Step 1: Create a new eMail address

Log into your host gator cpanel account, locate the Mail section of the control panel, and select Email accounts

In the Add New Email Account section:

Adding a new email address with cPanel

• Enter the name for the email account
• Select the domain name that you want to use
• Enter the password you want to use twice
• Set a quota to note how much space it can take up
  I recommend something fairly small unless you want to save all of your mail online. 10 MB is plenty if you download all of your mail. 50 MB to 100 MB is probably plenty if you keep your mail online and delete old / unwanted mail.

When done, select Create and you should see a confirmation message with the new email address shown in the list under the Current Accounts setting.

Using your new email account

Once you have created the mail account, you need to be able to make use of it. There are two primary ways of doing so:

1. Checking and using email online
2. Setting up an email client to use the email account locally

Because there are a number of email clients available, I am just going to cover accessing your email via cPanel.

Accessing webmail from the cPanel email list

Select Access Webmail from the list of emails shown in the Email Accounts panel. Note that if you select the WebMail button from the main cpanel home, you will be logging into the main account for your domain, which is probably not what you want.

You should see the below login screen ( or something similar ). Go ahead and enter the password you set for the new email account and select login.

Once you do so, you should come to a screen that allows you to choose which webmail client you want to use and/or configure the account.

Clients and Mail Setting Options in cPanel

Choose a client to log in. I’ll use Horde for this example, but any will work. Try them each to see what you prefer. Here is what Horde looks like:

The Horde Mail Client

From there, you can see your email, write email, etc.

If you want to setup your email to be read from an email client such as Mozilla Thunderbird and are not sure how to go about doing so, feel free to leave a comment with the client in question and, when I get time, I will see about putting up a quick configuration walkthrough for you.

Instructions for doing so very greatly from mail client to mail client…and some online mail clients have support for custom footers as well.

You can make the footer say whatever you want. For example, mine is displayed below:

Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxx
Privateer Web Solutions
Build your website. Drive traffic to your online store.
~ http://www.privateerwebsolutions.com/
~ Email: XXXxxx@privateerwebsolutions.com
~ Phone: (XXX) XXX-XXXX

If you use Mozilla Thunderbird as your mail client, you can setup a footer as follows:

Open your mail client

Select "Tools" → "Account Settings" from the file menu

This will open the Account Settings box

Select the email account you wish to setup a footer for

Your accounts should be shown on the left.

Check the box to the right next to "Attach this signature:"

Select "Choose" next to the empty box under "Attach this signature"

Browse to the file that you want to use as a footer

This can be a plain .txt file, an html file, an image, etc.

I recommend a plain .txt file, but an html file typically works fine as well.

Select "OK" once done choosing a file

This will save your settings

If you are not sure how to go about creating the file to use as a footer:

• Windows Instructions

Select your start button

This should bring up the start menu

Select "Run …"

This should bring up a box to enter text into

Enter "notepad" in the box and select "OK"

This should load a blank notepad window

Enter the text for your signature

Select "File" → "Save As" from the file menu

Save the file wherever you want. If unsure, select "My Documents" from the left menu

Give the file a name you will remember

Save the file

From now on, any emails you send from the specified account will have whatever you entered in your signature file inserted into them.

Should you want to update your signature, just update the file you created.

Below, you will see the file menu for a recent version of Mozilla Firefox outlined in red.

When instructions on this site tell you to use the file menu to select "Edit" → "Copy", you would select Edit from the file menu and then select Copy on the submenu that comes up.

Shortcut Keys

As you see, most items on the menu have an underlined letter. In windows, you can hold down control on your keyboard and then press the underlined letter to bring up the submenu for that item with your keyboard. From there, you can use your arrow keys and your enter key to select an item.

Direct Shortcut Keys

When a submenu comes up, you might see key combinations to the right of certain selections like the following.

As you can see, Copy has "Ctrl+C" next to it. This means that you can hold down control and press C on your keyboard to copy things within the program in question.

Instead of selecting individual files in a web browser, you can copy entire directories up and move on to other things while the files are being uploaded.

FTP Programs

There are a wide variety of FTP programs available for use. For these instructions, I will use FileZilla, an FTP program available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.

