Hosting FAQ

1. Organizational and administrative questions about hosting


When ordering hosting you need to fill following fields of the registration form:

  • Your name and organization name will be used for the bill.
  • Your contact e-mail is the e-mail address to which sent the activation key hosting and through which will be hosting support. This address must be working because all information and technical messages will be sent to him.
  • Desired login is a name (small Latin letters, numbers and a dash) up to 16 characters long, which will be used for FTP access. This is also part of the address of your future hosting (for example: LOGIN.ho.ua). It is also the name of a possible date base MySQL. Please note that the desired login may already be busy and you will have to clarify it. Next to the login you are also offered a choice of 2 domain name options for the site (*.ho.ua and *.houa.org).
  • Your existing domains - if you have domains (registered with any domain name registrar) that are supported on NS-servers and which you want to configure for future hosting - specify them in this form field.
  • Country is your country of residence.

After filling in the registration form, click the Order button. If the form is correctly completed, the specified login is not found in our database, you will receive a notification that a letter with the key (link) to activate the hosting has been sent to your e-mail. You need to carefully read this letter before clicking on the link indicated in it.

If however, some errors occurred during the registration (inaccuracy of filling in the form), you will be informed about this and asked to correct them.


After successfully completing the registration form, you will receive an activation key. This letter in itself checks the availability of your e-mail address from our provider's network. If you have not received this email, then first of all, check your mailbox settings (all kinds of SPAM filters, etc.) Next, you should contact your mail provider for help. In the end, you can send us an email from our website - you are unlikely to receive our response to it, however, we will look at the reason for the failure to deliver you a letter (if we receive a response from the mail server with an error).

In the letter with the activation key will be sent your application code, which will need to be sent by SMS-message to our technical number. The cost of SMS is normal, depends only on your mobile operator. In case of successful delivery of your SMS message, you will need to click on the activation link.

After successful activation, initial setup will be performed. Hosting account is created on the hosting server, changes will be made in Web server settings and other initial settings, and you will receive an After successful activation, initial setup will be performed. hosting account is created on the hosting server, changes will be made in Web server settings and other initial settings, and you will receive an e-mail notification about successful activation and initial information for working with hosting. However, please note that your hosting is fully operational. will be within 1 (one) hour after the activation of hosting. During this time you can see at the address of your site error 404, however, it is quite normal. Do not rush and do not write to the support service. inoperability of your site during the first hour after activation - it is simply not cultural and disrespectful of our support service.

When activated, there may be some unforeseen situations (for example, from the time you file your application, someone has already taken your login, the domain you specified already made by someone in the settings of another site, etc.). With this you will receive the corresponding notification and message, which form field should be corrected. For serious problems contact support, Be sure to specify the key (link) activation hosting.


Free hosting can be closed for several reasons:

  • violation of the Hosting Rules;
  • untimely extension of the hosting (a reminder about the extension comes to the contact e-mail every 3 months);
  • not following recommendations or just ignoring letters from the support service ho.ua;
  • in case of detection on the site of viruses and codes of their downloaders (temporarily blocked);
  • no changes to the site from the date of creation within 30 days;
  • overrun of the limits system resources (load on the server, exceeding the disk quota), especially unreasonable attendance of the site.

In any case, before the hosting is closed, the user sends a notification by e-mail. Only with the most malicious violations we can close the hosting immediately. In the rest there is a non-zero probability of canceling the closing of the hosting after eliminating disagreements.


Paid hosting can be closed mainly for the following reasons:

  • violation of Hosting Rules;
  • violation of the Public offer;
  • not following or simply ignoring letters from support and billing ho.ua.

In all cases, the balance of the client's account can be returned, which is regulated by the Public offer. All controversial issues on closure are also regulated by this document.


We do not provide NS servers for user domains. If you want to set up hosting from ho.ua to work with your domain, then you need to take care of its support on the registrar's NS-servers. Or simply register this domain with any domain name registrar. After the domain is supported on someone else's NS servers, you need to set an IN A record for it in accordance with the hosting server where your site is located:

  • 91.228.146.11 - если Ваш сайт находится на сервере хостинга s1.ho.ua;
  • 91.228.146.12 - если Ваш сайт находится на сервере хостинга s2.ho.ua;

For help in setting up the IN A domain record, please contact your registrar - we cannot help you with this, because we do not have access to your domain.

After setting up the domain at the registrar, you need to add (if you have not done this before or did not specify the domain when applying) the domain to the list of domains in hosting control panels ("Domains" bottom). In a maximum of 3 hours, the domain from our side will be configured. Note that it takes a long time to changing IN A records - usually about 1 day.


No, we only provide hosting service. You can get mailboxes at any free mail provider.


If the hosting was closed due to an untimely renewal, and less than 1 month has passed since the closing, then you just need to enter in control panel and click the "Prolong" button.

If more than 1 month has passed since the hosting was closed, then all hosting data has already been deleted and you need to re-register the hosting. We do not store any backup files of remote sites.


After the hosting is closed, its files are stored on the server for 1 month.


There is a button "Forgot your password?" on the login page control panel - use it to receive your contact e-mail with a key (link) to change your password. After clicking on the link indicated in the letter, you will be asked to enter a new password for the hosting (FTP) twice.


To gain access to hosting in case of loss of contact e-mail, if you have access to the control panel you just need to enter the panel and edit the contact information ("Contacts" button). After adding a new e-mail address, you will receive a letter confirming the addition of this address.

If you do not remember your password, then you need to contact the support service, indicating your username, the reason for the loss of e-mail and data that can authorize you as the owner of the specified hosting (date and time of submitting the hosting application, when and how at the last times made changes to the site, etc.)


We provide an SSL-certificate for custom sites with request to the hosting support service.


The use of any CMS on this hosting is discouraged due to the load that such sites create on the server. The list of prohibited and non-recommended CMS is described in the Rules. Advice: if you use a CMS, then to reduce the load on the server, we recommend that you study its documentation and enable the page caching function (if available). This can be implemented as a separate module or as a simple option in the CMS settings - depending on the CMS you have chosen.
No, we do not have windows hosting, so ASP (which work in the windows environment) scripts will not work for us.

2. Hosting payment questions


You can pay for the use of our hosting online using a payment card.


We will receive notification of your payment in at least 1 business day. That is, the transfer to the paid type of hosting should be expected the next business day. Online payments are often faster.


Paid hosting may be closed mainly for the following reasons:

In all cases, the balance on the client's account can be returned, which is regulated by the Public Agreement . All controversial issues on closure are also regulated by this document.


There is a Big tariff plan, prices and parameters are indicated here . You can also only pay for several accounts and keep different parts of the site (for example, bases and / or pictures) on them.


Your site will be closed, files will be stored on the server for a month, and then they will be deleted.

If you want to leave your site on a paid hosting, write to e-mail your username and the date when you can pay.

3. Getting started with hosting


First of all, you need to check that after the activation of the hosting more than 1 hour has passed. During this time, hosting may not be fully configured, which is indicated by this error page. In addition, a similar situation may occur if you change the list of domains on the hosting in the control panel - again, you just have to wait.


First, you need to make sure your site files uploaded to the htdocs directory of your home directory (and not directly to him). Remember - the htdocs directory is the root of your site. If you pay attention, then in this directory after the establishment of the hosting are test files, one of which is shown when entering your site.

Also, you need to know that the so-called index file whose name has one of the following values: index.htm, index.html, index.php and etc. More advanced users can consult the web server documentation Apache and explicitly specify the name of the index file in the DirectoryIndex directive in the file ~/htdocs/.htaccess settings (having previously uncommented this directive).


To restore files and directories that were when hosting started up, you can use special function in the file manager. Remember - sometimes simple copying of files saved previously from server may not lead to the expected result, since files other than the such important attributes as mode and access rights have their presence. And they when copying is not set to the correct values.


This is most likely due to the fact that you do not match the case of the letters of the file names on the server and in the links to them in HTML documents. We are using UNIX OS (FreeBSD), which is critical to the case of the letters in file names. For example, the files image.jpg and Image.JPG are different files.

Some FTP clients even have a special option to automatically lowercase filenames to the FTP server. We strongly recommend that you do not use capitalized letters in file names (to avoid further confusion).

