Account Basics

You can upload and download your files through several methods including Microsoft Frontpage, your control panel or FTP (File Transfer Protocol).  FTP is usually the quickest and most direct method, allowing for easy 24 hour logons to your webpage storage account. Any FTP program will work; however, if you don't have one WS_FTP (or Fetch if you use a Mac) is recommended.  FTP programs and your website account will work with any dialup provider you may have.

To logon:

• enter your hostname where required
• hostname equals ftp.yourdomain.extention (for example if you domain name is mysite.com then your hostname would be ftp.mysite.com)
• Do not use the lead www extention.
• If your domain name is not ready yet or has not been transfered to our servers from its registry, then you can use the temporary IP address provided in your startup email.
To logon via America Online:
• America Online provides a built in FTP program.
• Goto keyword: FTP.
• Click on "goto FTP" then click on "other site".
• Enter your hostname (as described above), username and password when asked.
• Note that hostname is sometimes called "site address" on AOL.


File Transfers

Your web files should be uploaded into the public_html directory (which you should see when you logon). Name your lead webpage file index.html. If an index.html file is already present feel free to delete it.  We recommend naming all files lowercase for simplicity on the server and in your code.  Files are automatically ready for web viewing after you upload them.

It is important to note the difference between BINARY and ASCII transfers. A file sent using the wrong transfer protocol will be unusable on the receiving end. As a general rule of thumb, files that are readible in a normal text editor are usually sent as ascii. On the other hand files that look scrambled when you look at them in a text editor (like images, etc) should be sent through binary.

binary

This indicates that the files being transferred are binary. This must be used to transfer image files such as GIFs and JPEGs. It should not be used for regular HTML files, however.  Some typical files that are binary are .jpg, .gif, .exe, .mdb, .zip, pdf, .doc.

ascii

This indicates that the files being transferred are text. This should be used to transfer regular HTML files and other files that are readable as normal text. The reason for the text-vs-binary distinction is that text files are stored in a slightly different format on many systems, including PCs, Macs, and Unix.  Some typical files that are ascii are txt, .html, .htm, .shtm, .pl and .cgi.

Because TELNET is now considered unsecure, our server only support SECURE TELNET (called SSH).  Refer below:

SSH (Secure Telnet) Access:

SSH is like Telnet, however, it established an encrypted, secure connection to keep safe any info that may pass between you and our servers, such as passwords or other sensitive data.  To aquire software for SSH, visit our downloads area.  We recommend PUTTY or  SecureCRT from Van Dyke Technologies for American and Canadian citizens, and F-Secure SSH from Data Fellows for users from most other countries.  For the Macintosh, we recommend F-Secure SSH.  Still other sources for SSH software are available here.  The program WU-FTP is not recommended at this time because it prevents secure tunneling.

Many things done with SSH, such as file permission setting, can now also be done through your account's control panel using the file control menu.  So SSH is not entirely neccessary unless you are an advanced webmaster.

Enabling SSH:
First off, SSH is only enabled in accounts that request it.  It is not on by default.  Secondly, since SSH gives you direct access to the server, we are very strict with access is given to and we require a photo ID from anyone that may be using it.  If you would like SSH enabled in your account please make sure we have a signed copy of our system agreement on file (address and fax numbers are included in the link).

Connecting via SSH:
To connect via SSH, connect to your hostname (your domain name minus the front extention). For example if your domain is www.ralph.com you should connect to ralph.com to access your SSH session.

You will be prompted for your account password and username. Enter them exactly as they appear on your startup sheet.  If this is your first logon you may get some warning screens, just click yes to them. Once logged in type the command cd which will send you to your home directory. Typing cd public_html will then bring you to your web directory.

Warning: when using a SSH program make sure only to connect in SSH mode.  Attempting to connect in another mode (such as rlogin, offered by many SSH programs) will lock your IP out of the system.

More documentation on SSH and its use can be found here.

AnonymousFTP is supported and maintained directly from your control panel.  Refer to the control panel documentation for details.

The Shell

We now introduce you to a few of the most used commands in relation to WEB design and Mail Checking.

