While the internet is a great platform for establishing an impressive online identity it also brings a lot of perils. Some time ago, people have witnessed one of the biggest DDos attacks in the history of internet. We also heard about the WordPress website being targeted by the hackers. These things bring about insecurity in the minds of many website owners who run their websites with the WordPress CMS.

WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems that is used for website / blog creation. Approximately, 17% of the websites are powered by WordPress today. This has offered a greater platform for the people with bad intentions to plan activities like DDoS attacks and website hacking.

How can you safeguard your WordPress website against the hackers trying to crack into your WordPress login credentials?

There are many ways in order to strengthen the security of your WordPress website. Here is an insight on the most crucial ways:

You can use a plugin known as ‘Limit Login Attempts’ that limits the number of login attempts made to your website. This plugin enables you to set a maximum limit of failed login attempts from any particular IP and intimates you about the failed attempts. In this way you are well aware about any malicious activity that might occurs on your website in the future.

Another method of eliminating the unauthorized access is by limiting the login access altogether. This can be done by ‘White listing’ certain IP addresses that are known to you and blocking all the other IP addresses.

Here are the steps that you need to follow:

Step 1 : Go to the root of the WordPress installation on the server and locate a folder named – ‘wp-content’

Step 2 : Edit the .htaccess file by adding the commands mentioned below:

<Directory /wp-admin >
<files wp-login.php>
AllowOverride None
order deny,allow
# whitelist
allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (IP 1)
allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (IP 2)
allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (IP 3)
deny from all
</files>
</Directory>

Note : Remove the IP1, IP2 and IP3 from the code. In the similar way, you can add as many IP addresses as you want.

This is a small step that proves to be extremely beneficial in terms of the security of your WordPress website. With the help of this small amendment, only the authorized IP addresses will be able to access the WP-Admin page.

Other important tips for safeguarding your WordPress website / blog :

• Use a complicated username that cannot be thought about easily
• Use a complicated password, that comprises of a combination of numbers, letters in upper case and lower case and some special characters. You can also take the help of online password generators that will generate a complicated password for you.

2. What is included in Build a Website bundle?
Build a Website includes everything you need to get started with your own website – a website address(Domain Name), a website builder tool, and e-mail. All websites hosted through ‘Build a Website’ are hosted on our reliable and redundant “VMware cloud” infrastructure. What this means is that there is more than one back-end server that is making sure your website stays online, and remains fast and responsive at all times.

3. Can I create my own online store using Build a Website?
An eCommerce module powered by a third party eCommerce service provider called Ecwid comes bundled with Build a Website. Their free plan allows you to add up to 10 products to sell. If you would like to list more products to sell through your eCommerce store or would need features like coupon codes, tiered pricing and multi-storefront tracking, you will need to consider purchasing a paid plan which starts at $15 USD per month (which is around £9.75 per month, but this is subject to change as currency rates change all the time). Your Ecwid eCommerce store is integrated directly into your website. All the products which you add via Ecwid will be added to your website’s storefront immediately.

4. Are there any penalties to shift a domain name if the client chooses to leave?
Because Build a Website is offered on a monthly payment basis, we have certain conditions regarding the free domain name which we also offer with the product. If you decide to cancel your product within six months, you will need to pay for the domain name if you would like to use the domain name elsewhere (e.g. move your domain name to another registrar). The rates are fixed from the point of placing an order even if they change in the future. The rates are detailed in our supplementary terms of service (http://www.eukhost.com/build-a-website/fair-usage-policy-supplementary-terms.php). As of writing, the rates are currently £8.98 for generic top-level domains like .com, .net and .org and £10 for country-code top-level domains like .co.uk. However, if you cancel your Build a Website product after six months (or on the sixth payment cycle), the domain name automatically becomes yours meaning you can move it to another registrar and use it elsewhere if you wish.

