Frequently Asked Support Questions

1. How do I access my Host Account Control Panel?

Your host account Control Panel is located by typing in your domain name followed by :"/cpanel"(without the quotes). For example if your website url was www.mydomain.com , the URL for your control panel would be www.mydomain.com/cpanel
When you have successfully entered your Control Panel URL, you will be prompted for your host account username and password. If you can't remember you username or password, then please contact us and we will provide you with this information after successfully identifying you as the ligitimate owner of the host account.

2. How do I set up my Email on my computer?

1. Login into your Host account control panel (see above on how to do this).

2. Locate the tool or option titled Add/Remove E-mail Account(s) and click on it.

3. Click on Add Account to create a new email account (If you have already done this, then move onto the next step). Fill in the information required and click on the create button.

4. To set up a mail account on either Microsoft Outlook, or Outlook Express, locate the Outlook button located on the right side of the screen appropriate to the actual mail account you wish to set up.

5. Depending on your requirements you can choose to Auto-configure either Outlook or Outlook Express. Usually you will need to use the POP3 Access option, so click the one that matches your mail client (the program you use to check mail on your site). If you do not use either Outlook or Outlook Express to check your mail, then you will need to use the manual setttings located at the bottom of the page. NOTE: Before selecting any option on this page, make sure your email client (program) is not currently open. Close it down if it is, before proceeding.

6. You will need to follow the on-screen prompts from here onwards. Basically just agree to everything that is asked of you, and you should be fine.

7. Once step 6 is complete you can open your mail client and your mail should now send and receive. When you first check your mail, you may be prompted for your mail password. This is the same password you entered when you created the mail account. Enter this and check the Remember Password box, to automate the process.

If after doing all of the above you mail does not seem to be working, please click the CONSOLE button located at the top of this page to submit a support request.

3. How can I check statistics about my site?

Log into your host account control panel (see above for instructions on how to do this).

Locate the option called WEB/FTP stats, then click on Awstats for a detailed analysis of your website.

4. How do I stop SPAM emails?

The honest truth is - once you start getting SPAM, it is almost impossible to completely stop it. However there are things that you can do to reduce the amount you get.

First it is important to understand why you may be getting more SPAM. If in the past you have only ever used an email account provided by your ISP, then you may have been fairly sheltered from SPAM. One of the only downsides of having your own hosted website & Registered Domain Name, is that you are more susceptible to SPAM. The likelihood of you being SPAMed increases as your websites exposure increases. This is because as the search engines find you better, so do the SPAMers and the SPAMbots.

So what can you do about it ?

Before anything : Make sure that the SPAM is being generated from your website. Often people also have a mail account with their ISP, and it is the ISP account that is receiving the majority of SPAM email. In this instance you should contact your ISP to determine a solution. You can click on the properties of a message (RIGHT CLICK > PROPERTIES), and from here you can usually assertain the intended recipient address. If it turns out the SPAM is being directed at your Domain Hosted with Brainstorm Technology then read on...

1. Firstly, be selective about giving out your email address to just anbody. You don't have to be paranoid, but each time you are faced with giving out your email address, consider the benefits of doing so against the potential risk of the person, organisation or website you are giving it to.

2. (If you are creating your website yourself) Try to avoid including your email address in the text on your website. Instead, place it inside an image file, because web-bots usually can't read the information displayed in an image file. Also avoid using the "mailto:" tag for creating clickable links to a mail program (ie. Outlook Express). If you want your site visitors to be able to contact you then you are better off using a secure email form.

3. Enable SPAM Assassin in your Control Panel.

• Login to your Control panel at www.yourdomain.com/cpanel
• Under Email Management Tools select SpamAssassin.
• Click the button labelled Enable SpamAssassin
• As an additional step look above the Enable SpamAssassin button, for the text 'To simply have the server DELETE and NOT deliver emails that are tagged as spam by SpamAssassin, click here' and click on click here. As stated this will delete all emails that are detected as SPAM. If you suspect that SpamAssassin has been deleting legitimate emails, then you may wish to disable this option.

4. Setup a Default email address (Catch All).

• Login to your Control Panel
• Under Email Management Tools select Aliases / Forwarding
• Where the text asks if you wish to set your default address, click on click here
• Click Set Default Address (Catch All)
• Here you can either
  1. Send all unrouted email to a specific address, OR
  2. to have unrouted mail bounce back to the sender enter :fail: in the to: box, OR
  3. to have unrouted mail deleted, enter :blackhole: in the to: box.

  NOTE: Unrouted Mail, is mail that has been sent to your server, but not to a specific real email address. For example your email address might be info@mydomain.com. All mail addresses correctly will be sent to info@mydomain.com but incorrectly addressed email such as asdf@mydomain.com which does not correspend to a legitimate email address, is considered unrouted email.

5. Finally, you can also install an Anti-SPAM program on your computer. Norton, McAffee and many other suppliers provide these programs, which attempt to filter SPAM as your computer receives email.

At the end of the day there is no such thing as a 100% effective proofing against SPAM. The best you can do is minimize it. Your website is most likely receiving 1000s of SPAM attacks every day, if you only receive less than 0.5 % of these then you do have an effective anti-SPAM solution already working for you.