Shell Command Introduction

pine

a menu driven mail viewer. Highly interactive and user friendly.  It allows you to check your primary email box through SSH and is often used for manual email deletion if your box gets clogged.

mail

an older version of pine.  Mail is the manual way to send email directly from SSH.  It is recommended that you use pine as it is more straightforward.

cc

this is a Unix native C/C++ compiler.

vi

Unix's native text editor...vi is notorious for being complex.

pico

A external text editor. It is very easy to learn and acts very much like a standard word processor. We suggest using this if you choose to edit online

cd [option]

Command allowing you to move to a different directory.  For instance cd flower moves you one directory hire into directory flowers.  To move down the directory tree, type cd..

pwd

Command tells you where in the directory structure you are.

ls -al

Lists the files in the current directory you are in and their permissions.

You can change your passwords via your account control panel.  Passwords must be at least ten digits long and contain numbers, upper and lower case letters for security reasons.

You have the option of protecting selected web pages from viewing or transmission to certain users. With the Password Protect option only users with the correct access password (which you provide) will have access to select areas of your web pages or selected directories. All other users have access to your normal pages but can't see your protected pages.

Password setup is now directly controlled in your control panel, which elliminates previous complicated coding. To setup a protected directory go into your web control panel and follow the instructions provided.

Your Web-visible files are stored in a separate directory tree from your home directory, called public_html. Just click on or goto the public_html directly when you logon to your account.  This is where your website files need to go.

If you want to create subdirectories in your site, this is also where they should be created.

What to name your files:

Your welcome page or lead file should always be called index.html when possible (the server will also accept these names for a directories lead file default.htm -> index.phtml -> index.php -> index.cgi -> index.shtml -> index.html -> welcome.cgi -> welcome.html -> index.htm.
 

If you don't have a lead file you won't get a webpage when you acess your domain name on the web.  Files that are not lead files can be named anything, ideally ending in .html.

Common mistakes:

By far the most common programming mistakes are placing files in the wrong directory or misnaming files.  Unix is filename case sensitive so make sure your filenames match up exactly to their references in your code.  Also, make sure that links and images point to the right directory.  For instance, if you have uploaded your site and images to the public_html directory and notice your images are not working is it likely because they are referenced to another directory in your code.  For instance, myimages/image.gif will point to the public_html/myimages directory NOT to public_html.  To fix this, create a myimages directory off of public_html and place your images there or recode your files not to reference this directory at all.

To change the name that appears on your account, use the chfn command. Running this command will place you in an editor (normally vi unless you have changed your EDITOR environment variable), where you can change certain values for your account. For example:

                #Changing user database information for username.
                Shell: The full path to your preferred shell here
                Full Name: Your Name Here
                Location:
                Office Phone:
                Home Phone:

It is a bad idea to change the value for Shell unless you know what you're doing!

A variety of mime type are already installed on our servers, so you probably will not need to install new ones, however in the event that you do your control panel allows you to it instantly (refer to the control panel documentation).  Please note, if you use Microsoft Frontpage you need to add mine types from your frontpage program, not from the control panel.

An example of a mime type is:

application/octet-stream dat
image/pnm pnm

These examples indicate that any file ending with dat is a plain binary file (to be downloaded, not viewed on-screen), and that any file ending with pnm is a special image type (which most browsers will not recognize for display purposes at this time, unfortunately).

Some cell phones and pagers now have the ability to read website documents on them.  This technology is widely becoming a recognized standard as many websites create special content for such devices.  To that end, WEBster Computing Services fully supports use of the Wireless Markup Language (WML) for Wireless Application Protocol (WAP).

The WAP gateway retrieves WML pages from a webserver via normal HTTP.  The only difference is, you have to configure your webservers to map the following extensions to the appropriate mime types as follows:

# MIME Types for WAP
text/vnd.wap.wml .wml
image/vnd.wap.wbmp .wbmp
application/vnd.wap.wmlc .wmlc
text/vnd.wap.wmlscript .wmls
application/vnd.wap.wmlscriptc .wmlsc

You should naturally also name your WML web files with these extensions to make this work.  These mime types are currently scheduled for installation on our servers.  If they are not already present on your server refer directly above to the MIME ADDITION section.  Mime types such as these can be added at any time into your account from the control panel.

For more information on WML and WAP please visit TheWirelessFaq