Limiting What Search Engines Can Index

Limiting what search engines can index using /robots.txt

Various search engines such as Google have what are called "spiders" or "robots" continually crawling the web indexing content for inclusion in their search engine databases. While most users view inclusion in search engine listings in a positive light and high search engine rankings can translate to big bucks for commercial sites not everyone wants every single page and file stored on their account publicly available through web searches.

This is where /robots.txt comes in. Most search engine robots will comply with a webmaster/site owners wishes as far as excluding content by following a robots inclusion standard which is implemented via the use of a small ASCII text file named /robots.txt in the root web accessable directory of a given domain.

When a compliant robot visits a given site the first thing it does is to check the top level directory for the presence of a file named "robots.txt". If found the directives within the file which tells the robot what if any content it can or cannot visit and index is read, and in most cases honored.

Creating /robots.txt files

To create a /robots.txt file simply open a plain text editor such as Windows NotePad, type or paste your directives and save the file using the file name "robots" (robots.txt). This file should then be uploaded to the /public_html directory such that it's URL will be http://domain.com/robots.txt


/robots.txt syntax

All valid /robots.txt files must contain at least two lines in the following format:

User-Agent: [robot name or * for all robots]
Disallow: [name of file or directory you do not want indexed]

Unless one wishes to implement different rules for specific robots the user agent line should just include an asterisk [*] which is a wildcard read as "rules apply to all robots".

Disallow lines can be used to specify specific files or folders one doesn't wish to have indexed by search engines. Each file or folder to be excluded must be listed separately on it's own line, and wildcards are not supported in Disallow directives. One can have as many or as few disallow lines as is necessary.

Example /robots.txt files

- A simple /robots.txt file which would allow all robots to access and index all content with the exception of the contents of a directory named "private" would be as follows:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /private/

- A /robots.txt file which would exclude all robots from indexing the content of "cgi-bin", "admin" and "stuff" directories plus a page named "private.html" would be:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /stuff/
Disallow: /private.html

- A /robots.txt file which would allow all robots to access and index all content on a given site would be:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

- A /robots.txt file which would forbid all robots from accessing and indexing any content would be:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

- A robots.txt file which would allow Google's spider (aka GoogleBot) to index all content with the exception of files stored under a folder named "private" and which would exclude all other robots from indexing any content would read as follows:

User-agent: GoogleBot
Disallow: /private/

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

- A robots.txt file which would allow all robots with the exception of HotBot's (aka Inktomi Slurp) to index all content with the exception of files stored under folders named "images" and "cgi-bin" and which would exclude the HotBot spider from indexing any content would read as follows:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /cgi-bin/

User-agent: Inktomi Slurp
Disallow: /

More Information

For more details on /robots.txt and the Robots Exclusion Standard visit
The Web Robots Pages at http://www.robotstxt.org

Here is a good list of basic SSH commands.

Common SSH Commands or Linux Shell Commands:

ls : list files/directories in a directory, comparable to dir in windows/dos.
ls -al : shows all files (including ones that start with a period), directories, and details attributes for each file.

cd : change directory . . cd /usr/local/apache : go to /usr/local/apache/ directory
cd ~ : go to your home directory
cd - : go to the last directory you were in
cd .. : go up a directory cat : print file contents to the screen

cat filename.txt : cat the contents of filename.txt to your screen

tail : like cat, but only reads the end of the file
tail /var/log/messages : see the last 20 (by default) lines of /var/log/messages
tail -f /var/log/messages : watch the file continuously, while it's being updated
tail -200 /var/log/messages : print the last 200 lines of the file to the screen

more : like cat, but opens the file one screen at a time rather than all at once
more /etc/userdomains : browse through the userdomains file. hit Spaceto go to the next page, q to quit

pico : friendly, easy to use file editor
pico /home/burst/public_html/index.html : edit the index page for the user's website.

vi : another editor, tons of features, harder to use at first than pico
vi /home/burst/public_html/index.html : edit the index page for the user's website.

