http://www.demon.co.uk/dil/www/FAQ.html (The Risc Disc Volume 2, 10/1995)
It does not deal with page design, creation, or development software.
It is not intended as a guide to the Web in general.
If you have any additional questions, please feel free to send any comments to e-mail us at webfaq@gemma.demon.co.uk.
When you order Web space from Demon, we allocate you an account on our Web Server. To use this account, you need a user name and password.
The best way to order space is by telephone. Phone the Demon Web sales team on 0181-371-1240.
You may also order space by sending e-mail to us at www@demon.net or by fax to 0181-371-1245.
In an e-mail, or faxed order, you should include
If you are an existing Demon customer who pays by Credit Card then you do not need to include these details again. If you would prefer not to include your Credit Card Details in an e-mail message, please order by telephone or fax.
Typical domain names end in .co.uk or.com but other domains such as .org, .org.uk, sch.uk, and .gov.uk can be arranged. There is no actual limit on the length of the name appearing before the .co.uk; for example, averylongname.co.uk is valid. See also the tips on selecting a domain name at http://fleet.britain.eu.net/naming-co/naming-co-tips.html.
Delegation of .co.uk domain names require the name to unambiguously reflect the name of your company.
Names of 3 characters or less will not, in general, produce very informative addresses and will only be accepted if they correspond exactly to the name of the company or are a very well known acronym for the company (hp.co.uk = Hewlett Packard, bt.co.uk = British Telecom, etc). If you wish to use a 3 character domain name then you must supply a justification for this.
The support hours are as follows,
Monday to Friday:
Demon Webmasters should only be used for support issues relating to the Demon Web site. It is not for support of client software, questions of this type will be bounced to support@demon.net.
If you see an error on a Web page then please report it to the maintainer of that page not Demon Webmasters. This should ensure a swifter response.
You should sign every page that you create so that users can contact you if they find an error. A guide to signing can be found at http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Provider/Style/SignIt.html.
Monthly rental for space as follows:
All prices exclude VAT.
You chose the directory name if you require our normal service. This is the name which appears after http://www.demon.co.uk/. This will determine you URL and your user name. For example, if you want a WWW site called my_site then your URL would be http://www.demon.co.uk/my_site/
You can check that the directory you want has not already been used by trying to access it. If you try to access the site http://www.demon.co.uk/my_site/ and your browser says that the site does not exist then it has probably not yet been allocated.
The final arbiter of a site name is the Webmaster and if you have any queries regarding a name then please mail www@demon.net or call us to discuss your requirements. Site names are allocated on a first come, first served basis.
This password must be a minimum of 5 characters, a maximum of 8 characters, should be mixed case and contain at least one numeric or special character. The password should not be a proper name or dictionary word and should not be easily associated with you, i.e. a car registration number.
One way of choosing a password is to take the initial letters of a book, phrase, or other item. In this way the phrase
a holistic approach to the prevention of disease
would produce the password "ahattpod". You should then modify it slightly to
fit the above criteria, for example "ahat2poD".
For non-Web Forwarding customers, e-mail is the only way that we can deliver the extract.
Note: The access log extract can be very big. Each hit on your pages generates a line approximately 80 bytes long. You must ensure that your mail system can handle large files.
Web Forwarding customers will find their access logs in their logs directory.
A list of log analysis tools can be found at Yahoo.
You must administer the site for your customers. You will have to handle the uploading and installation of their files. You should not, in any circumstances, disclose your password to your customers. Doing so will compromise the security of all your customers' files.
Please note that it does take some time for registration and delegation of domain names.
Approximate times are:
If you have done this and you can still not access the files then it may be a file access permission problem.
Type the command:
ls -l filename
(where filename is the name of the file you cannot access).
You will see the following listing:
-rw-r--r-- 1 username usergroup 3333 May 24 16:14 filename
-- -- -- -----
| | | |
| | | +-- other stuff you can safely ignore
| | |
| | +------- permissions for the world (including the server)
| |
| +---------- permissions for members of your access group
|
+------------- permissions for the owner of the file (you)
The letters in the permissions bit stand for:
To fix this, use the chmod command as follows:
chmod +r file.html
(The +r option to chmod indicates that it should add read
permission to the named file.)
CGI scripts must be readable and have the execute bit set. This is done as follows:
chmod +rx file.pl
For further information please consult any tutorial on UNIX file
permissions. An example can be found at
http://www.eecs.nwu.edu/Unixhelp/tasks_access_permissions.html
Please refer to the Apache and NCSA documentation for more detailed information.
The Demon Webmasters have developed a number of front ends to the htaccess mechanism which they would be happy to discuss with you. An example of such a system is Business Monitor which can be found at http://www.businessmonitor.co.uk/
If you want your customers to pay on-line for goods you can offer them the following options:
Online ordering systems can be built around pre-registration systems where you take a customers details prior to them purchasing goods. For an example of some of the systems that the Demon Webmasters have built see http://www.fma.com/consultancy.html#ordering
rm -rf directory
the directory and its contents will be removed.
