Welcome to KU4AY Web Hosting! Please read the information below for important information about settng up your account and the steps you can take to get your presence on the Internet under way.

Don't worry if you don't understand the advanced features, You can get your site up and then fine tune your features later. The first few paragraphs explain how to get your site up and running quickly. If you need help at any time, we are here to help.

Step 1: Log into your account control panel

The KU4AY Administative Control Panel (http://yourdomainname.com/menu/) allows you to maintain and modify your account with ease. While your domain name is in the process of being transferred or registered, you may use your assigned IP Address that was provided in your account Welcome Letter in place or your domain name to access your account control panel.

When prompted enter your assigned account user name password to log into the control panel. Once you have logged into the control panel browse through the features to familiarize yourself with the tools available.

Step 2: Publish your website

FTP

To upload your files to your site you can use any ftp ready client or ftp enabled publishing tool. Until your domain name becomes active you can use your IP address to connect to your account.

WS_FTP LE is a freely availabe FTP application you can download from Download.com orSoftseek.com

You may also use the file manager located in your control panel to upload files to your site.

Upload your web files into the directory labeled "html". This is your web directory and any files that you wish to be seen via the web must be located in this directory.

The initial page of your site should be named "index.html", this way when a user types in the url www.yourdomain.com, they are taken straight to the initial page of your site without any further input.

Your CGI-BIN is also located in the "html" directory.

REMEMBER - name your home page "index.html" or "index.htm".

General Settings:

Host Name/Address: yourdomain.com

User ID: Your Account User Name

Password: Your Account Password

Upload your files for your website to your /html directory

Do not delete or change any of the directories or files that are located in your account other than uploading to your "html" directory with pages of your own design. The initial page of your site should be named "index.html", this way when a user types in the url www.yourdomain.com, they are taken straight to the initial page of your site without any further input.

When you connect to the root or "home" directory of your account via ftp, you will see the following system files & directories:

File/Directory Name - Description:

• logs - this folder contains all access logs of visitors to your site
• html - this folder stores all html files for your domain
• stats - this folder stores all the compiled statistics for your site

Of these directories, the most important one is named "html". Every account has its own separate "html" subdirectory. Files placed in the "html" 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.

All your HTML files and subdirectories should be placed in the html directory. Your CGI-BIN is also located in the www directory.

FRONTPAGE 98/2000/2002

Our servers also fully support Frontpage 2002 and support most features of FrontPage 98/2000. If you intend to use MS FrontPage, you must first activate your FrontPage extensions by clicking the "MS Frontpage" button in your account control panel and installing the extensions. To publish your web from Frontpage, publish to:

http://yourdomain.com/

Once again, until your domain name is transferred you can use your IP address to publish your site with Frontpage.

Please note:  Before your site will be displayed after your publish, you will need to delete our default "under construction page". You can do this by logging into your account control panel and accessing the File Manager. Click on the "www" directory and delete the file named "index.html". You can also use any ftp client to perform this operation.

Step 3: Setup your email

Your domain must be active to use email.

To check your email you can configure any email client to receive and send your mail. Here are the general settings to use for your email client:

Email Address = username@yourdomain.com
Mail Server user name = username@yourdomain.com
Outgoing SMTP Mail Server = The SMTP server of your Internet Service Provider
Incoming POP3 Mail Server = mail.yourdomain.com

Step 4: Customize your account

Create your own "404 Not found" error pages.

Your first step is to create the HTML page you want to use as your error message and upload it to your html directory.

Next, create a text file and name it ".htaccess" and add the following line (the URL should point to your error page):

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yourdomain.com/yourerrorfile.html

Finally, upload your .htaccess file to your html directory. After you complete these steps, anyone trying to access a page that does not exist will be redirected to your error page.

Step 5: Submit your site to search engines

We provide our clients with a tool to submit their domain name to the top 30 search engines. If you would like to do this, you can use our free online submission tool.

Bulk submissions don't tend to be as effective as they used to be, it is best to manually submit to the search engines. There are many factors that will affect your ranking. There is much more to it than simply filling out online forms. If done improperly it is possable to hurt your ranking.

