After signing up for a new Level Ten Hosting account, there are some steps to take before your site will be operational.

Shortly after you submit your order, you will receive an order confirmation notice [usually with a few hours]. If you are paying by credit card, then within approximately the next 12 hours you will receive a second e-mail, indicating the activation of your account. If paying by check, your account will be activated upon receipt.

Please retain and take note of the information presented in the welcome email - you'll be referring back to it often as you begin setting up your site.

• Login ID + Password -
  Your primary login ID will be assigned to you as soon as your account is activated - make note of it as this login ID will be the same used to access all your primary account services - control panel, e-mail, FTP. Your login ID is case sensitive - "jack" is not the same ID as "Jack". Likewise, your password is also case sensitive.
  
  
• IP Address -
  Your IP address is the true address of your web site; it indicates the location of a site on the internet. Your site's IP address is synonymous with your acquired domain name - and indeed in the first days after your account is activated, you must use your IP address in place of the domain name to access it. This becomes optional once your domain's DNS has stabilized. [your domain name is merely a pointer to this IP address; this is accomplished through the DNS system.
  
  
• Domain Registration -
  Should you be obtaining a domain for the first time, or a new domain for your site, then the domain will be automatically registered in your name, unless you indicate otherwise on the sign-up form. This is only done for you for top level domains [.com .net .org]. If your domain is not among these three, contact the representative domain registry and Level Ten Hosting to coordinate setup information. Until your domain is activated, your web site will be reachable only by IP address. Note that all domain registration is a third party contract between you and the network registrar in question, and in most cases absolutely outside of our control.
  
  
• Domain Charges -
  Your domain registrar body [InterNIC, RIPE, et al] will bill you separately for domain charges. Keep in mind this is AFTER your first free year of registration if you choose to get your domain from us. We use Bulk Register, where there is a yearly renewal fee of $15. Once again, this is an entirely third party element to Level Ten Hosting service, and exept in unique cases we refuse all intermediary roles in such matters.
  
  
• Domain Changes -
  If you're domain has previously resided on a different [physical] location on the internet then, as explained in the following section on domains and the DNS system, your domain record [held by your domain registrar - e.g. InterNic] must be updated to take the authority of a Level Ten Hosting DNS server for domain name to IP address resolution.
  
  In many cases, the listed owner of the domain is the only party with sufficient access to make such changes - Level Ten Hosting cannot modify domains that were not registered here.
  
  Unless you have special requirements, it is recommended that you modify your domain to use Level Ten Hosting's DNS servers as the authoritative name servers for your domain. Please contact Level Ten Hosting on account sign-up for specific details if you are migrating a domain to Level Ten Hosting.
  
  
• Control Panel -
  The web-based control panel is available upon the activation of your account, through your browser, in a URL of the form:
  
  http://ip_address/cpanel/login
  
  where "ip_address" is the IP address given to you in your welcome email.
  
  The control panel is covered in greater deal in the following chapter. If you have prior familiarity with site development, most of the cpanel will be immediately self evident, covering account management and providing example code for shared site resources.