Your account comes with a comprehensive suite of web tools that will help you create, promote and manage your sites:

• SiteStudio to create a professional website without knowing HTML
• Search Engine Submit to register your website with major search engines
• WebShell to manage files in your home directory and htProtect to protect any directory on your site
• Webalizer, ModLogAn, and Urchin to track and report your website statistics
• Reverse Traceroute to troubleshoot your domain
• Site Toolbox to promote your website and increase site attendance

SiteStudio Site Builder

Before you pay a fortune to a web design studio or waste hours making a nice-looking web site in FrontPage, consider our online site builder that will create you a professional website in a matter of minutes and post it to your directory on the server.

To start SiteStudio, click the SiteStudio icon on the control panel home page. Alternatively, choose the domain and on the Edit Domain page click Login in the SiteStudio field.

Then follow the on-screen instructions.

Search Engine Submit

So your site is up and running? Help others find it among infinite pages of the Internet! Register it with major search engines!

To start the Search Engine Submit utility, click the Submit URL icon. On the page that appears, check the engines to register the site with and fill in the following fields:

• Domain to submit: select the site you would like to be indexed.
• Contact Email: most search engines require a contact e-mail address.
• Key Words: some search engines provide the possibility for entering additional keywords your site can be searched by.
• Description: this text will show to Internet users as a description of your site in the list of search results.
• Time-out: this is the time you allow for registering one site with all search engines. If this period is too short, the site will get registered with only a few search engines.

Next, click Submit. Be patient while the server processes your request.

Warning: Avoid submitting a large number of web sites at a time, or the browser will time out before the program has finished.

You may have to wait a week or more before some search engines start showing the sites in search results.

WebShell File Manager and htProtect

WebShell allows you to copy, move, delete, and rename files and directories in your home directory on the server. Also, you can use it to upload, download, compress and decompress files as well as preview them in the browser.

Starting from H-Sphere version 2.3, htProtect utility is integrated into WebShell. Protect utility allows you to password-protect any directory on your site so only authorized visitors can open its content with their browsers.

To launch WebShell, click the File Manager icon on your control panel home page.

Webalizer, ModLogAn and Urchin Web Analyzers

Information about the operation of your site is critical for decision-making. To obtain this information, you need to analyze statistics data that is written to log files in your home directory on the server:

• Error log - stores data about errors generated by the server (e.g. Page Not Found error) or by your CGI scripts;
• Transfer log - stores combined data about every visit to your site, including:
  - Remote host IP (i.e. visitor's IP);
  - Time of request (i.e. when visitor requested the page);
  - First line of request;
  - Error generated by request, if any;
  - Size of message sent in response to the request;
  - Referrer (i.e. from which page visitor was directed);
  - Agent ID (i.e. type of browser or another agent and related information, such as user's OS, etc.) ;
• Referrer log - stores the list of URLs from which visitors are referred to your site; and
• Agent log - stores data about agents used to enter the site -- such as browsers or any other Internet-based software -- and all related data.

To enable or disable writing log files, do the following:

• Click the Web Options icon on your control panel home page
• Select the Domain name you need
• On the page that shows, scroll down to the Settings section and click the ON/OFF icon next to the log files.

To view the log files records, do the following:

1. Click the Web Options icon on your control panel home page.
2. Choose the necessary domain
3. Scroll down to Log files and click the View icon next to it.
4. List of log files shows.
5. Click the necessary file and all its records will show.

Note: Entering end in the Line Number field will show a list of records from the tail of a logfile.
         

The statistics data in the log files is difficult to read. Web analyzers will read log files to produce visual reports in HTML format for viewing through a browser.

To enable these analyzers and view statistics reports for your sites, do the following:

1. Click the Stats icon to go to the Statistics page.
2. Enable ModLogAn or Analyzer for this domain.
3. Click the Apply link on the right of this domain.
4. Click the View icon to see your statistics report.

Note: To use Urchin, you need to buy a license.

Reverse Traceroute

This net troubleshooting tool allows you to ping any Internet host from your hosting server. In other words, you can use this tool to determine if a host is reachable and how long it takes for the signal to go all the way through.

To launch the Reverse Traceroute tool, do the following:

• On your control panel home page, click the Reverse Traceroute icon.
• In the form that appears, enter the host name or the IP address of the server you would like to ping:

  

• Select the timout period. If you see the connection is slow, select a bigger period.
• Click Trace and wait for the result. The next page will show all the hosts that were passed to reach the target server.

Site Toolbox.

You can promote your site with Site Toolbox utility by referring to the link in your user control panel. To have your website promoted, do the following:

1. On your user control panel home page, click the Web Options icon.
2. Click Edit next to the necessary domain.
3. On the page that appears, click the lens icon against Site Toolbox.

It will take you directly to the Site Toolbox website and all further actions will be taken outside H-Sphere interface.