We also provide search engine optimization and submission services to achieve higher ranking and provide your site with higher traffic. Beware of some sites promiseing to rank you with the engines, you may get spamed. If you are interested in this service send email to placement@ku4ay.net

Site statistics:

You can view your site statistics to check out how many people are visiting your site, where they came from, etc by going to:

http://www.yourdomain.com/stats/

Our statistics software inludes many useful features including pageviews, hits, data transfer, referring URL's, and browser types.

Form Mail

FormMail is a generic www form to e-mail gateway, which will parse the results of any form and send them to the specified user. This script has many formatting and operational options, most of which can be specified through the form, meaning you don't need any programming knowledge or multiple scripts for multiple forms. This also makes FormMail the perfect system-wide solution for allowing users form-based user feedback capabilities without the risks of allowing freedom of CGI access.

There is only one form field that you must have in your form, for FormMail to work correctly. This is the recipient field. Other hidden configuration fields can also be used to enhance the operation of FormMail on your site. The action of your form needs to point towards this script (obviously), and the method must be POST in capital letters.

Here's an example of the form fields to put in your form:

<FORM ACTION = "/cgi-sys/formmail.pl" METHOD = "POST">
<input type=hidden name="recipient" value="ANYONE@YOURDOMAIN.COM">
<input type=hidden name="subject" value="SUBJECT">
<input type=hidden name="return_link_title" value="TITLE">
<input type=hidden name="redirect" value="http://YOURDOMAIN.COM/PAGE.HTML">

The following are descriptions and proper syntax for fields you can use with FormMail.

Recipient Field:

Description: This form field allows you to specify to whom you wish for your form results to be mailed. Most likely you will want to configure this option as a hidden form field with a value equal to that of your email address.

Syntax: <input type=hidden name="recipient" value="email@yourdomain.com">

Subject Field:

Description: The subject field will allow you to specify the subject that you wish to appear in the email that is sent to you after this form has been filled out. If you do not have this option turned on, then the script will default to a message subject: "WWW Form Submission".

Syntax: If you wish to choose what the subject is:

<input type=hidden name="subject" value="Your Subject">

To allow the user to choose a subject:

<input type=text name="subject">

Email Field:

Description: This form field will allow the user to specify their return email address. If you want to be able to return e-mail to your user, I strongly suggest that you include this form field and allow them to fill it in. This will be put into the From: field of the message you receive. If you want to require an email address with valid syntax, add this field name to the 'required' field.

Syntax: <input type=text name="email">

Realname Field:

Description: The realname form field will allow the user to input their real name. This field is useful for identification purposes and will also be put into the From: line of your message header.

Syntax: <input type=text name="realname">

Redirect Field:

Description: If you wish to redirect the user to a different URL, rather than having them see the default response to the fill-out form, you can use this hidden variable to send them to a pre-made HTML page.

Syntax: To choose the URL they will end up at:

<input type=hidden name="redirect" value="http://yourdomain.com/to/file.html">

To allow them to specify a URL they wish to travel to once the form is filled out:

<input type=text name="redirect">

Required Field:

Description: You can require certain fields in your form to be filled in before the user can successfully submit the form. Simply place all field names that you want to be mandatory into this field, separated by commas. If the required fields are not fill ed in, the user will be notified of what they need to fill in, and a link back to the form they just submitted will be provided.

To use a customized error page, see "missing_fields_redirect"

Syntax: If you want to require that they fill in the email and phone fields in your form, so that you can reach them once you have received the mail, use the syntax like:

<input type=hidden name="required" value="email,phone">

Env_report Field:

Description: Allows you to have Environment variables included in the email message you receive after a user has filled out your form. Useful if you wish to know what browser they were using, what domain they were coming from or any other attributes assoc iated with environment variables. The following is a short list of valid environment variables that might be useful:

REMOTE_HOST - Sends the host name making the request.
REMOTE_ADDR - Sends the IP address of the remote host.
HTTP_USER_AGENT - The browser the client is using.

(Note: In our case, both REMOTE_HOST and REMOTE_ADDR are the same, since our servers don't do the reverse DNS look up needed to generate the true REMOTE_HOST string).

