Web Hosting

Our Linux server based web hosting plans are more than just disk space and bandwidth. A long list of powerful features are included to allow maximum control and productivity of your domains. Our superb customer and technical service is always available, and your decision to enroll is completely risk-free.

Choose a plan:
Basic
Standard
Premium
Custom
2.99/mo.
9.99/mo.
14.99/mo.
21.99/mo.
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HIGHLIGHTS
dedicated disk space 1 GB 5 GB 10 GB 20 GB
monthly bandwidth 10 GB 50 GB 100 GB 200 GB
control panel included included included included
multi-domain hosting
domain alias
setup fee  Free  Free  Free  Free
customer support 24/7/365 24/7/365 24/7/365 24/7/365
E-MAIL
full function mailbox
e-mail forwarding
mailbox alias
auto-responders
catch-all
https webmail
POP/SMTP
IMAP
alternate SMTP port
spam filtering
virus scanning
advanced mailing list
SCRIPTING
ASP
ASP.NET
PHP
PERL/CGI
Tomcat/JSP
Python
Flash
JavaScript
DATABASE
MySQL
phpMyAdmin
MS-SQL
FILE Management
FTP master account
FTP sub-accounts
web based file manager
personal private directory
protected directories
custom error documents
MS FrontPage extension
DNS
full control of zone file
custom sub-domains
unique IP for SSL On Request On Request On Request On Request
TRAFFIC STATISTICS/LOGS
AWStats
Webalizer
raw log file access
log rotation

For client support please click here

Frequently Asked Questions

How Do I order my web hosting package?
We accept payment by cheque if you are going to pay for a year in advance. If you are going to pay monthly then we accepts all major credit cards via our secure paypal account. You can simply click on the tab below the plan to process your order.

What anti-fraud measures do you take?
If you are unlucky enough to have your credit card stolen or for someone to illegally obtain your card details you may find that the person responsible will attempt to buy products online pretending to be you. We follow a set of stringent anti-fraud procedures specifically designed to prevent anybody from successfully placing an order with us using a bogus or stolen credit card.

For your protection every order has to pass a series of strict automated and manual anti-fraud checks. Paypal, who provide our secure online credit card processing facility, automatically carry out several of these checks in real time. Once your order has been received by us we carry out our own checks and only once we are satisfied that the order is legitimate will your card be debited.
These measures help to protect both us and consumers from fraudulent transactions. To date we have a 100% fraud detection rate and therefore zero customer charge backs (a charge back happens when the victim of the fraud disputes a transaction placed by an unauthorized person and the merchant i.e. Net Explorers, would be forced to pay a full refund).

How long will it take for my web space to be setup?
Once your order has been received and full payment has been authorized we set up your new account immediately.

What is an email account?
An email account enables you to send and receive email using yourname@yourdomain.com. Your hosting package will come with a minimum of 10 email accounts that you can set up for yourself, your friends or your colleagues to use.

What limit do you set on maximum mailbox sizes?
Each email that sits in your mailbox waiting to be collected takes up a small amount of disk space. We do not set any limit on how much disk space individual mailboxes can use other than you cannot exceed the total disk space allocated to your hosting account.

What is the maximum size of an email I can send or receive?
No single email that you send or receive can be larger than 10MB in size. For larger files we have FTP.

How do you calculate web space usage?
The amount of space used by the following services is all included in your total web space usage calculations:

We do not set any limit on how much space any of the items listed above can use, but the sum total may not exceed the total space allocated to your hosting account.

What is an "Email Account"?
This enables you to have several email addresses that all deliver mail to one email account. For example, your main email address could be:
bob@yourdomain.com
You could then set up email aliases such as:

Which all deliver mail to your main address? Each hosting package comes with unlimited email aliases.

What is a "Mailing List"?
Using your control panel you can create a number of different mailing lists. When you send an email to your mailing list address it is distributed to every address on that list. This is normally used for sending out regular newsletters or as an easy means for a group of people to collaborate and share ideas.

All your newsletters are managed via an online admin interface where you have complete control over the operation of all your mailing lists.

