How do I publish my personal home page to the Web ?

As a Centralva.net subscriber you are given up to 5 megabytes of personal webspace. Here are the steps you need to follow in order to upload your personal website. PLEASE NOTE: Your web space may only be used for a PERSONAL homepage. Business pages are not allowed on this web space, and are a violation of our Terms Of Service. If you are using Front Page to publish your web page, please call 434.385.5053 to have the Front Page Server extensions added to your site.

Step 1: Download and Install an FTP Program
You need to download an FTP program in order to upload the website you created. A commonly used FTP program is WS_FTP LE. To download this program, please click here, and double-click the file that you downloaded to install it.

Step 2: Setup WS_FTP.
You will need to setup WS_FTP with the host name, and server information for our server. To do this, click the New button, and fill in the information on the General and and Startup tabs, to match the following screenshots. All other options can be left alone.

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Why do I get the error message 'ERROR 404 or 403 page cannot be displayed'?

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Why do I get disconnected from the Internet frequently?

#1... Incompatible analog modem protocol.
The CVA Network supports most modems.

#2... Problems with the phone lines between your computer and the internet provider connection.

Many times, frequent disconnects are caused by a bad connection somewhere down the phone lines between your home and your service provider. Each time there is a splice box up on the pole that connects one phone line to another, there is a potential trouble spot. Depending on how far you actually live from your service provider, there could be a few to many of these splice boxes. Wind and rain or heavy fog are the primary causes of problems at these splice boxes. As a normal trouble shooting process, try and notice the times you are disconnected and note the direction of the wind, or if it is raining, or if there is excessive humidity. Sometimes a simple shift in direction of the wind can cause disconnects to become more frequent.

#3... Problems with phone lines in your home.

a... If you have an older home, there could be some bad phone line connections in or under your home. Try connecting your computer to various connection boxes in your home to see if one box has a better connection than another.

b... If you have line of sight from your home to the telephone pole phone line connector, you might try running your own phone line directly from the pole to your computer. If you make this dedicated connection, you might as well double up on the wire by connecting red and yellow and green and black together. This will double your bandwidth between the computer and the pole. If this is not possible, at least try to make a separate connection from the nearest outside terminal box to your computer. You will notice a difference if you can at least do this.

c... Always make your computer the first thing connected to the wall connection and then from your computer add additional phones, fax etc. If at all possible, make your computer the only thing connected to your wall box. Connect all other devices to an additional box in the house.

#4... Phone line surge protectors.
You should use a telephone surge protectors on your computer modem line. Try plugging directly into the wall, you could have a bad surge protector. It is best to unplug your computer and its phone line during lightning storms. 

#5... Phone extensions in other rooms of your home. 

If you have other phone units elsewhere in your home and your computer is on these same lines, you will become disconnected if any one of those phones are picked up. It is best to get an additional phone line just for your computer. When getting an additional line from your phone company, be sure to ask for a "teenagers" line. A plain phone line is all that is needed. You do not need call forwarding, call waiting, long distance, or any of the special extra cost items the phone company want to add to your bill.

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Why can I no longer check my email after installing/upgrading Norton Antivirus?

This is a common problem that is easily solved. If you are using Outlook Express 4.x-6.0 all you have to do is open Outlook Express (please note you can work offline to do this)

• Click on TOOLS on the top menu
• Choose ACCOUNTS
• Click on the MAIL TAB
• Find your mail account - is should say  
• mail.centralva.net (default)
• Click on your mail account once and then click  
• on the PROPERTIES button located on the right navigation bar
• Now click on the SERVERS TAB
• Your mail server is a POP3
• Your incoming mail server is: mail.centralva.net
• Your outgoing or SMTP server is: mail.centralva.net
• Account name should be: username 
• (please note that the username@centralva.net 
• is not correct please remove the @centralva.net part)
• DO NOT HAVE USE Secure Authentication checked 
• or your email will not work!

Norton Anti-Virus and few others will inadvertently change your incoming mail server to pop3.norton.com - this must be changed to mail.centralva.net.

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I'm on the Internet, now what?

You're in the center of a vast digital jungle. All around you, a web of data — millions of bits of information about almost every topic under the sun. You've heard that there are magazines, newspapers, books of all kinds on the Web. You've heard there's art, business information, games, jokes, and music—but where? You feel lost.

But never fear Centralva.net is here to guide you toward a better understanding of this exciting part of the Internet: the World Wide Web. You'll learn all you need to start making the most of your time online.

Your visit to the Web begins, simply enough, with a page — a Web page. In fact, since Web pages are really just computer files, they can be infinitely large. The reason they're called pages is because that is what they look like when they are displayed on your computer screen. To see Web pages you use a special program called a browser. You are probably using one of the two most popular Web browsers: Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator (which is part of the Netscape Communicator package).

Because Web pages can be very large, all the information on them may not fit on your screen at once. That's why you may need to scroll the page (move it up and down or right and left) to see everything. You scroll by clicking the arrows on the scrollbars along the right side and bottom of your browser's window, just as you can in a program like Microsoft Word. You can also move up and down on a page by pressing the arrow keys or the page up and page down keys on your keyboard.

Hyperlinks — usually called just links — are what make the Web truly web-like. These links, which can be words or images, can connect any one page to any other page, anywhere in the world, with a single click. Though it is most common for links to take you from Web page to Web page, clicking on a link can also download a computer file, play sounds, display graphics, or even open your email program with an address filled in.

To use links (and the Web) effectively, you have to be able to identify them. So, how can you tell if something is a link?

Words that are links are almost always a bright color (blue, red, and purple are popular) and underlined. Images and icons that are links can have bright borders that show they are links. Generally, if you see text (or images) highlighted in this manner, you can be sure that you are looking at a link.