Syntax: If you wanted to find all the above variables, you would put the following into your form:

<input type=hidden name="env_report" value="REMOTE_HOST,REMOTE_ADDR,HTTP_USER_AGENT">

Sort Field:

Description: This field allows you to choose the order in which you wish for your variables to appear in the email form that FormMail generates. You can choose to have the field sorted alphabetically or specify a set order in which you want the fields to appear in your mail message. By leaving this field out, the order will simply default to the order in which the browsers send the information to the script (which is usually the exact same order as they appeared in the form).

When sorting by a set order of fields, you should include the phrase "order:" as the first part of your value for the sort field, and then follow that with the field names you want to be listed in the email message, separated by commas.

Syntax: To sort alphabetically:

<input type=hidden name="sort" value="alphabetic">

To sort by a set field order:

<input type=hidden name="sort" value="order:name1,name2,etc...">

Print_config Field:

Description: print_config allows you to specify which of the config variables you would like to have printed in your e-mail message. By default, no config fields are printed to your email. This is because the important form fields, like email, subject, et c. are included in the header of the message. However some users have asked for this option so they can have these fields printed in the body of the message. The config fields that you wish to have printed should be in the value attribute of your input ta g separated by commas.

Syntax: If you want to print the email and subject fields in the body of your message, you would place the following form tag:

<input type=hidden name="print config" value="email, subject">

Print_blank_fields Field:

Description: print_blank_fields allows you to request that all form fields are printed in the return HTML, regardless of whether or not they were filled in. FormMail defaults to turning this off, so that unused form fields aren't emailed.

Syntax: <input type=hidden name="print_blank_fields" value="1">

Title Field:

Description: This form field allows you to specify the title and header that will appear on the resulting page if you do not specify a redirect URL.

Syntax: If you wanted a title of 'Feedback Form Results':

<input type=hidden name="title" value="Feedback Form Results">

Return_link_url Field:

Description: This field allows you to specify a URL that will appear, as return_link_title, on the following report page. This field will not be used if you have the redirect field set, but it is useful if you allow the user to receive the report on the f ollowing page, but want to offer them a way to get back to your main page.

Syntax: <input type=hidden name="return_link_url" value="http://yourdomain.com/index.htm">

Return_link_title:

Description: This is the title that will be used to link the user back to the page you specify with return_link_url. The two fields will be shown on the resulting form page as:

Back to Main Page

Syntax: <input type=hidden name="return_link_title" value="Back to Main Page">

CGI

CGI stands for "Common Gateway Interface," a fancy name meaning computer programs running on the web server that can be invoked from a www page at the browser. The "bin" part alludes to the binary executables that result from compiled or assembled programs. It is a bit misleading because cgi's can also be Unix shell scripts or interpreted languages like Perl. CGI scripts need to be saved in ASCII format and uploaded to your server's cgi-bin in ASCII or text format. This is very importa nt.

We do not provide Technical Support for CGI scripts. So if you are not already familiar with CGI scripting, you may want to read a book on the subject or find places on the Internet with CGI scripting information. There are many good resources for CGI scr ipts found on the web. The scripts at Matt's Script Archive found at http://www.worldwidemart.com/scripts/ are very good. You'll find many scripts free of charge and with detailed configuration information. Another excellent resource is The CGI Resource I ndex found at http://www.cgi-resources.com/ -- if you are not an expert, look for scripts that are very well documented and come with step-by-step instructions.

Put your cgi-bin scripts in the www subdirectory named "cgi-bin".

Perl Executable: /usr/bin/perl

Perl Version: 5.006001

PERL compile version OS: solaris

Be very carefull with the following if you are not familiar with chmod.

The following is a simple explanation of file permissions in Unix. To list the access permissions of a file or directory, telnet to your server, then:

cd directoryname

to change the directory until you are either in the directory above the file you are interested in, or above the directory you are checking.

Type: ls -l filename

and you will see what the current permission settings are for that file, along with a bunch of other stuff.