5. Is there the facility to incorporate sub-pages?
Yes, you can change the hierarchy of pages via the website builder. When you do this, the sub-pages would appear in the sub-menu of a particular menu item.

6. Can contact forms be made functional / embedded in the site?
There is a ‘Contact Form’ module which you can add to specific pages in the website builder. You can add and remove form fields, whether certain fields need to be filled out and whether certain fields are valid (e.g. if it is an e-mail field, it will check whether the e-mail address looks valid – sales@eukhost versus sales@eukhost.com as an example). Lastly, you can change the message which is displayed to users which have sent an e-mail through the form.

7. Is it possible to add imagery / patterns to the backgrounds?
Yes it is possible to use images as the site background, as well as the background for different parts of your website – such as the content area. You can also choose to ’tile’ the background image which would repeat the background image which is useful if you have a patterned background image you’d like to use.

8. Can the site be fully styled (padding, margins, font packaged, etc)?
You can change the padding and margin of various parts of the website builder, such as between the content area and the sidebar(s), the content area and the header, and so forth. You can also change the styling and font used in the menu and change the styling, font and colour scheme of the entire website. There are also many pre-made colour schemes you can choose from. However, you cannot currently change the margin on text which is set as a heading (i.e. Heading 1 or Heading 2 text) and whether links are underlined or not (except for the upper menu, where you can indeed change the styling and appearance of the links – bold, underline, italicised, colour and background – including the appearance on “hover” and when the menu item is “active”).

To order Build a Website and get started with it, go to – http://www.eukhost.com/build-a-website/

Cloud web hosting virtual machines represent excellent value for money as you are able to control your expenditure on resources as many solutions allow you to set a cap on the amount of money that you spend each month, guaranteeing that you’ll never go over budget; furthermore, you can often tailor each virtual machine to meet your own requirements by choosing the exact resources that form the VM, therefore meaning that you are only ever going to be paying for what you need.

What are the main benefits of selecting an affordable cloud hosting service?

A cloud web hosting plan can provide you with the following features to ensure that you receive a web hosting service that is affordable for you:

• Tailored web hosting plan – with each individual virtual machine, you will be able to specify the amount of each resource that is allocated so that you can create dedicated hosting environments in the cloud that are designed specifically for their assigned purpose – as you are only ever going to be paying for the resources that you have assigned to your virtual machines, this guarantees that you will only ever have to pay for resources that you are using or have purchased as opposed to spare capacity that may come as the result of purchasing a web hosting plan that provides pre-defined resource levels – any good web hosting company will allow you to tailor your virtual machines to your needs as the resources available in the cloud ensure that there will always be spare capacity to guarantee the performance of the cloud as a whole as well as individual virtual machines as this will enable server administrators to purchase additional resources for their virtual machines when the load placed on them is starting to undermine their existing resource allocations.
• Scalability – all cloud virtual machines have scalability built into as in most cases you can set the resources of your virtual machines to be automatically scaled as the load on them increases, therefore meaning that you won’t need to be constantly monitoring your VMs with the view of adding additional resources when demand increases – this may sound like a costly idea to some users, but you can set a cap on the amount that is spent on additional resources through these means so that you never end up going over budget, although this could compromise the stability of your virtual machines – many start-ups are unable to predict how popular their websites are going to become in the future and this is where the benefit of the dynamic cloud comes in because it means that you can purchase a web hosting service that meets your needs for the time being with the view of expanding it once your web operations grow without the need to upgrade your hosting plan.
• Security and reliability – all cloud web hosting services are designed to offer a secure and reliable web hosting environment to customers so that businesses are able to make the most of their online operations by ensuring that customers have trust in their online brand and that their website is always accessible for customers to place orders and view goods and services – all cloud web hosting plans come with a 100% uptime guarantee because network designers have worked hard to remove any single points of failure without compromising on the level of service that is provided, therefore beating the uptime of any other web hosting service (apart from certain dedicated server configurations) – the dedicated hosting environment provided can be configured to offer you the security that you require.

