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Technical Support
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Below are some questions and answers that our support team
has recently received regarding the way the system works; we have broken this down
into categories to help you find an answer more easily. Please read through
these before you contact the support team, however, if after reading
these FAQ's, you think that an answer is not complete or does
not answer your question, please
e-mail the support team and quote the item that
part answered your question.
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We
will be happy to reply to you and update these pages.
Click on buttons below to
obtain detailed set up information: |
General Questions
Why can my sites only be accessed with www. before them?
Can I create sub-domains on this service?
Web Server
What are the default documents that the web-server will look for on my site?
Are .htaccess files supported?
It says that the servers support PHP/Perl/ASP but I can't find anywhere to
enable/disable them - where do I look?
Mail Server
I am using Exchange Server, can your server send the mail via SMTP to me?
Scripting Questions
What is the path to the Perl binary?
What is the path to the sendmail binary file?
How do I set the execute bit (do a CHMOD) on a script without using a shell
session?
How do I find the path to my web-site for my script?
I've put all the right paths in my CGI/Perl program but it still won't run -
what's wrong?
Data Access
There are no options to create MySQL databases for my scripts - how do I do
this?
General
Questions
| Q: |
Why
can my sites only be accessed with www. before them?
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| A: |
There is a really simple reason for this, removing the www. off the front of
a domain manipulates the DNS in a way which breaks MX (mail exchange)
records.
This means that when you go to http://domain.name this is fine but when a
mail server tries to find the correct server for mail to be delivered to it
will only ever get the same address as http://domain.name
Because we're a serious ISP who value the idea of not putting all our
eggs in one basket, we put mail and web on separate servers which have
different IP numbers, maybe even on separate networks with different IP
ranges, therefore mail would never get routed to the mail server.
This will never become an "opt-in" facility for the following reasons:-
1) We value our sanity - customers with little to no knowledge will enable
it and then complain their mail doesn't work even if we put huge notices up
saying "do not enable this if you want mail to work ever!" - fact of life!
2) The entire system has to be re-written to add secondary listening
records to the web-servers for each domain - this is already a huge problem
on NT getting one working.
Back to FAQ's Index
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| Q: |
Can I create
sub-domains on this service?
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| A: |
Yes, very easily, in fact, you can even create sub-domains within
sub-domains as many levels deep as you need.
Contact support team with the sub-domains that you
require and they will set them up for you and send you the set up
information.
For example: enter fredsdomain.mydomain.co.uk and you'll get
www.fredsdomain.mydomain.co.uk created for you as a sub-domain capable of
catching it's own e-mail, you can even allocate UCP's to sub-domains too.
They just act like normal domains.
Remember that sub-domains don't have their own nameserver records so you
must have transferred the root domain (in the example, mydomain.co.uk)
to our nameservers to make the subdomain work.
Back to FAQ's Index |
Web Server
| Q: |
What are the default documents that the web-server will look for on my
site?
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| A: |
All the web servers support the following default documents which are
looked for when you do a direct access to the site (eg:
http://www.mydomain.com)
index.htm, index.html, index.shtml, index.php, index.php3, index.asp*,
default.htm, default,html, default.shtml, default.php, default.php3,
default.asp*
* ASP is only available on Windows2000 Servers.
Back to FAQ's Index
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| Q: |
Are .htaccess files supported?
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| A: |
Yes. You can create .htaccess files and upload them, although, some FTP
software does not let you view them in the list.
If you are using WS_FTP LE you can enter "*.*" in the box under the "MkDir"
button on the right and click "Refresh", this will let you see them.
Please be very careful about using .htaccess files especially if you have
FrontPage Server Extensions configured for that site as FP creates .htaccess
files in various folders, including the root folder for its security and
publishing system.
The "AllowOverride" option is set to "All" for our Apache (UNIX)
web-servers, for more information about .htaccess files, consult the
Apache web site
Back to FAQ's Index
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Mail
Scripting Questions
| Q: |
What is the path
to the sendmail binary file?
