Introduction to your new site
This document will familiarize you with some of the things you can do with
your new Web Hosting Account. After
logging in to your site,
you'll see something very similar to the following directory structure.
(Click on the item for more information):
..
cgi-bin
logs
.htaccess
index.html
more about directories
What about those two dots that don't have links to more information?
Well, the two dot's you'll see (..) represent the directory above you.
You can think of it like the "back" button in your web browser. For
instance if after connecting you double click on the "cgi-bin" folder
and upload a file - you might need to get back to the "stats" directory so you can upload
an html file to be viewed from the web. Double click the ".." and you'll
go back to the "root" (the spot you were deposited immediately after
connecting). Now you can change to "stats" and upload your html document
by double clicking on the "stats" folder.
Common Gateway Interface (CGI) :
Click on cgi-bin to learn more about CGI.
What about the "logs" directory?
This directory contains the access logs and statistics about your site. The file,
access_log is raw (i.e. almost humanly unreadable). You're in luck, though - you don't have
to know to interperet them, we've already done it for you! All you need to do is contact the
Site Administrator
and we'll set you up.
The .htaccess file :
The .htaccess file contains special code which enables your site to use
Server Side Includes (SSI), unless you are an experienced webmaster,
you should not edit this file. For detail information on using .htaccess, please view the
NCSA HTTPd Access Configuration Document.
Please see the section for SSI's
within the NCSA HTTPd web site more information on Server Side Includes.
The index.html file :
The index.html file is an HTML
document, which is the default page a visitor to your web site receives when no specific file is requested. For instance,
if a visitor requests http://www.yourdomain.com, they will receive the index.html file by default. You can
edit the file however you wish. See our setup example page
for a demostration of what visitors see when they access your web site before you upload your own index.html file.
Directories
When viewing your directories in your ftp program, you will see that your currently logged into a certain directory on our UNIX server. This directory should
look something like:
This is what we call the "absolute path" of your domain and is the directory which your web site belongs. When writing custom
cgi scripts, you will need to use this "absolute path" and any subdirectories when referencing files within your web space.
For instance, if you wish to call or access a file from a cgi script, which was uploaded to a directory you made called html within your
files directory, you would call the file like this:
That's it! That completes your introduction to the directory structure of your web space. There is a lot more
information here on our Web Hosting Help Desk, so try to read as much
as possible to get the complete knowledge of making your web site the best it can be. Most every question
asked to us is posted somewhere in our help desk area. Or you can search the help
desk using the form below:
