Web Service

For more information contact us at support@tokios.com

This service allows you to administer your web site and control the performance of web site services. In this document we will look at the web service in the Unix plan. The Windows plan works similarly to Unix, but offers a somewhat different set of features.

Accessing the Web Service Page

To access the Web Service page, select Domain Settings in the navigation menu, and on the page that appears click the Edit icon in the Web Service field:

This will open the Web Service page.

Working with Web Service Settings

At the top of the page you will see your basic web settings:

• Domain Name: the front door address used by visitors to enter your site. Click the domain name to go back to the Edit Domain Info page. You can enter your site from here clicking the View icon.
• Server Configuration: Any changes you make to this page will take effect only! after you restart the apache web server. To restart it, just click the Apply link. If no changes have been made, Server Configuration will show as OK.
• IP Address: If you have a dedicated IP address, you can go to your site by clicking the link. The difference between dedicated and shared IP is discussed in the Domain Management chapter.
• Preinstalled Scripts (version 2.09 and higher): H-Sphere comes with free pre-installed CGI scripts written in Perl, PHP, and ASP. These are the counter, guestbook and a web-chat. If you accidentally delete any of your CGI scripts and/or index page (index.html), you can restore it by clicking the Restore to default link. The system will create the missing files and skip any of existing ones: this way you will not lose any of your changes. If you want to get rid of any undesirable changes in you CGi scripts and restore H-Sphere's default settings, you will have to delete the files you want to restore and then click the Restore to default link. Also, use the Restore to defaultlink to fix up your temporary index page and graphics to default.
  See the Contents of Your Home Directory chapter of this manual for more information on the files and catalogues not to be deleted.
• Site Studio: click Login to enter SiteStudio, a powerful site construction tool enabling you to create a professional-looking site in a matter of minutes.

Configuring Your Apache Web Server

The next section allows you to configure your apache web server:

• Indexes: The index page is the first page entered on your site. If for any reason it is corrupted or missing, apache can automatically generate a substitute index page. Switch the radio buttons to enable or disable this option.
• Symbolic links: If your file system supports symlinks, enabling these options will allow you to use them.
• Multiviews: If for any reason the requested file is not available, apache will redirect the request to other files with the same name, but a different extension. This is exceptionally useful in handling files with similar extensions, such as .htm, .html, .shtm, etc.

Adding More Features

Further below is the list of features that you can add your site to enhance its functionality:

SSL support

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer protocol) is a standard for transmitting confidential data such as credit card numbers over the Internet. Most true business sites support this feature which allows more security in data transmitted over the WWW. This is the standard minimum safe security level for true business on the Internet. SSL works by using a private key to encrypt data that is transferred over the SSL connection. To read more about what is SSL and how it works, go to http://www.modssl.org/docs/2.8/index.html

Click here to go to the SSL page of this manual.

Shared SSL support

Shared SSL uses WildCard (server-wide) certificates to service multiple domains. Thawte determines a wildcard certificate as "a single certificate, with a wildcard character in the domain name field. This allows the certificate to secure multiple hosts within the same domain. For example, a certificate for ' *.domain.com ', could be used for www.domain.com, www1.domain.com, www2.domain.com, in fact, any host in the domain.com domain. When a client checks the host name in this certificate it uses a shell expansion procedure to see if it matches."

According to VeriSign, a shared SSL certificate "enables Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to provide SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption and business authentication to Web business customers, but without the need to issue unique digital certificates to each hosted customer. The service offers ISPs the convenience and streamlined management of a single specially licensed SSL digital certificate to share among multiple hosted Web sites".

WildCard certificates work only within one domain level. For example, if you get a domain name for *.domain.com, it will work for www.domain.com and subdomain.domain.com. But it will not work for www.subdomain.domain.com.

FrontPage extensions

To enable FrontPage Extensions support, click the ON/OFF button. In the window that appears, enter the login and password you will need to upload your web pages with the FrontPage Publish Web feature:

You can change FPE login and password at any time in the future by clicking the Edit icon that appears next to the ON/OFF button.

CGI

To add a CGI alias, click the Add icon.

In the window that appears, enter File Extension for the files you want to be regarded as scripts. For example, entering .pl extensions will mark all *.pl files as executable scripts. The file extension must begin with a dot. This configuration will not affect other users.

Server Side Imagemap (version 2.09 and higher)

This feature allows your server to regard files with a specific extension as map files. In other words, the server checks the file with the specified extension to define the links of an image (unlike a client-side image map, which uses the info inserted into the HTML code) and reports back to the browser where to go.

To add an imagemap file extension, click the Add icon.

Enter the File Extension in the window that appears. The files extension must begin woth a dot, for example .map.