Not all links — especially graphic links — are clearly identified. Web page designers often hide the link outlining around pictures and icons  to create more aesthetically pleasing pages.

The safest and easiest way to identify a link is with your cursor, or mouse pointer. When your cursor moves over a link, it turns from an arrow to a pointing hand . Whenever you see this hand, you can be sure your cursor is over a link (you can also see the URL or address that the link would take you to in the lower left corner of the browser window, but we'll talk more about Web addresses in a bit).

Though there is no limit on how large Web pages can be, long pages can be hard to read and take a long time to load in your browser. So, Web page designers generally split large pages into several smaller ones. A collection of related pages designed by one person or organization is called a Web site. The Web Tour you are taking now is part of the Centralva.net Web site.

Sites are usually organized around what's called a homepage, which is the first page visitors see. Homepages function a lot like the lobby of an office building. They are a place to welcome visitors and provide them with options for where in the building they want to go. You might also think about the homepage as the beginning of a book, providing an introduction and a table of contents for what follows. With some sites though, you jump right in with no introduction. Many sites include a link back to their homepage from all other pages on the site.

The links on a Web page often lead to other pages within the same Web site. Many times, however, they take you to new Web sites. So, it's hard, sometimes, to know just where you are.

The look and feel of the page — its tone, colors, graphics, and buttons — can be the first indication you have arrived at a new site. If you click on a link and suddenly find yourself in a very different-looking place, chances are you've jumped to a new site.

But, a more definitive way to know if you've moved to a new site is by comparing the URL (Universal Resource Locator) or address of the page you are on to the URL of the page you came from (hit the Back button on your browser to return to the page you left).

On the Web, you move from page to page and site to site in two ways: You either click on a link, which automatically enters that URL in your browser, or you can type the URL into the text Address/Location field and hit the Return/Enter key on your keyboard. (Just be careful to type the URL exactly as it's written or you may go to the wrong place or get an error message. Watch for periods, capitals, hyphens, and spaces — there are no spaces and no commas allowed in Web addresses.)

While you're exploring the Web, you'll probably find places that you'd like to return to often. Browser programs make this easy by letting you store favorite Web sites in easily accessed menus that Microsoft Internet Explorer calls Favorites and Netscape Navigator calls Bookmarks.

Both browsers come with pre-configured bookmark links to popular Web sites that you can go to by selecting from the Bookmark/Favorites menu. But your Centralva.net Start Page makes it easy to find many more great sites. Just click on one of the topics in your Web Channels to see organized lists of the best Web sites.

You can also use the Search tool to find sites with some of the Web's top search engines — special sites that index the millions of Web pages available on the World Wide Web. Just type in a "keyword" (or two) describing what you are looking for, then click the Search button. You will see a list of sites matching those keywords.

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I keep downloading the same email messages over and over. What's wrong ?

If your email seems to be stuck on receiving, you could have a large email clogging up the works!  If you notice your email hanging on 'receiving X of XX email messages', you get an error message saying the server failed to respond in 60 seconds, and you continue receiving the same messages over and over, there is probably an email message too large for your dial-up connection to download. This is an easy problem to fix: simply log into our Web Mail (top left corner) and  you will see the email waiting to be downloaded to your computer. From there you can simply delete the large email message (as well as the ones you have already downloaded, if you wish) and be sure to click the Purge Deleted option. You can then go back into Outlook or Outlook Express and download the rest of your messages!  

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My e-mail program can't find the POP3 server. What do I do?

    1.  In Outlook Express, click on Tools - Accounts - Mail tab.
    2.  Under Accounts, double-click on your centralva.net account then click on the Servers tab. 
    3.  For outgoing (SMTP) and incoming (POP3) mail servers, you should have mail.centralva.net.
    4.  If you don't, delete what's in there and type mail.centralva.net for the correct entry.
    5.  Click Apply and then click OK. That should fix your email problem.   

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How do I setup my dial-up connection in Windows XP ?

Note: If you are running Windows XP in classic mode, your will need to select the Start menu, select Settings, then choose Control Panel

Click the Switch to Classic View icon.
Double-click the Network Connections icon.
Click the Create a new connection icon.
Click the Next button.
Select Connect to the Internet. Click the Next button.
Select Set up my connection manually. Click the Next button.
Select Connect using a dial-up modem. Click the Next button.
In the ISP Name field, type a name to identify your connection (i.e.Centralva.net).
Click the Next button.
In the Phone number field, type your local access number exactly as it needs to be dialed. (385-1962)

Click the Next button.
In the User name field, type your username.
In the Password field, type your password.
In the Confirm password field, type your password.
Uncheck the box next to Use this account name and password when anyone connects to the Internet from this computer.
Uncheck the box next to Make this the default Internet connection.
Uncheck the box next to Turn on Internet Connection Firewall for this connection.
Click the Next button.

Check the box next to Add a shortcut to this connection to my desktop if you wish to have a shortcut to the connection on your desktop.
Click the Finish button.

Close all windows.
From the Start menu, choose Connect To.

Note: If you are running Windows XP in classic mode, from the Start menu, click Settings, and choose Network Connections.
Right-click your dial-up connection, then choose Properties.

Click on the Networking tab. Select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) in the This connection uses the following items list.
Click the OK button.
Close all windows.
You have successfully created a Dial-up Connection in Windows XP.

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Recommended
Downloads

Spybot Search & Destroy www.safer-networking.org

Ad-Aware SE
www.adaware.com

Microsoft Windows Defender  
www.microsoft.com

Design by: CentralVa.Net
Last modified: July 23, 2007