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So your account has been setup, you have successfully logged in to the control panel, and you can view the InterBax welcome page where your site should be. Now that you know your account is working, you will need to upload your files to the server. Uploading is the process of moving files from your computer to the server. InterBax offers a few different ways for you to do this: File Transfer Protocol (FTP), the control panel file manager, and FrontPage. By far the most flexible and common way is using FTP. The control panel file manager is good if you only need to upload a few files, anymore than three and it is probably not worth your time. If you have designed your site using FrontPage, then you will most likely want to use it to upload your files as well.
In order to upload your files using FTP, you will need to have an FTP client installed on your computer. Below is a list of some of the more common FTP clients in use:
WS_FTP - Very good FTP client from Ipswitch. There are two versions WS_FTP PRO and WS_FTP LE. The WS_FTP LE version is available for free to educational users, government employees (U.S. local, state, federal and military) or to non-business home users. It can be downloaded here.
CuteFTP - Another popular FTP client for window users from Globalscape.
Fetch - A popular FTP client for Mac users.
There are also many other FTP clients available. Visit www.download.com for a large listing of clients.
Once you have installed your FTP client on your computer, you are ready to start transferring your files to InterBax. Each of the FTP clients will provide the same basic function, but the interface can be quite different between each client. Take some time to get familiar with your specific software. All of the FTP clients will need the following information in order to connect to the server (your specific client may use different wording).
FTP host name or address: ftp.yourdomain.com (replace yourdomain.com with your actual domain name)
User ID or Username: username (your FTP username)
Password: password (Your password for your account with InterBax)If you have trouble connecting to InterBax, please check the following:
Username and Password: double check the username and password making sure that they are typed exactly. Usenames and passwords are case sensitive.
Has your Domain resolved on our name servers? If you do not see our welcoming page when you visit your domain name, than your name servers have probably not propagated through the internet yet (see the section on DNS for an explanation). In the meantime you should use the IP number that was included in your welcoming email as the ftp hostname. Once your domain is resolving to our servers you will be able to use: ftp.yourdomain.com
Passive Transfer Selected: if you are behind a firewall, than you will need Passive Transfer to be selected.
Remote Port: this should already be set to 21.
Once you have successfully connected to InterBax, you need to place your files in the directory httpdocs or httpsdocs directory. The httpdocs should be for regular files while the httpsdocs directory is for secure site only. If you are not using SSL, you do not need to place any files in the httpsdocs directory.
IMPORTANT - make sure that your home page is named index.html or index.htmIf everything went smoothly, your page should now be viewable on the web. If you do not see your home page through your browser, please try refreshing the page.
The file manager is located in your control panel and can be useful for quick edits and small uploads. To access the file manager, log-in to your control panel and click on the 'File Manager' link located inside the Hosting section. This feature is pretty self explanatory, but if you need assistance simply click on help from within the control panel.
If you designed your site using Microsoft FrontPage, than you will most likely want to use it to publish your site as well. Many of frontage's features will not function properly if you use FTP to upload the site. You will need to wait until your domain name has resolved to InterBax's name servers before you can publish your site using FrontPage. Below are instructions to publish your site using front page.
Using the correct mode - ASCII or Binary:
Uploading in the wrong format for images or binaries will result in a strange mess appearing in place of the file. For CGI scripts, this mistake has to be the most common cause of that annoying error known as the (Server 500 Error - Malformed Headers), or something to that lovely extent. While this can be the result of many various programming errors, the most popular amongst new users are uploading their scripts in the "WRONG" format. Your cgi scripts "MUST" always be uploaded in ASCII mode. Alternatively, if you upload an image or .exe file, it must be done in "BINARY" mode.
In short, html or text based files are supposed to be transferred in ASCII mode. Uploading them in Binary mode will append ^M's to the end of every line. In most cases, this is OK, with html files because your browser will ignore them. BUT, with other text files such as cgi scripts, uploading them in binary will damage them, thus causing a (server 500 error). This is because binary mode has added ^M's to the end of every line, which are not supposed to be in the program. This of course, is what causes the additional message of (Malformed Headers), which often displays at the bottom of the "Server 500" message when a CGI script has crashed.
Once again, BINARY mode is used for transferring executable programs, compressed files, and all image/picture files. If you try to upload an image in ASCII mode, you'll observer a strange mess appearing on the page where the image is suppose to appear. ASCII mode in this case, has corrupted the binary coding in the jpeg or gif image. If this happens, just re-upload it in the Binary format.
Case sensitivity on a Linux system is a small detail that can throw many newer users into a tailspin. Unlike your local PC, the Linux file system is very particular about "uppercase" and "lowercase" file names. If you name a file called index.html, then you must refer to it as exactly that. Naming it Index.html for example, (observe the uppercase 'I') tells a Linux web server to treat it as a totally different file name.
Linux file servers are exceptionally fussy on this issue, so make sure you pay close attention to "case' when uploading files, or installing and configuring cgi based scripts. Want to keep in simple? Try to stick with lowercase letters in all file names and extensions.
This again is where a number of the newer webmasters become stumped. They upload all of their files and directories, and then want to access them with their browser, but forgetting to create their welcoming page as index.html, so here's what happens: They access their site as http://www.mydomain.com or using the associated IP number, for example, http:// 205.214.69.32, and what they see is a "Forbidden" error instead of their website.
When you access your site by calling it as http://www.mydomain.com or the assigned IP, the web server looks for certain files as the default file (for example: "index.html" or "index.php") to be sent to visitors. This is why http://www.mydomain.com/ by itself will automatically display the home page.
If it can't find index.html, the web server will simply return a "Forbidden" error.
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