The following are a few questions that are often asked by new customers and some of the policies and rules that apply to ALL customers. We hope this helps answer some of the things you may need information on:

What are your rates and  plans? 

Please visit our Hosting Services to see our plans. If for some reason the information you are looking for can not be found there, feel free to e-mail us and ask questions. 

What is a Domain Name? 

Your Domain Name is your address on the Web. Just like people use your phone number to call you on the phone, your Domain Name allows people to access your site on the Web.   Clever, simple, or easy to remember Domain Names are most desirable as they can play a large part in attracting visitors to your site.   Domains can also be used with your e-mail accounts allowing you to send and receive e-mail with addresses such as "support@yourdomain.com"
 

How does a Web site work? 

A Web site is simply a collection of files that reside on a computer connected to the Internet. When someone visits your site, they are actually contacting that computer, and that computer (called a Web server) gives the visitor the files they want to see. It sounds very simple, but most normal computers don't have the power or the software needed to constantly respond to all the requests made by all the visitors to a site. And even if they did, they'd need an extremely fast   connection to the Internet to keep up with all the requests. Most people and small companies don't have the resources to run a Web server, and that is where Web Hosting comes in.

How do I transfer files to my web site?

Most of the time you can use a program called an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) utility . You can make or delete directories and files through FTP.  If you are using Frontpage you can use the publish function to publish via the internal HTTP or FTP methods. We support Frontpage 2002/2003 and Expression Web Designer.  You can also use Dreamweaver for your design and uploading.

What is Virtual Web Hosting?

We offer Virtual Web Hosting which means that you can have a home for your web site on our active  web servers and establish a presence on the internet. We can help register your own domain name which will become your unique address on the World Wide Web.   

How do I change my domain over to LI Web Tech from my old hosting company? 

If you already have a domain hosted with another company you will need to change the DNS entries at the registrar (usually NetworkSolutions, OpenSRS, Register.com and so on).   The only two things you need to know are the primary and secondary dns info for our DNS servers, they are:

      ns1.hofweb.com       209.139.92.2

      ns2.hofweb.com       209.139.92.3

Those are "server name"  "server ip"  pairs and you may be asked for names only, numbers only or both.   If you don't know how to handle this, feel free to drop us an email and we will help you.

Can I use my account for commercial purposes ?

Yes, you can use your account for commercial purposes. The World Wide Web has become a most efficient and cost-effective means of
making information available to the users of the Internet community. We do not host adult or porn sites nor do we allow "warez" or game file download sites. 

Do you have an "uptime" guarantee? 

Yes, we guarantee that the web server will be up  99% of the time. If we fail in any given month, you can request one full free month of hosting service which is added to your accounts expiration date.   If you ever have trouble accessing your site always be sure you are actually on the internet and that you can see other sites at that time. If you are having trouble getting to your site always be sure to call or email us right away, it usually is something between your dialup/cable account and the path to us, not the servers here, but we will check it out for you right away.

If LI Web Tech does not charge you for your domain name that means some other domain registrar is controlling it.  Always know who is your domain name registrar, when it expires AND who is the owner or admin contact for renewals. Many times web sites that appear to be down are actually up but their domain name has expired so they cannot be accessed.

How much disk space and bandwidth do I need ?

If you have been looking around at some of the larger hosting companies you will notice that in the past year or so they have been doubling and tripling both disk storage and bandwidth. Every few days you see 5 gigs become 10 then 25 or even 100 or more.  So how much do YOU need ?  If you are an average customer who just has a dozen pages, email contact form, some small images and maybe a mpg or few mp3's you would probably find it hard to fill out 50-100 megs. E-commerce sites with as much as a 1000 items still have a hard time filling out a few gigabytes. So what do you need 100, 200 or 500 gigs of storage?. You don't.  If you are already hosting your site on another host, check your statistics. If you are not using a fraction of your resource limits then why would you need more ?. The most important things to check for any host is reliability, REAL tech support and extra features you can use, not 500 gigabytes of storage and a terabyte of transfer.  Some web hosting companies are desperate to get more market share and overselling resources that you don't need seem to be their only option. We host over 1,500 accounts and 85% of them use less than 500 megs of storage and one gigabyte of transfer per month.  Our basic account offers 50000megs (50 gigs) and 50 gigabytes of transfer, which is more than 99% of our hosted customers need. Features, support and reliable servers are of more use to you than space and transfer limits you will never use.

