Control Panel Basics

This document explains how to

• change your hosting plan
• change your billing period
• change your control panel password
• change your FTP password
• change your traffic limit
• change your disk quota
• select a different skin
• change control panel language

Changing Your Hosting Plan

Your hosting plan determines the services you get with the account and the prices for these services. Big sites with high hit rates and special services require more expensive plans; cheaper plans are suitable for simpler sites.

To change to a different plan:

1. Select Quick Access in the Account menu.
2. Click the Change icon next to your plan name.
3. Select your new plan and click Submit

Warning: Switching plans will disable the resources that are unavailable under the plan you are switching to.

If you don't see the plan of your choice in the list that appears, it means it is incompatible with your current plan. You can't change to an incompatible plan, but you can create a new account under this plan and then, if you want, you can delete your old account.
Plan Upgrade: If you are switching to a 'higher' plan, your disk quota doesn't increase, but free units do. As a result, your disk quota may turn out to be lower than free units, so you can increase your disk quota without being charged. The same is true of other resources.
Plan Downgrade: If you are switching to a 'lower' plan, the system reduces your quotas for free units. If you are using more than free units, the system reduces the quota to the amount you are using.

Changing Your Billing Period

Your billing period determines how far in advance you pay recurrent fees. Your hosting plan may be configured to allow you to switch between billing periods of different length, price and discount policies.

To change the billing period:

1. Select Quick Access in the Account menu.
2. Click the Change icon next to your billing period.
3. Select a different billing period and click Submit.

Changing Your Control Panel Password

You need your control panel password to log into the control panel. Initially, this password is the same as your FTP password, but you can make these two passwords different.

To change the control panel password:

1. Select Quick Access in the Account menu.
2. Click Change Password in the Quick Access section.

Changing Your FTP Password

You need your FTP password to upload your site to the server. Initially, this password is the same as your Control Panel password, but you can make these two passwords different.

To change the FTP password:

1. Select FTP User in the FTP/User Account menu.
2. Click the Change icon next to Password.

Changing Your Traffic Limit

Traffic limit is the gigabytes of transferred data you pre-pay for at the beginning of the billing period. Every month the system checks if you stay within the limit, and if you don't, it charges you for the excess. Then your traffic is reset.
Example: If your billing period is 2 months long and started on the 5th of October, the first billing month will end on the 5th of November, and your total traffic will be reset. However, if you change your total traffic limit on the 15th of November, your traffic will be reset and a new billing month will start.

Note: if you fail to run up all your quota resource, you are not returned the payment for the unused megabytes.

If you expect to run up more traffic than comes with your plan, it's a good idea to raise your traffic limit. To change the traffic limit:

1. Select Quick Access in the Account menu.
2. Click the Change icon next to Total traffic.
3. Enter how much traffic you expect to run up throughout your billing period.

Changing Your Disk Quota

To change your disk quota:

1. Select Quick Access in the Account menu.
2. Enter how much disk space you would like to have.

Selecting a Different Skin

Different skins offer different control panel navigation. To change the skin:

1. Select Look and Feel in the Account menu.
2. On the page that appears, select the name of the skin in the Choose Design box and click the Choose button.
3. Select the icon set and click the Set icon.
4. Set Tooltips state. This option determines whether or not to show assisting hints at the top of each page.

Changing Control Panel Language

To change the language of the control panel:

1. Select Language in the User menu.
2. On the page that appears, select the preferred language from the drop-down box and click Submit.

Choosing And Configuring CP Skins

1. New designs (skins), XPressia and XPressia Lite, were added, with a dropdown menu panel on the top of the page. XPressia Lite is specially designed to be used if your browser works slowly with XPressia.
2. The obsolete Text-Based skin was completely removed from CP interface.
3. Instead of the Text-Based skin, it is provided a possibility to choose the Text Links mode from the Choose Iconset select box, with text-only links instead of icons in the Quick Access page.

Note: If a user chose the Text-Based skin before HS update to 2.4, this user's CP will appear in the Left Menu default H-Sphere skin after update. If Text-Based was a default user CP skin, it will be replaced with a new default interface skin set by administrator.

To select a skin and configure interface design settings:

1. Select Look and Feel in the Account menu. The following page will appear:
    

   

2. Select the name of a skin in the Choose Design box. You will see the skin preview. Click the Choose button.

   Note: If your browser works slowly with XPressia, choose XPressia Lite which is specially designed for such situations.

3. Select an icon set in the Choose Icon Set box. You will see the preview of images from this icon set. Click the Set button.

   Note: Choose the Text Links mode if your browser is slow in drawing images.

4. Set Tooltips state. This option determines whether or not to show hints at the top of each page.