MIME

According to Webopedia, MIME is "Short for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, a specification for formatting non-ASCII messages so that they can be sent over the Internet. Many e-mail clients now support MIME, which enables them to send and receive graphics, audio, and video files via the Internet mail system. In addition, MIME supports messages in character sets other than ASCII.

There are many predefined MIME types, such as GIF graphics files and PostScript files. It is also possible to define your own MIME types.

In addition to e-mail applications, Web browsers also support various MIME types. This enables the browser to display or output files that are not in HTML format."

There are many predefined MIME types, such as GIF graphics files and PostScript files. In addition, you can also define your own MIME types. To do so, click Add MIME Type link. New MIME Type page will appear:

• File Extension: Begin file extension with a dot.
• MIME Type: e.g.: text/rtf or video/mpeg.

PHP3

According to Webopedia, "PHP Hypertext Preprocessor is a server-side, HTML embedded scripting language used to create dynamic Web pages.

In an HTML document, PHP script (similar syntax to that of Perl or C) is enclosed within special PHP tags.

Because PHP is embedded within tags, the author can jump between HTML and PHP (similar to ASP and Cold Fusion) instead of having to rely on heavy amounts of code to output HTML. And, because PHP is executed on the server, the client cannot view the PHP code.

PHP can perform any task any CGI program can do, but its strength lies in its compatibility with many types of databases. Also, PHP can talk across networks using IMAP, SNMP, NNTP, POP3, or HTTP. Click the button to enable PHP support."

SSI

To add an SSI alias, click the On/OFF button. In the window that appears, enter your SSI File Extension.

The file extension must begin with a dot.

CGI dir

Click the ON/OFF button to enable or disable the cgi-bin directory. This will not delete the directory or any of its content, but will stop running any cgi scripts for your site.

MIVA

For details read the Creating an Online Store section.

Error

Define the actions to be taken if the requested page on your site is missing. Click the Add icon to configure the error document. In the form that appears enter the error document settings:

• Error Document Code : Enter the error code to change the default message. One of the common errors is File Not Found.
• Message or URL : Enter a text message the visitor will receive or the URL of the page that the visitor will be taken to if the requested page is not found.
• Type : Specify if the text in the previous field is a URL (Redirect) or an error message (Message).

Logs

Enable writing error logs, transfer logs, referrer logs and agent logs. You can view these log files using Telnet. See Viewing Web Statistics.

Webalizer

Enable the program that analyzes the transfer log and generates readable HTTP transfer reports. It requires transfer log to be enabled. See Viewing Web Statistics.

Modlogan

This package is functionally similar to Webalizer, but it also supports FTP, RealAudio and other protocols. See Viewing Web Statistics.

Server Alias

Add an alias to the domain.

Redirect

With this feature you can redirect Internet users from one URL to another. When an Internet user tries to connect to a URL that is redirected, he is taken to the address this URL is mapped to.
To redirect a URL, click the Add icon in the Redirect entry. The following form will appear:

For example entering:
http://www.demo.com/products in the 'Redirect from: ' field and http://www.demo.com/new_proucts.html in the 'to' field will take all the 'http://www.demo.com/products' visitors to the 'http://www.demo.com/project.html' page.

Note: URL path must be an absolute path, not a relative path.

Redirect Status set to

• Permanent
  returns a permanent redirect status (301) indicating that the resource has moved permanently.
• Temp
  returns a temporary redirect status (302). This is the default and indicates to the client that the resource has moved temporarily.
• Seeother
  returns a "See Other" status (303) indicating that the resource has been replaced.
• Gone
  will cause a visitor's browser display "The requested resource is no longer available on this server and there is no forwarding address. Please remove all references to this resource." message when trying to go to the 'to' URL.

This is how you can add a 'redirect' under the Windows plan:

Redirect Status set to

•  The exact URL entered above redirects requests for any files in the indicated directory to one file.
  - For example, to redirect all requests for files in the 'products' virtual directory to the file new_products.html, type 'www.demo2.com/new_products.html in the 'to' text box and select this option.
• A directory below this one redirects a parent directory to a child directory.
  - For example, to redirect your 'demo2.com/products/new' directory to a subdirectory named 'products', type 'products' in the 'to' text box and select this option. Without this option, the Web server will continually map the parent to itself.
• A permanent redirection for this resource sends the following message to the client: “301 Permanent Redirect.” Redirects are considered temporary, and the client browser receives the following message: “302 Temporary Redirect.” Some browsers can use the “301 Permanent Redirect” message as the signal to permanently change a URL, such as a bookmark.

