The Basics
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 Pentium II
Dual Pro 400 mhz machines running Apache 1.2 over Red Hat Linux 4.2. 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 1 DS3 lines to NAP, 1 DS3 line
to UUNET, each having a capacity of 45 Mbps (Million bits per second).
We have 7 backup T1 lines to UUNET as well.
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. Also note that your path might
be "/home2/userid" depending on which of our servers your domain resides
on.
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/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.
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.
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 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
- 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."
Note:
If you experience problems with your telnet program when
accessing the above programs you will need to make a 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.
9+ Character Names
A name 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.
Wusage 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
there yet. 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 empy 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:
du -s /www/htdocs/yourdomain
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:
du -s $HOME
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:
du * www/* anonftp/* -c
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: passwd
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:
unzip myzip
Typing zip or unzip by
itself will give you a usage summary, showing nearly all the options available.
Accessing Your Email
We recommend using Eudora as your email client. This is
a mail program that runs under MS Windows and Macintosh OS. Eudora connects
to the mail server over the Winsock or Macintosh TCP/IP. Mail may be composed
and read offline, but make sure that Winsock or TCP/IP is running before
attempting to send or receive email. Although your account exists on our
server, you won't be able to receive email at yourname@yourdomain.com
until Network Solutions has activated you in the domain name servers.
After Eudora has been installed, it must be configured to
point to your server. To do this, start Eudora and select "Settings" from
the menu bar. Most of the options are self explanatory. Here are the steps
you need to perform to set up Eudora:
1) Install and start up the Eudora program
2) Select "Settings" from the "Special" menu
3) Select the "Getting Started" tab, then under Real Name,
enter your Real Name
4) Under "POP Account" put yourdomain.com
5) Leave Return Address blank unless you want people to
send return email to you at a different email account
6) If you use the Macintosh version, the radio button for
TCP/IP connection should be highlighted
7) Click the "Personal Information" tab (also only for the
Macintosh version)
8) Under POP account put yourdomain.com again
9) Fill out the "Real Name" and "Return Address" as you
did before
10) Under "Dialup User Name" enter yourdomain (do not enter
.com or .net here)
11) Click the "Hosts" tab then enter yourdomain.com again
under POP Account, and put yourdomain.com under SMTP Server.
12) Go to the "Checking Mail" tab and make sure "Save Password"
is checked.
That's pretty much all the configuration Eudora needs. Many
of the configuration areas will be filled in when you go to them, for
instance it will usually fill in the POP account info where ever it needs
it after you enter it the first time. Now, when you select "Check Mail"
under the File menu, a window will pop up asking for your password. Enter
in your password then click on the proceed button and Eudora will check
to see if you have email. You can now send a test email message to yourself
and then check to see if it gets returned to you. If you checked "Save
Password" as in step 12, Eudora will not prompt you again for your password
after the first time. If multiple users have access to your computer,
and you don't want them to have access to your email account, make sure
"Save Password" is unchecked.
Your default email address is yourdomain@yourdomain.com,
and that's where all your email will be sent to, unless other configurations
take priority (such as autoresponders and redirects mentioned later).
If you would like additional POP email accounts above what
comes with your package, ask us and we'll set it up for you. Remember
there are additional charges for each additional POP account after what
is included with you account. To check numerous POP accounts, read the
manual or help files that come with Eudora or your email client software
for configuration.
The sample assumes a domain name of fred.com
Microsoft internet mail
- Full name = fred
- Email = fred@fred.com
- Internet Mail server = fred.com
- Account = fred
- Pass = xxxxxx
- Smtp = fred.com
- From = anything@fred.com
Netscape
- Your Name = fred
- Email Address = fred@fred.com
- Reply to = anything@fred.com
- Mail Server user name = fred
- outgoing Smtp = fred.com
- Incoming = fred.com
If you are familiar with the shell (Unix) programs, "pine"
and "mail", you can use either of these to check and send email as well.
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