Technology Lighthouse, Inc. designs traditional web sites using Dynamic HTML (DHTML) and Joomla!, a Content Management System (CMS) written in PHP. Most of our newer sites are done with Joomla!

We can also design sites using Word Press and other similar systems.

Yes, in most cases. We use a very powerful and complete CMS called Joomla! in most of our current designs, including this one.

Joomla! is Open Source Software licensed under the GNU General Public License (Version 2) and, therefore, available to all without charge provided the terms of the license are respected. This means, for you, that much of the underlying programming is done and TLI doesn't have to do everything from scratch and you receive an attractive and fully usable web site for far less than a custom site would cost.

In addition to the Joomla! core we utilize additional Open Source Software as appropriate for each site. Likewise, while Joomla! is the core of our web sites, each site must be individually customized to our customer's needs. A major component of this is the "look and feel" of the site. We use commercial, very high quality "templates" for the basic design and then modify the template as appropriate.

Yes. Most of our shopping carts are done using VirtueMart, a Joomla! component. We have also used "OS Commerce" and "Zen Cart" but prefer VirtueMart. It is much easier to set up, configure, and use than the others.

We have a free "public" SSL certificate available for our customers use. We prefer, however, that our customers have their own SSL certificate so their web site appears when the checking out and making payment.

Customers wanting to accept payments online will need a merchant account with a credit card processor. PayPal is a good alternative if you don't expect a large volume of business.

Designing an effective web site is a complex and relatively time consuming business, especially if there is significant graphic design (modifying photos, designing a logo, etc.) involved. Everything is dictated by the customer's needs and desires. We do not, therefore, have a "standard" price for designing a web site. Our charges reflect the amount of time and skill needed to give the customer what he expects. (Besides... we don't want to make it easy for our competition to do their market research!)

We do, however, make every effort to keep our prices competitive, and often much lower, than that of our competitors. Please call or e-mail us for a quotation.

Yes, we can. We can design relatively simple text-based logos or incorporate an existing graphic into the header for your site. Please look at the header of this site or many of the sites in our portfolio for examples.

If you need a complex graphic your best option is to have a graphic artist design the logo for you. We are not artists but have contacts with several able to do an excellent job at a reasonable price.

The short answer is "No." We can incorporate some flash in your website but do not design flash sites. If you want a flash-based web site you will be much better served having a reputable flash site design group develop your site.

In general, we believe that flash is tremendously overused. Large flash movies require long load times -- a real downer when your site is loading -- and just about everything you can do with flash can be done in other ways without the hassles of flash.

Some of the standard features you receive when hosting your domain with Technology Lighthouse are:

Please see our Control Panel FAQ for additional capabilities.

Technology Lighthouse, Inc. has a variety of hosting plans, each with different features. We do not publish our prices. Please call or e-mail us so we can discuss your needs and quote you a price for your configuration.

No, Technology Lighthouse, Inc. never charges a "setup" fee.

No, we do not offer "unlimited" disk space or bandwidth. We purchase disk space and bandwidth from another company and can not afford to allow any single customer to consume more bandwidth or disk space than they are willing to pay for.

You can easily find hosting companies that do offer "unlimited" disk space and / or bandwidth to their customers. These companies typically "oversell" their actual capacity by a huge factor, figuring that most small web sites will use only a few megabytes of space and, perhaps, a few hundred megabytes of bandwidth instead of the gigabytes they tease you with.

No, we do not have our own servers. This would require someone physically available in case of hardware / software issues on the server 24/7. This is impractical for a small company like Technology Lighthouse, Inc. without huge price increases.

We purchase disk space and bandwidth from a major hosting organizations with many servers, multiple high speed, high capacity data lines. Their 24/7 online and e-mail support, daily backups, and much more mean you don't have to worry about all of the little things that make a web site work for you.

Yes, we can a install SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate on your site.

Each site comes with a "shared" SSL certificate shared by all web sites on the server. If you choose to use this certificate, however, your customers may be confused because a notice warning that the certificate does not match the web site may appear and asking if they want to proceed. It is perfectly safe for your customers to continue but the modest cost of your own certificate will probably pay big dividends in terms of peace of mind.

Yes. Each account comes with a Control Panel (see Control Panel FAQ, below) that, among other things, gives you access to detailed statistics and logs.

Our servers are located in Houston, TX and / or Atlanta, GA.

No, we do not normally allow chat rooms on our servers. They consume large quantities of bandwidth and may slow down other sites on the server. Small customer support chat applications that do not require large bandwidth are allowed under some circumstances.

If you require a high volume chat room like IRC contact us and we can discuss the options we have available for you.

We always hope and trust that nothing does go wrong. But, of course, things do all the time and something could fail at any time. Technology Lighthouse, Inc. chose to host our servers with an extremely reliable and reputable vendor with multiple locations. Each server is backed up daily and can be restored from tape in the event of a catastrophic failure.

