NT Web Hosting
[ FTP | CGI | DSN | FRONTPAGE | ISAPI
| MPS | ODBC ]
[ POP3 | SQL | VISUAL
INTERDEV | SENDMAIL ]
Anonymous
FTP
You can enable this feature by selecting it in the
Edit Account Information form found off of the control
panel. There is a directory off of your root/home
directory named anonymous; this is the location an
anonymous user will be placed in.
To access the anonymous directory, the user can go
through their browser or FTP into your site. To access
the site with a browser the following syntax is required:
ftp.<domain name>/<userid>_anon
So for our example ntrules domain, the syntax would
look like this:
ftp.ntrules.com/ntrules_anon
You can also use this reference to download files
through htm/asp.
If an anonymous user logs in to your server, they will
be placed in a directory that goes nowhere. They must
then execute "cd <userid>_anon" to move
into the anonymous directory.
Even though this method is an improvement over the
security model found in Unix anon-ftp, anonymous FTP
still allows any user into this anonymous sub-directory,
if they know your userid and the extension attached to
it.
The anonymous user however can't get into any of your
other sub-directories. Please do not post your userid
freely for this exact reason and be careful of what is
happening in this directory.
As we are ramping up please allow for a half day
between selecting the option and actual implementation.
We are now feature complete except for generic SSL,
which we are simply waiting on a certificate for. Custom
SSL certificate setup is now available.
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CGI:
Question: How do we impliment Perl
Scripts on the new NT systems?
Answer: Perl 5.001m has been
installed.
Here is a sample script you can test if you are
interested. Copy this code into a file called
helloworld.pl and place it in your scripts directory.
print "HTTP/1.0 200 OK\n"; print
"Content-Type: text/html\n\n";
print "<HTML>\n"; print
"<HEAD>\n";
print "<TITLE>Hello
World</TITLE>\n";
print "</HEAD>\n";
print "<BODY>\n";
print "<H4>Hello World</H4>\n";
print "<P>\n";
print "Your IP Address is
$ENV{REMOTE_ADDR}.\n";
print "<P>";
print "<H5>Have a nice day</H5>\n";
print "</BODY>\n";
print "</HTML>\n";
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Data
Source Name DSN
Question: I just tried to add a new
DSN and got the following message Microsoft OLE DB
Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80040e21' Errors
occurred
/sys/dsnform.asp, line 499:
Answer: When setting up ODBC data
sources note the following:
1. The dsn name that is created is a combination of
your user id + . + whatever you named it.So if you name
the DSN "MyAccessDatabase" and youruserid is
"USERID" the dsn would be referenced by
"USERID.MyAccessDatabase". It is not case
sensitive.
2. The reference to a table assumes the root directory
of your web site. So if you placed a database named
"MyMDB.mdb" in the scripts directory. The entry
in the database name field would be
"scripts\MyMDB.mdb".
3. If you are using Visual InterDev, you need to enter
the complete path for your database. The path will always
be "d:\webs\" + user id + database name. In the
above example it would translate to
"d:\webs\USERID\scripts\MyMDB.mdb".
You do not need to register a DSN to get ODBC working
in ADO. You can create a file DSN or point to an existing
one (ie the demo one everyone has) and make the correct
entry for where the database resides (or in the case of
SQL the db name). Remember that the directory structure
on the server is d:\webs\<userid>\ + path to db. So
if you had a MYDB.MDB residing in your scripts
sub-directory and your user id was NTRULES the full path
w/b: d:\webs\NTRULES\SCRIPTS\MYDB.MDB
Secondly, we will be analyzing our feature set and
adding to it after the BETA, based upon demand. So make
alot of noise for your favorite features you would like
us to implement and we will look at them after the BETA.
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ISAPI:
Question: Are there any plans to
allow custom ISAPI programs to be run on the server?
Answer: Yes, we will be supporting
ISAPI dll's. We are working out the process of
registering them, here are the initial ideas.
1. Installed on a individual case by case basis.
2. Tested first on a non production server
3. Installed within Transaction Server on the
production server
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MPS:
We have just gone live with the Microsoft Site Server
Personalization System. This gives you three capabilities
built into the system that you can leverage with ASP.
1. User Property Database - This is an easy way to
maintain properties of the users that visit your site.
You simply define individual users and what properties
(ie preferences such as color, taste, favorite page,etc.)
and the UPD maintains the info for you as these users
come to your site. It can be configured to use cookies or
not use cookies.
2. Voting Component - Easy way to set up and monitor
different voting scenarios (ie. which page did you like
most)
3. SendMail Component - Integrate mail into your
applications. Check out the samples web page off of your
control panel, you now have examples of each. The code is
also available in the samples directory for learning
purposes (not to mention cutting and pasting into your
apps).
MPS
User Guide
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ODBC:
Question: I want to access an ACCESS
database with IDC/HTX. When doing so I get the message:
"Record(s) can't be read; no read permission on
'Personal'. " Personal is a table from the database.
1. The database Name.mdb is in the root directory
2. I created a dsn called MYDSN.USERID
Questions:
1. Why do I get this error message?
2. I donīt have permissions set on the database. But
if I do so how can I
set the .mda file in the ODBC Data Sources?
Answer: Your admin user didn't have
any rights in the orgtest mdb. Just make sure admin has
rights to the mdb in this scenario. The ODBC driver
accesses the mdb through admin.
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POP3
Accounts:
You can add and edit your pop accounts through the
Edit Account Information option off the control panel.
