Zen Internet Support Forum

Hi there,

I have recently had windows webhosting and a domain name order completed, but I am getting frustrated that I am unable to find answers to some (I think) really straightforward questions. I emailed dnssupport but they don't seem to be available for the bank holiday weekend.

 1, Do I get email for my domain name? How do I admin this? I have seen some people on the forum reference 'cpanel' but I have no idea how to access this.

2, Can I manage the zone file for this domain myself? (i.e. change the A or MX record should I want in the future?) 

3, Can I mange IIS myself as helm is really restrictive. For example I created a simple page to send an email from a form in ASP, this works fine on my home computer but from the Zen webspace I get a " The "SendUsing" configuration value is invalid." error message. I just need to know if smtp server is running in IIS so I know I'm not wasting my time trying to fix the issue.

Regards,

Andy 

1) The domain name doesn't come with any POP3 mailboxes, and at present POP3 mailboxes are not provided with the windows hosting packages either.

If you want e-mail then you'll either need to purchase a cPanel bronze (or Lite) package for 10/1 POP3 mailboxes respectively.
Alternatively if you have your own mail server the MX records can be re-pointed.

2) Not at the moment - presently you'll need to email dnssupport to request changes to the Zone file. Fairly soon though there'll be a domain control panel in the Zen portal for you to do this yourself (its being tested/checked for bugs at the moment)

3) On shared hosting packages you can't manage IIS yourself. IIS doesn't allow someone control over just their website on a shared server, hence the need for Helm. (I think for the dedicated managed servers you can access IIS.) E-mail or call support tomorrow if you'd like to check the SMTP service is functioning correctly. (Note though that if you are using CDONTs this is no longer supported. Use CDO instead - example)

Thanks James, that clears things up a lot.

I feel kind of foolish for not noticing that windows hosting does not come with email. The basic Windows hosting is already slightly more expensive than linux and I just assumed, I mean, it seems a bit stingy not to include even 1 pop3 mailbox. I can make my own arrangements for email now though.

I will try using the email sending example later, looks good.

Many thanks again,

Andy.

James Sweet:

3) On shared hosting packages you can't manage IIS yourself. IIS doesn't allow someone control over just their website on a shared server, hence the need for Helm. (I think for the dedicated managed servers you can access IIS.) E-mail or call support tomorrow if you'd like to check the SMTP service is functioning correctly. (Note though that if you are using CDONTs this is no longer supported. Use CDO instead - example)

Sadly the examples dont work. They do on my own win 2003 server but not on my Zen silver account. There seems to be a configuration problem on the server - probably an SMTP config error.

The error message reurned is:

CDO.Message.1 error '80040220'

The "SendUsing" configuration value is invalid.

/mailcore/test.asp, line 7 (obviously that is on my test script).

 Is there any chance we can get this fixed?

 Thanks

I am also finding the lack of email options frustrating here. I have a shopping cart system (Cactushop) running asp and a SQL 2005 database. I can select many different options that use server components to send mail (CDOSYS, JMAIL, aspMail etc) but none seem to work. I can resort (and have) to pointing the MX records elsewhere to create email accounts but, unfortunately, the problem comes back to the server limitation (for instance, people signing up to a mailing list, mailing order confirmations.

What plans, if any, are there to address this current limitation on Windows hosting?

 PS this is on a Gold account

It should be able to send e-mail. Contact support if its not.

NB even if the SMTP server on the mail platform is not running you should still be able to send e-mail via the remote server: mailhost.zen.co.uk

EG

<%
Set myMail=CreateObject("CDO.Message")
myMail.Subject="Sending email with CDO"
myMail.From="mymail@mydomain.com"
myMail.To="someone@somedomain.com"
myMail.TextBody="This is a message."
myMail.Configuration.Fields.Item _
("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusing")=2
'Name or IP of remote SMTP server
myMail.Configuration.Fields.Item _
("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserver") _
="mailhost.zen.co.uk"
'Server port
myMail.Configuration.Fields.Item _
("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserverport") _
=25 
myMail.Configuration.Fields.Update
myMail.Send
set myMail=nothing
%>

I had trouble with this code, I think it might be the '_' in the configuration settings lines.  Anyway, here is the code I used and it works.

EmailFrom, EmailTo, Subject and Body are variables I set before executing this part of the email script.

 ' send email
Dim objMail, objConf
Set objMail = Server.CreateObject("CDO.Message")
Set objConf = Server.CreateObject ("CDO.Configuration")
objConf.Fields("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserver") = "mailhost.zen.co.uk"
objConf.Fields("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserverport") = 25
objConf.Fields("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusing") = 2
objConf.Fields("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpconnectiontimeout") = 60
objConf.Fields.Update

Set objMail.Configuration = objConf

objMail.From = EmailFrom
objMail.To = EmailTo
objMail.Subject = Subject
objMail.TextBody = Body
objMail.Send

Set objMail = Nothing
Set objConf = Nothing