What steps can I take to make the most of cloud web hosting?

There are several different steps that you can take to make the most of cloud web hosting; it is important for businesses of all sizes to recognize the cost savings that can be made from using cloud web hosting and to apply these to their business models as appropriate in order to effectively use what the cloud has to offer.

One of the primary ways in which the cloud can save you money is through the migration of dedicated servers and any servers that are hosted on site into the cloud as this will allow you to reduce the physical footprint of your servers, therefore reducing your hosting budget and making cloud hosting a more affordable option than dedicated server hosting.

Secondly, you may wish to take it upon yourself to create individual virtual machines or each service, for example a database server, a web server and a file server. This type of distributed configuration will allow you to introduce a certain level of redundancy into your website’s backend and will therefore improve stability because loads will be spread.

To ban an IP address from accessing your website, create a .htaccess file within your root directory (usually public_html or www) and add the following configuration in the file:

order allow,deny
deny from 127.0.0.1
allow from all

It’s pretty simple to understand what’s going on here. “order allow,deny” is specifically in this order so that the allow rules are checked first, and if someone matches a deny rule, their server request is refused (i.e. they’re blacklisted). If you have the order as “deny,allow”, the deny rules are checked first and the allow rules after. If you had it ordered “deny,allow”, the allow rule is evaluated last, so you can imagine what would happen – hence, “order allow,deny” evaluates deny rules last.

In the example above, we’re blacklisting 127.0.0.1. In real use, you’ll need to change this to the IP address in which you want to blacklist. You can, of course, blacklist multiple IP addresses by listing multiple deny rules on a separate line. For example:

order allow,deny
deny from 127.0.0.1
deny from 127.0.0.1
deny from 127.0.0.1
deny from 127.0.0.1
allow from all

If you want to block an entire IP range, you simply exclude a specific octet in the .htaccess rule:

order allow,deny
deny from 127.0.0
allow from all

This will blacklist IP addresses in the range 127.0.0.0 through to 127.0.0.255. An octet is each part of the IP address (i.e. 127, 0, 0, 1).

Note: If you can’t see your .htaccess file listed in your FTP client it may be hidden depending on the file manager you are using, because the file starts with a period character. If this is the case, you’ll need to find the option in the menu of the FTP client you are using to show hidden files.

In most control panels for Linux- and Windows-based hosting, you can blacklist IPs using a graphical user interface instead of having to do so via a .htaccess text file. In cPanel, go to the IP Deny Manager (in the Security category) to blacklist IPs from accessing your website. Just like doing so directly within a .htaccess file, you can specify a complete IP address or a specific range.

Note: Be careful when you are blacklisting an IP range. Don’t blacklist an IP range too broadly if you are concerned of blacklisting genuine visitors.

Choosing a Windows dedicated server will provide you with your own environment that can be used for the installation of applications and components on the Windows platform that may not otherwise be available with Windows shared web hosting. Windows provides a platform on which you can use a number of different proprietary applications and services that are only available on this OS and this is the main driving force behind the demand for Windows hosting products; example of this include websites developed using ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL Server databases. A dedicated server can provide you with a number of opportunities to customise your web hosting experience to meet your individual needs because you can adapt the resources and hardware that forms your dedicated server to form something that no other business is going to be using; you may wish to choose a more powerful CPU so that your server is able to perform more calculations per minute or on the other hand additional hard drives in RAID configuration could be a necessity for you. In any case the one way in which you are going to be accessing your Windows dedicated server is through Remote Desktop so that you are able to perform these operations and more from the comfort of the Windows GUI.