ColdFusion

Windows plans include some services that are unavailable under UNIX plans. One of them is ColdFusion, a popular and sophisticated set of products for building Web sites and serving pages. With ColdFusion, you can build a content database using input templates and combine these with application programs to create a Web site in which pages are developed dynamically as they are served. Find out much more about ColdFusion at the Allaire home page.

Users that were created under H-Sphere Winbox will automatically have .cfm and .dbm extensions handled by ColdFusion libraries:

Users can also assign custom extension to be handled by ColdFusion.

NOTE: Users that were not created under Winbox, will not have the default extensions included.

Directory Indexes (version 2.09 and higher)

In H-Sphere 2.09 you can set custom directory indexes. In other words, you can tell the Internet users' browsers which page should be loaded first as they enter your URL e.g. www.mywebsite.com into thier browsers' Address field. H-Sphere sets this page to /index.html by default, but you may still set another custom welcome page or even the sequence.

To disable H-Sphere's defult settings, toggle the ON/OFF button to enable the resource.

On the page that appears, click the Edit icon next to the ON button.

In the Directory Index box enter the page(s) that you want your visitors to be referred to when entering your site and press Update. You may enter several pages separated by spaces (e.g. index.html cgi.bin about.html). This way, you point the visitor's browser to a different page (in the order that you enter them into the box) if the first one on the list for some reason cannot be reached.

NOTE: Under Unix plan you have to restart Apache to apply the changes you have made. Press Apply in the Web Service -> Server Configuration row.

Throttle Policy

Throttle Module was developed to to reduce the load on your bandwidth by delaying or refusing requests to your sites. To enable the Throttle Module, toggle the ON/OFF button to enable the resource.

Next, click the Edit icon next to the ON button. In the drop-down box that appears, choose of eight throttling policies.,

The eight 'throttling policies' (each expecting two parameters: a limit and a time period) are:

• Concurrent - impose a limit on the number of concurrent requests at any one time. The period specifies how long data is accumulated before the counters are reset.
• Document - excluding requests for HTML page elements such as images and style sheets, impose a limit on the number of requests per period. When this limit is exceeded, all further requests are refused, until the elapsed time exceeds the period length, at which point the elapsed time and the counters are reset. Note that the requests (hits) column of the throttle status display does not include the requests for page elements.
• Idle - impose a mimimum idle time between requests. When the miminum is not reached, the request incurs a calculated delay penalty or is refused. First, whenever the elapsed time exceeds the period length, then the counters are reset. Second, if the idle time between requests exceeds the minimum, then the the request proceeds without delay. Otherwise the request is delayed between one and ThrottleMaxDelay seconds. If the delay would exceed ThrottleMaxDelay, then the request is refused entirely to avoid occupying servers unnecessarily. The delay is computed as the policy minimum less the idle time between requests.
• Original - impose a limit on the volume (kbytes sent) per period, which when exceeded the request incurs a counter-based delay penalty or is refused. First, whenever the elapsed time exceeds the period length, then the volume and elapsed time are halved. Second, if the volume is below the limit, then the delay counter is decreased by one second if it is not yet zero. Otherwise, when the limit is exeeded, the delay counter is increased by one second. The delay can be between zero and ThrottleMaxDelay seconds, after which the request will be refused to avoid occupying servers unnecessarily.
• Random - randomly accept a percentage (limit) of the requests. If the percentage is zero (0), then every request is refused; if the percentage is 100, then all requests are accepted. The period specifies how long data is accumulated before the counters are reset.
• Request - impose a limit on the number of requests per period. When this limit is exceeded all further requests are refused until the elapsed time exceeds the period length, at which point the elapsed time and counters are reset.
• Speed - impose a limit on the volume (kbytes sent) per period, which when exceeded the request incurs a calculated delay penalty or is refused. First, whenever the elapsed time exceeds the period length, then the limit (allowance) is deducted from the volume, which cannot be a negative result; also the period length is deducted from the elapse time. Second, if the volume is below the limit, in which case the request proceeds without delay. Otherwise the request is delayed between one and ThrottleMaxDelay seconds. If the delay would exceed ThrottleMaxDelay, you refuse the request entirely to avoid occupying servers unnecessarily. The delay is computed as one plus the integer result of the volume times 10 divided by the limit.
• Volume - impose a limit on the volume (kbytes sent) per period. When this limit is exceeded all further requests are refused, until the end of the period at which point the elapsed time and counters are reset.

You can also set throttle policy to None which imposes no restrictions on a request and used as a place holder to allow monitoring. The limit currently serves no purpose. The period specifies how long data is accumulated before the counters are reset. Remember to apply the changes you have made. Press Apply in the Web Service -> Server Configuration row.