thekeylab.co.uk
NinerNet Communications™

thekeylab.co.uk

This is the place holder for thekeylab.co.uk. If you see this page after uploading your site content, you have probably not replaced or deleted the index.html file on the server, or your browser may have cached the old page. Please check the former and clear your browser's cache.

For future reference, the permanent address of this page is skel.niner.net/?domain=thekeylab.co.uk.

Welcome, and thank-you...

Thank-you very much for choosing to host thekeylab.co.uk with NinerNet Communications™. We're here to help you get started with your venture onto the Internet. In fact, we've spent over a decade building our reputation on helpful and personalised service, something you don't often find on the Web these days.

To prevent you from being overwhelmed with information, we've tried to distill the vast resources available on the Web to present the bare necessities below. We hope the following information will get you started without delay:
  1. Read NinerNet™ documentation
  2. Build your website
  3. Combat spam with a web-based contact form
  4. Use your web-based control panel to set up email accounts and manage your hosting
  5. Set up your email program to send and receive your email
  6. Access your email through the Web from anywhere
  7. Contact NinerNet™

Read NinerNet™ documentation

 Documentation to assist you in using all of NinerNet's services can be found on our website at:

Build your website

 If you are not planning to contract a design firm or a professional designer of some sort to put your website up at www.thekeylab.co.uk, you may be planning to "do it yourself". The Web is full of information, documentation and tutorials to help you do this, but at some point you have to take the bull by the horns and simply start the job. As with many things, it helps to have at least some background knowledge first, and for that we recommend the following HTML primer: Once you've absorbed (or at least skimmed) that information you can dive right in with a plain-text editor and start coding the raw HTML (which stands for hypertext markup language) if you are technically-minded, or you can use a WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") HTML editor that works like a word processor. We recommend a free program called KompoZer: Other useful software that we recommend, depending on your needs:

Combat spam with a web-based contact form

 We strongly discourage the use of unprotected email addresses on websites, due to the proliferation of unsolicited bulk email (aka spam) and viruses/worms that are propagated through the automated collection of email addresses from websites. A simple program to use with a web-based contact form has already been uploaded to your server and is pre-configured to be used with the "info@" address on your domain. (You will need to create this address using your control panel. [See below.]) Here is some sample HTML code that you can copy and paste into a web page that will get you started with a working form, or you can just link to and use (and modify, if you wish) the basic contact page that has already been uploaded to your server:
<form action="/cgi-bin/sendit/sendit.pl" method="get">
<input type="hidden" name="_config" value="ninernet" />
     Name: <input name="Name" type="text" size="50" maxlength="100" />
     <br /><br />
     Email address: <input name="Address" type="text" size="50" maxlength="100" />
     <br /><br />
     Subject: <input name="Regarding" type="text" size="50" maxlength="100" />
     <br /><br />
     Message:<br /><textarea name="Message" rows="10" cols="60"></textarea>
     <br /><br />
     <input type="submit" value="Send it!" />
</form>
You can further customise the program if you wish something beyond this basic but very useful functionality; please see the read-me file, the examples file, and the FAQ file for more information. You can get further support on the authors' website if you need it. (The program is called TFMail.) Should you decide to customise it, the program (sendit.pl), configuration (ninernet.trc) and template (.trt) files you will need to download from your server and edit (using a plain-text editor) are located in the cgi-bin/sendit directory that you will see when you log in via FTP. (See the "Build your website" section above for information on FTP and plain-text editors.) Please ensure that you do not delete or modify the .pm files in that directory, as these are necessary for your contact form to function.

Use your web-based control panel to set up email accounts and manage your hosting

 Your hosting account comes with a web-based control panel that you will use mostly to set up email accounts on thekeylab.co.uk, but which also has many other functions to help you manage and monitor your hosting account. You can access it at: Here are some links to documentation and tutorials to help you get started:

Set up your email program to send and receive your email

 Again, if you use Windows on your computer, you're probably already using one of the free email programs that comes with it -- Outlook Express or Windows Live Mail. Another alternative is the similarly-named Outlook which comes with Microsoft Office. Better, safer, and more secure programs that we recommend include a free program called Thunderbird: These are the settings you will need to use: There are four (and a half) issues that we commonly deal with regarding email, all problems with sending email and all related to anti-spam measures either installed on your server or used by your ISP:

Access your email through the Web from anywhere

 It's a good idea to use a proper email program (as described in the previous section) to send and receive your email and store it on your own computer. This is more secure and gives you complete control over your email, and is a lot more efficient than using any web-based email system currently in existence. However, for those times when you are away from your office or home, your account comes with a web-based email interface that can be accessed using any web browser: As when setting up your email account on your own computer, please be sure to log in using your full email address (including your domain) as the user name, not just the part before the "@" sign.

Here are some links to documentation you might find useful if you wish to change the default configuration of the web-based email for an individual email account:

Contact NinerNet™

 When you need help, we'll be here. This is where you can find us: You should also be aware of and familiar with the legal agreements and policies governing your hosting and domain registration:
Resources:
On NinerNet™:
NinerNet™ Blog: