Welcome to the Freeola Internet customer support pages. This guide is designed to help guide you through setting up a domain name with Freeola. For more internet help topics please visit our main Support Page.

This guide describes in detail the process of hosting and setting up your domain name purchased at (or transferred to) GetDotted.com. Once you have set up your domain name you will be able to use it for e-mail and a web site.

As an example, we've used the domain name 'example.com'. Just replace references to 'example.com' with your own domain name. You can personalise this guide to show your actual domain name by clicking here.

PLEASE NOTE:
If you've already signed up to Freeola.com, ignore stage 1. And, if you already use Freeola to connect to the Internet, please ignore stage 2 as well.

1. The Free Domain Hosting Offer is provided by Freeola.com, our unique free UK Internet Service Provider. In order to take advantage of this offer you'll need a Freeola User Name and Freeola Password which you can get by signing up to any of the following services.

• Freeola 0845 Dial-up (Free!)
This is a no-ties dial-up service offering fast and reliable internet access. There are no high monthly fees - you just pay low cost local call rates to your telephone provider which can cost as little as 48p per hour off-peak. This is the right option for you if you use the internet fairly infrequently.

• Freeola Anytime (Just £13.70 monthly with no call charges)
Freeola Anytime is a dial-up service charged at a low monthly fee (£13.70). There are no call charges for up to 160 hours usage per month. If you want to know what your internet bill is going to be every month, this option is for you.

• Freeola Broadband ADSL (Up to 24Mb - try it for only £9.99 with no commitment)
Freeola Broadband ADSL provides a super-fast internet connection up to 450 times faster than a dial-up modem. Unlike dial-up access the service silently shares your telephone line to allow phone calls and internet access at the same time. This service is charged at a monthly fee (from £9.99) and there are no call charges at all for 24/7 high-speed internet access. A BT telephone line is required in a broadband enabled area. You can check ADSL availability via the Freeola Broadband home page.

2. In order to send and receive e-mail at your new domain name or upload web pages (the process of making them available to the outside world), you'll need to be connected to the internet via a Freeola connection (e.g. any of the options detailed above).

3. Each Freeola User has their own control panel (known as MyFreeola) where you can make changes to your e-mail addresses, host domain names, alter personal details and change passwords etc. We're now going to log into Your Freeola Settings and host your domain.

Visit MyFreeola and enter your e-mail address and MyFreeola password you used to buy the domain with. Once you log in select 'Create New Email Addresses' from the left-hand menu.

If you would like to set up e-mail addresses, for example: anything@example.com, on your domain you can do this from the newly loaded page. Firstly select that you wish to create an email on your domain (this should be the middle option) then complete sections 1 and 2 on the next page to create your desired address.

In the next section it will ask you if you would like to set up a web site, if you do, then select the option to create a web space user name. If you would like to do this at a later date you can do so by selecting 'My Websites' from the left-hand menu within MyFreeola. Once you have set up the hosting space you should be able to upload files within a couple of hours, however very rarely this can take up to 24 hours.

4. Now it's time to start using your domain properly!

If you set up any e-mail addresses then you can view the details of these from the 'View/Edit Email Address' section within MyFreeola. Clicking the 'Settings & Features' button next to your address will show all the information required to set this up within your e-mail client. Freeola offers several guides on setting up your email address across multiple mail clients, these guides can be found on the Email Support section of the website.

Remember! You'll need to be connected via a Freeola internet connection when you send e-mail via the smtp.freeola.net server. If you would like to use a Freeola mail server without choosing to connect via Freeola you can do so by signing up to our Email Freedom service for as little as £2 per month.

6. This stage explains how to access your web space. This is where you place your web pages and files that you want to be accessible to the outside world via your web site address http://www.example.com.

Unfortunately the process of creating a web site or web pages is so varied and potentially complex (if you want it to be), we can't go into much detail here. If you are unsure how to create a webpage you may find Freeola's InstantPro website designer a great help, this software will allow anybody to create a professional looking website in minutes. However, here are some key facts and pointers which will help you on your way to creating the pages if you choose not to take this option:

• Web pages, however created are designed in a language called HTML. This stands for HyperText Markup Language.

• Web pages are created on your machine initially and are made using web design programs such as Dreamweaver or Microsoft Front Page and can even be made in text editors like Notepad (part of Windows) by those who understand the HTML language.

• Web pages are made available to Internet users (or uploaded) using a process known as FTP which stands for File Transfer Protocol. Programs which handle this process are known as FTP clients. Internet Explorer can act as a very basic FTP client but does have it's limits. An FTP client such as Filezilla is recommended by Freeola Support as this is a far easier and more stable way of transferring your files. A guide for this program can also be found here.

• The FTP client connects to the Freeola server in order to upload the web pages you have created and in order to do this you need three settings. The FTP Server, Username and Password. The FTP server name will need to be entered in the Host field, FTP Username in the Username field and the FTP Password within the Password field. The hostname will be in the form of 'freeolawebX.freeola.net' (vipX.freeola.net for VIP Hosting customers). The FTP username will vary depending on your Freeola hosting package, VIP Hosting customers will have a username in the form of vip0000000 whilst other customers will have an sr number username.

• Once you gain access to the server you will be placed in what is known as your root folder. You will see another folder with the name 'htdocs'. This folder is where you should place any files you want to be published to the world on the web.

• If somebody tries to access your site in the normal way by typing http://www.example.com, the server will look for a page called 'index.html' or 'index.php' in the htdocs directory. To put it another way, 'index.html' or 'index.php' is what you should always name the first page you want people to see when they type your web site address. This is sometimes known as your site home page, index page or default page. Note the strict lower-case requirement for this filename.

• If you placed a file in the 'htdocs' folder called 'mypage.html', it would be visible to the whole world via the Internet address: http://www.example.com/mypage.html

• You can place more folders inside the 'htdocs' folder. So, if you placed a file called 'mypage.html' in a folder called 'mypages' inside the 'htdocs' folder, it would be visible to the whole world via the Internet address: http://www.example.com/mypages/mypage.html<

• The Freeola server is case-sensitive which means that if you put a page called 'myPaGe.html' in the 'htdocs' folder, you would have to reference it that way. e.g. http://www.example.com/myPaGe.html would work, http://www.example.com/mypage.html wouldn't.

• The Freeola server allows you to use the programming/scripting language PHP for advanced web pages. This is a major benefit and there is no extra charge for this powerful service. Filenames need to end with .php for PHP processing to take place. If your index page requires PHP processing use index.php as the filename. Please see our PHP Essentials page for more information.

• The Freeola server also supports SSI and Freeola Support Section has a number of articles and guides to help you design and upload a web page.