ProZ.com frequently asked questions

1 - What is ProZ.com hosting?

Note: When ProZ.com hosting was first introduced, hosting services were much less accessible than they are today, and it was deemed a valuable service to extend to ProZ.com members. Currently, economical solutions of this kind which exceed the capacity of ProZ.com hosting exist through many third-party providers.

For this reason, as of August 2015 the ProZ.com hosting service has been suspended. Full members who already had hosting accounts through ProZ.com may maintain their existing accounts, but no new accounts are being created.

2 - Who can take advantage of ProZ.com hosting?

For the time being, site staff will consider requests made by full site members to access the site's hosting service.

If you'd like to request access to ProZ.com's hosting service, please submit a support request.

3 - How much does it cost?

The standard hosting package is available for free to all full members. An advanced hosting upgrade is available with additional features for a small fee.

Domain registration and management is not free, however. To own your own domain name, you must pay an annual, non-refundable domain registration fee to a domain registrar. That fee can be paid through ProZ.com, or to a third-party registrar or domain reseller.

As an alternative to owning your own domain name, it is possible to host your web site using a subdomain of proz.com (yourname.my.proz.com). This service is free to full members.

See the hosting info page for more feature and pricing information.

4 - Where can I find ProZ.com hosting Terms of Service?

See this page to find ProZ.com hosting Terms of Service .

5 - What is the difference between hosting and domain registration?

Hosting and domain registration are two distinct services. You register your domain name with a domain registrar, giving you unique ownership of that name. You tell your domain registrar where to find the nameservers authoritative for your domain. Your hosting service provides nameservers for your domain, and handles your web site, email, etc. Often, domain registration service is provided through your hosting provider, but not always. One of the advantages to owning a domain name is that you are not tied to any one hosting provider.

ProZ.com provides domain registration services for some top-level domains (currently .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .co.uk, and .org.uk). We can also provide hosting services for domains that use a different domain registrar.

6 - Why do domains hosted at ProZ.com have to use ProZ.com's name servers?

ProZ.com hosting requires full control over domains in order to allow integration. The cPanel needs to be able to control the DNS for the domain so it can add ftp. mail, extensions, etc.

7 - Who will own my domain if I register it at ProZ.com?

You are the owner of any domain you register at or transfer to ProZ.com. Your contact information will be shown as the owner, admin, and billing contact in your domain's whois record. By default, ProZ.com will be listed as the technical contact and registration service provider in your domain's whois record.

8 - What happens when my domain renewal date expires?

If you do not renew your domain within a certain period of time, it will be passed to the Redemption Period which is a 30-days hold period for expired domains which begins once a domain has been expired for 40 days without being renewed by the owner. The Redemption Period provides the owner with one last chance to recover the domain before it’s dropped and potentially re-registered by a new owner.

The Redemption process is non-refundable (non-guaranteed fee of $80USD) and you should renew domains before expiry or during the grace period when a renewal can be completed for no additional cost.

Note: The domain can only revert back to the original Registrant (original whois information), and it will take approximately 2-3 business days to complete the process. The cost of redeeming is non-refundable and non-guaranteed fee of $80 US (plus a 1-year renewal). This may take up to 7 business days to process and is not guaranteed.

9 - Are there any restrictions on the content of my web site?

The main focus of all web sites hosted by ProZ.com must be translation or interpretation. Additionally, normal guidelines for acceptable Internet use must be followed; please read the hosting terms of service for more information.

10 - I forgot my password. How can I reset it?

To reset your password, start at your hosting info page. Make a note of your username listed there. Then click your "control panel" link.

Click "cancel" at the password dialog that pops up. You will be directed to a page that says "Access Denied. If you have lost your password, you can reset it by entering your username". Enter your username in that field and click the submit button. A message will be sent to the email address associated with your hosting account that will walk you through resetting your password. If you don't receive this email message, please submit a support request.

11 - How do I get started with my hosting account?

See the Getting Started Guide for information about signing up for a hosting account, managing a domain name, using the control panel, creating and uploading your web pages, and accessing your email.

12 - How can I create a website on ProZ.com?

As of August 2015, the ProZ.com hosting service has been suspended. Full members who already had hosting accounts through ProZ.com may maintain their existing accounts, but no new accounts are being created. For more information, please see the note in http://www.proz.com/faq/3859#3859

Note: For the time being, site staff will consider specific requests from full site members to access ProZ.com's hosting service. If you are a full member and would like to make a website through ProZ.com, please submit a support request.