Please be careful with this command. There is no undelete utility for UNIX, and the Demon Webmasters do not provide access to backups of user web site data.
If you already have Web Forwarding you will have to register a new domain name and have that name point to your Web space. There will be a additional Web Forwarding charge for this. There can be no refund on the original Web Forwarding charge.
Another point to note is that you must not have a directory called gifs or icons.
The gifs directory is a collection of publically available images. See http://www.demon.co.uk/gifs/.
icons is reserved for system use.
The pager should only be called when you believe there is a fault within the Demon Network that will affect all customers, and should only be used by people who are quite confident that they understand how the network works and are sure that the problem is ours.
When calling the pager service please state:
For example:
The steps to creating an image map are as follows.
Create your image and map file. You must save this file in UNIX format. Place the resulting map file in your docs directory hierarchy. Use the following URL to refer to the map:
<A HREF="http://web.archive.org/web/199510/http://www.demon.co.uk/cgi-bin/imagemap/%3CB">your-dir/file.map"><IMG SRC="/view-riscdisc_n/http://www.demon.co.uk/dil/www/file.gif" ISMAP></A>
Note: The map file goes in your docs directory, not your cgi-bin directory.
In some cases this may not work for Web Forwarding customers. Please call us or mail www@demon.net if you experience any problems. Alternatively, see Yahoo for more information sources about imagemaps.
An example imagemap setup can be found at http://www.demon.co.uk/test/
This directory contains a sample form and a sample CGI script written in perl. Perl is the recommended language for writing CGI scripts on our web server.
There are a number of reasons for this and (most of) these are detailed below.
First a note about the directory structure. When you log on the WWW server to maintain your site you will see at least three directories; incoming, docs and cgi-bin.
As is explained in the Web Maintenance document, http://www.demon.co.uk/dil/www/wwwspace.html, these directories are, respectively, for uploading your files, storing your documents and storing your CGI scripts.
When you wish to call a CGI script you refer to it as /cgi-bin/your-dir/script_name, not /your-dir/cgi-bin/script_name.
If your scripts is written in perl then the first line of the script must be:
#!/bin/perlYou must save the file in UNIX format. If the file is saved in DOS format then there will be an extra (Control M or ^M) at the end of the line. Macintosh format text files appear as single line to UNIX. These will cause a 500: Server error message.
If you want to place programs written in C, C++ or any language apart from Perl, in your cgi-bin directory, then the Demon Webmasters must examine the code and compile it for you. This is chargeable, the cost being determined by the amount of work involved in installing your application.
You must not, except with the explicit agreement of the Webmasters place a binary, executable file in your cgi-bin space.
You should try to debug your scripts locally. Versions of perl exist for most flavours of UNIX, DOS and MacOS. Although the DOS and MacOS versions may not show up all possible errors, they will tell you if any glaring syntactical errors have been made.
MacPerl can be found at ftp://nic.switch.ch/software/mac/perl/.
Perl for Dos can be found at ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/perl/.
If your script is to create a file in your Web space or your cgi-bin directory the correct path name is one of:
You must consider bandwidth restriction.
If you have a dial up line your site will only be accessible when you are connected to the Net.
If you have an NDRL with the bi-directional feature, you will have to pay the call charges for every call made to your site. A "popular" site could cost you a lot.
Your users will also experience a delay when connecting for the first time, as the modem connection comes up. This could range from a couple of seconds to a couple of minutes.
A 14.4K line will probably not give sufficient bandwidth for anything other than a small site.
A 64K leased line should give sufficient bandwidth for a small to medium site.
You are going to have to install and maintain your own server and server software or employ someone to do it for you.
There are circumstances where you will want to run your own server, for example, if you want to run your server as a front end to a database. In these cases the Demon Webmasters can offer advice and consultancy.
It is also possible to rent machine space in the Finchley NOC whereby your machine is connected to the main Demon backbone. Mail www@demon.net for further details.
We do not automatically put your details into this list. If you would like an entry in this list then please e-mail webdemon@foresight.co.uk giving us a 50 character description of your site.
We only allow one entry per site in this list.
You can also publicise your own site by having it added to the various Web Indexes. A good guide is available at http://www.uwtc.washington.edu/Computing/WWW/AnnouncingYourSite.html.
Another interesting site which helps to submit your site to the main indexes is http://submit-it.permalink.com/submit-it/.
©Demon Webmasters, September 1995
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These pages are maintained by Foresight Interactive Services. If you have any queries or comments about the Demon World Wide Web pages, please feel free to email webdemon@foresight.co.uk.