Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous’ Category

Second Thoughts?

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

Have you ever had second thoughts about what you wear to work?
A Flarehosting.com employee wore this shirt(in the picture below) to work yesterday. It made for a day of fun banter in the NOC. It really BRIGHTENED the day for us.

Giving our customers the best customer service is the goal of the whole team here at Flarehosting.com. This yellow shirt put a little more fun in the job yesterday.

The employee took all of the comments in stride and even wore a different Hawaiian shirt to work today.

Keep you work place fun and wear something outrageous today!!

Our mission is to provide the best service possible to our customers at an affordable price with two primary goals in mind: commitment and focus. We are committed to providing services that will not just keep our customers satisfied, but position them for success in web hosting.

Flarehosting.com

New Client Area Home Page

Friday, May 28th, 2010

In an effort to make our client easier to use, we have just launched a revamped client area home page. When you log into your client area you will see the changes. Now, you can manage nearly all aspects of your hosting plans right from the home page. From your new home page you can:

  • View your account credit / balance
  • See some quick stats on all of your hosting accounts
  • View your account details
  • View / Open Support Tickets
  • See your current invoices
  • View domains that will soon be expiring

Here are a couple screen shots of the new home page:

If you have any questions or comments about our new client area home page, please let us know!

Creating a New Email Address in SmarterMail

Friday, November 6th, 2009

All of our hosting accounts come with an account on one of our SmarterMail email servers.  You will be able to find which server your account is located on in the welcome email that you receive after signing up.

If you are hosting DNS with us, then you will be able to get to your mail server by going to the following URL in an Internet Browser, such as Internet Explorer or Firefox:

http://mail.YOUDOMAIN.COM/

If you entered this correctly, your windows should look similar to the image below:

ScreenHunter_04 Nov. 06 11.01

Next, we will need to enter our admin username and password.  By default, your admin username will be similar to the following:

admin@YOURDOMAIN.COM

You will be able to get your password out of the welcome email.

The first time that you login, you will see the following screen.

ScreenHunter_05 Nov. 06 11.05

Select your timezone and click, “Finish”.  From the next screen, you will want to click on the “Settings” button.

ScreenHunter_07 Nov. 06 11.09

Once you click on the settings button, you will need to expand the “Domain Settings” folder by clicking on the “+”.

ScreenHunter_08 Nov. 06 11.12

Once that folder is expanded, you will see the “Users” option.  Click on this link.  You will now see something similar to:

ScreenHunter_09 Nov. 06 11.13

Now click on the “New” button and you should see something like:

ScreenHunter_12 Nov. 06 11.16

This is where you will create the new user.  By going through the tabs located above this window, you will be able to set a range of different settings including a forwarding email address, signature, and many others.  Once you are done modifying these settings, you can click on the “save” button located in the top left of this window to save this user.  This email address is now setup and ready for use.

If you need assistance with this, do not hesitate to contact support@flarehosting.com.

The New Client Area

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

Here’s another time-saving tip that’ll make you more productive and efficient with your Flare Hosting account.  Instead of sending a support ticket to get your account changes done, let’s have a look at how the new Flare Hosting Client Area has put you in control of your account by giving you the ability to make changes previously done by the support teams.

First of all, you might be asking what is this “Client Area”?  This is your account portal and command central.  To log-in( https://www.flarehosting.com ), you’ll need to use the full email address(ie. yourname@domain.com) that you signed up your account with us as the username and your password will be your FTP password.  Once logged-in, you’ll see the “Client Area”.  The first bar across the top, positioned with the “Home” link in the center of the page is the Flare Hosting site navigation bar.  Here you can go back to the Flare Hosting Homepage, view our products, find-out more about us, check the blog area, or contact us.  This will move you around our site and you will not need to log-in to use this particular navigation bar.

Notice to the far right there is a “Quick Navigation” list and it does the same job as your “Client Area” navigation bar, but slightly more detailed.  Under the quick navigation icons you can see the contact information that we have listed on your account.  Further down is your Account Statistics. This gives you a quick overview of how may Products and Services you have with us, how many domains, how many referrals, your account balance, and the amount of any due invoices.  This is a very useful tool and you can quickly look here to see your account info without digging down into your account.

