A View of Website Hosting
Download: 
Think of your Oceania webhost server as a virtual skyscraper.
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Each client who purchases a hosting account has reserved space inside that skyscraper; as have other virtual tenants – we call this shared hosting. |
Our skyscraper’s address is written like this*:
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ns1.oceania.com.au ns2.oceania.com.au Or it can be written by IP address (numbers) like this: 162.213.10.30 Other hosting companies own other skyscrapers with different addresses and IPs to ours and also usually starting with ns1. and ns2. |
What you can do when your Domain Name points to our address
When you register a domain name you lease the rights to use that domain name on the internet for a set time frame (usually two years – and it is renewable).
The Domain Name Registrar who sells you the name has to make sure that your domain name points to the right hosting provider ; and so your host’s address should be entered in the Name Server Record at the Registry. This process is called ‘delegation’. Nameservers are re-delegated whenever you want to move your web site to a different host.
Any domain name that has been delegated to Oceania name servers can now be used to display a website, but only if you have signed up for a hosting account with us, and have uploaded site pages into your space. (Somewhat like furnishing your office)
The Primary Hosted Domain
The primary domain name is the one you used to establish your hosting account with us and it leads to the primary website. It owns the username for your hosting account as well as the cpanel (your management interface).
Alternative Hosted Domains on your account
It is possible that you have other domain names that you would like to use with your hosting account. You can park (or point) these to the primary website.
eg www.abcwidgetcompanyptyltd.com may be the primary domain name of your hosting account with a very effective website. You can use another name that you have registered, say www.abcwidget.com to park over the primary domain name; the same effective website will be displayed when the shorter domain name is used.
If we go back to the skyscraper notion – the primary domain is the main room of your rented hosting space. The ‘parked’ domain is a second doorway into that same room. See Fig 1 below.
AddOn Domains
Oceania hosting accounts also allow addon domains. These are in addition to the primary domain and they lead to their very own website and have nothing to do with the primary domain as far as the outside world is concerned. Only you know that they share the same hosting account. Addon domains have their own door leading to a compartment off the main room of your office space.
Fig 1: Figurative Hosting Account Layout
cPanel and Emails
All domains in your hosting account are managed from the CPANEL (Hosting Control Panel). Pages can be created, files uploaded, statistics viewed. In fact there is a whole Download just about cpanel’s many features.
Any domain name setup in your account can have emails created for it. The emails are administered from the Mail Server attached to your cpanel.
You can also have one of your domain names (primary, parked or addon) redirected by cpanel to another part of your hosting account OR even to another website on another host. This is known as a Redirect. (It is like a visitor coming to your skyscraper office and you put them into the teleport cubicle to be teleported over to another location altogether.)
There are other Downloads in the Members Area Support Tab about Addon Domains, cPanel and more.
DNZ Zone File
Should you want to point your site content to another skyscraper you should provide us with written instructions to alter the DNS record for you and we will make that magic happen.
Should you want to point your MX (ie mail) records to another server you may use cpanel > Mail > MX record Manager. Many users prefer to have their mail pointed to an exchange server or google mail for example.
Heaven forbid, but should you want to leave us and move your hosting account to another host you have to set up an account with them and tell your Registrar to update the Name Server Record for you (Your Registrar will usually give you the management tools to do this yourself.)
We hope that as the concierge of your Skyscraper we can assist you with any questions. Please call or email the helpdesk.
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* For some of our early Oceania clients the domain name server address might be shown as:
ns1.apphosting.com 162.213.10.30
ns2.apphosting.com 139.99.220.44
(These are also suitable name servers for Oceania clients and still point to the right skyscraper.)
