This document is directed toward the Webmaster of a MBAY.NET Virtual Web Server. A Virtual Web Server allows anyone in the world to access your web pages with a simple address, such as http://mycompany.com/. This type of address makes it as easy as possible for anyone on the Internet to access your site.
You will need to know a few things to run your web server: Your Domain Name, your User Name, and your Password. Your Domain Name is the the name that you registered with the InterNIC, and probably ends in ".COM" or ".ORG". It does NOT include the leading "WWW.". For this document, we will refer to your domain as "MYDOMAIN.COM". Domain Names are not case sensitive; they will be referred to in all uppercase or all lower case at various times in this document and elsewhere.
You will also need to know the username and password that your server is configured under. These were chosen when you when you signed up for service with Monterey Bay Internet. Your username will be from two to eight characters, all lower case, and your password is between 5 and 8 characters, usually in lower case. Your Username and Password ARE case sensitive - you MUST enter them exactly as you you chose them. For this document, we will refer to "myuname" and "mypasswd" for your username and password.
All traffic reports, notices, and other information related to your web server are sent to the Server Admin address. This is usually webmaster@mydomain.com. You should make sure that mail sent to this address will get to you. In most cases, this is already done - all mail sent to mydomain.com will automatically get forwarded to myuname@mbay.net. You can check (or change) the mail forwarding for your domain using the web page at http://www.mbay.net/utils/domain-alias.html.
The actual name for your webserver is www.mydomain.com. To make it as easy as possible for people to access your site, we have configured your domain so that web surfers can reach it with just http://mydomain.com/, as well as the full http://www.mydomain.com/. In fact, they can reach it with anything ending in your domain - http://web.mydomain.com/ will work as well. It is up to you how to advertise your site. Some web browsers will allow users to enter just mydomain.com, but don't count on this to work for all users.
When you have written your pages and are ready to make them available for the world to see, you need to upload them to our server. The most basic is to use a FTP client, such as CuteFTP or WS_FTP for Windows machines, or Fetch for the Macintosh. Read the documentation for your client, and spend some time learning how to use it.
To upload your web pages, connect to ftp.mbay.net (this may be called "host name", "server name", "address", or something else, depending on your client). Log in with YOUR username and password - "anonymous" will NOT work. Leave any selections for "remote directory" or similar blank.
When you are connected to our server, you will be in your home directory on our server. From there, you should see a link with the name of your web server, such as www.mydomain.com. Open that link, and you will get an empty directory. This is the Document Root, or top directory for your web site.
Now you need to upload the files for your page. The exact method needed to do this will vary depending on your FTP client, but you will need to select the files for your site on your computer, and then "Put" them on the server. Make sure you transfer any images (.jpg or .gif) files using binary mode. Some clients have an "Auto" option which should also work.
The default index file (the file that is read if a user just accesses your site as http://www.mydomain.com/, without a filename), should be called index.html. If that file can't be found, the server will also look for index.htm, in case your operating system can't handle long filenames.
Note: For security reasons, your document root directory is "hidden". This means that once you are in the directory, you will not be able to see the actual name of the directory you are in. Some FTP clients have bugs that prevent them from working in this configuration. The latest versions of CuteFTP and WS_FTP will work correctly. If you have trouble changing to your document root directory, you should update your client.
If you are using Netscape Navigator Gold to create your pages, you can publish directly from Netscape. In the Editor Preferences, select the Publish tab, and enter ftp://ftp.mbay.net/www/docs/www.mydomain.com in the "Publish To" field. Netscape will then automatically upload your pages when you select "Publish" from the File menu.
Your Virtual Web Server comes with the ability to use custom CGI programs. These are programs that run on our server, and handle input from forms that are part of your web site. This document will not explain how to write your own CGI scripts, but it does provide some specifics you may need to use them. If you don't understand some of this, don't worry; CGI is not required on your web site.
The CGI directory for your web site is the cgi-bin link in your home directory. Put the CGI programs you want to run in this directory, along with any data files they require. This, and the document root, are the only directories that are available to the web server. To execute your CGI programs, you would use URL such as <FORM METHOD=POST ACTION="/cgi-bin/program"> on your forms.
The CGI program must be owned by you, and it must not be writable by anyone other than you. When the program is executed, the current working directory is your cgi-bin directory. All data files that the script needs to access must be in the cgi-bin directory, or below. The program should access these files using paths relative paths from current directory, since the actual directory is different than the one you see in your FTP program. If the program needs to access your document directory, use the DOCUMENT_ROOT environment variable. In Perl, for example, you could refer to the default page as $ENV{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/index.html.
There are a number of interpreters available for your CGI scripts. The most common is Perl, and the path to the interpreter is "/usr/local/bin/perl". We are currently running Perl 5.003. You may also use compiled CGI programs; the web server is running on an Intel Linux 2.0 platform.
If you are uploading Perl scripts or other ASCII files, you MUST use ASCII mode on your FTP client to convert PC or Mac text files to plain ASCII. If you do not do this, the server will not be able to execute your program. In addition, CGI programs must have the execute bit set for the owner. Most FTP clients allow you to set file attributes.
We run Apache 1.2 on our web server. The full documentation is available
at http://www.apache.org/. You can set
certain server configuration directives yourself, using ".htaccess" files in
your document directories. For example, if you want files ending in .foo
to be served with the Application/Foobar mimetype, put a file called
.htaccess in your document root, with the line
AddType application/foobar foo
in it. There are many other server directives you can set; consult the
Apache documentation for more information.
If you want to use access control password files, you will need to
specify the full path name to the password file in the .htaccess file.
For example, put the password file in your cgi-bin directory, called
"htpasswd". In the .htaccess file for the directory you want to protect,
you would use the line
AuthUserFile /www/cgi-bin/myuname/htpasswd
in addition to the other options.
We do not support the Microsoft Frontpage extentions for security reasons. While we understand that they make certain operations easier, we do not feel it is worth making our server and customers vulnerable to downtime and outside attacks. This does NOT mean that you can't use Frontpage to create your web pages; you just can't use the custom server extentions. See http://www.worldgate.com/~marcs/fp/ for more information on this problem.
If you have any questions, please send email to webmaster@mbay.net.