible for teaching you how to use another company's products. Example: Mydedihost will assist you with the settings for using MS Frontpage™, but we will not teach you how to actually use the product itself. You need to contact the software maker in such a situation, who provides tech support for how to use their product. Mydedihost cannot even attempt to support all the thousands of software products on the market. Mydedihost will attempt to provide some tech support for the most popular programs our clients use. Mydedihost is not responsible for assisting with your own programs and cgi scripts. If you choose to install your own programs and cgi scripts on your site, you are responsible fully for installing them. Mydedihost will provide support for any program or cgi script that we provide pre-installed with your web hosting package. Mydedihost is not responsible for designing, nor developing, your website, including HTML and/or images. Mydedihost will attempt to give a quick look at your design/development problem, and offer a suggestion if it is a small issue. Anything complicated relating to design/development is not the responsibility of Mydedihost.
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What if the hardware fails?
Mydedihost's facility stocks replacement parts for all servers. Hardware failures are uncommon, but they do happen, and are a part of the hosting business. Any failed hardware is repaired promptly, to minimize any downtime caused by such.
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Are there any hidden costs?
No. All costs are stated plainly on our website. We do not hide fees in fineprint, or in our terms of service pages. The only costs that are commonly found to occur beyond your expected flat monthly rates per service, are those due to increased disk space or bandwidth usage. Pricing for such is plainly stated on our website. Mydedihost very often will allow you to upgrade your packages to the next size up, should you see an increase in disk space levels or bandwidth usage for the current month, and not want to pay for such additional usage. Disk space usage and availablility, as well as estimated bandwidth usage, is available to you in the majority of the control panel versions included with the hosting packages.
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What is Cpanel™?
CPanel™ is the brand name of the web browser control panel software that Mydedihost utilizes on its web hosting packages.
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What happens if I decide to leave Mydedihost?
You are free to leave at any time.
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Is there a discount if I pre-pay for several months in advance?
Mydedihost offers 10% off for yearly advanced payments on hosting plans.
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Does my website have their own IP address or is it shared?
This depends on the type of hosting packages you order. Mydedihost dedicated servers have the ability to utilize IP based, or IPless, virtual hosting configurations.
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What type of support do you offer? Average Response Time?
Mydedihost offers support to our clients via web based ticket system and email. We strive for response times of no more than a few hours. Mydedihost has recently implemented a web based support ticket system, which integrates all incoming support email into it. The ticket system tracks support inquires by "time waiting" for reponse from the support dept. The Mydedihost administration carefully monitors that the Mydedihost support staff maintains a fast response time, with courteous and helpful service.
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What are the hardware specs of the servers?
Every server at Mydedihost has different specifications. Whenever a server reaches what we feel to be the limit, another server is built. Mydedihost is constantly upgrading the server hardware on our network. If more drive space, memory, or faster processors are needed, they are added in at that time. The average shared server is a dual processor system, with 512-4048MB RAM, and 160mbps SCSI hard drive(s). All Mydedihost servers run spare hard drives for backup requirements.
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Can I have adult content on my website?
Pornography and sex-related merchandising are not allowed on sites hosted by Mydedihost.
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May I view your Terms Of Service?
The Mydedihost terms of service (TOS), including policy and service guidelines, are available online at: http://www.mydedihost.com/index.php?page=tos.
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Do you support International domain names and clients?
Mydedihost can host all international domains on its servers. Mydedihost can accept foreign clientele, just please be advised that all correspondance must be conducted in English. The client is responsible for handling the registration process of foreign domain name(s). This must be pointed to nameservers on the Mydedihost network as assigned, or you can use other nameservers and route the domain name to the IP address you are assigned. Mydedihost cannot handle the foreign domain registration process for you, due to the fact that we do not speak all of the potential foreign languages that may be involved. Mydedihost will assist you however, with any technical information need to accomplish this.
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What if my site breaks your "acceptable usage policy" rules?
Users' sites may be suspended for violations of policy, or if extreme, or second time offenders, sites may be cancelled. Each occurance is dealt with on a case by case basis, and we try to work things out with every client. Notifications will be sent, if Mydedihost takes any action on your account.
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What if I want to upgrade my website?
You may upgrade or downgrade your Mydedihost web hosting package at any time. You will be required to pay the difference in the setup fee for your current plan, and the plan you are upgrading to, should you decide to choose a larger plan. You will then pay the new monthly fee for the new account package that you select.
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How is my website monitored?
Mydedihost maintains internal and external monitoring systems for every server in the Mydedihost Data Center. The servers are checked every 5 minutes via network monitoring software. Mydedihost monitors uptime as well as individual features and services running on each server. Mydedihost staff is notified via alarms, email, screen popups, and paging, if a problem occurs.
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What is the uptime?
Mydedihost strives to maintain a 99.5% network and server uptime service level. This uptime percentage is a monthly figure, and does not include any scheduled hardware/software upgrades, nor "Acts of God". Our definition of "Act of God" includes; fire, flood, tornado, earthquake, telco fiber issues (ie. Verizon™ cutting a fiber line somewhere), backbone peering point issues (ie. UUnet™ having a router go down in Virginia that wipes out internet service for the entire East Coast), hard drive failure (faulty hardware is rare, but cannot be predicted nor avoided), as well as network floods, hacks, and attacks. If Mydedihost fails to meet it's 99.5% uptime guarantee, and it is not due to one of the above reasons, partial downtime credits will be made available to each client, upon request, on a case by case basis. Mydedihost does not credit a full month's service if we only have 99.4% uptime. This would not be financially healthy for Mydedihost , and in turn would only negatively affect the service level Mydedihost provides to you. "Partial refunds for partial downtime" is our standard policy.
