FAQ's about your WWW sites

Q. What is the URL for my WWW site ?

A. Here is the URL's for your WWW site.

To access your WWW site from a web browser, go to URL "http://www.accesscom.com/~username"
(where 'username' = your username on AIC)

Q. How much space do I get for my WWW/FTP site ?

A. Each Personal PPP account is allocated 25 MB of disk space for combined personal WWW/FTP directories.

Q. How can I tell how much space I've already used for my WWW/FTP site ?

A. In order to check your disk space usage, you will have to log onto the user machine via telnet.
See the help page on Shell Access if you are unclear how to do this.

From the shell prompt.....
To check the disk space utilization in your www directory, use the UNIX disk usage (du) command.
From the shell prompt in your home directory on shell.accesscom.com, type du -kLc www.
The output should look something like this... 
     shell [11] du -kLc www
     2       www/docs
     2       www/private/passw
     14      www/private
     6       www/gifs
     25      www
     25      total
     shell [11]
To check the disk space utilization in your ftp directory, type du -kLc ftp.
The output should look something like this... 
     shell [11] du -kLc ftp
     295     ftp
     295     total
     shell [11]
The above examples show a total usage of 25KB in the www directory and 295KB in the ftp directory. The directory structure shown for each of these directories will obviously differ for your directories.

Q. How do I access my WWW/FTP site ?

A. You can access your personal FTP/WWW directories through Telnet, FTP or WWW

Telnet - Use a telnet client to log onto 'shell.accesscom.com', using your username and password.
The directory structure should look something like this. 
shell [12] ls -l
total 53
-rwxr--r---  1 username    username         105 Feb 25  1996 .bashrc
-rw-r--r--   1 username    username          15 Feb 25  1996 .profile
lrwxrwxrwx   1 username    username          27 Aug 19 23:53 ftp -> /home/ftp/pub/users/u/username/
lrwxrwxrwx   1 username    username          35 Feb 25  1996 www -> /home/users/www/u/username/public_html/
shell [13]

FTP - Use an FTP client to log onto 'shell.accesscom.com', using your username and password.
The directory structure should look something like this - the same as it does for a telnet session. 
shell [12] ls -l
total 53
-rwxr--r---  1 username    username         105 Feb 25  1996 .bashrc
-rw-r--r--   1 username    username          15 Feb 25  1996 .profile
lrwxrwxrwx   1 username    username          27 Aug 19 23:53 ftp -> /home/ftp/pub/users/u/username/
lrwxrwxrwx   1 username    username          35 Feb 25  1996 www -> /home/users/www/u/username/public_html/
shell [13]

WWW
To access your WWW site from a web browser, go to URL "http://www.accesscom.com/~username/"
(where 'username' = your username on AIC)

To access your FTP site from a web browser to go to URL "ftp://shell.accesscom.com/pub/users/u/username/
(where 'u' = the first letter of your username and 'username' = your username on AIC)

NOTE: Web browser access to your FTP site will permit viewing but not editing of your FTP directory.

Q. Can I get a virtual domain name for my WWW site ?

A. You can register a virtual domain name with Access Internet Communications.

For more detail goto our page about virtual domain name.

Q. How do I edit/upload my WWW site ?

A. You can upload files (HTML, GIF, etc) to your personal WWW directories through any FTP client.

  1. Use an FTP application and set the Host to 'shell.accesscom.com'.
  2. Provide your username and password.
  3. Type www (also know as public_html) as the Directory.
  4. In this directory you should find an html file named index.html, this is your default home page.

If you want to make a new home page you will need to replace this html file with a new html file named exactly index.html or index.htm. After uploading your new home page go ahead a launch your web browser and go to your URL which would be http://www.accesscom.com/~username/. If the page doesn't come up the first time try pressing the Reload button.