The default interface for mozilla looks something like the following:

Status Information shows what is happening with your connection.

Your computer lets you browse the contents of your computer.

The files on your computer in your working directory displays your current working directory…which is the directory on your computer where files will be copied to if you download them from your server.

Your web server lets you browse the contents of your web server (or whatever computer you are connected to via FTP)

The files on your server in your working directory displays the files on your remote working directory. This is where files will be copied to when you upload them (unless you drag them into a displayed folder).

Status of File Uploads / Downloads displays status information related to file uploads and downloads.

Uploading files to your Webserver

For the purposes of this quick tutorial, we will cover uploading the Atahualpa theme to a WordPress site.

Step 1: Setup your site in the FileZilla Site Manager

The first thing you should do is to setup your site in the site manager.

• Select "File" → "Site Manager"
  This will open the FileZilla Site Manager.

Select "New Site"
This will bring up the new site dialogue.

• Enter a name for your new site
  This can be whatever you want.
  I recommend using the domain name.
• Enter your sites domain name in the "Host" box
  If you have a static IP, you could enter the IP address instead.
• Enter your sites ftp port
  Leave this empty unless you set ftp to a non default port.
• Select your ftp server type
  This should normally be FTP – File Transfer Protocol
  As noted in Blog LockDown, you might want to consider enabling and using SFTP for better security.
• Select your "Logintype"
  Use normal if you want Filezilla to store your password. (convenient)
  Use Ask for Password if you want to be prompted for the password. (safer)
• Enter your FTP username
  If you signed up with Host Gator, you received this in your welcome email. It is your account username.
• Enter your password
  This only applies if you selected "Normal" for Logintype.
• Select "OK" or "Connect" to save your new server entry
  Ok saves without connecting to your server.
  Connect saves and then connects to your server.

Step 2: Find the files you want to upload on your computer

Once you are connected to your web server, you will want to locate the files that you want to upload. To do so, use the left windows to find your files.

If you wanted to find "downloads/atahualpa" on your D: drive, you would:

1. Select D: in your top left window
   This would show it’s contents in the bottom left window
2. Select downloads in the top left window
   This would show its’ contents in the bottom left window.
3. Find atahualpa in the bottom left window
   This is the directory you want to upload.

Step 3: Find the location you want to upload your files to.

On the right side, use the two displayed windows to find the folder that you want to upload content to.

If you wanted to upload a new theme, you would upload it to "public_html/wp-content/themes"

1. Select public_html in the top right pane
   You would see subfolders below it in the top right pane.
   You would also see the contents of public_html in the bottom right pane.
2. Select wp-content in the top right pane
   You would see subfolders below it in the top right pane.
   You would also see the contents of wp-content in the bottom right pane.
3. Select themes in the top right pane
   You would see subfolders below it in the top right pane.
   You would also see the contents of themes in the bottom right pane.
   You would drag your new theme folders to the bottom right pane.

Step 4: Copy your files to your server.

To copy files to your server, drag them from the bottom left pane to the bottom right pane.

Continuing our example of uploading the atahualpa theme:

1. Click the atahualpa folder in the bottom left pane
2. Drag the atahualpa folder from the bottom left pane to the bottom right pane
   Be careful not to drop it into a folder on the bottom right as doing so would place the atahualpa folder into whatever folder you dropped it into instead of into the themes folder.

Your files will then start being copied up and you will see both the top and bottom windows displaying information related to the files being uploaded.

Copying files from your server to your computer

This is just like uploading files, but instead of dragging them from the bottom left to the bottom right, you drag them from the bottom right to the bottom left.

The ability to extract zip files is built into newer versions of Windows.

1. Right-click the zip file that you want to extract.
2. Select "Extract All…"
   This will open the Extraction Wizard.
3. Select "Next"
   This will take you to the "Select a Destination" page.
4. See where the files will be extracted to
   The default for WordPress themes and plugins is typically a new directory with the same name as the zip file in the same directory that the zip file is in.
5. Select "Next"
   The files will start being extracted.
   When they finish, you will see the "Extraction Complete" window.
6. Select "Finish" to close the wizard.
   If you don’t want the extracted files displayed in a new window, uncheck the "Show extracted files" box before selecting Finish.