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The Basics
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General Account Information
We offer storage space for web pages with global public access to those pages over the Internet. We also offer a limited form of program execution known as "cgi-bin." Our computers are Dual Pentium III 1 Ghz+ servers with 1GB+ of RAM running Apache 1.3.26 over a custom version of Red Hat Linux. Apache responds to web page fetch requests from remote browsers while Linux is one of several variants of the Unix operating system. Our servers are connected to the Internet backbone over multiple, fully redundant DS3 lines each having a capacity of 45 Mbps (Million bits per second), and multiple, redundant OC3 lines each having a capacity of 155 Mbps (Million bits per second).
Every customer gets his or her own password protected userid under Linux. By logging in with the userid, the customer gains access to his web storage space. Every userid "owns" a structure of disk subdirectories in the Linux file system. The "root" of this structure is the "home" directory, found at path "/home/yourdomain". Note that this is somewhat similar to the MS-DOS directory structure, except that there is no drive letter and forward slashes are used instead of backward slashes. The path referred to above, however, is in relation to our own servers. When you FTP to your account using your domain name and userid, you don't need to put in "home/userid." You will automatically be taken there.
Directory Location for Web Files
Inside the home directory are several files and subdirectories. The most important one is named "www". Every account has a separate "www" subdirectory. Files placed in the "www" directory are visible to remote browsers over the Internet, so this is where you want to place all your html documents, graphics, sounds, files, etc. that you want people to be able to access from the World Wide Web. For example, when a browser asks for URL http://yourdomain.com/page.html, Apache looks for the file: /home/yourdomain.com/www/page.html and sends it out.
The Index Page
The filename of your home page should be index.htm or index.html. The webserver will automatically send the file at path /home/yourdomain.com/www/index.htm when a browser specifies http://www.yourdomain.com. When your account is set up, there will be an index.htm page already installed. This just tells anyone accessing your domain that your site is under construction and will be available soon. You will replace this file in the www directory with one of your own creation. If you wish to use any of the cgi features we provide that use Server Side Includes (SSI), you must name your page with the .sht or .shtml extension. You can put an index.htm file in any subdirectory that you wish, and it will be the default page served when you don't want your visitors to have to type a full page URL reference, for example, http://www.yourdomain.com/whatever instead of http://www.yourdomain.com/whatever/page.htm, or http://www.yourdomain.com/whatever.htm.
It is possible to have more than one index file in the same directory. For instance, you have index.htm and later add index.shtml. When you do not specify a filename in a directory, the web server will search for the index file in a very specific order. In this case, the server will load the index.htm file and never load the index.shtml, because the index.htm file has a higher search order priority. The search order priority is as follows:
| Search | | |
| Order | | Filename |
1 | | index.html |
2 | | index.htm |
3 | | index.shtml |
4 | | index.sht |
5 | | index.php |
In the above example, if you simply delete the index.htm file the newer index.shtml file will load automatically.
FTP Access
Now that we know where the files have to be located in order to be visible from the Internet, just how do we put the files there? There are several ways, depending on your computer system. For the Macintosh, a program called Fetch is used. Microsoft Windows systems can use WS_FTP. Follow the links above for detailed instructions on these programs. Look further in this support area for instructions on other FTP programs.
Telnet Access
A telnet account is another name for a general Unix/Linux userid. When you sign up with us, you get a userid and password.
You need a telnet program to access your telnet account. Simply put in yourdomain.com as the host, and connect to the server. When you are connected, you will be prompted for your userid and password.
Some of the programs available at the shell prompt
are:
- mail - a primitive email program
- pine - a more powerful email program
- ftp - to FTP to other sites
- telnet - to telnet to other sites
- pico - an easy to use text editor
- vi - a not so easy to use (but standard) text editor
- lynx - a text-based world wide web browser.
You access these programs by typing in their names and then following commands relevant to each program. If you need help with any of the programs, at the shell prompt, type man and the name of the program to get instructions for that program online.
If your problem is not knowing the name of the program, try apropos subject, (i.e. apropos mail). It is important to remember that Unix is case-sensitive, and that Index.htm is not the same as index.htm.
Note:
If you experience problems with your telnet program when accessing the above programs, you will need to make an entry in your login directories .bash_profile file. Just add the following to the last line export TERM=vt100. This will allow you to access all shell programs properly.
Username and Filenames Limitations
A username of anywhere from 3-16 letters is legal for email accounts, FTP accounts, and telnet accounts and may include upper and lower-case letters, numbers and hyphens. There is no limitation for file names on the server but spaces are not normally used on Unix systems and may cause problems.
You may create an unlimited number of subdirectories (folders) within your account space to organize your site using the FTP command 'mkdir'. To have a page automatically load up when a browser goes to a directory, name a file index.html (make sure it's lowercase) and place it in that directory. If an index.html file is not present, the Web browser will default to a list of all the files in that directory. This applies to the root directory as well.
Usage and Access Logs
To count accesses, there is a directory called wusage in your www directory. To access it, just log on the Internet and with your web browser, go to:
http://www.yourdomain.com/wusage
You will see a webpage with statistics for your domain for the previous week. If you are a brand new domain, you won't see any statistics the first week. If you go to the link from that page leading to Weekly Reports, you will see a much more detailed report, including pie charts, graphs, etc. These reports are automatically generated for you once each week, and are stored in one place so you can compare weekly statistics easily.
If you would like to see domain names in your stats rather than just IP numbers, put an empty file in your wusage directory called dns (no extensions). This will act as a switch and reverse authentication will be activated for the domain.
In your home directory, you will see a file called access-log. You can download this file and open it in any word processor to see exactly what files were accessed, what domain the visitor came from, the dates and times of each visit, etc.
Checking Server Space Usage
You can find out how much space is in use by the www files for your domain by using Telnet to log into your account and then from the Unix prompt, typing the following:
This will give you a report back of the number of kilobytes (k) all files in your www directory add up to.
If you have an anonymous FTP area, also check:
du -s ~ftp/yourdomain.com
To check how much space is being used by files in your home directory, type:
Adding up the results from all three of these commands will give you the total amount of space you are using, but a simpler way of checking all three directories is to type:
You will then see a space report for each directory (-a to see for each file) and at the end, a total.
Changing Your Password
To change your password, Telnet to your account. After
logging in with your username and password, at the Unix prompt, type:
A script will ask you to type in your old password, then the password you want it changed to will be asked for twice to verify. This will not work for POP-only accounts. There is no way you can change the password for those accounts - they must be changed by sending us email and we will take care of it.
Zip/Unzip Files
This Unix program is compatible with the zip program for DOS and Windows. To zip files, first have the files uploaded to your server, then log into your account with Telnet. Navigate to the directory where the files are that you want to zip (for instance by typing cd www then cd sounds). Then type:
zip myzip file1 file2 file3
This puts the files file1, file2, and file3 into a new zip archive called myzip.zip.
On the other hand, if you had the archive myzip.zip and wanted to get back the files, you would type:
Typing zip or unzip by itself will give you a usage summary, showing nearly all the options available.
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