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| A: |
For UNIX sites only: /usr/sbin/sendmail
For Windows NT sites there is no equivalent command provided by Microsoft.
You will need to obtain a copy of a sendmail script which uses the TCP/IP
socket library functions to send the mail message. We regret we are unable
to provide a download location or any documentation on how to do this.
Back to FAQ's Index |
| Q: |
How do I set the execute bit (do a CHMOD) on a script without using a shell
session?
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| A: |
We do not provide shell access sites are distributed across multiple servers
meaning that many different configurations are required. We have also found
via past experience that this is a highly insecure facility to allow which
can lead to other users attacking your sites. We will be providing a "File
Manager" module which will allow you to accomplish many of the basic tasks
that you would do via a shell session - this also allows you to manipulate
settings for Windows NT sites as well which you would not normally be able
to do.
Most FTP software however, will allow you to at least set the read, write
and execute permissions for the owner, group and other segments of UNIX
security, mostly this is accomplished by right-clicking a file or folder on
the remote host window and selecting "Properties", "Permissions" or "CHMOD"
Back to FAQ's Index |
| Q: |
How do I
find the path to my web-site for my script?
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| A: |
Because we continually upgrade and add to our service, this can mean that
paths to the root of your site may change. This means that if you fix the
path "/WebSites/mytag/mydomain" into a script and the root path of your site
changes to "/WebSites2/mytag/mydomain" because we've added a new disk-volume
to the server and balanced the content your script will stop working.
At the present time the absolute path on UNIX is
"/WebSites/net-traders2/mydomain" , where 'mydomain' is domain name. On
Windows 2000 it is "c:/WebSites/net-traders2/mydomain"
To get around this problem, use the commonly available DOCUMENT_ROOT
functions of the script languages. Below are some examples of how to get
the path of your website.
Perl: $myDocRoot = $ENV{'DOCUMENT_ROOT'};
PHP: $myDocRoot = $GLOBALS["DOCUMENT_ROOT"];
ASP: myDocRoot = Server.MapPath("/")
Please note that on Windows NT, even though Perl and PHP are supported,
for some reason not defined by the developers of the languages, the
DOCUMENT_ROOT variable is not available, however, ASP's version works fine.
Back to FAQ's Index |
| Q: |
I've put all the right paths in my CGI/Perl program but it still won't run -
what's wrong?
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| A: |
You have probably not
configured the file permissions correctly, if you're using Window NT for
your site this won't matter, however, on UNIX, the Perl module works
slightly differently (or more to the point it obeys the correct rules).
You need to set the owner, group and other permissions on both the /cgi-bin/
directory and the files within it.
Most FTP software will allow you to correct this by right-clicking on the
file in the remote file window, select the "Properties" page and you will
usually be confronted by 9 checkboxes. These will usually be on 3 rows and
labelled User, Group and Others.
Above each row is uaually headings of Read, Write and
Execute.
Because UNIX has three levels of security for every file, you need to set
all three so they look like the following pattern.
Owner has: Read, Write, Execute.
Group has: Read, Execute.
Others have: Read, Execute.
For the more technically minded, these form a bit-pattern of the order
755.
Back to FAQ's Index |
Data Access
| Q: |
There are no options to create MySQL databases for my scripts - how do I do
this?
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| A: |
We are currently developing a module called "Data Access" which will allow
you to administer MySQL databases including permissions for them. At
present, you will need to e-mail the support team with the name of the
database you need to be created and the username and password which will be
used to administer the new database. Once you have created your tables, you
should issue a GRANT statement to create another user which with limited
rights that your scripts will use.
Back to FAQ's Index |
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Testimonials
Ms
A Antrobus, Liverpool
"I
would like to take this opportunity to thank you for a very
reliable, helpful and speedy service. I have had no cause to
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addresses and everything is working fine."
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