Windows Server 2012

Windows Server 2012 is the latest release of the Windows operating system for the server environment; with this release there have been many new features introduced that have put the emphasis on managing multiple servers and simplifying a number of tasks related to these processes. A number of changes and updates have been introduced to the Hyper-V platform, a feature that is used widely by web hosting companies and corporations for the hosting of virtual machines on a Windows-based infrastructure; you can expect to see limitations on VM resources being removed whilst network virtualization and cloud backup are two of the new features to be added. IIS 8.0 has also been introduced for the hosting of websites on a Windows dedicated server; Microsoft has taken into account the high loads that busy websites can place on a dedicated server and so one of the new core features of IIS 8.0 is CPU usage caps for individual websites.

Purpose of Remote Desktop

In the same way that Linux servers have SSH access for administration and maintenance purposes, a Windows dedicated server can be access using Remote Desktop; however, the difference between SSH and Remote Desktop is that SSH is a command line-based interface whilst Remote Desktop is a GUI-based interface so that with one you will have to rely on a set of commands to interact with your server, whilst with Remote Desktop you can interact directly with the desktop of your Windows dedicated server. Some may argue that managing a Windows server through RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) is a simpler task for beginners to pick up because they will be using a simpler and more familiar interface, but the command-based nature of the Linux server is often seen as being most effective because it allows you to get the task in hand completed in a much more targeted manner.

Connecting from a Client Computer

The Remote Desktop client is a default feature of the Windows desktop operating system for a number of generations now and has always been accessible from the ‘Accessories’ menu that is often located under Programs/All Programs on the Start menu. The Remote Desktop client is necessary to facilitate a connection between your desktop and Windows dedicated server using the RDP. Using the Remote Desktop Client you can access your server’s GUI and share certain features of your desktop computer with your server; for example, you may have files on your local hard drive that you wish to copy over to your dedicated server and using the client application you can mount your local hard drives on the remote server so that you can copy the necessary files over. Unfortunately if you are a Linux desktop user then you won’t be able to access a Windows dedicated server because there is no RDP client available, but Mac OSX users can take advantage of the free client that is available for download from the Microsoft website.

Establishing an Environment that Supports Your Website

With your eNlight cloud servers, full access will be provided through Remote Desktop or SSH depending on whether you have chosen Windows or Linux. With full root/administrator access you can make any ammendments to your hosting environment that you feel will improve the support that is available for your website – this can include changes to applications to improve their use of system resources or the installation of applications and components that aren’t available by default. The dedicated environment offered by eNlight cloud servers allows you to break out of the mould creating by shared web hosting so that you can use any third-party applications and components as part of your website; furthermore, the resources offered with an eNlight VM will offer far more expansion opportunities than a shared web hosting plan.

Uploading your website to the eNlight cloud won’t be an issue once you have your environment established. Even though FTP is the standard way for uploading files to your web space, root access means that you can use more secure methods to achieve this including SCP.

Resources of eNlight Cloud Servers

The design of the eNlight cloud means that your virtual machines can grow along with your website because resources can be added with just a few clicks without incurring any downtime. The issue with existing web hosting plans has been that you have had to pay over the odds to receive resource allocations that aren’t necessarily completely fitting to your needs and this has meant that money is being wasted in some areas. The eNlight cloud overcomes this by allowing you to specify the exact resource allocations that are given to each of your VMs so that you know exactly what you are going to be paying and will only ever have to pay for what you want – this makes eNlight ideal for websites of all sizes. Auto-scaling is also available for websites that are unable to predict their growth because this will introduce a system that will automatically allocate resources to your server to cope with demand as it increases; you are able to set a cap on this however, so that you don’t end up with any nasty bills that you weren’t expecting.

Security Provided by eNlight VM

An isolated dedicated environment within the context of a virtual machine offers opportunities to introduce a level of security that is individual to a client’s needs so that they are able to guarantee the safety of the data that they are hosting without impeding on the performance of the website itself. With a dedicated environment you have full control of everything that goes on and as full root/administrator access is a standard feature of any virtual machine, you can install the applications that are necessary for creating the secure environment that you desire. Furthermore, as each virtual machine is independent of one another you can be assured that any security breaches that have occurred in another eNlight environment will not leak into the main cloud or any other virtual machines as the damage will be limited to the VM that was impacted initially.