Please note the user id, for your mail reader only, is a
combination of your USER ID and the account name you
define. So if you define your account name in the pop3
entry screen as "joe" and your user id is
"ntcool", the user id you would type into your
mail reader would be "ntcool.joe". Please do
not type this combination into the pop3 entry screen,
only use it to retrieve mail.
The POP3 server (incoming mail) setting is:
www.yourdomain.com
How to use:
Under the "Edit Account Information" screen
of the control panel, you can acess your mail accounts.
There are three entries available for each pop account
@yourdomainname.com, User ID and Password. Here are some
examples on how to set up your accounts.
Example 1:
Your account user id is ntrules and your domain name
is ntrules.com. If you wanted to set up a pop user named
webmaster that received mail at webmaster@ntrules.com
with a password of 12345, you would enter webmaster
in the first two boxes and 12345 in the last one.
Remember you would access this pop account by using a
combination of <userid>.webmaster. The
<userid> in this combination is your overall
account ID, make sure you don't enter this in the POP3
form. Here would be the settings to retrieve your email
in this example.
POP3 Server: www.yourdomain.com
User ID: ntrules.webmaster
Password: 12345
Example 2:
Assume the same above, but, you wanted to set up a pop
user named webmaster that received mail at
admin@ntrules.com with a password of 12345. You would
enter admin in the first box, webmaster in the second box
and 12345 in the last one. Here would be the settings to
retrieve your email in this example.
POP3 Server: www.yourdomain.com
User ID: ntrules.webmaster
Password: 12345
Note, in example 2, the settings to retrieve your
email are the same,however your email is being sent to
admin@ntrules.com instead of webmaster@ntrules.com.
Finally, don't forget, these email settings are not
automatically updated,there is a delay between posting
them to the EAI form and accessing your mail.
Couple of things to note. Internet-Sites.com doesn't offer a
SMTP service, please use your ISP's SMTP server for
outgoing mail. As we gear up there will be a little delay
between the time you enter the information into the entry
screen and the time you will be able to retrieve mail,
however, this should never be more than one hour.
Question: How do I test mail
forwarding. I sent an email to test@209.41.28.147 and it
was never forwarded to my "real" e-mail
address. Am I doing something wrong, or is it not
working.
Answer: You will need to use a domain
name for this to work
Question: What happens when a mail is
sent using sendmail to an unknown destination? Does it
get returned to the sender?
Answer: The Postmaster will notify
you about that like this: Your message has encountered
delivery problems to the following recipients:
wekjhkjh@kljhksdh Unable to deliver to destination
domain.Cannot resolve kljhksdh.
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Visual Interdev:
Question: Can someone point me in the
right direction. I'm using Visual InterDev and I can't
figure out how to do the data stuff. How do I set up the
DataConnections so that I can program it on my local
system and then save it to the server and run it?
Answer: When setting up ODBC data
sources note the following:
1. The dsn name that is created is a combination of
your user id + . + whatever you named it. So if you name
the DSN "MyAccessDatabase" and your userid is
"cooljo" the dsn would be referenced by
"cooljo.MyAccessDatabase". It is not case
sensitive.
2. The reference to a table assumes the root directory
of your web site. So if you placed a database named
"MyMDB.mdb" in the scripts directory. The entry
in the database name field would be
"scripts\MyMDB.mdb".
3. If you are using Visual InterDev, you need to enter
the complete path for your database. The path will always
be "d:\webs\" + user id + database name. In the
above example it would translate to
"d:\webs\cooljo\scripts\MyMDB.mdb".
4. If you are using Visual InterDev to develop and
test locally and then deploy to the server (a very good
way to develop web sites). Use thefollowing steps:
a. Place your local database (dbc, mdb) in the same
location as it will reside on the server, ie the
d:\webs\<userid> path.
b. Create a local DSN that matches the name of the one
on the server, ie <userid>.<dsn name>
c. After testing, use the Copy Web option from the
Project menu to transfer your files to the server (only
the files changed will be copied). You can also connect
to the server and use Add Files/Folders to transfer from
your local computer.
Note that if there is a conflict with the d: drive,
you can also use x: in your drve reference
Question: I could not find a way to
transfer files from Visual InterDev to my domain
Answer: Use the option Copy Web,
Select in your toolbar Project, Copy web and follow the
instructions.
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SENDMAIL:
A very easy way to use the sendmail component is
through the use of the jmail.asp program found in your
stats/samples directory. By calling this form with the
GET method from your htm or asp input form, you can
easily send mail. The jmail.asp program iterates through
the fields on your form and generates an email from them,
it is an excellent example of using collections in ASP.
The ASP testmail.asp is a sample of a page calling
jmail.asp and is found in the same location as jmail.asp
There are some fields that jmail.asp interpretes as
special as they relate to the email being sent. They can
be hidden fields or standard and are as follows:
send_to - This is who the mail is being sent to and is
the only required field.
email - This is who the email is from, can be anything
and is not required.
mail_subject - The subject field, not required.
mail_body - This field goes into the body of the message
and it does not include any field headers
submit - Call your submit button this, so it doesn't show
up in the email body
All other fields will be automatically inserted into
the mail body and be prefixed by the name of the field.
Since we are using a GET method here you can type in a
querystring right into an address and send an email. For
example try the following:
http://209.41.28.10/jmail.asp?send_to=where@nowhere.com&email=
billg@microsoft.com&mail_subject=Cooool!!!!!!
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