grep : looks for patterns in files
grep root /etc/passwd : shows all matches of root in /etc/passwd
grep -v root /etc/passwd : shows all lines that do not match root

touch : create an empty file
touch /home/burst/public_html/404.html : create an empty file called 404.html in the directory /home/burst/public_html/

ln : create's "links" between files and directories
ln -s /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf /etc/httpd.conf : Now you can edit /etc/httpd.conf rather than the original. changes will affect the orginal, however you can delete the link and it will not delete the original.

rm : delete a file
rm filename.txt : deletes filename.txt, will more than likely ask if you really want to delete it
rm -f filename.txt : deletes filename.txt, will not ask for confirmation before deleting.
rm -rf tmp/ : recursively deletes the directory tmp, and all files in it, including subdirectories. BE VERY CAREFULL WITH THIS COMMAND!!!

last : shows who logged in and when
last -20 : shows only the last 20 logins
last -20 -a : shows last 20 logins, with the hostname in the last field

w : shows who is currently logged in and where they are logged in from.

netstat : shows all current network connections.
netstat -an : shows all connections to the server, the source and destination ips and ports.
netstat -rn : shows routing table for all ips bound to the server.

top : shows live system processes in a nice table, memory information, uptime and other useful info. This is excellent for managing your system processes, resources and ensure everything is working fine and your server isn't bogged down.
top then type Shift + M to sort by memory usage or Shift + P to sort by CPU usage

ps: ps is short for process status, which is similar to the top command. It's used to show currently running processes and their PID.
A process ID is a unique number that identifies a process, with that you can kill or terminate a running program on your server (see kill command).
ps U username : shows processes for a certain user
ps aux : shows all system processes
ps aux --forest : shows all system processes like the above but organizes in a hierarchy that's very useful!

file : attempts to guess what type of file a file is by looking at it's content.
file * : prints out a list of all files/directories in a directory

du : shows disk usage.
du -sh : shows a summary, in human-readble form, of total disk space used in the current directory, including subdirectories.
du -sh * : same thing, but for each file and directory. helpful when finding large files taking up space.

wc : word count
wc -l filename.txt : tells how many lines are in filename.txt

cp : copy a file
cp filename filename.backup : copies filename to filename.backup
cp -a /home/burst/new_design/* /home/burst/public_html/ : copies all files, retaining permissions form one directory to another.

kill: terminate a system process
kill -9 PID EG: kill -9 431
kill PID EG: kill 10550
Use top or ps ux to get system PIDs (Process IDs)

EG:

PID TTY TIME COMMAND
10550 pts/3 0:01 /bin/csh
10574 pts/4 0:02 /bin/csh
10590 pts/4 0:09 APP

Each line represents one process, with a process being loosely defined as a running instance of a program. The column headed PID (process ID) shows the assigned process numbers of the processes. The heading COMMAND shows the location of the executed process.

Putting commands together
Often you will find you need to use different commands on the same line. Here are some examples. Note that the | character is called a pipe, it takes date from one program and pipes it to another.
> means create a new file, overwriting any content already there.
>> means tp append data to a file, creating a newone if it doesn not already exist.
< send input from a file back into a command.

grep User /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf |more
This will dump all lines that match User from the httpd.conf, then print the results to your screen one page at a time.

last -a > /root/lastlogins.tmp
This will print all the current login history to a file called lastlogins.tmp in /root/

tail -10000 /var/log/exim_mainlog |grep domain.com |more
This will grab the last 10,000 lines from /var/log/exim_mainlog, find all occurances of domain.com (the period represents 'anything',
-- comment it out with a so it will be interpretted literally), then send it to your screen page by page.

netstat -an |grep :80 |wc -l
Show how many active connections there are to apache (httpd runs on port 80)

mysqladmin processlist |wc -l
Show how many current open connections there are to mysql

mysqldump -u username -ppassword dbname > file.sql
MySQL Dump

tar -zxvf file.tar.gz
UnTAR file

mysql -uusername -ppassword database_name <file.sql
Importing MySQL database

which [perl]
Finding path to [perl]

How to use a SWF file as your homepage without embeding into an html page.

1. Name your shockwave flash file as index.swf
2. Edit the .htaccess file in your /public_html/ directory and insert the line blow.