Q. What are possible default home page names ?

A. You can use either of the following name:

index.html   index.htm   index.cgi   index.shtml   INDEX.HTML   INDEX.HTM   default.html

Q. How do I publish my home page using Netscape Navigator Gold ?

A. You can upload files (HTML, GIF, etc) to your personal WWW directories using Netscape Navigator Gold.

Select Editor perferences from the Options menu.

Select the third tab which should be publish.

Type ftp://shell.accesscom.com/home/users/u/username/www/ in the space labeled "Publish to (FTP or HTTP)"
(where 'u' = the first letter of your username and 'username' = your username on AIC)

Type http://www.accesscom.com/~username in the space labeled "Browse to (HTTP)"
(where 'username' = your username on AIC)

Provide your username and password in the next two spaces.

Q. How do I publish my home page using Netscape Communicator ?

A. You can upload files (HTML, GIF, etc) to your personal WWW directories using Netscape Communicator.

Select Perferences from the Edit menu.

Scroll down until you get to Composer.

Select the Publish which is under Composer.

Type ftp://shell.accesscom.com/home/users/u/username/www/ in the space labeled "Publish to (FTP or HTTP)"
(where 'u' = the first letter of your username and 'username' = your username on AIC)

Type http://www.accesscom.com/~username in the space labeled "Browse to (HTTP)"
(where 'username' = your username on AIC)

Provide your username and password when you are about to publish your files.

Q. How do I publish using Microsoft FP98 to a 'non FP98 extension enabled' server ?

A. You will need to follow the following prcedure:

  1. published to 'http://www.domain_name.com/' (your web site URL)
  2. connected to our shell server 'shell.accesscom.com'
  3. path to use '/home/users/u/username/public_html/'
    (where 'u' = the first letter of your username and 'username' = your username on AIC)
  4. supplied your username
  5. supplied your password

It may be necessary to completely 'clean' the ftp site of old files previously uploaded so everything will finally worked. Any left over FP98 'stuff' seems to cause problems.

Note: We no longer support Micrsoft FrontPage. You will not be able to take advantage of its server scripts.

Q. How do I secure my WWW site ?

A. This should help you set up protection on a directory via the Basic HTTP Authentication method. This method also uses the standard plaintext password file.

So let's suppose you want to restrict files in a directory called private to username pumpkin and password pie. Here's what to do:

To create a file called .htaccess in directory private, issue the following commands at the UNIX command prompt. 

     shell [13] vi .htaccess

     AuthUserFile /home/users/u/username/public_html/private/.htpasswd
     AuthName "ByPassword"
     AuthType Basic

     require valid-user
AuthUserFile needs to be the full path to the .htpasswd file.

(where 'u' = the first letter of your username and 'username' = your username on AIC)

AuthUserFile must be the full Unix pathname of the password file.

Create the password file .htpasswd

The easiest way to do this is to use the htpasswd program. Do this: 

     shell [13] htpasswd .htpasswd pumpkin

Type the password -- pie.

Check the resulting file to get a warm feeling of self-satisfaction; it should look like this: 

     shell [13] vi .htpasswd

     pumpkin:y1ia3tjWkhCK2

That's all. Now try to access a file in directory private -- your browser should demand a username and password, and not give you access to the file if you don't enter pumpkin and pie. If you are using a browser that doesn't handle authentication, you will not be able to access the document at all.

Q. What do I set the file/directory permissions to ?

A. To change the permissions of files/directoies, issue the command "chmod" at the UNIX command prompt followed by the three digit number and filename.

Here is a list of what numbers are assigned when setting permissions and the UNIX command.

Permission type: Owner Group Everyone
Readable 4 4 4
Writeable 2 2 2
Executable 1 1 1
Total 7 7 7

shell [13] chmod 755 filename

HTML/CGI files should be set to 755; which is 7 - RWE for Owner, 5 - RWE for Group, 5 - RE Everyone
If you create a cgi-bin directory to hold all your cgis, that directory will also need to be set to 755.

Q. Can I have access log files for my web site ?

A. User with a web site can have request to have access log files enabled.