See eNlight Cloud Hosting

CodeIgniter Framework.

If you make use of the CodeIgniter framework, you can use the built-in Email class in order to send e-mails. Here is sample code using the CodeIgniter’s Email class:

$this->load->library(‘email’);
$this->email->from(‘noreply@eukhost.com’, ‘eUKhost Limited (No Reply)’);
$this->email->to($email); // $email = “email_id”
$this->email->subject(‘Welcome to eUKhost Limited.’);
$this->email->message(‘<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<p><b>Message here</b></p>
</body>
</html>’);
$this->email->send();

You can also autoload the Email class within the config/autoload.php file which means you do not need to use the first line of code to instantiate the Email class before making use of it.
For more information on the Email class in CodeIgniter, see the documentation.

PEAR Library.

The PEAR library also has a built-in Mail class for sending e-mails, including e-mails over SMTP authentication with an already-existing e-mail account. Here’s an example:

include(‘Mail.php’); // includes the PEAR Mail class
$headers = array (‘From’ => $from, ‘To’ => $to, ‘Subject’ => $subject); // the email headers
$smtp = Mail::factory(‘smtp’, array (‘host’ => “localhost”, ‘auth’ => true, ‘username’ => $username, ‘password’ => $password, ‘port’ => ’587′)); // SMTP protocol with the username and password of an existing email account in your hosting account
$mail = $smtp->send($to, $headers, $body); // sending the email

For more information, see the page on the Mail class on the PEAR website.
Note: The code above does not catch any errors so we’d recommend you check the documentation for more elaborative examples.

To find the SMTP port, go to “Configure Email Client” under the “More” menu within “Email Accounts” of cPanel. It may be port 587, but check to be sure.

SwiftMailer Library.

The SwiftMailer library is another popular choice for sending e-mails. Here’s an example:
$transport = Swift_SmtpTransport::newInstance(‘mail.example.com’, 587); // your mail server address and port. If you don’t know what yours is, go to cPanel -> E-mail Settings and for the specific e-mail account, More -> Configure E-mail Client – it will be displayed there.

$mailer = Swift_Mailer::newInstance($transport); // creates new instance of an SMTP transport specifically

$transport->setUsername(‘email@example.com’);
$transport->setPassword(‘your_password_here’);

$message = Swift_Message::newInstance();

$message->setSubject(‘Set the subject of the e-mail’);
$message->setFrom(array(‘email@example.com’ => ‘Your Name/Company Name’));
$message->setTo(array($email));

$message->addPart(‘<p>If you want <b>HTML in your e-mail use addPart()</b></p>’, ‘text/html’);

$result = $mailer->send($message); // returns FALSE boolean on failure

if(!$result)
{
echo ‘failure’;
}
else
{
echo ‘success’;
}

Some of our staff members are experienced with PHP so if you require any assistance with your PHP code to send e-mail using any one of these libraries or a different library you may want to use, you are most welcome to post your query on our Web Hosting Forum where a staff member or customer on the forum will be happy to assist you.

All of our dedicated servers come with a minimum of 5000GB monthly bandwidth. However, if you require more bandwidth on a month-to-month basis, you can allocate more to your servger prior to placing your order, or by contacting our sales department if you already have a server with us. Depending on what server you choose, you can configure your server with up to 15,000GB of monthly bandwidth.