DirectoryIndex index.swf

Now your shockwave file should come up as the homepage without having to embed it into a html page.

Installing Teamspeak for voice chat on a server.

Installing Teamspeak for voice chat requires a Dedicated IP and SSH access.
Download the latest Teamspeak server binary for linux from goteamspeak.com.
Upload the tar.bz2 to your home directory.
Follow these steps:

tar xjf ts2_server_rc2_20201.tar.bz2

cd tss2_rc2

./teamspeak2-server_startscript start

./teamspeak2-server_startscript stop

This will extract your Teamspeak server, start your Teamspeak server and stop it.
You need to start it once so it will create an admin password and a superadmin password which will be located in your server.log file.
You need to edit the server.ini file, and change the line BoundToIp1= to show your dedicated IP. Now that you have edited your server.ini file, you need to start your TeamSpeak server by typing:

./teamspeak2-server_startscript start

Getting Server 500 errors on your php scripts? Try reading this.

When a php script requires write access to a file or directory (like Nucleus does for the 'media'-directory if you want to be able to upload pictures etc), you have to chmod that directory (or file) to 777 (or 666 for files) on most servers. This gives world write access to this folder (file). This is because on most servers apache (and php) runs as user 'nobody'.
Although giving world write access will make it possible to use the script, it also means a security hole, which can be used by hackers and other riff-raff.
To avoid this security hole some ISP's install phpsuexec on their servers (like mine did a few days ago). Using phpsuexec php runs under your own username on the server. This removes the necessity to make files and folders world writable. Instead you can just use 755 for folders (the default) and 644 for files (also the default).
But using phpsuexec has some other consequences: some statements in your .htaccess file will result in an error 500 (internal server error). So here are the two problems of which i know, and how to solve them (btw: these problems are Apache specific, since IIS isn't as advanced as Apache):

ForceType

When you are using files with (or without) an extension different then the normal extension for that filetype you can use ForceType in your .htaccess file to make it clear to the server how to handle that file (or all the files in the folder) (this works on servers without phpsuexec).
An example: When you have a file called 'item' (like Nucleus uses for FancyURL's) and want it to be parsed by the server as php you use the following code in your .htaccess file:

??? ForceType application/x-httpd-php

However, when your server uses phpsuexec this will result in an internal server error. To solve this you can simply use SetHandler instead of ForceType, so your .htaccess-file becomes:

??? SetHandler application/x-httpd-php

php_value

On a server without phpsuexec it is possible to use the php_value statement in a .htaccess-file to change settings of php (actually overwrite the settings from php.ini). On a sever with phpsuexec this will also result in a server error. To solve this you can use a php.ini file which you put in the same folder as where you would have put your .htaccess file. In that php.ini file you can change all the php values. You only have to put the values you want to modify in that file. By example if you want to set the short_open_tag to Off you would have used short_open_tag? = off in your .htaccess file. Using a php.ini file this results in:

[PHP]

short_open_tag = Off

Optimizing Your Images

You can now use the 'Image Manager' in your control panel to rapidly resize images in your directories.

bitmapped (or rasterised) graphics

When producing new versions of a graphic from the original, always use the original to make each new version . This will retain as much of the quality as possible. And always ensure that the image mode is on rgb color .
This is because each time a graphics package shrinks an image , it reduces the number of colours , therefore reducing the quality. So if you use the original every time , you will always get the most colours possible.
This also means that unless the image is a vector image , you can't create a good quality larger version as there won't be enough colours to render the image at the same quality.
Once a graphics package, such as Adobe Photoshop or Macromedia Fireworks , has optimized the graphic, you cannot get back to the original quality . Gifs are indexed color and jpgs may have have their quality reduced to shrink the file size.
There will always be the sacrifice between quality and file size - smaller file size = quicker download times.

re-sizing images in a web page

Never use the width and height attributes of the < img > tag in the html of a web page to resize images. If you use this method to reduce the image size, you will increase the download time of the page as a whole. This is because the browser has to "re-draw" the image at an incorrect size which takes longer.
In addition, never use this technique to increase the size of an image - it severely reduces image quality as well as taking longer to download . Use you favorite graphics software to re-size your images properly and include the correct width and height dimensions for a speedier download. This means your site will look better , and your visitors will be happy with a quicker download time.