What is an "Email Auto responder"?
This can be very useful if you want to reply to an email with an automatic response. For example:

"Out of office" message
Going to be away from your desk for a while? Just set up an auto responder that replies to any emails you receive with your own message e.g. "Thanks for your enquiry. I am away on holiday and will respond to your email when I return."

Information Packs
You can add file attachments to your auto responder enabling you to automatically send out information about your products or services. For example you could have a message on your web site that says "Send an email to info@yourdomain.com for an information pack."

What is "Spam" and how can you help me tackle it?
Unsolicited commercial email (also known as Spam or Junk Email) is any email you receive that was sent to you without your consent. It is becoming a serious problem with many Internet Service Providers reporting that most of the email they handle is now Spam.

Once the culprits have your email address you will start to receive all manner of bogus messages and the longer you've had your address for, the worse it will get.

The content of Spam is varied but companies trying to sell Viagra, pornographic material or cure-all wonder drugs are a consistent theme. We recently received an email trying to sell us some pills that claim to make you lose weight, improve your libido, enhance intelligence and prevent hair loss!

Mystic (the makers of Norton anti-virus) claim that 80% of children aged 7 - 18 receive inappropriate SPAM every day. 47% have received pornographic emails (source .net magazine).
Thankfully there is something we can do to help you deal with this menace. Spam filtering is provided as standard with every hosting package and works like this:

Can I keep my domain name when I change my hosting provider?
Absolutely! Although each ISP has its own policy for releasing domains and some may charge you a release fee. In the unlikely event that you wish to host your site elsewhere, we do not charge a release fee of any kind.
If you are the legal registrant of the domain then you own it and have the freedom to host it wherever you like.

How do I transfer my existing domain to be hosted by you?
All you have to do, once you have ordered your Q Digital Design Hosting Package, is contact your existing domain registrar and request that the "name servers" are changed to:
NS.Qdigitaldesign.CA
NS2.Qdigitaldesign.CA
Some providers enable you to do this online via a control panel. In any case contact the existing registrar (where you bought the domain) and they will be able to advise you.

Once the name servers have been changed on your domain record it can take a while for the change to propagate throughout the internet. Please allow 48 - 72 hours for this change to become effective. After that time your Q Digital Design web space should be accessible on your domain.

IMPORTANT
The instructions above are only for pointing your domain at our servers which is all that is required for us to host your site. However if you wish to also change the registrar so that all future renewals are made through Q Digital Design you will need to tell us this when placing your order. We will then initiate a full transfer. Please note that in order for such a transfer to succeed the current administrative contact must be aware that a transfer is taking place as they will be required to authorize it. Ask your current registrar who the admin contact is if you are unsure.

Does it make a difference what type of desktop computer I use?
We consider ourselves to be a very Mac-friendly company and we take great care to test all our services on both Windows and Mac OS machines. Most of the issues we are aware of are down to the fact that certain browsers are not very standards compliant.
We are not currently aware of any serious issues that would prevent you from using any of our services with any of today's modern browsers, either on Windows or Mac OS. Users of IE on Mac may struggle as will users of older versions of IE or Netscape on Windows. With so many great standards-compliant (nearly) browsers around there has never been a better time to upgrade. For Mac users (well anybody actually) we highly recommend the free and extremely fast fire fox web browser. Enjoy.

Do you provide technical support?
We certainly do and pride ourselves on offering the best 24 hour technical support you are likely to find.

What is a secure server certificate?
This only applies to customers who wish to use SSL encrypted connections on parts of their web site. A secure server certificate is an externally authorized certificate assuring your web site visitors that:

Failing to install a valid certificate on your site may cause error messages to pop up whenever someone tries to view a secure page.

If you choose to add SSL encryption to your hosting package we will provide you with your own IP address (required for SSL) and enable SSL on your web space.

If you would like to order a SSL Certificate please let us know at the time of your order. We can also add it any existing package you have already purchased.

Do I have access to raw log files?
Your online Control Panel includes a log file manager for viewing and downloading your logs. Don't forget every hosting package comes with Visitor Statistics which automatically processes your logs and generate graphical reports.