Now, the next bar across the screen and positioned more to the left of the page is your “Client Area” navigation bar and it is right above the words “Client Area”.  This toolbar navigates you through your Flare Hosting Account.  To come back to this main page at any time simply select the “Home” link.  Under the “Client Area” heading you will see where you are located in your account.  At this point we are in “Portal Home” and in the “Client Area” section, so you will see “Portal Home > Client Area”.  This will show you where you are as you browse your account.  Just as you select the Home link and come home, you can select any of the other links in this tool bar and you will be directed accordingly.

The links on the “Client Area” navigation bar are:

  • My Details
  • My Services
  • My Domains
  • My Invoices
  • My Support Tickets
  • Affiliates
  • My Emails

When you select “My Details” you are taken to the area where your personal information can be updated.  Please see the sections listed under “My Details”:

  • Manage Contacts – This is where you can manage the additional contacts that you added to your account.
  • Add New Contact –  This is where you can add additional contacts to your account.
  • Change Credit Card Details – This is where you will update your credit card on file
  • Change Account Password – This is your Client Area log-in password(not FTP)
  • Change Security Question – Security for your Client Area password

Next, to go back to the “Client Area”, we can select the link listed right under the heading “Client Area” (“Portal Home>Client Area> My Details”) or you can us the bar right above this and select “Home”.   We’ll now have a look in the “My Services” section.  Once this is selected you will be taken to a list of your products and services.

Notice that if you have multiple services or previous services, you will see some packages highlighted in green and some highlighted in red.  What this means is the green highlighted services are active services and the red highlighted services are inactive or closed services.  To the right of each service is a small white icon that looks like a sheet of paper with an arrow pointing to the right.  When you select this icon it will give you details about that particular service.  This is where you will need to go to make changes to your specific services such as purchasing add-ons (disk space, dedicated IP, sub-domains, additional ftp users, etc), upgrading or downgrading your packages.  Also this is where you would go to cancel your service.  Now, moving back to the Client Area, we will discuss the “My Domains” section.

From anywhere in the portal, you can select where you would like to travel next from the navigation bar across the top..  This time we’ll go to the “My Domains” section.  Once here you will see the domains that you have registered through Flare Hosting.  Again you will see the domains highlighted in red or green to label the domain as active or inactive.

Our next stop is in the “My Invoices” section. From here you can see what invoices are on your account.  The new billing system sends out your invoice 7 days before we attempt payment unless you use the mail-in option(Yearly Plans Only). This is why you may see an invoice on your account before it is actually due.  In this section you will see your recent invoices and you will be able to pay an existing invoice if it’s marked Unpaid.

If an invoice is red, this means that the invoice will need to be paid very soon. Anything in green will be listed as “Paid” and this can be printed out to act like a receipt.  To view your invoice, click on the “View Invoice” link.  When attempting to make payment on a invoice, you can select from the drop down box to pay via PayPal or credit card(authorize.net).

Under the “My Support Tickets” link you can go in and respond to any tickets you have sent to our support teams (Billing or Tech Support) under the email listed on the account.  If you have sent an email from a different address than what we have on file, it will not show up here.  You can create a support ticket here by selecting the “Submit Ticket” link.  You can review your emails sent and emails that have been replied to by the support teams.

Please also rate the tickets you have received from support as we try to supply great service and support. This rating helps us understand who is helping you and who is not.

Affiliates, we are working on getting our affiliate program up and running right now and should be finished pretty soon!

Our last stop is the “My Emails” section and this is where you will find emails that we have sent to you(ie. Customer Invoices, Order Confirmations, etc) .  This is your email history with Flare Hosting.

Backup your files

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

Have you ever lost your hard drive at home or work?

It could really be disastrous.

Today with all of the digital cameras and video recorders, most people are saving all of their family pictures and videos to their computer. If their hard drive fails, they will lose everything, so to ensure that this does not happen, one would need to have a solid backup solution in place.

Most businesses rely on storing all of their important files on a computer somewhere. If these files are lost due to a hard drive failure, one could jeopardize their entire company. This is also a great place for a backup solution to come to the rescue.

Flare Hosting is now offering a new backup solution. Our solution is powered by BackupSpace.com. For a limited time, you can try this service with the low cost of $1.00 for the first month. If you like this product you can continue at the normal price.

  • Supports Windows XP/2003/Vista/2008
  • Off-site Secure Backup
  • Easy To Use Client Utility
  • Automated Scheduler Process
  • 256-bit Encryption
  • 128-bit SSL Secure Connection

Protect yourself from disaster and backup your files.

http://www.flarehosting.com/backups