13 - How do I upload images to my website using the ProZ.com SiteCreator?

To learn how to add images to your website using the ProZ.com SiteCreator, watch this video.

14 - Can I have my website designed by a website designer instead of using the Site creator?

Yes. You can have your website designed by a website designer. Just make sure your designer does not use ASP to develop the site.

15 - How do I use the mail hosting features?

See the mail howto for information about using the mail features of your hosting account.

16 - How do I use anonymous FTP or create new FTP accounts?

See the FTP howto for information about using the FTP features of your hosting account, including anonymous FTP and maintaining extra FTP accounts.

17 - How do I use multiple domains, subdomains, or other advanced domain-related features?

See the domain name HOWTO document for information about these and other domain-related features.

18 - How do I access the WYSIWYG editor?

To edit your site with the WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editor, first log into your control panel. Then click the "file manager" icon.Your web site is in the "public_html" directory. Navigate to the public_html directory by clicking the little folder icon to the left of "public_html". To edit your index.html page, first click the "index.html" file. In the upper right pane you will see the various actions you can perform on this file. You can edit the HTML code directly by selecting "Edit File", or you can use the WYSIWYG editor by selecting "HTML Editor".

Note that the WYSIWYG editor is not supported by all browsers. It is officially supported with Internet Explorer version 6 and higher, and has been reported to work with Mozilla-based browsers such as firefox.

19 - How can I access to my control panel?

You can access your control panel by typing h1.host.proz.com/cpanel in the address bar of your browser. Once your domain registration or transfer has taken place, you may instead access your control panel by typing www.yourdomain.com/cpanel (replacing yourdomain.com with your own domain name). You can find a link to your control panel on your hosting info .

20 - I am unable to connect to my control panel or webmail, and I use a personal firewall.

Your control panel and webmail interface use alternate "ports" that are not normally used to access web sites. If you are unable to connect to your control panel or webmail, and you use a personal firewall, your firewall may be blocking your access. Try configuring your firewall to allow outbound connections to TCP ports 2082 and 2095, which are the ports used by your control panel and webmail, respectively.

21 - Where can I find the Documentation for cPanel?

You can find the documentation for control panel by following this link Documentation for cPanel .

22 - How can I get information about my account in the old hosting system?

Information about your account in the legacy hosting system is available at http://www.proz.com/?sp=hosting/index.

23 - I have the standard hosting package. Can I change my hosted domain name?

Yes. To change the domain name used with your standard hosting package, submit a support request specifying the new domain name you want to use. If you do not already own the new domain, you must first purchase it by clicking "buy now" in the "domain name registration" box on your hosting info page.

24 - How can I have my hosted site indexed by search engines?

See this page at Search Engine Watch for good information about submitting your site to search engines and optimizing your site for search crawlers.

25 - Are domain registrars required to remind domain owners to verify their contact information annually?

Yes, domain registrars are required to remind domain owners to verify their contact information annually.

26 - Where can I get the authorization code needed to transfer a domain from ProZ.com to a new registrar?

You should be able to get the authorization code to transfer your domain by going to /?sp=host/info and clicking on "Manage My Domain".

27 - How can I edit the contact information and other details for my domain name?

If you registered your domain name at ProZ.com, you can manage the contact information and other details for your domain name from your domain control panel. Start at your hosting info page and click "manage my domains".

28 - Why have I stopped receiving email sent to my account?

Your email account may be over quota (that is, it may have used up all of the disk space you have allocated to it).

To see the disk space used by your email accounts, log in to your control panel, click "Mail", then click "Manage/Add/Remove Accounts", then click "Show Disk Space Used". If the disk space used for an account exceeds the quota for that account, it will no longer be able to receive mail. You can increase the disk quota for an account by clicking "Change Quota". Note that all disk space used by an account is counted, including Trash, Spambox, and Drafts folders.

29 - Someone appears to be sending SPAM from my email address. What can I do?

One technique used by spammers is to forge the "From" address from which their spam is sent. If the forged email address is one for which you receive mail, then bounced spam messages will be returned to you. There are a couple of steps you can take to address this issue.