If you require an unmetered connection, we can offer up to a 1Gbps unmetered connection. What does this mean? This means that you can receive and send up to 125MB per second over your server. 1000Mb (or 1Gb) is in gigabits. In bytes, it is equivalent to 125 megabytes per second. Let’s see a comparison:

• 1000Mb: 125MB/s (£3999 per month)
• 100Mb: 12.5MB/s (£299 per month)
• 10Mb: 1.25MB/s (£20 per month)

What should I choose?
For a 10Mbps unmetered connection, you are limited to 1.25 megabytes per second. This may seem small but can reasonably support a website with thousands of visitors a day – but of course, this depends on factors like the size of your website files, your website images, and so forth. But for higher traffic-intensive websites, you’ll need more than a 10Mb unmetered connection. And all of our servers come with a dedicated 100Mbit port speed (and you’re able to upgrade to a 1Gbit port speed for an additional £49 per month).

As well as unmetered connections, you can (as by default) choose a metered bandwidth capacity. All of our servers come with a minimum of 5000GB of monthly data transfer. You can purchase additional monthly transfer from £50 per month for 2000GB of additional monthly transfer.

If you have any queries regarding bandwidth on your dedicated server, please contact our sales department over the phone on 0800 862 0380 or by e-mailing us on sales@eukhost.com.

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Yes, we do. Our Email Web Hosting starts at £2.49 per month. With our Email Hosting packages, you can create unlimited e-mail accounts within your Email Hosting account’s disk space constraints. Email Hosting is perfect for businesses or professional individuals that want to have a dedicated E-mail Account without having to use services such as Hotmail, Yahoo! Maiul or AOL Mail and having an unprofessional business image by having an @hotmail.com or @aol.com e-mail address.

With all of our Email Hosting packages, you need to also purchase a domain name. Our domain names start at just £7.49 per year for .COM and .NET domain extensions and £5 per year for .CO.UK domain names*. Any e-mail account you create under your Email Hosting account will be tied to your unique domain name. So instead of business@hotmail.com – your domain name can be business@example.com – whatever your domain name happens to be.

Why should I opt for Email Hosting?
If you don’t want full-scale web hosting and don’t want to have to pay for web hosting in order to have your own unique e-mail address with your company branding, Email Hosting is the perfect solution for this. And all of our Email Hosting packages come with SpamAssassin which is a widely-recognised anti-spam solution that is installed on all of our servers. You can activate SpamAssassin and will automatically filter e-mails that are detected to be spam by SpamAssassin. You can set the filter level before SpamAssassin will automatically delete e-mails it has detected as being spam.

Why is it important to have an anti-spam solution with email?
While “spam” doesn’t sound so scary, it can be used as a collective term to refer to more malicious e-mails, such as:

• “Phising” emails are e-mails sent by malicious users and organisations that are pretending to be a company or organisation that you may have an association or service with. A prominent example is PayPal spoof e-mails that are sent by malicious users that are claiming the customer’s account has been suspended and it needs to be verified. You’d be surprised by the amount of people that are unfortunately fooled by these kinds of e-mails.
• Scam e-mails that are trying to get you to provide your personal information that may be used to steal your identity or to use your credit or debit card details for unauthorised transactions. For example, some spam e-mails may claim that someone needs help with transferring funds from a certain third-world country. Never trust these e-mails – they always have an underlying motive to either steal your identity or make use of your credit or debit card information.
• Malicious emails can be sent that may have malware embedded in an attachment.
• Spam emails in general which are advertising certain products and services such as viagra pills, SEO services and so forth. Never, ever trust these e-mails – some of these malicious users are not really selling you viagra pills and could be something much more dangerous than that.

I’d be able to tell the difference between a real e-mail and a fake e-mail?
Not necessarily. In fact, it is very easy to spoof an e-mail and pretend to be someone you’re not if certain records are not set on a domain name where the e-mail is coming from, it will otherwise look like a genuine e-mail from the person you’d naturally expect it to be from. How is this possible? Well, very simply, malicious users simply set the e-mail address that sent the e-mail address to the e-mail address they wish to spoof. And even more, they can set a different e-mail address for the “Reply-To” header, which means when someone replies to such an e-mail, they’d be sending it to a completely different e-mail address.

How do you prevent this? Like with all of our Linux cPanel Hosting Packages, within the Email Authentication section of the control panel. Within this section, you can set an “SPF record” which adds a TXT record on the domain name that specifies what IP addresses are authorised to send e-mails from for your specific domain name. This may be set by default. And if it isn’t, you can contact our support team to set the SPF record within cPanel for you if you have any difficulties doing this yourself.

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There are two primary protocols for retrieving e-mails from a server – IMAP and POP3. But what is the difference, and which protocol should you use when setting up your e-mail account with your favourite e-mail client – whether that’s Thunderbird, Outlook or Apple Mail?

What is POP3?
“POP3″ is version 3 of the POP protocol – “POP” is short for “Post Office Protocol”. The Post Office Protocol downloads your e-mail messages to your computer unlike IMAP, which means you also have a local copy of the e-mails on your computer.

What is IMAP?
“IMAP”, short for “Internet Message Access Protocol” has the same outcome as POP3 – it allows you to read your e-mails using a user-friendly e-mail client – however, the primary difference as you may guess, is that your e-mails are NOT directly downloaded to your computer. Instead, you are reading your e-mails directly off the web server in which your e-mail account resides. In other words, your e-mails are not downloaded locally to your computer unlike POP.

Which protocol should I use when setting up my e-mail account?
Both work very well and if you have your e-mail account set up with our cPanel Hosting Services, you can make use of any two of the protocols for retrieving e-mails – if you want to keep a local copy of your e-mails, we’d recommend you opt for POP3. Otherwise, choose IMAP.

What about for sending e-mails?
When you are sending e-mails, you’re sending your e-mails over SMTP – which is short for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. When you are setting up your e-mail account, the section specific to “incoming” e-mail will allow you to choose between POP3 and IMAP (with most of the major e-mail clients out there), and for outgoing e-mail you are using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol.

When setting up my e-mail address, it’s asking for other information such as “server hostname” or “mail server address”?
The “incoming” and “outgoing” e-mail server address is to be able to retrieve your e-mails from the right server. If you have cPanel Web Hosting with us, you can find what the incoming and outgoing mail server address is as well as the port number for incoming and outgoing e-mail. If you’re running Thunderbird, all you need to provide is your username and password and the rest of the details should be automatically detected – including the server mail address, port number for connecting to the mail server and so forth. All you need to supply is your e-mail account username and password. Of course, make sure your “username” is your e-mail address and not a username, if you had set up your e-mail account in cPanel.

It’s important to note that popular e-mail services including Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail, Hotmail (soon to be known as Outlook.com) will likely be automatically set up by most e-mail clients without you needing to supply anything else except a username and password because of how popular these e-mail services are.

However, if you have your e-mail account set up with your web hosting account with us or if you need to provide the connection information manually, you can login to cPanel and go to Email Accounts, and from the right of your Email Account, click on More and select Configure Email Client. From here, you can see the Manual Settings but you can also download a configuration file for Outlook on Windows and Apple Mail on Mac OS X. You can make use of the manual settings to understand what you need to fill in when setting up your e-mail account in your preferred e-mail client.

What is a “port”?
A server “port” is to determine what service to use when communication happens between a server and a client, or a server to another server. A “client”, in this context, is you – and the server being the machine that “hosts” your e-mail account. While there may be many default port numbers for specific standards, such as port 80 for HTTP (Hyper Text Transer Protocol – yes – http://), port numbers may be changed for certain services that may be primarily used only by system administrators. For example, to connect to a Linux-based web server remotely as a customer of a VPS or Dedicated Server, you are likely to use SSH (Secure SHell), you use a specific port number. System administrators may change this for security reasons – because there will be malicious users trying to gain unauthorised entry into that web server; and changing the port number makes it more difficult for a malicious user to be able to gain successful unauthorised entry into a web server (as well as, of course, having a secure password) – because if they commit too many failed login attempts, the server’s firewall may blacklist the IP for too many failed login attempts in a short span of time.

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