music, marketing, media, management, magic

fivetrees domain hosting services: user notes

The following is a collection of notes intended to assist our domain hosting clients.
For hosting details please contact us.
Updated July 27, 2001: Steve Fairhead (hugely out of date - will sort soon - apologies)

Contents

• Web site construction
• FTP access details
• CGI scripts
• Mail redirection

Web site construction

• This is a Unix (OpenBSD, actually) system. Unix is case-sensitive; fred, Fred, and FRED are all different files. Therefore a reference to fred.jpg will fail if the file is actually called fred.JPG. Tip: use lower-case for both filenames and references; or at least try to adopt a consistent style.
• Avoid using spaces in filenames; they will cause you pain. Use e.g. underscores instead.
• Avoid punctuation in filenames (exceptions: underscore, hyphen, period are all ok).
• In designing websites generally try to be aware of industry standards, as distinct from proprietary (e.g. Microsoft) derivations. A useful (if a little old) HTML primer can be found at http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW. A more up-to-date primer is Dave Raggett's Guide to HTML at http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide. For the adventurous, complete HTML specs can be found on the W3C home site at http://www.w3.org/MarkUp. Note that these standards are evolving fast; we currently recommend the use of HTML 4.01.
• The industry-standard extension for a web page is ".html"; the ".htm" custom is a Microsoft derivation due to the old DOS 8.3 filenaming limitation. Our server does handle both. Whichever you choose, be consistent. Remember that if you have two files of the same name but differing only by their extension, the .html file will override the .htm file. (This is in fact a useful trick for "hiding" a page you want to test before making it public.)
• Avoid Microsoft Extensions. They are inherently proprietary i.e. non-standard.
• The root page of a site is the index.html (or, if it doesn't exist, the index.htm) page. A link to your website with no page specified will yield this page.
• Use some structure to help you organise your website; use subdirectories to store different kinds of objects. A typical site might look like:
  • / (root): html files
  • /images: all jpegs and .gifs etc
  • /sounds: all MP3s etc
  • /binary: any binary downloads
  • etc
• Be aware that the directory delimiter within websites is the forward slash ('/'), not the backslash ('\') used in Microsoft products.
• Don't forget to set the title of each web page - your readers will need these for bookmarking. Keep the title brief and descriptive.
• Try to keep page names stable. If a user bookmarks a page on your site, and comes back later and finds it missing, s/he may be confused, give up and go away. This will happen if the page is deleted or simply renamed. (It might be a good idea to replace any such pages with a bare page pointing back to the root of the site or to the replacement page.)
• Graphics file formats: be aware that the .gif file format is problematic, and should ideally be avoided. Unisys holds the patent on the format and has stated that websites containing gif files could be subject to a $5000 license fee; for more data on this issue see the "Burn all Gifs" site, amongst others. Using an alternative format, e.g. jpeg or png, might be prudent. (Don't use .bmp files on a website; they're too inefficient for anything other than trivial use.)
• Sound file formats: preferred sound file formats are MPEG 1 layer 3 (.mp3) and Real Audio downloadable (.rm). Raw PCM wave files (.wav) are not recommended as they are simply too big. We do not (yet) support streaming media.
• General file formats: remember that the person viewing your site might be using a completely different operating system to you. Therefore avoid e.g. Windows-specific file formats - Word files will be unreadable to a Unix user. Stay with the industry-standard MIME formats (if you don't know what this means, don't worry, but be guided by your HTML editor).
• Character sets: similarly be aware that certain characters (e.g. £, ©, &) must be specially defined in HTML, and not left to the operating system defaults; for instance the character used by Microsoft Windows for the £ sign will only show correctly on a Windows machine. Always use the HTML definitions: a useful list can be found on "Dave Raggett's Advanced HTML" page at http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/Advanced.html.
• Web page editors: there are dozens, if not hundreds, to choose from. Some we can recommend include:
  • WebExpress from MicroVision Development
  • Microsoft FrontPage & FrontPage Express (albeit again avoiding Microsoft Extensions)
• It's often informative (although sometimes a little bewildering!) to run a website through an HTML validation service e.g.:
  • http://validator.w3.org
  • http://www.weblint.com
  • http://unix.hensa.ac.uk/html-val-svc

FTP access details

• The settings for publishing your site via ftp are as follows:
  • host: ftp.fivetrees.com
  • port: 21
  • server type: Unix or auto
  • remote directory: none (leave blank)
  • login/password: as issued when account setup
• If you need help with ftp, or recommendations for an ftp client, please yell. Note that a website publishing facility may be included within your HTML editor (e.g. WebExpress), and/or within your operating system (e.g. Windows 98 Web Publishing Wizard, Web Folders).

CGI scripts

• We do not support customer-uploaded CGI scripts in general as these pose a significant security risk; we take server security extremely seriously. Any required CGI scripts must be approved and installed by fivetrees.
• We support scripts written in Perl using the industry-standard Perl library (cgi.pm). Exceptionally, we will consider scripts written in C if a port already exists for Unix in general, and OpenBSD in particular. Contact us for details.
• Microsoft-oriented .exe and .asp scripts are not and will not be supported.
• Standard CGI services currently offered include:
  • Hit counters: a variety of counter and digit styles are supported. Note that counters are allocated on demand.
  • Form mail: via the industry-standard Matt's Script Archive "formmail.cgi" script
  • Form mail: via the WebExpress "mvforms.cgi" script
• Note: CGI scripts are effectively programs run on the server, and as such are a) public and b) a use of a centralised public resource. In contrast client-side scripts, such as Javascript, run on the client's machine and are transparent to the server.

Mail redirection

Section under construction. Please come back soon!

home