Introduction
Apache Web Server
FTP Access
Mysql
PHP
Shell Access
INTRODUCTION
So you've obtained your LSYF/YOA
Beryllium hosting account and have your web site already under construction. Now is
the time to examine some of the resources available to you on LSYF/YOA Beryllium , and see
how you can take advantage of them to build a more powerful, efficient site. Our services
are designed to facilitate the construction of web sites that do more than merely present
static information to your visitors. Successful web sites use many technologies that
provide 'behind the scenes' information processing, to create content that engages and
involves your visitors. The following is a short overview of resources available on
LSYF/YOA Beryllium servers, and how you can make use of them to build a better web
site.
APACHE WEB
SERVER
The apache web server is the most
widely implemented web server on the internet today. Fully 50% of all web sites are run
from Apache, and the reasons are clear. Efficient programming has made a web server that
can serve tens of thousands of web pages every minute, with stability and elegance. In all
but the most massive web sites, apache is simply faster than the competition. Apache's
noncommercial, flexible development methods mean that bugs are fixed, and distributed to
end users mere hours after their discovery - so when a security problem is discovered
within the Apache software, you wont be left waiting for a corporation to fix it while
your web site lies vulnerable to hackers.
Apache's core abilities are powerful
in themselves, and new abilities may be added to it in the form of plug-in modules. In the
day to day running of your web site however, some of these functions will be used more
often than others:
- Server-side Includes
- By including specific text in your HTML
documents, you can pass instructions to the apache server for it perform various actions
on your HTML, before it is actually sent out to a visitor on your site. A common usage of
this is to include a 'footer' at the bottom of all web pages from your site. By including
a "server side include" [a small extra tag] at the bottom of each HTML document,
the web server will attach a file you specify to each page. In this manner, instead of
wasting time and disk space adding this footer by hand [and checking to make sure you
haven't missed it anywhere] you can have the web server perform this for you. If you're
tired of adding that "copyright, your company, 2000, all rights reserved" at the
bottom of every page, you'll appreciate that SSI is a serious tool. More can be found on
SSI in Chapter
2.
- HTTP logs -
If you've come from a free web hosting
service before LSYF/YOA Beryllium , you've probably tried to use 'counters' to track the
number of visitors to your web site - and likely discovered that counters are not a great
way to monitor your site's traffic - they just aren't designed for the job. The Apache web
server maintains its own HTTP Logs - blow-by-blow accounts of every file served up
by your web site, who viewed them, with what browser, and when. With this raw information
you can make use of Log Analysis Tools that can analyze your traffic patterns over
certain times of the day, to certain areas of your site, and other trending information.
- Secure
Sockets Layer - Called SSL for
short, this is the basis for the secure site - the https:// URL's you see on
company order pages. SSL allows visitors to your site to both submit and view
information over a cryptographicly secure link that renders 'wiretapping' of the data sent
between you near impossible. For a business site, SSL is part of the foundation of good
practice through which you can ensure the privacy and security of your customers. More on
SSL in Chapter
2.
- CGI-BIN - For a site to be more than just a collection of
static pages [the 'electronic brochure' syndrome] it must offer [to apply an overused
buzzword] interactive content. For that to come about, your site needs to do
things - to offer functionality to your visitor. This may be as simple as a guestbook
or a message board, or a fully operational online ordering and tracking system. CGI is the
path most taken to achieve this. CGI is Common Gateway Interface - a way to run
programs on the web server itself, and send and receive information to your site's
visitors. Alongside the preconfigured CGI applications we include with your account, we
allow you much freedom to run other CGI scripts, should you write your own, or find them
on the web. CGI programs can be written in many different computer languages however, so
we support most of the common ones - PERL, Python, Tcl to name the top three.
- Protected
Directories - Apache
can be configured to behave differently, depending on what directory within your site it
is serving files from. One of these configuration options is to only serve pages from a
selected directory if the visitor can provide a valid username and password [that you
control] or if the user is from a certain location on the internet. More on this here.
- Configurable
error pages - '404 Error
not found' - not only is this sight disheartening, its downright unhelpful. We all want to
make our web sites accessible to our visitors, and custom error documents are one way to
help achieve this. Instead of the dreaded '404' message, you can instead have the web
server display a page that gives a set of links to major areas of your site, to get your
visitors back on track. The same can be set up for other types of errors - pages that have
moved, or when a login to a protected directory is denied. All of these pages can be
edited in real time using your Control
Panel.
E-MAIL
ACCOUNTS
Many contenders come and go, but
e-mail remains as the true 'killer app' of the internet. Having a strong e-mail system
behind your web site is one of the best ways to build communication with your site
visitors. People make note of addresses that are easy to remember, and e-mail is often the
first line of contact to your visitors after your home page. You most likely already have
your own e-mail addresses through your internet service provider, so being able to
incorporate your LSYF/YOA Beryllium mail with your existing mail is important here
too. Here are some of the tools available to you with LSYF/YOA Beryllium .
- POP Accounts - Like your
e-mail account with your ISP, POP accounts are e-mail addresses that store received e-mail
on the server, for you to collect later. Your account starts with one of these by default,
and you may add extra addresses to your domain, so people within your organization can
receive e-mail at your domain as well.
- E-Mail
Forwarding - When you need an
extra address @ your domain, but do not require another place to store your e-mail before
collecting it, a forwarder is the tool for the job. Forwarders are e-mail addresses that
redirect mail they receive to another e-mail address to be collected there. A common
example is to set up a 'webmaster@yourdomain.com' address, that forwards e-mail to your
e-mail address at your internet service provider.
