Frequently Asked Questions
About
Cobalt Servers
Administration
Design Issues
FTP
PERL/CGI
About Cobalt Servers
What is the Sun Cobalt™ RaQ server appliance?
The Sun RaQ is a server appliance for Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
It can host up to 200 individual websites or ideal to be dedicated to
a single medium or large customer.
High Reliability
and Low Administration?
The Sun RaQ server appliance's economic success is the tight integration
of open-source software and focused hardware design, providing the high
reliability and reduced support costs.
Administration
How do I access
the control panel (site admin) for my domain?
Go to http://www.yourdomain.com/siteadmin/ and enter your username and
password. For more information visit our Site Administration
page.
What can a Site
Administrator configure using the control panel?
Adding
Users
Editing User Settings
Mailing Lists
Site Settings
FTP Settings
Disk Usage
Backup
Restore
How can a Site User access their Personal Profile?
As a Site User, you
can manage your Personal Profile by using any standard web browser. Access
the Personal Profile screen by typing the address http://www.yourdomain.com/personal
into your browser. You will be prompted to enter your username and password.
What can a User
configure using the control panel?
Modify User
Email
Usage Data
Backup
Restore
How do I create
a new user using my control panel?
Log in to
your control panel.
Go to the "user management" area. Select "add user"
to create a new user account.
Input the user's display name.
Create a unique username for the new user. The user name needs to be lowercase
only and less than 12 alphanumeric characters. Periods [ . ], underscores
[ _ ] and hyphens [ - ] are allowed. If the username you choose is already
used by the system, you'll need to select a new one. For instance if you
want the address info@ to work but the user "info" is already
taken then create user "info1" or some other number and then
give that user the alias info@.
Select a password for the new user and enter it twice. The password will
be used if you give the user POP3 email access, FTP access or control
panel privileges.
Enter the aliases that you want to create for that user.
If everything is how you want it, hit "confirm new user" or
"cancel" if you want to start over.
Once the user has been created, select the "modify email" (envelope
icon) for that user and enter the address where the email should forward.
If you do not give a forwarding address then the account becomes a POP3
email account by default.
Select the "Save Changes" button when you are finished or "Back
To User List" to abort your changes.
How do change
a user's password using my control panel?
Log
in to your control panel.
Go to the "user management" area. Select the user who's password
you want to change.
Select the "modify" (pencil icon) for the user that you want
to update.
Select a new password and enter it twice.
Select the "Confirm Modify" button. This user's password will
now be changed for POP3 email access (if enabled) and FTP access (if they
are a siteadmin).
If you forgot or lost your control panel password, we can reset it for
you. Please follow these instructions.
What are the requirements for user passwords and what can I do to
make them difficult to crack?
Passwords should be 8-12 characters in length. The most secure type of
password includes a combination of upper and lower case letters, along
with numbers and symbols. For instance, A$f8T#3!w would be a very difficult
password to crack, even with a brute force attack from a very determined
hacker.
Try to avoid using common words in English or other languages, as well as obvious things like your name, relatives names and other words that might be easily guessed/cracked by an unauthorized user. Here are examples of bad passwords:
words or combinations
of words from a dictionary, English or any other language
any person's name including yourself, partner, children, relatives, friends,
etc.
your birthday
your Social Security Number, telephone number, address, etc.
numeric sequences, ie. "1234"
words spelled backwards
any part of your username or combination of letters from your username
Finally, never under any circumstance make the password the same as your
username or use a password like admin, test, guest, etc.
I lost or forgot my control panel password, can you send it to me
again?
For security purposes, passwords are encrypted on our servers, so we do
not know what your original password is, but we can generate a new one
and reset it for you. If you want us to reset your password, please contact
our Tech Support.
Also, as a security measure, we will only send the new password to the primary email address associated with your account.
If you have more than one user setup as a site admin, please indicate which user needs to have its password reset. Once the password is reset for the site admin, you'll be able to log in and change passwords for your other users.
When I try to
create a user, the system keeps responding with "user already exists"?
It's possible that you are trying to create a username that already exists
on the server. On a Unix system, each username has to be unique, but that
username can be aliased to whatever you want. This commonly happens with
the username "info" since many sites want a user that receives
email to info@. If you wanted to create the address info@yourdomain.com,
you should create a unique username, like "info5" and then give
it the alias "info". This is the common work-around for this
issue.
When I try to
access my control panel, my browser responds that it cannot find the page.
I can access the domain and FTP normally, but not the control panel. What
might be causing this?
If you are behind a firewall, it may be preventing you from accessing
the control panel which is located on the server's port 81. The control
panel is assigned to port 81 for security purposes since many of the control
panel functions must be executed as "root". If you wish to use
your control panel from behind the firewall, you'll need to enable access
to port 81
Design
Issues
If you build it, will they come?
"If
you build it they will come" may be true of a baseball field built
in a cornfield, but it has little semblance to reality when the phrase
is applied to a web site. Many people think a web site is used to promote
their business, when in reality it's an extension of their business. A
web site should have just as many marketing dollars spent on it as you
would spend in any other marketing medium. Most new website owners believe
by having a website they will get to advertise to 70 million people worldwide
for less than $20 per month! However, they usually forget to ask themselves
how these 70 million people will know how to find them.
We are not telling you this to spoil your Internet dreams, but rather to debunk some of these myths and controversies that seem to float around the Internet. Once a web site is built it should have a marketing plan set up for the next couple of years with plans for additions and adding new content. Your visitors will come.....guaranteed, but remember that it takes time and marketing efforts to get your site out and visible to all of these potential customers.