The most likely problems are...

• Hardware failure, whether it's minor, serious, or catastrophic. If this happens our hosting company quickly identifies the problem and repairs the system as soon as possible. The problem is usually corrected within minutes and you will never notice the problem. In the case of a total server failure, repair of the system - including installing a new operating system and restoring all data from backups - may take several hours.
• Site changes caused by not paying proper attention to what you are doing. It is not particularly uncommon to hurry to complete something and mistakenly modify or delete critical a file or two on your site. This is normally corrected by correcting the error and then uploading the corrected file to the server.
• Hacking of the site. There are numerous unscrupulous hackers who try to break into web sites either for the fun of it or for a more malicious reason. We take every effort to ensure the security of your site but sometimes it still happens. The best tool to prevent hacking is always using non-obvious user names and unique, very strong passwords when accessing the administrative portions of your site.

If you notice a problem with your web site please immediately call or e-mail Technology Lighthouse and we will resolve the problem as quickly as possible. We will let you know the status of the problem on a regular basis.

Yes! The Control Panel is where you can control or monitor many features of your site including e-mail accounts, site statistics, databases, subdomains, and so on. Please see the additional articles in this FAQ section for more information.

The Control Panel for your account can be accessed by entering https://your_domain.com:2083 (replace "your_domain.com with your domain name) in your browser's address bar. A screen notifying that you are entering a "secure site" and that the certificate does not match the domain name may appear. Go on and accept the certificate -- it's safe. You will be asked for your Control Panel username and password (given to you when we created your account).

Once you are in the Control Panel you have access to many functions, ranging from setting up e-mail accounts, e-mail forwarders, auto-responders, and mailing lists to subdomains and password-protected directories to web site statistics.

The Control Panel enables you to configure a large number of standard features via the Control Panel:

Additional features are available.

If you lose the username and / or password to your Control Panel account please call or e-mail Technology Lighthouse, Inc. via our Contact page. You can also try contacting us on Facebook (Technology Lighthouse, Inc., but you'll have to join the group before I'll know you need support), or instant message me on Google Talk.

Yes! All of our hosting packages come with e-mail enabled. The number of e-mail addresses is determined by the specific hosting package you choose.

There are two steps to setting up an e-mail account:

1. Set up the account(s) on the server.
   1. Go into your Control Panel and click on the E-Mail Accounts icon in the Mail group.
   2. Enter the Username in the text box. Use only alphanumeric characters, a period, or a hyphen.
   3. Click on Password Generator button to generate a strong password. Copy the password down exactly (or copy it into your clipboard and paste it into a password safe), check the "I have copied this password in a safe place." box, and click the Use Password button.
   4. Assign the new e-mail account a quota. Either 10 MB or 20 MB is recommended.
   5. Click Create Account.
   6. Repeat steps 1-5 for any additional e-mail accounts
2. Set up your e-mail account(s) on you computer(s). Each e-mail client (Outlook Express, Outlook, Thunderbird, Netscape, etc.) uses a different setup procedure. Some things are required though:
   1. E-mail address and password. Use the values obtained above.
   2. Incoming (POP3) server: mail.yourdomain.com where "yourdomain.com" is your domain name. The ".com" may actually be ".org", ".net", ".info" or some other top-level domain.
   3. Outgoing (SMTP) server: mail.yourdomain.com, with similar qualifications about the domain name.
   4. Do not change the POP3 or SMTP port numbers from their defaults.

Check your e-mail client's help files or web site for more information about setting up your e-mail client.

Several options are available through the Control Panel to control spam:

• Spam Assassin, an automated e-mail filtering system that attempts to identify spam messages based on the content of the email's headers and body.
• Account-level filtering.
• User-level filtering.
• Automatically forwarding or deleting e-mail that is sent to an invalid e-mail address.

When you go to your server to send an e-mail you have to go through a "backbone" to go from your computer to your ISP and then on to your server. Some ISP's interrupt this process by blocking the outgoing mail (SMTP) server on "port 25" from passing e-mail on to your outgoing mail server.

You have two options when this happens: Use the ISP's server with the username and password they have given you to log on with, or use an alternative port on the shared secure server at yourdomain.com.

Technology Lighthouse lets you use port 465 as a SMTPS (SMTP Secure) port. The shared SSL domain for your account is now 'servername.nocdirect.com'. Make sure to replace 'servername' with the name of the server your account is on. To connect to that port, please use shared SSL domain and activate SSL in the email client.

For example in MS Outlook in the advanced settings, change the outgoing port number from 25 to 465 and select the checkbox "This server requires an encrypted SSL connection (SSL)" - also change mail server to servername.nocdirect.com (for outgoing server only).

Please call or e-mail TLI for the servername to use.