Examples of using chmod:

People:
u = the file's user (you)
g = the file's group
o = others
a = the user, the group, and others >

Permissions:
r = read access
x = execute access
w = write access

To change permissions for a file named filename.cgi, you need to chmod the file (change mode). For example, when you type this:

chmod u=rwx,g=rx,o=rx filename.cgi

by typing this you have given:

read, execute, and write access to the user (that's you)
read and execute access to the group and;
read and execute access to others

Some scripts will tell you to chmod 775 (for example). Doing the above is the same thing as typing chmod 775. You can use either method with our Unix servers. Let me explain:

When using the numeric system, the code for permissions is as follows:

r = 4 w = 2 x = 1 rwx = 7

The first 7 of our chmod775 tells Unix to change the user's permissions to rxw (because r=4 + w=2 + x=1 adds up to 7. The second 7 applies to the group, and the last number 5, refers to others (4+1=5).

When doing an ls -l on the file, telnet always shows the permissions this way:

-rwxr-xr-x

Ignore the first dash, then break up the above into three groups of letters. If there's a dash where a letter should be, it means that there is no permission for those people.

Remember: the first 3 apply to user, the second 3 apply to group, and the third 3 apply to others.

Some FTP clients support changing permissions in a more graphical way. If you have Fetch for the Mac, you have an easy way to change permissions. Go to the file you want to change the permissions on, and highlight it. Under the Remote menu, select Change Permissions. A window will pop up showing the current permissions for the file you had highlighted. Click on the boxes to change permissions as needed.

WS_FTP accomplishes the same task as above. Just highlight the file you want to check, and right-click on it. A menu will pop up, then select CHMOD.

Below are solutions to some of the more common CGI script problems, in question and answer format. You will find a list of proper permission settings for the scripts we provide at the end.

When I activate my CGI program, I get back a page that says "Internal Server Error. The server encountered an internal error or mis-configuration and was unable to complete your request."

This is generally caused by a problem within the script. Log in via Telnet and test your script in local mode to get a better idea of what the problem is. To do this, go into the directory in which your script is located, then execute the script. To execu te the script, you can do it by two ways:

1) Type "perl myscript.pl" (Perl being the language interpreter in this case).
2) Or simply type "myscript.pl" alone, that will work if the first line is well written to indicate the location of Perl.

The first one is useful to see if there's any error IN your script. The second one is useful to test if your "calling line" (the first line of the script) is okay, i.e. if you entered the right location of Perl.

I am being told "File Not Found," or "No Such File or Directory."

Upload your Perl or CGI script in ASCII mode, not binary mode.

When I test my Perl script in local mode (by Telnet), I have the following error: "Literal @domain now requires a back slash at myscript.pl line 3, within string. Execution of myscript.pl aborted due to compilation errors."

This is caused by a misinterpretation by Perl. You see, the "@" sign has a special meaning in Perl; it identifies an array (a table of elements). Since it cannot find the array named domain, it generates an error. You should place a back slash ( \) before the "@" symbol to tell Perl to see it as a regular symbol, as in an email address.

I am getting the message "POST not implemented."

You are probably using the wrong reference for cgiemail. Use the reference /cgi-bin/cgiemail/mail.txt. Another possibility is that you are pointing to a cgi-bin script that you have not put in your cgi-bin directory. In general, this message really means that the web server is not recognizing the cgi-bin script you are calling as a program. It thinks it is a regular text file.

It's saying I don't have permission to access /

This error message means that you are missing your index.htm file. Note that files that start with a "." are hidden files. To see them, type ls -al. If you wish to FTP this file in, go to the home/yourdomain directory.

Here are your paths to the common server resources that CGI scripts often require:

Sendmail: /usr/sbin/sendmail
Date: /usr/bin/date
Perl: /usr/local/bin/perl

The CGI Directory
Contains over 500 CGI and Perl resources. Includes hundreds of CGI scripts, tutorials, books, tips, and much more.

BigNoseBird's FREE CGI Script Archive
Over 20 free cgi scripts. Most in perl. Guestbook, survey, form handler, mailling list, and more. For unix and Windows.

Awesome Web Scripts
Small collection of CGI script including web counter and insta-poll.

CGI for the Total Non-Programmer
This tutorial will walk you through the basics of creating CGIs with Perl on a Unix platform. Unlike other tutorials I've read, this does not assume you know anything about CGIs, Perl, or Unix.

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