Uploading to your Webspace

You can upload files to your webspace using an FTP client (which might be built in to your website design software, such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage.

But before we tell you about these, you need to know about Domain Owners, Web Users and usernames.

When we set up your Gold or Silver account, you were given a special Domain Owner's username and password. Using these, you can access your Domain Owner's Control Panel through which you are able to add and modify email accounts and also Web Users. Web User have their own personal Web space, their own usernames and passwords, and cannot modify the main Web site for your domain - only the Domain Owner can do this.

In the sections that follow, we'll explain how Domain Owners access the domain's main Web space, and how Web Users access their personal Web space.

More details on how to use the Domain Owner's control panel and Web Users and usernames can be found on the Using your Control Panel page in the Gold Help section.

FTP

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, which is the protocol all web sites use to allow customers to upload (send) their files to their Web space. An FTP client is simply a program that understands this protocol and is designed specifically for uploading (sending) and also for downloading (receiving) files from Web sites.

Some examples of FTP clients include CuteFTP, WS-FTP and FTP Voyager. Click on the name of the program to go to the program publisher's Web site. You can also find more FTP programs by visiting www.download.com and searching for FTP.

PLEASE NOTE: Some HTML editors have built-in FTP facilities. These include Dreamweaver and FrontPage. If this is the case with your HTML editor, you won't need to download a separate FTP client.

Getting Started

In order to connect with your web site, you'll need to tell your FTP client program the following three things:

1) The FTP server name/address

2) Your FTP username/account name

3) Your FTP password

The FTP server name/address you should use depends on your Gold/Silver account's domain name. If your domain name is mydomain.com, then the FTP server name/address would simply be mydomain.com

For Domain Owners, the FTP username and password were sent to you by email when your account was set up.

For Web users, the FTP username is the same as the username you allocated to the Web user using your Domain control panel. So, if the Web user's account name is david, enter david as the FTP username in the FTP client. Similarly, the FTP password is the password allocated to the Web User account. For example, if Web user david has a password of mypass, he would enter mypass as the FTP password.

Using your FTP client to connect to your Web site

Having entered the correct information into your FTP client, ask it to connect to your Web site. FTP clients differ from program to program, but usually this is done by clicking on a Connect button or selecting an option called Connect from a menu.

Web Users

When the FTP client connects to the Gold/Silver account domain, by default it puts you in the directory used to store all the files for your personal Web space. Simply use FTP to send the pages and files for your site to this directory.

Domain Owners

When the FTP client connects to your domain, by default it puts you in the root directory for your domain's web site.

Within the root directory you'll find several other directories:

/anon_ftp (if available)

/bin (you will not normally need to enter this directory)

/cgi-bin (your cgi-bin directory where all your CGI and Perl files should be placed - if your account level allows it)

/conf (used for configuration files - do not alter any files in this directory unless specifically told to do so by Cymru 1)

/error_docs (the files a Web browser displays if it encounters an error - you can customise these if your account level allows it)

/httpdocs (your main domain web directory. Place all the HTML files for your main web site here)

/logs (log files - you will not normally need to enter this directory)

/pd (you will not normally need to enter this directory)

/web_users (the directory containing the files of any Web Users you have configured)

So, in order to upload your main Web site to the server, you'll need to change to the /httpdocs directory before sending any files. Some FTP programs and website design programs call this the "host directory".

NOTE:

Exactly how you change or navigate through directories on the server depends on your FTP client. Most provide a graphical user interface similar to that of Windows, so it should not be difficult for you to move up and down between directories.

CGI Scripts

Your main Gold account domain web space supports common gateway interface (CGI) scripts, such as those written in Perl, C or other languages, allowing you to add CGI scripts to work with your Web content.This enables you to develop highly interactive, powerful Web-based applications by building server-side CGI scripts that generate Web pages in response to specific user inputs. These applications range from simple hit counters to scheduling and conferencing applications and sophisticated electronic commerce solutions.

You can develop CGI scripts on your desktop machine and then transfer them to the web space by means of any FTP-based application that allows permission bits to be set to 'Executable'.

When transferring CGI files via FTP, make sure that .cgi and .pl files are sent in ASCII mode. Once the file has been transferred, use your FTP program to make the script executable.

The path to Perl is /usr/bin/perl. CGI scripts must use .pl or .cgi filename extensions in order to be executed by the Web server.

All CGI scripts must reside in the \cgi-bin directory