Sandvox Hosting
Sandvox Hosting is Karelia Software's built-in hosting solution for Sandvox-built websites. While you are free to use an alternate host, you will probably find that Sandvox Hosting is the fastest and easiest way to get a website onto the Internet. Read more about Sandvox hosting at its home page. and FAQ page.
Creating a Sandvox Hosting Account
Creation of a Sandvox Hosting account is done directly from Sandvox, in the Host Setup Assistant. While the Sandvox Hosting website is there for managing your account, initial sign-up is done exclusively from Sandvox.
When you sign up for an account, you are given a free fifteen-day free trial (with limited storage space and data transfer bandwidth) so you can try it out before you pay for the service. At any time in that period, you can upgrade your account to a paid account.
To get started, open the Host Setup Assistant, and if needed, click on the Sandvox Hosting banner at the top to reveal the sign-up form.
There are four bits of information you need to provide in order to set up an account:
- Your email address
- We will send you an email to confirm that this is indeed the correct address.
- Your name
- Enter the name you will be using for your billing information.
- Choose a password
-
Sandvox will suggest a randomly-generated, secure password for you; or you can type in your own. The password needs to be at least 8 characters and should contain a mix of letters, numbers, and punctuation. A strength meter will evaluate the security of your password for you. Please avoid a password marked as "insecure" (too common and easy to guess) or "weak". The password, whether you choose your own or use the suggested one, will be stored in your keychain for use by Sandvox and also by Safari for when logging into SandvoxHosting.com.
- Choose a website address at sandvox.net
- For your trial account, your website will be accessible at a URL like http://mysite.sandvox.net/. You might want to base the identifier on your name or your business name. Pick a website identifier here made up of letters a-z and digits 0-9; a dash between letters/digits is OK as well. (If the identifier you have chosen is unavailable, try a different one.) If you are planning on getting a custom domain name later, this need not be particularly memorable since you will no longer use it after setting up your custom domain.
Review the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, and then click "Sign Up" in the lower right corner to create your account.
Signed into Demo Account
Once you are done signing up, the display of the Host Setup Assistant will change and you will see that you are signed in.
- Domain that website will be published to
- This is where your site will be published. For a trial account, it will always be of the form mysite.sandvox.net.
- Trial account expiration
- The number of days remaining in your trial account is shown below. Click the "Learn More" button to find out more about upgrading to a paid account.
At this point, you can click "Done" to exit the Host Setup Assistant, or go manage your account at SandvoxHosting.com.
Be sure to check your email and confirm your email address so that your account will stay active. Accounts that have been set up without their email address confirmed will be deactivated after 24 hours of initial sign-up.
Logging In
If you have signed out of your Sandvox Hosting account — there is rarely a need for you to do this — you will need to login with your email address and password before publishing again.
After you have upgraded to a paid account
Once you have decided to pay for a long-term Sandvox Hosting account, the status you see when logged in will look a little different than it looked when you had a trial account.
- Domain that website will be published to
- If you have more than one site established for your account, you will see a list of domain names available. Choose "Custom Domain…" to visit a page on your SandvoxHosting.com account from which you can purchase or transfer an additional domain name.
- Plan
- Information about your hosting plan, along with information about when the plan needs to renew. Hint: Click on the renewal date to toggle to a different display of the date.
- Storage meter
- How much storage that you are using out of the allotted storage for your plan. If you have multiple websites, each of these may be contributing to the total amount.
- Bandwidth meter
- Similar to storage meter, but it shows how much bandwidth you have used out of your total allotment for the time period (one month or one year) of your current plan.
Click "Manage Account" to log into your SandvoxHosting.com account and find out more information about your plan, your storage and bandwidth usage per site, and so on.
