FAQ

For free online help with HTML and other Web technologies visit http://w3schools.com

• Uploading your site files
• Logging in via SSH
• Account password
• Databases
• Logs and stats
• Password protecting pages
• CGI scripts
• SSL
• Software Versions
• Email
• DNS

Uploading your site files

You can connect using SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol,) SCP (Secure Copy,) or regular old FTP (though this protocol does not protect your password). If you are moving your Web site from a previous host, you'll need to first connect to their server and download all your site's files, then upload them to EE at:

         host/server:  ftp.electricembers.net
            username:  (your web hosting username)
            password:  *********

The files that make up your Website go in the public_html directory inside your home directory. You can view the site at http://techforpeople.net/~username even before your domain name has been pointed at Electric Embers in DNS.

To migrate a database from a previous Web host to EE, you should first create a database dump on the old host, then download that dump file along with the rest of your Web site files and upload it to EE, where you can import it into your new database. The dump command at the old host should be something like:

     mysqldump -u username -p'password' databasename > dumpfile.sql

     mysql -u username -p'password' databasename < dumpfile.sql

Logging in via SSH

You can connect directly to the UNIX shell to do many things with your account such as move, rename, edit, or delete files, change permissions or your password, view Webserver logs, work with MySQL, even read email using Pine.

         host/server:  web.electricembers.net
            username:  (your web hosting username)
            password:  *********

Account password

Your password is your responsibility. Maintaining a strong password is how you prevent abuse of your account. You can set it to whatever you like, but simple words make very weak passwords. It's best to include some capital letters and some non-alpha characters like numbers or punctuation. If you forget your password you will have to contact us to have it reset. Keep in mind we can only do this for the contact person we have on file for the account.

The easiest way for you to change your password yourself is probably to log in to Webmail and click "Pref -> Change Passwd". Note this is available with your Web hosting account, even if your email is actually hosted elsewhere, or you do not normally use this Webmail. You can also log in via SSH and issue the command passwd.

Databases

If you would like a MySQL database, simply contact us and we'll create one for you. You can then work with your database using the command line tools or using the friendly graphical user interface of PHPMyAdmin. To use PHPMyAdmin, login with your database username and password (username is same as Web/email login, but password is different) at https://secure.electricembers.net/dbadmin. If you are configuring the MySQL settings in a database-backed application, it should connect to the hostname "localhost".

Logs and stats

You can see statistics for your Website's traffic for up to 12 months by using your Web hosting username and password to access:

       https://secure.electricembers.net/stats/your-domain.org

You can also find the current raw access and error logs at /weblogs/your-domain.org and /weblogs/error/your-domain.org, if you connect via SSH or SFTP. (4 weeks' access log archives are at /weblogs/old/your-domain.org.[1234].gz.) These record the IP address, date, time, and specific request. It can often be useful when debugging your site to keep an eye on the error logs with a command like

       tail -f /weblogs/error/your-domain.org

Password protecting pages

If you want to password-protect certain areas of your Web site or the whole site, the best ways to do that involve cookies or sessions that are managed by your Web application. But the easiest and most general way uses the built-in authentication mechanism of Apache, our Web server. You can read about setting up Apache authentication, including the advantages of using the somewhat more secure Digest authentication instead of Basic. Since many users just want the most basic protection and aren't too worried about the details, we've created a script that will ask you questions and set up the necessary files for you using Basic or Digest authentication. To run this script, log in to your shell account over SSH and type the command protect-web.

CGI scripts

Scripts written in perl, PHP, python, or any other language should be placed in the cgi-bin directory inside your home directory (alongside the public_html directory.) For reference in your scripts, the paths to Perl and Sendmail executables on our system are:

            /usr/bin/perl
            /usr/sbin/sendmail

SSL

Secure Sockets Layer is a cryptographic protocol useful when you need to exchange sensitive data through your Website (taking online donations by credit card, for example). If you would like space in the Electric Embers shared SSL area, or a private SSL setup under your own domain, please contact us.

Software Versions

We are currently running Apache 2.2.4, PHP 5.2.6, MySQL 5.0.45, Perl 5.8.8, and Python 2.5.