How long does it take to set up a new account ?

Most accounts are set up and active within a few hours! Once an account  is set up an activation notice will be sent you via e-mail including a user ID, password, IP Address and FTP hostname. You can begin uploading files to your new web site immediately thereafter.  If we are registering a domain name for you then your account can be ready for use in 15 minutes.  If you are registering a new domain name yourself or moving an existing one from one host to ours it can take 24 hours for that process to complete, so you may have to wait that long to actually see the site via a browser.

How do I upgrade or downgrade from one plan to another?

You can change plan types at anytime by sending your request to support@liwebtech.com or contacting our Customer Service.  No special fees apply to handle the process, but if you are downgrading, that means the next renewal will cost a lower rate and your account will be reduced in capability to the new lower account type upon renewal.   If you are upgrading you can pay the difference between what you paid for an account and the price of the new service you are upgrading to, special considerations are applied to the amount of time already used for your annual subscription so you don't pay too much.

Will I be able to access my domain name with or without the 'www.'?

Yes, you will be able to access the domain name with or without the 'www.' in front. For example, you can access the domain name "mydomain.com" by going to "www.mydomain.com" as well as
"mydomain.com".  If you are hosting with a company and cannot access your domain without the 'www' then you are probably losing a lot of customers and visitors, many people type in the domain without the www because that's how they are often referred to in magazines and TV shows.

Backups and Data Recovery

Backups are made disk to disk daily and disk to tape weekly .We store some on site and others off site. We also do periodic backups throughout the month and physically swap drives and copy them to an emergency server which has no internet connection. These backups are made for use by our company only, that is we make backups for in case of hard drive or system failures or any possible account corruption or breach. In those cases we can easily reload the backups and restore the accounts or hard drives.  We will, upon request,  reload files for a customer if they need them and IF WE HAVE A BACKUP AVAILABLE for the time period requested. No guarantees are made of any kind, either expressed or implied, as to the integrity of these backups. It is the clients' responsibility to maintain local copies of their web content and any information on their account including but not limited to clients website, email, databases, mailing lists, and archives. LI Web Tech is not an archival source for your files. We can only restore files from our backups we retain for our purposes but we do not store files indefinitely nor do we keep files of expired or deleted accounts. You are strongly urged to always have a copy of ALL of your files of your website, especially if you use a third party to design your site. Too many people get sites designed, never get a copy of the site and when they stop dealing with their web designer they no longer have access to their files and may not know how to get them off the live website.   If you do not have a copy of your website you should get one immediatly from either your web designer or discuss this with support here at LI Web Tech to see if we can arrange a copy to be made for you. There may be a small fee for websites that need to be burned onto CDROMS or DVD's.

What about porn, adult videos, celebrity nude or teaser images and videos, "hot chick", FlashYourRack  images or videos, etc. - ANYONE who posts any of these images or videos for download or viewing on their website hosted by LI Web Tech will lose their account, have their website immediately shutdown and will be forced to remove their files and account from our servers.  The impact on a network from posting these kinds of files are overwhelming and we have a ZERO TOLERANCE for it.

What about spamming -- Sending unsolicited bulk and/or commercial messages over the Internet (known as "spamming"). It is not only harmful because of its negative impact on consumer attitudes toward LI Web Tech but also because it can overload LI Web Tech network and disrupt service to LI Web Tech subscribers.  If a customer has a mailing list program on their website it must not be used to send out mass email to a list of people who did not specifically join that mailing list. When a complaint is received, LI Web Tech has the discretion to determine from all of the evidence whether the email recipients were from an "opt-in" email list.   LI Web Tech hosting customers must not use our servers for any kind of "bulk" emailing, period.