- General
Account Information
- The
Index Page
- FTP
Access
- Telnet
Access
- 9+
Character Names
- Web
Traffic and Stats
- Checking
Server Space Usage
- Changing
Your Password
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 top of the line machines
running Apache over Linux. Apache responds to web page
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 a
T3 line, which has a capacity of 45 Mbps (Million bits
per second).
Every customer gets his own password protected userid
under Linux. By logging in with his 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/userid."
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.
Inside the home directory are many files and other
directories. The most important one is named "www".
Every customer has his own 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. which 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/usreid/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/userid/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.
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 use
"WS_FTP." Look further in this manual for detailed
instructions on each of these programs.
Telnet
Access
A
telnet account is just another name for Unix/Linux
userid. When you sign up with us, you get a userid and
password. You may ask for more than one such userid.
See the Fee Schedule for pricing. Each telnet account
for your domain has its own separate home directory,
but shares the same www and FTP directories.
You need a telnet program to access your telnet
account. If you are using Windows 95/98, you already
have a telnet program installed on your computer.
Simply go to your start menu, choose "Run" and type
telnet yourdomain.com, press "OK" and you will be
connected 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 onto 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
- Joe
- another easy to use text editor
- lynx
- a text-based world wide web browser.
In
general, it's a pretty complete POSIX environment. 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."
9+
Character Names
A
name of anywhere from 3-16 letters is legal for email
accounts, FTP accounts, and telnet accounts. There is
no limitation for file names on the server.
Web
Traffic and Stats
To
view your web site statistics, simply point your web
browser to:
http://www.yourdomain.com/wusage/
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:
du
-s /home/userid
This
will give you a report back of the number of kilobytes
(k) of all files in your directory.
Changing
Your Password
There
are two ways to change your password.
The first: Telnet to your account. After logging in
with your username and password, at the Unix prompt,
type: passwd and follow the prompts.
The second: Enter your control panel at
http://www.yourdomain.com/control/ and select
"Passwords"