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Do you have a Service Level Agreement (SLA)?
The Mydedihost terms of service (TOS), including policy and service guidelines, are available online here.
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What is your connectivity to the Internet?
The Network Operations Center is connected via a fiber connection to our backbone provider. Mydedihost utilizes a DS3, running at 45mbps thru Sprint™. A 2nd DS3, thru AT&T™, Broadwing™, Cable & Wireless™, or Global Crossing™, is being planned for installation in November 2001, for redundancy. A third DS3, or an OC3, is being planned before the end of 2002. After this, Mydedihost will then be peering (sharing capacity) with major backbones, to exchange connectivity. The connection will run BGP4 (border gateway routing protocol) & SONET to maintain the speed and uptime. If one backbone line goes down, it will balance the load to the others. If one line gets congested, it will load balance the traffic. SONET technology is a high capacity, 100% fiber optic network deployed in a ring topology with a working, or "hot," path carrying data in one direction and a standby, or protect, path transmitting in the opposite direction around the ring. In the event of a fiber cut or service degradation, SONET equipment at the edge of each failing fiber segment isolates the failure and uses both working and standby fibers to create a new temporary ring. All of this happens within 50 milliseconds.
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Do you have battery backups and generators?
Our Network Operations Center is backed up and protected by UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) systems. In a very rare case of utility outages, our auto-start generators start automatically, taking over for the UPS system and supplying all necessary power for our Network Operations Center. APC™, Tripp-Lite™, & Liebert™ UPS Systems provide the power backups, along with Kohler™ generator systems.
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What about software upgrades?
Mydedihost handles all software upgrades/patches on the shared hosting servers. We fully follow all trends in the industry, and monitor all support/bug announcement groups. If a new bug or security vulnerability is found, Mydedihost immediately upgrades our systems. Mydedihost auto-updates the Linux systems every night from security patch websites. As new software is released, including new versions of operating systems, Mydedihost evaluates the new software. If the software's new version does not have any security issues, or bug problems, the upgrade is implemented.
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What if the server my website is on gets hacked or attacked?
Individually hacked websites are rare. If such occurs, usually they are a target for a reason; hate sites, pirated software, etc... Mydedihost does not host such websites. If such materal is found on a Mydedihost server, it is deleted immediately and the user's account cancelled. Usually the target is the whole server itself. Hackers usually go after a server just to say that "they did", or to use the server to bounce off of to hack something more important. Rarely are any users' files on the server damaged, erased, or modified. For this reason, once a hacker is detected, a server can usually be cleaned up and the hacker locked back out within a matter of hours. At that time the server is restored to full security levels, as if the hack has never occurred. Most hackers get into a system thru valid user accounts. We recommend you use complicated passwords for your account. Mydedihost strictly reviews all orders for new clients, to make sure they are legitimate. Unfortunately, some fake orders do get thru the system, and that is one way a hacker can gain initial access. Mydedihost runs security checks on the servers daily, so even if a hacker does get in, they are found and dealt with quickly. Most hackers are not malicious, they are just playing or testing their abilities. If an individual attacks the whole Mydedihost Data Center, measures are in place to cut off such floods and attacks automatically at the backbone level and the router level. Mydedihost also uses firewall technology to fend off most common methods of flooding and attacks to the network.
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What is included in my website package?
Mydedihost provides full hardware, software, support, and system administration for your Mydedihost shared hosting solution. The software provided includes the operating system, ftp & email software, web server software, and a control panel. Mydedihost even includes free e-commerce shopping cart software. Everything you need to conduct business on the Internet, or maintain a personal website, is included in your Mydedihost hosting solution. Mydedihost will provide basic support on services/software that we provide you with your account. Mydedihost does not develop your website for you, nor provide tech support on how to use software products that we do not provide to your directly...even if we do support them. We are always more than willing to help you if we can though with external issues, time permitting...
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How many sites are currently running on per server?
Mydedihost does not have a set quantity of domains running on each machine. We find that ten domains can utilize more resources than 200 others. Mydedihost monitors each server's performance levels and attempts to maintain a low server load average and high cpu availability. As needed, Mydedihost will upgrade the hardware, to increase server performance. Individual domains that become to much for the server to handle, and utilize too much server resources, are moved to servers set up specifically for such resource intensive accounts.
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Why should I choose Mydedihost as my webhost?
Simple. Mydedihost maintains one of the most feature rich hosting packages on the market, so advanced that many hosting companies cannot compete. Mydedihost offers Cpanel™ & WebHostManager™ on it's packages, the premier software in the business. Mydedihost offers a 30 day full money back guarantee for new clients that sign up... so you really cannot loose by selecting Mydedihost.
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How do I get started?
Simple! Just fill out one form....the Secure New Account Order form! You will receive details shortly afterwards about how to proceed with your new Web Hosting Account!
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