You should also avoid letters in file names other than Latin letters (for example, Cyrillic letters). In general, a valid and well-behaved character set for web server filenames is:

  • Latin characters (a-z);
  • digits (0-9);
  • some characters: -_ ,. (dash, underscore, comma and period).

Instantly. No caching is performed on the hosting servers. If you see an old page, then it is shown either from the cache of your browser or from the cache of the proxy server (if the latter is used when connecting to the Internet). In both cases, one good method helps - refresh the page displayed by the browser using the Ctrl + F5 keys (all popular browsers support this keyboard shortcut for unconditional page refresh).


The start (index) page is the page that given to the visitor when typing the address in the address bar of the browser. We have this the file should be called index.htm, index.html, index.php, etc.

If you have a different index page name (for example, default.html) you can refer to the Apache web server's DirectoryIndex directive. To do this, you just need in the settings file. ~/htdocs/.htaccess write (or edit an existing) string:

DirectoryIndex default.html

For details on usage, refer to the official Apache web server documentation.


You can find information about software versions on a specific hosting server at the following links:

4. Script errors, their diagnosis and resolution


First of all, to debug any web server errors, it is advisable to enable the error log (error log) in the hosting control panel. The log itself (error.log file) will appear in the logs directory of your home directory, and error messages will begin to be written within 3 hours.

By analyzing the error messages in the error log, you can draw conclusions about the cause of them. In general, there are 2 categories of causes of errors:

  • incorrect settings of the directory access modes, errors in the .htaccess settings files (incorrect directives or directives with errors), incorrect access modes of the scripts themselves;
  • directly runtime errors that resulted from the execution of the scripts themselves (invalid file format, incorrect interpreter path.

The most ideal option would be the case when you can understand after what your action this error 500 occurred. Then it will be easier for you to localize and fix it. Now we will give some of the most typical cases and tips where you need to "watch":

  • the error appeared after unzipping some package (set) of files that previously worked on another server (from another hosting provider, local test web server, etc.) - in this case we advise you to pay attention to the file(s) contributed by this package .htaccess - it may contain web server directives that are not supported by the version or configuration of our web server. To check, just rename your .htaccess file (for example, to .htaccess-my) and check the operation of the site. If the error 500 disappears (even if the site does not work the way it should - all the same removed some of the settings), it remains to return the .htaccess file back and Further diagnostics should be performed using the previously specified error log.
  • The error occurred after downloading cgi-scripts - in this case, check the script file format on the server or the incorrect path to the interpreter.
  • The error appeared after changing the cgi-script - in this case, the cause of the error may be the error of the script execution itself - see the error log.
  • Error 500 appears sometimes - no one can help here apart from analyzing the error log.

This message appears in 2 cases - the wrong path to the interpreter (usually indicated in the very first line of the script after the characters #!, for example #!/usr/bin/perl) or a file format other than ASCII (line breaks consist not of one character with code 10 (\n), but of 2: 10 13 (\r\n) Two-character translation of strings is typical for DOS and Windows encodings, but not applicable for UNIX scripts.

That's why quite working scripts on Windows-systems will be executed normally, and with us - with server error 500. To convert a script file to ACSII-type, you can use special text transcoders, the standard Windows notepad has ACSII-option when saving, and some FTP-clients (for example, the FAR recommended by us) - can automatically convert text files to ACSII-view when uploading files to the server.

In addition, the file manager file manager also automatically performs the conversion of scripts to the ACSII view in time to the server (if necessary).


It is a very common user error associated with tampering with the file hierarchy in the cgi-bin directory. There is no need to place any php files in this directory - it contains only the php interpreter and its settings file (php and php.ini files, respectively). Besides these files, cgi-scripts can be placed in the cgi-bin directory.

The php files themselves must be placed like ordinary html documents in the htdocs directory. So, if this error appears, then you need to restore the original state of the php-interpreter, namely - 2 files (php and php.ini). In the future, we strongly recommend that you be careful with these two files. If you need to make changes to the php-interpreter settings you can (modify file php.ini), however, do it wisely and knowing what you are doing and what you want to achieve. Broken php interpreters cannot be exchanged or returned. Another side note: do not overwrite the settings file php.ini with "your own" - this is fraught with breakdowns from platform-specific settings to settings that depend on the version of the php interpreter.


The fact is that HTTP authentication for php only works if php works as a module of the Apache web server (which is clearly written in the documentation). We have the php interpreter installed as a cgi application, but we cannot provide php as an Apache module. However, you yourself can configure HTTP authentication for individual files or the entire directory from the file manager..


This is the most common mistake. The fact is that for some time the php developers decided to disable by default (in order to increase security) the global registration of variables passed to the script by various methods (GET, POST, etc.). If you wrote your scripts in the "old style" relying on automatic variable registration and you don't want to rewrite them, set the register_globals variable to On (in the config file php.ini which is located in ~/cgi-bin your home directory.

Also, some scripts use arrays of variables $HTTP_*_VARS[], the automatic creation of which is also disabled by default. You can enable the creation of these arrays using the register_long_arrays variable. And don't forget that in the php.ini configuration file, lines with a semicolon ";" at the beginning are comments! And changing the value of the commented out variables will not lead to anything!


The php.ini configuration file for the php interpreter can be located in the ~ /cgi-bin directory. However, starting from version php 5.3 there is a more flexible possibility to change php settings - through the so-called .user.ini file which should be located in the same directory where the php-scripts themselves are located. At the same time, by analogy with the .htaccess files of the Apache web server, php settings can be overridden in subdirectories through the .user.ini file located in them. Those. for each directory of the site, you can set your own specific php settings. If there is no .user.ini file in the directory, then php will use the settings from the global settings file. And the settings made in the .user.ini file only override the default settings from the global php settings file. Note that, in principle, the options in the global php settings file have the values ??recommended by the php developers and should be suitable for most correctly written php scripts.

The settings file itself has a fairly clear syntax, and you can find comments and examples of the file on the Internet. Here are just some tips and definitions for beginners:

  • comments in the settings file start with a symbol ; (semicolon) - everything after this character is simply ignored;
  • at the beginning of the file, as comments, there are messages about changes in the file in new versions, with examples and new values of variables. Moreover, these are only comments - the values ??of the variables themselves need to be changed below in the settings file. So do not stop at the first finding of the desired variable - check that this variable is not defined in the settings file below. The final value of a variable when it is redefined is set to the last value found in the text of the file;
  • don't touch the php extensions in the php.ini file - this will not lead to anything good, since all installed modules are included in the global config. If you need any of the uninstalled modules, write to the support service, describing the need for this module;
  • all changes to the php.ini file take effect instantly.

On the hosting, outgoing connections are closed by default, except for those required for installing and updating popular CMS. cURL only works with permitted addresses.

5. Editing and setting up the site


To edit the site content, we provide FTP access to the hosting server. FTP connection options sent after hosting activation - this is the login, password and server hosting (for exemple, s1.ho.ua).

For users who are not familiar with FTP, you can use our file manager which allows you to edit the site through a web interface. You can get into it through hosting control panel (The " File Management button").


On the server, you are allocated a so-called home directory, whose name in the description can be found as ~ /. In this directory there are 2 directories at once:

  • cgi-bin - directory for cgi-scripts; it also has a php interpreter;
  • htdocs - the directory in which you need to write the files of the site - this directory is called the root of the site.

In addition to these directories, there may still be a logs directory this is the directory in which the web server writes the log files of its work (if they were included in the control panel hosting). Also in your home directory you can place any files and directories, however they will not be accessible via HTTP. One recommendation is that we strongly do not recommend deleting the cgi-bin and htdocs directories - this is not the best way will affect the operation of your site.


To connect via FTP you need to use the following parameters:

  • login - your login (specified during registration).
  • password - the hosting password given to you (you can always change it in the hosting control panel).
  • FTP host - the name of the hosting server where your site is located (for example, ftp://s1.ho.ua). Server name you can always find out in hosting control panel. In addition to the server name, you can also specify the address of your site directly (for example, ftp://LOGIN.ho.ua, where LOGIN - this is your username), but after changing the username or site address, this method will not work.
  • Port - 21 (standard value).
  • FTP mode - can be both active and passive. However, remember that when working through a firewall (firewall), NAT (from a local network), etc. you need to use passive FTP mode. By the way, with a direct connection to the Internet, it will also work. So we recommend using passive FTP as it is more versatile.

In addition to these options, each FTP client may have other specific options (ACSII mode, etc.) - refer to your FTP client documentation for an explanation of these options.

Finally, not as an advertisement, we can recommend using such FTP clients as FAR, Total Commander. In addition, almost any browser can be used as an FTP client. To do this, it is enough to enter an address like

ftp://LOGIN@sN.ho.ua

where LOGIN - is your login, and sN (s1.ho.ua, s2.ho.ua ..) is the name of the hosting server where your site is located. When you log in, the browser will ask for your FTP password - enter it and you will get access to your home directory on the server.


This error is usually the result of an incorrectly configured firewall (firewall) or other network software that blocks computer ports, as well as in cases when the connection is made from a local network (through the so-called NAT). In this case, you must use passive FTP mode. And if this does not help, contact your network administrator or provider.


This is most likely due to the incorrect hostname. To connect you must use the following addresses:

ftp://LOGIN.ho.ua/
ftp://sN.ho.ua/

where LOGIN - is your login, and sN (s1.ho.ua, s2.ho.ua ..) is the name of the hosting server where your site is located (s1, s2 ..) This server is specified in the letter with your hosting settings.


This file is used to change the settings of the Apache web server. The directives added to it are applied to files and directories located in the directory containing this .htaccess file. Among the features of this file are:

  • implementation of basic HTTP authentication;
  • access denial to some files by mask (by extension, name, etc.);
  • access denial to the site from some IP addresses or range of IP addresses;
  • setting document encoding;
  • processing files description of a certain type (extension) - SSI, php, etc.

We cannot list all the possibilities of web server settings - you can find them out in the Apache web server documentation.

6. Database control (DB) MySQL


We provide for each free account one MySQL database. When hosting is established, this database does not start. If necessary, you can create it yourself in hosting control panels (button " Database "). The name of the created database matches the login of the hosting, and you set the password for it youself.


We provide one MySQL database per account. If you need more than one database - we can advise you to use prefixes for tables. On a paid hosting, the number of databases depends on the tariff - these are 2 or more databases.


We provide phpMyAdmin to manage the MySQL database. The path to phpMyAdmin is different for different hosting servers. The phpMyAdmin address is shown when the database is created, but you can easily remember it yourself. General view of the address:

https://www.ho.ua/phpMyAdmin

where sN is the hosting server where your site is located (s1, s2, etc.). Note that you cannot create a database in phpMyAdmin.


First of all, make sure that in the hosting control panels the database for your hosting has been created. If not, create it. Next, make sure you go to phpMyAdmin on the same hosting server where your hosting is located. And finally, check that the database login and password are entered correctly - remember that our login consists of only lowercase letters, and the passwords for FTP and database are different!


To connect to a MySQL database from your scripts, specify the following database hostname:

dbN.ho.ua

where dbN - by analogy with the name of the hosting server where your site is located (db1, db2, etc.) Using a value as the hostname of databases localhost , although it will work, is not entirely correct, and in addition, in this case, we cannot guarantee in the future that the connection to the database server with this value will work.


To easily and easily import a MySQL database dump the first time it should contain:

  • definitions of creating tables as CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS ... or DROP TABLE IF EXISTS ... (this will save you the trouble of re-loading the dump );
  • indication of data encoding (usually at the very beginning of the dump) ;
  • the dump should not contain SQL commands for creating the database itself - this will lead to an error at the very beginning of the dump.

If you follow the above rules when creating a database dump (using phpMyAdmin, etc.), you can easily import the resulting dump.


Databases are backed up once a day (at night). If you need a backup copy (SQL dump of the database), then contact support , specifying the exact date for which you need this dump. If you need to completely restore the database, we can do it. If there are separate tables, then we will only provide you zipped SQL dump (we will place it in your home directory) - you will have to parse it yourself. Without specifying the date, we will not fulfill the request for restoration. The number of backups themselves is not clearly limited - usually there are about 7 of them.


Not. For security and reliability reasons, we have disabled access to the database from outside. There is access from your site scripts and phpMyAdmin.