How do I upload my site?
There are 2 ways you can do this:

Online File Manager

All our hosting packages come with an Online File Manager which can be accessed via your Control Panel. This enables you to upload files using just your web browser meaning you can upload web pages, images and scripts from any internet enabled PC anywhere!

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) Software

There are many excellent FTP packages available, some of them free, which enable you to connect to your web space and upload your files almost as if you were just copying files to another disk on your PC. Here are some examples:
If you're using an FTP program you will need to enter the following information in order to connect to your web space:

What is my bandwidth/traffic/data transfer allowance and what happens if I exceed it?
Each time someone views one of your web pages the HTML, images, flash movies etc have to be transmitted from the web server to the client's web browser. This is what we mean by data transfer or bandwidth usage. Bandwidth is not an unlimited resource so we must allocate our clients a certain amount they can use each month.
Even our smallest package includes up to 500MB of data transfer / month which is enough for many thousands of visitors.
To keep your bandwidth usage down, optimize all your image/media files as much as possible to reduce their file size. Even large photos can be reduced to as little as 30kb. Always avoid making large files available for download such as movies or audio files - this will make your bandwidth usage go through the roof!
Your bandwidth is 'burstable' meaning your site remains online even if you exceed your bandwidth limit; some other hosts will automatically suspend your site.

If you exceed your bandwidth limit you will be invoiced for any additional bandwidth used at 3.50 per 1000mb at the end of the current calendar month, in line with our terms and conditions.
If your account continues to exceed the bandwidth limits for your package over two consecutive months then it will be AUTOMATICALLY UPGRADED to the next largest package. You will receive an invoice for the cost of the upgrade to the next package, in line with our terms and conditions.
In severe cases it may be necessary to suspend your site if your bandwidth usage is extremely excessive in order to protect the sites of our other customers, but to date this has never been required.

What are Server Side Includes (SSI)?
Imagine you have a web site with over 100 pages and the main navigation menu is the same on every page. If you want to make an alteration to the navigation you don't really want to edit all 100+ pages individually. One solution is to create a separate HTML file that contains just your navigation. Then when you were creating your pages you could just place the following code at the position where you wanted it to appear:
<!--#include virtual="/navigation.html" -->
and save your page with the extension .shtml instead of .html.
When someone views that page, the server replaces the code above with your navigation file. Now if you ever need to make a site-wide alteration you only need to edit a single file and your whole site will be instantly updated!

What is CGI / Perl?
CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface which is the standard method by which data is passed between web servers and web applications. Perl is the programming language most commonly used when writing CGI web applications.
Example: "Tell a Friend" Script
The user completes a web form with their friend's email address and a message. The data is posted to the server by submitting the form and the data is then passed via CGI to a Perl script. The Perl script takes the information provided in the form and uses it to compose an email and send it to the address specified. The Perl script could then send a response back to the server which could be output to the browser, displaying a "thank you" or error message.

What is PHP?
PHP is a general purpose server-side scripting language that was written specifically for web developers. Many other languages used for web development existed before the advent of the internet and are therefore not necessarily so well suited for the purpose.
It is much easier to use than many other server-side languages due to its embedded nature. Snippets of PHP code can be placed within your HTML page and the server processes these before outputting a plain HTML page to the browser. This means it is extremely easy for beginners to pick up and master the basics.

PHP is supported by dedicated developers, a massive online community and thousands of ready-made scripts. Current statistics estimate that over 13 million domains worldwide use PHP (source php.net).

What is MySQL?
MYSQL (pronounced "My ess cue el") is an open source Relational Database Management System that uses Structured Query Language. Information is stored in "Tables" which can be thought of as the equivalent of Excel spreadsheets. A single MySQL database can contain many tables at once and store thousands of individual records. It's fast, reliable and flexible.
PHP and MySQL work extremely well together. Useful tutorials on how to use them are freely available on the web and some excellent reference books have been produced catering for complete beginners to experienced web application developers.

Q Digital Design Ltd, Namao Center, P.O. Box 31132, Edmonton,AB, T5Z 3P3, Phone: (780) 761-0909

©2009 All Rights Reserved. - Q Digital Design Ltd.