1. Do I have telnet access?
2. How can I use Form-Email
3. How do I install my own cgi scripts?
4. How do I setup a counter?
5. What can I do with the .htaccess file and what is it ?
6. What is CGI?
7. What is my pathname?
8. What scripts are preinstalled?
9. Where is perl located on your server?
10. Where is the 'date' program?
11. Where is the mail command located?
12. Why won't my script work?

Yes. Read the mail we sent you when you signed up. It has the host.

Form-to-Email can be accessed by
"http://www.serviceisland.com/cgi-bin/formmail.pl"

For more information check out http://www.serviceisland.com/FAQ/formhelp.html

You are allowed SHELL access to our servers. Just upload the script, config it, and your set.

Place your scripts in your public_html/cgi-bin directory. Since that is the only directory that will let you execute scripts.

It is also important to check on the permissions of the directory containing your cgi script. If a directory is either group or world writeable, this leads to a potential security hold, and the script will not execute. The ideal settings for a directory is the octal value 711.

Your CGI script should then be ready to run...

The counter setup can be setup thru the ACCESS PANEL.

The .htaccess file is an ASCII text document that can be placed in any directory on your site. It can be used to control access to files and directories, and customize some server operation in your site. A .htaccess file can be created in any word processor but must be saved as text only. You must use FTP software in ASCII mode to upload or edit your .htaccess file. For the examples provided here, place the .htaccess file in your root directory.

If you use frontpage do not modify the .htaccess because it will mess up your site!

Some examples of the uses are shown here.

Custom Error Messages
Add the following to the .htaccess file::

ErrorDocument 404 /notfound.html

After "ErrorDocument" specify the error code, followed by a space, and then the path and filename of the .html file you would like to be displayed when the specified error is generated.

Denying User Access
Add the following to the .htaccess file:

order allow,deny
deny from 128.23.45.
deny from 207.158.255.213
allow from all

This is an example of a .htaccess file that will block access to your site to anyone who is coming from any IP address beginning with 128.23.45 and from the specific IP address 207.158.255.213 . By specifying only part of an IP address, and ending the partial IP address with a period, all sub-addresses coming from the specified IP address block will be blocked. You must use the IP addresses to block access, use of domain names is not supported.

Password protecting directories.

The file .htaccess.

This file should be in the directory which contains the documents to restrict access to. The contents of this file specify the name of the password file.

For example if you were user username with web documents in the local directory "/home/yourname/public_html/members" that you wanted to restrict access to, your .htaccess might look like:

AuthUserFile /home/yourname/public_html/members/.htpasswd
AuthName Members Only
AuthType Basic

require valid-user

Note that .htaccess will not work if there are extra spaces after AuthUserFile.

The file .htpasswd.
This file contains the passwords of the users.

To create the .htpasswd file log in to this server using telnet, change directory to the directory you want to restrict access to, and type:

htpasswd -c .htpasswd someuser

for the first user (where someuser is the username). You will then be prompted twice for the user's password. The -c option causes the .htpasswd file to be created. For each additional user type:

htpasswd .htpasswd someuser

Other examples can be found at http://www.apache.org

CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface. It is a standard created to provide a consistent interface between web servers and the programs that extend their capabilities.

Should you need to supply a script with your "home directory" or "base directory" or "full pathname", the value that you should enter is:

/home/yourusername

What scripts are preinstalled?

Formmail, Graphical Counters, And more to come.

The path for perl is:

/usr/bin/perl
The first line of the cgi script should read:

#!/usr/bin/perl
If you are having problems executing the script, it could be do to invisible characters surrounding the above line. This is caused most often when saving files in windows with line feeds or when uploading scripts through FTP in binary format.

The best way to clear up these problems is to delete the first line and rewrite it.

Where is the 'date' program?

The date program may be found at:

/bin/date

The mail command may be found at:
/bin/mail

The sendmail command is located at:
/usr/lib/sendmail

Maybe..

If you are attempting to use a preinstalled cgi script, you need to specify the entire url for the script. For example, if you would like to use our form script, the ACTION for your script should read:

ACTION="http://www.serviceisland.com/cgi-bin/form"
The reason for this is that /cgi-bin by itself is a relative url. If you have a real domain name on our server, it becomes relative to your domain name, and web browsers attempt to intrepret it as http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/ thus attempting to look for a cgi-bin directory in your account, rather than the cgi-bin directory for the web server.