Website Support

Basics and File Locations

Website creation involves creating two types of files, HTML files which contain the basic content of your website and CSS files which define the layout and appearance of your website.

Both of these files are ordinary text files that can be created with any ordinary text editor although specialized WYSIWYG editors, like Bluefish and Dreamweaver, make the job much easier.

CSS files are optional. Without CSS the web browser will pick default methods of displaying your web page. CSS files allow you to specify exactly how the web page should be displayed.

Interactive sites may include PHP files, perl files, ruby files, and other CGI script files. Please see CGI Programs and PHP Content in the left hand menu for details.

Every shell account as well as regular dial-up and DSL accounts includes web hosting space under "eskimo.com". The following table lays out the relationship between file location and URL. Please note that "~" represents your home directory and "user" in the URL represents your login.

Please note that "www.eskimo.com" is intended to be family friendly. Any material placed in your public_html directory must be suitable for all ages. Adult oriented material should be placed in adult_html so that it shows up on "adult.eskimo.com".

These directories do not exist until you create them. Also, they should be publically readable and searchable for the web server to be able to serve pages from them. There are several ways you can do this. You can login to shell and use the mkdir and chmod commands:

     mkdir public_html
     chmod 755 public_html

If you create websites on your computer and then upload them with ftp, the ftp client will also have a mkdir command or it's equivalent. Under the windows command prompt, the ftp command has a mkdir command once you are connected to our ftp server and logged in. Also, graphical ftp clients like filezilla have a way to create a folder on the destination machine.

You can create your website on your computer and then upload (publish) it with ftp, or you can create it online using tools provided here. Your index page must be named index.html, index.htm, or index.php. If your page contains php code, it must be named index.php unless you make arrangements to have other extensions parsed in an .htaccess file.

Normal file modes for .html files are 0644, but for php files 0755, and if you have server side includes, chmod to 0754 to cause Apache to parse them for include directives.

The terms "directory" and "folder" are interchangeable. Windows tends to use the term "folder", while Unix-like operating systems such as Linux use the term "directory", although recently there has been a trend to Windowize Linux and some more recent graphical programs will refer to directories as folders.

Websites Under Your Own Domain

In addition to having websites under our domain, we can map any directory in your home directory to your own domain name with either Virtual Domains or Personal or Business Web Hosting packages.