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The information here
is designed to help you make the most from your website. Please
read these carefully. If you don't find what you need, our technical
support team are waiting to hear from you. For complex site-building
issues, and to empower your whole team, you might also like to
ask
about our bespoke training facilities.
Electronic mail
How
do I access my mail (using POP3)?
What can be done to reduce spam?
How can I have a mailing list for my site?
Domain name registration
What domain name(s) should I register for my site?
Web-site uploading
How do I upload my web site?
Logging on to the server
How do I log on to the server?
Web scripting and interaction with users
What
operating system does the server run?
How do I get CGI scripts to work?
How do I get PHP3 scripts to work?
Are Server Side Includes (SSI) enabled?
Why can't I successfully log into MySQL?
How do I include FormMail on my site?
Performance and web-site analysis
How
busy is the server? Can I watch its traffic?
How busy is my site? Where are my weekly
site stats?
How can I improve my hitcounts?
E-Commerce
How can my site take credit card payments?
How
do I access my mail using POP3?
The
POP3 server is at delysid.bltc.net (on port 110 as is
normal.) Use the same user name and password that we gave you
for FTP access.
If you have more than one email address ("alias") and
have asked for them to be sent to separate email boxes, each one
will have the same server but a different user name and password.
We will have sent these to you when the service was arranged.
For security reasons there is no automatic system for re-issue
- instead, please contact
us.
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I'm getting a lot of spam. Can anything be done to reduce it? Will I lose any messages?
We use ORDB and ORBZ to block spam. You won't lose any messages.
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How
can I have a mailing list for my site?
There
are two sorts of mailing list. You should tell us whether you
want 1) an "info list" to which only one person, normally you,
posts announcements; or 2) a "discussion list" to which anyone
on the list can post. You can have multiple lists under a single
domain. A web-based administration tool allows you to subscribe
and unsubscribe email addresses from the list. Alternatively,
your subscribers can add or remove themselves via email.
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What domain name(s) should I register for my site?
Ideally,
your domain name should be short, memorable and authoritative.
Domain names can generally be between 2 and 67 characters long
(including the extension), and contain the characters a-z, 0-9
and '-' (hyphen). Domain names cannot start or end with '-' (hyphen).
Domain names are not case sensitive and should generally be displayed
in all lowercase. You can now also register multi-lingual domain
names. If you are based in the UK, then it probably best to register
the .co.uk and the .com;
and perhaps also the .org, .net, .info
and .biz. We can set up
your domains as separate hosts, or alternatively, they can point
to the same address. You may also wish to register any likely
misspellings of your domain, hyphenated and unhyphenated versions
where appropriate, and any particular goods, products or services
with which your company is associated. You can check domain name
availability by going to the whois lookup.
Sometimes, if a domain is taken, it may be available on the secondary
market, but prices are typically expensive. To register an unclaimed
domain, you will need to send us the name you wish to appear as
the legal registrant (i.e. the domain "owner"), your address,
post-code/Zip code, phone number and an e-mail address. When you
own a domain, it is also possible to set up an unlimited number
of extra sub-domains i.e. subdomain.mydomain.com.
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How do I upload my web site?
We recommend that you first download CuteFTP. When you have installed the program, open it, then click on "file", then "site manager", then "new". Choose any label you like for your site. In the FTP host address field, type "www.mydomain.com". Then type the FTP username and password we have allocated you: a username and password ensures that only you can upload or modify files on your site. In the default local directory field, type the folder address on your local computer with your website [e.g. "C:\mywebsite"]. You can ignore the other fields. Then click "connect". The left-hand panel in CuteFTP represents your web site on your local computer; the right-hand panel represents your site on the Internet. You should try to keep them identically matched. To upload your site, simply select and then drag-and-drop your files from the left-hand panel to the right-hand panel in CuteFTP.
It is a good idea to use exclusively lower-case file names. It's also best to name your main web page "index.html"; delete the index.html holding page already there. The server is configured to default to the index.html file if web users simply type in your domain in their browser address bar without specifying a particular file name.
If you publish your pages and the changes don't seem to show up, then your browser is probably showing you an old page that it has cached on your local hard drive. To force the browser to reload the current page from the server, hold down the SHIFT key while you click on the Reload button (Netscape) or Refresh button (MS Internet Explorer). Or, if you are using the built in AOL browser, hold down the CTRL key while you click on the Refresh button (Normally just ot the left of the address bar and Home Icon).
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How do I log on to the server?
If you have a login account (you'll need specifically to ask
for one - an FTP account is the default) then you can use SSH
to log in to the server. Telnet access is disabled since the ssh
alternative encrypts all traffic over the internet and is available
for all common platforms. Most recent unix and unix-like implementations
(including Linux,
Mac OS X, Solaris and Cygwin) include a command line ssh client
as standard. Ssh clients are also available for Windows and older
versions of MacOS. Alternatively there's a Java applet implementation
of ssh at http://delysid.bltc.net/ssh/
that you can use to save having to install any software. All you
need is a Java-capable browser so you can even log in securely
from an internet café!
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What operating system does the server run?
Our
London Telehouse server runs Debian,
a free operating system using the Linux
kernel.
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How
do I get CGI scripts to work?
Our
web server - Apache - is configured to recognize script and program
files in all document directories - i.e. anywhere you'd normally
put HTML files - with the extension either ".cgi" or ".pl". So
you don't need to put the files in a special cgi-bin directory
outside of your site.
Your CGI
files must have execute and read permission set
for "other" users in order to work. Otherwise you'll
get the "You don't have permission..." or "Premature end of script
headers..." error messages. To set execute and read permission
you can use a good FTP program - see the documentation for your
chosen one. Or if you have "telnet" access to your site,
send the file by FTP then login, find the file, and type something
like:
chmod a+rx myscript.cgi
The file must
also have UNIX-style line endings. Sometimes your DOS or Windows
computer may change these, so if you're FTP-ing from a non-UNIX
machine, it's best to use ASCII mode rather than binary. Naturally,
we'd recommend that you also get a good programming text editor,
like TextPad,
so the problem won't arise. Otherwise, once the file is uploaded,
login and type:
dos2unix myscript.cgi
Finally, if you
want to use Perl for your CGI you need this "magic string"
on the first line because Perl lives in different places on different
computers. So if you have downloaded a freebie script from the internet,
this is something you will have to change.
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
You can run
your script with a simple link to its URL, like this:
http://www.mydomain.org.uk/myscript.cgi?extrainfo=likethis
or with a
form, in which case your form has the "action" set to
be the URL for the script, like this:
<form action="http://www.mydomain.org.uk/myscript.cgi">
<input name="extrainfo" value="likethis">
<input type="submit" value="Submit Query" name="submit">
</form>
If you have
problems getting your script to run, have a look at recent entries
in your "error_log" file, since that's where the error
streams from CGI scripts end up. Use a command like more
to page through the file, or just use tail to see the
last line. The file will have a name of the form:
/home/me/www.mysite.com-logs/error_log
For more
information on our web server and its capabilities, See the Apache RTFM pages
for a very brief explanation, or see the User's
Guide.
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How
do I get PHP3 scripts to work?
Name files with the extension ".php4"
instead of ".html" or whatever. The file will be passed
onto the PHP module in Apache. For PHP, you can put the files anywhere you'd put an HTML file, but use
the suffix ".php4". No special configuration needed.
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Are
Server Side Includes (SSI) enabled?
Yes.
Give files the ".shtml" extension.
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I can see MySQL after logging into the shell successfully. Why can't I now log into MySQL?
MySQL uses its own usercode/password system - it doesn't rely on the
normal usercode/password unix system used by telnet/ssh. So if you'd like to use MySQL as well, first ask the sysadmin to set you up a MySQL account and a database (or
databases). This account will have a username/password
separate from the username/password you log in with. You need to specify the name(s) of
the database(s) you want creating when requesting your MySQL account from the sysadmin. When connecting to the MySQL server from within your program use the
hostname "localhost" if needed.
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How do I include FormMail on my site?
The path for sendmail is "/usr/sbin/sendmail". Note that the FormMail
CGI script has the potential to be abused by spammers. The way to
avoid this happening is to hard-code the recipient address into the
Perl script rather than using the "recipient" hidden input field in
the HTML.
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How
busy is the server? Can I watch its traffic?
Yes.
Go to http://delysid.bltc.net/mrtg/ to
see the traffic to and from our main apache web server.
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How
busy is my site? Where are my weekly stats?
Go to https://www.knightsbridge.net/stats/www.yourdomain.com/
You enjoy full password-protected access to log files including referrer and browser
fields via FTP and Webalizer graphical
analysis of these logs via the web. Note your website is accessible both as http://yourdomain.com/ and http://www.yourdomain.com/
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How can I improve my hitcounts?
Submit your site to Yahoo and the Open Directory Project. For guidance on designing search-engine-friendly pages, together with registration and submission tips, we recommend Search Engine Watch, formerly A Webmaster's Guide to Search Engines.
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How
can my site take credit card payments?
You will need a secure server to collect credit card numbers encrypted over the Internet.
The address under which your pages appear will be of the form https://www.yourdomainname.com. We will arrange to provide you with an SSL [Secure Socket Layer Web Server] certificate from an appropriate certifying authority.
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