Why not design
it yourself?
That is an excellent question. Many people do build their own Internet
sites. There are thousands of reviews in almost every Internet and computer
magazine for new web construction programs. It is so tempting! How difficult
can it really be?
The answer depends on how professional you would like the finished web site to be, how much money you're willing to shell out, and how long you're willing to wait. A combination of the best web design software tools, including image editing and an HTML visual design editor, will cost you as much as $1200. Then you'll either need a training course or two on how to use all of these design tools, and use them together to achieve your desired results, or you need to spend at least a few dozen hours with trial and error. A course on your image editing package is a must! You'll also need to read a book on good web site design to avoid "beginner" mistakes. Another book on HTML site design... you'll need one that covers how to design pages that look good on any browser, on any platform, in any resolution, at any color depth. And don't forget to build a few sites for practice... there's no substitute for experience!
With two to four months of your precious time and a few thousand dollars spent, you'll finally be ready to begin building your own "professional-looking" web site. Although we might exaggerate certain elements a little bit, it should show you that you need to spend a lot of effort and money before you are able to lay out and build your very own web site graphics and html codes. The best idea is that you focus on your business and the message you want to deliver with the web site design. That is what you know best! And we will handle the art and science of building a good web site. That's what our graphic designers and coders do best. Working together, you'll have a better web site design, in less time, at a lower cost and a lot less aggravation!
Can I edit and
update my web site myself?
Absolutely. We have a great new program called The Online Web Editor.
We can upload this program to your site and then all you need is an username,
password, internet access and a bit of time. This editor will allow you
to add/edit text, upload images and add/edit hyperlinks. To use this program
you will need some internet know how and some time to learn the program.
So once again the question is how much time do you have to invest in your website? Not much, then we will be happy to do this updates and additions for you!
What is FTP?
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and it is the process used to upload
and download files from a web server. This is done using an FTP program.
Do you recommend
any FTP programs?
We recommend WS_FTP Pro or WS_FTP
LE
What setup information
do I need to use with my FTP program or the FTP feature that is built
into my web design application in order to upload my files to the server?
server/hostname: yourdomain.com
username: your username
password: your password
remote directory: ../../../web
port: 21
To help you with this, we have created tutorial of FTP setup info, Click
Here.
*** VERY IMPORTANT
FTP INFO ***
In order to make sure that you are accessing the public web directory
you need to set the initial path to your default directory in your FTP
application by entering the following exactly like this:
../../../web
The reason for this setup is that the server allows each user to have their own web space (http://domain.com/~username/ or http://domain.com/users/username/) as well as a public web space for the entire domain.
Ok, I uploaded my files, but nothing is showing up when I try to
access my site using a browser?
Double check that you uploaded your files to the public folder which is two levels up from your initial user folder (see FTP info above).
Make sure that you named your home (default) page index.html or index.htm.
My FTP program is having problems connecting, how can I troubleshoot this?
Make sure that you have entered all the proper FTP setup info for your site. This was provided in a setup email that we sent you when your site become live on our server.
Do not add a "ftp." before your domain name.
Double check that your FTP program is set to access port number 21.
Verify that you currently have a connection to the internet and that your ISP is not having any problems.
If you are behind a firewall, try enabling "passive mode" on your FTP program.
When I upload
my files to the server, why are they corrupted?
Make sure that your FTP application is set to automatically detect ACSII
or binary mode.
How do I change
the password for FTP access?
The password for a FTP user and/or POP3 user can be changed for a user
using your site admin.
If you forgot or lost your site admin password, we can reset it for you. For security purposes, passwords are encrypted on our servers, so we do not know what your original password is, but we can generate a new one and reset it for you. If you want us to reset your password, please contact our Tech Support.
What is PERL?
Perl is a "Practical Extraction and Report Language." It has
powerful text-manipulation functions. Perl electronically combines features
and purposes of many command languages.
What are CGI
scripts?
CGI (Common Gateway Interface) is a process used by the server to pass
information between the user and an application on the server. With CGI
access, you can install Perl scripts on your website for such things as
feedback forms, guestbooks, counters, and so on.
What info do I need to run a CGI script?
CGI scripts can be run from anywhere in your public directory, so a cgi-bin
is not necessary (make sure the script has a .cgi or .pl extension).
absolute path = /home/sites/www.yourdomain.com/web
path to Perl = /usr/bin/perl
path to Python = /usr/bin/python
path to sendmail = /usr/sbin/sendmail
path to the date program = /bin/date
Where
can I find more info on Perl?
Perl Mongers
Do you know
where can I find some free CGI scripts?
Here are a few resources for CGI scripts:
My CGI/perl
script is not working, can you help me with it?
Here
are a few things to try when you are troubleshooting a CGI/Perl script:
First of all, thoroughly read through the instructions that came with
the script and also check the website where the script was downloaded
for troubleshooting info.
Check to see if the script was uploaded to the server in the proper format (usually ASCII not binary).
Verify that all the paths are correct (Perl, sendmail, etc.). Refer to the CGI info that was included with your setup email that was sent to you when your site went live on our server.
Check to see if all the file permissions are set correctly. Permissions can be set using an FTP program that allows permissions to be set on transfer.
Since installing a
CGI script is extremely difficult for new webmasters, you may want to
consider hiring Hennessee Internet to design, install & manage your
scripts.