1. If the forged email addresses are ones you do not actually use, such as 123@{mydomain.com}, you can stop receiving the bounce messages sent to those unused email addresses. To do so:
* Log in to your hosting control panel, by clicking "[control panel]" on your hosting info page.
* In your control panel, under "Mail", select "Default address"
* In the "Unrouted mail" form, select "Discard with error to sender (at SMTP time)" and then click "Change"

2. If the forged email address is one you actually use, add a filter to discard the incoming spam bounce messages.
* First, look in the bounced messages for an uncommon phrase that you are sure will not appear in emails that you actually want to keep. In the following steps, you will cause all messages containing that phrase to be automatically discarded.
* Log in to your hosting control panel, by clicking "[control panel]" on your hosting info page.
* In your control panel, under "Mail", select "User Level Filtering".
* Click "Manage Filters" next to the email address to which the spam bounce messages are being sent
* Click the "create a new filter" button
* Under "Rules", select "Body", "contains", and then enter the phrase you want to filter on. Under "Actions", select "Discard Message". Then click "Activate".

3. You can help other mail servers detect forged mail from your domain by settings up "Email authentication". To do so:
* Log in to your hosting control panel, by clicking "[control panel]" on your hosting info page.
* In your control panel, under "Mail", select "Email authentication"
* On the "Email authentication" click the "Enable" button next to both "Domain keys" and "SPF"

30 - I cannot transfer my current domain to ProZ.com because my registrar is locked.

The company you are currently registered with has a Registrar-Lock, which needs to be unlocked in order to transfer your domain to ProZ.com. The unlock code needs to be entered in the source registrar that you are transferring from. However, you may be able to find out how to unlock the domain in the companies FAQs and/or by contacting support.

31 - I'd like to host two domains, how can I do this?

As a ProZ.com member you have the option to have one domain hosted on our servers.

However, with the Advanced Hosting package it is possible to host up to 5 additional domains (i.e. 6 domains in total) for 5$/EUROS a month. You can find more detailed information here. By using the "Addon Domains" feature within cPanel, you can assign these additional domains to point to separate folders within your /public_html, allowing for a total of up to 6 separate websites.

32 - If I create my website through Proz.com, would I have my own domain?

Yes, if you host your website on ProZ.com, you would have your own domain name.

33 - Are there any limitations regarding my monthly bandwidth usage?

There is a 1000 MB/month limit for the standard hosting package (that comes with the membership), and there is a 2000 MB/month limit for the advanced hosting package (can be purchased for an additional 5$/EUROS per month).

34 - I received a message saying my domain has reached its bandwidth limit. What does that mean?

This message refers to the amount of data transferred to and from the server. Every time a visitor views a file (whether it’s a web page, image, video, or audio file), that file has to be transferred to the visitor’s computer. Bandwidth is the total size of all these files transferred to your visitors’ computers. This message indicates that your bandwidth usage has exceeded the limit. This is not the same as disk quota (the amount of data stored on the server).

The standard hosting packages are limited to 1000 MB of bandwidth per month; advanced hosting packages are limited to 2000 MB of bandwidth per month.

If you exceed your bandwidth limit, please submit a support request and consider upgrading your hosting package.

35 - What happens with my website if my ProZ.com membership expires?

If your ProZ.com membership expires and your website is suspended, you are able to have your website restored after a new site membership purchase.

If you have purchased a new membership and you want to have your website restored, please submit a support request and specify your domain name so that your website account can be re-activated.

36 - How can I monitor my bandwidth usage?

You can view your bandwidth usage by viewing your cPanel interface; your usage is displayed on the left as "Monthly Bandwidth Transfer".

37 - Can I renew my domain name without renewing my Proz membership?

We ask that non-members transfer their domains to another domain registrar.

38 - How can I configure my ProZ.com domains in Gmail?

This can be achieved through the use of forwarders.

In your control panel, click the Mail icon on the main screen. Click "Forwarders" on the mail menu. Finally, click "[Add Forwarder]" on the next page.

Use the resulting form to enter a forwarder for each account ( Note that you only need to enter the prefixes. eg: myaccount1, myaccount2, etc.) to be sent to your Gmail account. Be sure to enter the full Gmail account address in the destination box.

Once this is done you can use Gmail's web interface to further organize your messages based on the recipient address if you so desire.

While Gmail's ability to log into your existing accounts is convenient, it does not resolve the issues of managing your accounts locally. Essentially, you would receive each message twice-- once locally and then again when Gmail connects to retrieve the messages.

By using forwarders instead, you no longer have to manage the accounts via your control panel. Your messages are simply delivered straight to Gmail in a single transaction.

39 - How do I configure my email client to read and send my ProZ.com hosted email?

From your cPanel interface, go to "Email Accounts". To the right of the email address in question under "Actions", click More, then select "Configure Email Client".

40 - I am unable to send emails, but I can receive emails correctly

Some ISPs, such as Verizon FIOS have taken to blocking port 25 to reduce spam from infected computers. Unfortunately, this also blocks legitimate traffic. If you suspect your ISP is blocking port 25 and preventing you from sending emails, configure your email client to use port 587. Verizon has provided step-by-step instructions on this process, and has provided a more detailed explanation of their policy.

41 - How can I expand my hosted site beyond what Site Creator can provide?

ProZ.com's Site Creator was developed to provide our members with a rapid path towards a web presence, similar to a brochure. For many users, that fulfils their needs. For others, a more robust solution is needed.

A site owner using a ProZ.com Hosted Site has the option to create their own website from the ground up, using static HTML or dynamic PHP. Many users utilize third-party frameworks, such as WordPress or Joomla, which allows them to customize a series of templates and modules to deliver the functionality that they need.

In short, any member is free to install a third-party framework that is more robust if they feel that the basic offerings do not fit their needs.

42 - Can I install a Content Management System (CMS) such as Joomla! or WordPress in my hosting account?

Yes, several members have successfully installed CMS including Joomla!, WordPress, and Drupal. However, resolving specific errors with the ini_set() PHP option (explained in detail here: http://drupal.org/node/54152) may require staff intervention. Please submit a support request if you need assistance.

43 - Can I have multiple domains on the same hosted account?

It is possible to host up to 6 domains with the Advanced Hosting package. Details: hosting info .

(Using the "Addon Domains" feature within cPanel, you can assign these additional domains to point to separate folders within your /public_html, allowing for a total of up to 6 separate websites.)

44 - I have paid for my domain name, but the domain registration requests have not been processed yet.

Note that new domains and transfers generally take 24 to 48 hours to be entered into the nameserver database. Transfers from a different registrar can take up to one week.

45 - Connecting to my website I get a warning message about the expiration of security certificate.

There is nothing to worry, please submit a support request to have updated the security certificate to the new ProZ.com certificate.

46 - After uploading my subdomain html file to the public-html/cig-bin folder, I get an error message.

In order for your subdomain to work as intended, you'll have to place an index.html or index.php file in the NEWS directory you've created. You have no need for the cgi-bin directory, which is intended only for .cgi script files.

47 - How can I upload files to share?

You can make your files publicly accessible by placing them in your public_html folder.

To upload a file from your Control Panel ("[Control panel]" option here) simply enter the "File Manager" section and look for the public_html folder. Open the folder in a different window or tab and click on "Upload file(s)". A files window will open for you to start uploading files.

Once files have been uploaded, you can grant access to other by providing them with the following URL:

http://your_website_name/your_file_name.extension

Note: Check the size of the files uploaded to avoid reaching your quota limit. Also, make sure that files do not start with capital letters.

48 - My website is not indexed by search engines. What should I do?

Recently created websites may take time to be indexed by search engines. However, if your website has been in place for some time, try linking to your website from other websites or your email messages. This could help to increase the traffic to your website and place it among search engine results.

49 - Can I use aspx files in my hosting package?

No. ProZ.com hosting package does not support aspx files.

50 - How can I install MySql for Wordpress?

To install MySql for Wordpress, go to your cPanel Account and then go to "MySQL® Database Wizard". The system will walk you through the installation process.

You can manage your MySQL Databases using the icon labeled "MySQL Databases".

51 - I am getting a 500 internal server error when I try to access my website. What should I do?

Go to your cPanel interface and click on the icon "Error log". This interface will show you the last 300 Error Log Messages in reverse order, with the newest error at the top.

Once you have looked at the error message, we recommend searching for the error message first using a search engine and seeing if this is a common, rectifiable error. If you are still uncertain of the cause of the error, please provide the top portion (10-20) entries of your error log in a support request.

52 - I cannot log in my ProZ.com hosted email address. What should I do?

Check if you are using your full email address as your username when log in. If you supply correct login name and still cannot log in, please submit a support request and let site staff know that you have tried your full email address as a login name and inform if you receive any warning message.

53 - I want to forward email and not have it saved. What can I do?

Do not create the email address, just create the forwarder.

If all that email is already forwarded, you can delete that email address and the forward will work as you expected it to.

54 - Is SSL supported for ProZ.com hosted accounts?

SSL is not supported for ProZ.com hosted accounts. SSL generally requires the use of a dedicated IP address. ProZ.com hosting accounts have shared IP addresses, and dedicated IP addresses are not available.

55 - Will hosting account support PHP, MySQL, The mod_rewrite Apache module if I use open-source WordPress?

The mod_rewrite Apache module should be supported if you are using open-source WordPress