- Auto Responders -
Let's face it, sometimes you don't have
to to respond to every e-mail that arrives in your inbox by the same day - yet you know
that if you don't get an answer back to them soon, they may wonder if they have the right
address at all. Auto Responders are a great way to solve this, and other problems. Such as
offering information on demand.
- Mailing Lists
- Mailing lists have a long history
on the internet as an efficient way to facilitate communication between interested parties
- and they work much like their real world counterparts, with the exception that people
subscribed to the list may be given permission to send their own messages to the list, to
be received by all other subscribers.
- More on e-mail in Chapter
2: E-mail.
FTP ACCESS
File Transfer Protocol [FTP] has
around twenty years of history on the internet, so as standards go it is well established.
Others come and go, but FTP is still the most commonly used and reliable method for file
transfer across the internet, and this makes it the recommended tool for managing your
site at LSYF/YOA Beryllium - FTP clients are available for all network capable
operating systems, and some elements of site management can only be performed with an FTP
client.
FTP being such an important feature of
the internet, it would be amiss if we didn't include features to enable you to make good
use of FTP as part of your web site:
NOTE: Anonymous FTP and Extra FTP logins are only available with Professional web
accounts. Basic accounts have only the primary login.
- Anonymous FTP access
- If you've
ever downloaded a file from the internet, chances are you've used anonymous FTP. The
'anonymous' part indicates that you don't need to have an account on the system you're
receiving the file from - its a public file server. Offering a public file server on your
own site has many strong points in its favor - although you can make files available on
your web site through HTTP, ftp is much faster and more reliable than HTTP for
transferring files, and has additional features, such as the ability to resume a failed
download. Used correctly, anonymous FTP can become another valuable part of your site
design.
- Extra FTP Logins
- Chances are that you wont be the only person involved
in the design and management of your web site, or you'd like to give some space on your
server over to a friend or associate. Having extra FTP logins to your site means you can
give people access to directories on your site, so they can manage their portion of the
site themselves, without giving them access to your home directory or control panel.
MYSQL
If data is the heart of computing,
then the SQL language could be the blood. For over twenty years, the Structured Query
Language [SQL] has been the defacto standard for accessing databases over a network. SQL
servers provide data storage and management services that can be accessed conveniently
from many scripting languages and CGI systems. Using SQL is both easier and quicker than
storing and accessing data from a 'flat' text file.
LSYF/YOA Beryllium implements
the TCX MySQL database server; MySQL has a reputation for speed, stability and ease of
use. While there are SQL servers that are much faster than MySQL, its accessibility and
adherence to standards make it the perfect choice for web site database storage.
- You can read more about MySQL at http://www.mysql.com/
PHP
If you have encountered web
development tools such as Cold Fusion or Active Server Pages, then the uses for PHP will
be immediately apparent.
PHP [http://www.php.net/]
is a server-side scripting language, with built in methods to access database services
through SQL, and is a powerful alternative to CGI applications for processing data before
it is viewed by your sites visitors. The uses for PHP are too diverse to go into detail
here, but here are some ideas to start off with:
- Rapid Database Driven
Site Generation - It used to be the case that database access was only
possible through the use of a CGI application running on the server, this required extra
modules and lengthy code. PHP, like other server-side script languages [ASP, Cold Fusion,
etc.] speeds this process by providing fast, direct access to SQL databases in a very
human readable syntax. Unless your needs are very specific or you have a pre built system,
implementing your site with PHP is often the fastest way to build database services into
your web site.
- Dynamic Page
Generation - Another common use of PHP with a SQL server, is the
ability to create web pages on the fly. Using a template page written in PHP, you can
retrieve images, text , etc. from an SQL server to construct the final HTML page that is
seen by the web browser. A classic example of this is a product information page. Instead
of generating hundreds of HTML pages, each describing a separate product and consuming
much disk space, product descriptions, photographs and other information are stored in an
SQL database, and a template PHP is generated. When a client requests information on a
certain product number, the PHP template requests the corresponding information from the
database, and constructs a completed web page of the product information that is presented
to the client. This approach saves much work, especially when the time comes to alter
product information, add/remove products and other site management tasks.
- Other PHP
Projects - php.net has a project portfolio here demonstrating many other practical
applications for this language.
- You can read more about PHP at http://www.php.net/.
SHELL
ACCESS - TELNET & SSH
Unix is a fully multiple user
operating system, able to have many users logged into the system and running programs
simultaneously [not just accessing files, but using the system as though they were
actually at the machine's keyboard].
This remote access to run programs on
the server is provided to LSYF/YOA Beryllium customers through two methods - Telnet
and Secure Shell [ssh]. Telnet is another long established standard on the
internet, and telnet clients are available for all common operating systems. Being able to
log into the system provides much greater flexibility in managing your web site - the Unix
command line environment is extremely powerful, and a small amount of time learning it,
delivers many skills that can reduce site management tasks down to a few minutes of work,
instead of hours of manual alteration. Many of the more advanced aspects of site
management can only be achieved within a telnet session, so time spent familiarizing
yourself with Unix is well spent.
SSH is a a newer implementation of
telnet - and addresses many of the problems of telnet - especially that of security.
Telnet travels as plain text over the internet, easily listened into by people with access
to the machines the connection travels over. SSH encrypts everything - from your initial
login and password, to every byte of data send over the ssh session. SSH clients are less
common than telnet clients however, and apart from the Unix versions, most are commercial
software.
- You can find more on TELNET & SSH
in Chapter
2: Telnet & SSH.
FROM HERE you
probably have many questions about where to find information and start using some of these
features.
- Chapter 2 contains many quick start tutorials on essential site
management tasks [FTP, the control panel, etc.]
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