The main domain on the hosting account uses the public_html folder for all of its Web site files. Any addon domains use subfolders inside the public_html folder. In order to also set up your main domain to use a subfolder on your hosting account you will need to set up a redirect in the .htaccess file in the public_html folder so that the server knows that any request for your main domain will be redirected to a subfolder on public_html.

Visitors to your Web site will not be able to tell that your main domain is using a subfolder, they will still see the Web site address as http://www.yourdomain.com/page.html

# .htaccess main domain to subfolder redirect
# Copy and paste the following code into the .htaccess file
# in the public_html folder of your hosting account
# make the changes to the file according to the instructions.


# Do not change this line.

RewriteEngine on


# Change yourdomain.com to be your main domain.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?yourmaindomain.com$


# Change 'subfolder' to be the folder you will use for your main domain.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/subfolder/

# Don't change this line.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

# Change 'subfolder' to be the folder you will use for your main domain.

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /subfolder/$1

# Change yourdomain.com to be your main domain again.
# Change 'subfolder' to be the folder you will use for your main domain
# followed by / then the main file for your site, index.php, index.html, etc.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?yourmaindomain.com$
RewriteRule ^(/)?$ subfolder/index.php [L]

How to enable the function to manually update AwStats.

If you want to manually update your stats, here is what you do.
Find you awstats folder. (it's outside of public_html in the tmp directory, usually, /home/username/tmp/awstats/)
You need to find and edit awstats.yoursite.com.conf
Change HostAliases=" " to HostAliases="localhost"
Change AllowToUpdateStatsFromBrowser=0 to AllowToUpdateStatsFromBrowser=1
Save and Set the permission for awstats.yoursite.com.conf to read only (chmod 444) to prevent server from over writing changes
Now when you open AwStats in cPanel there will be a link next to the date that says Update now

How do I add a Favorites icon to my site?

Step 1 - creating the image

• Using your favorite graphics software, create a 16x16 pixel image depicting your icon
• Most web sites use a smaller version of their logo or similar
• The main consideration is to keep your icon simple and clear at such a small size
• It is also often important to use as few colors as possible
• Most browser interfaces (the top tool bar containing the browser buttons) can display 256 colors, but it's best to use the Windows 16 colors
• Save this image as favicon.bmp
• It is important to save as .bmp format as some icon editors won't open .gif format graphics

Step 2 - creating the icon

• Open up your icon editor and browse for your saved .bmp
• We recommend using IconForge from CursorArts ( http://www.cursorarts.com/ca_if.html )
• When you open your .bmp to create an icon from it, make sure that you are using no more than 256 colors (IconForge gives you the option to choose how many colors) and preferably the Windows 16 colors
• If necessary, edit the image
• Save the image as an icon
• Make sure it is called favicon.ico and now has the file extension .ico

Step 3 - including the icon in your web pages

• Publish the icon into the root directory of your web site
• This is where Internet Explorer will automatically look for it when a visitor bookmarks your site
• Help the browser find your icon by including in the html, before the <head> tag, the following: <link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.your-web-site-name.com/favicon.ico">
• Preferably nearer the closing tag, because more important information, such as your meta tags, should come earlier
• Save your web page and publish it
• If you want to create different icons for different pages , simply call them something other than favicon.ico, but still retaining the .ico suffix
• Link to them in your pages in the same way as above, just changing the href location for the different icons

Step 4 - testing your icon

• Open Internet Explorer (version 5 or above) and bookmark your page
• Determine if your i con stands out from other bookmarked web sites with favorites icons
• If necessary, re-edit your icon and publish it again
• However, you will need to remove the bookmark (Favorites > Organize Favorites, select your bookmark and click "Delete") and delete your temporary Internet files and page history (Tools > Internet Options, tab "General" and click "Delete Files" under "Temporary Internet Files" and click "Clear History" under "History").
• This may take a few minutes if you haven't done this recently
• Close your browser and re-open it , bookmark your page again to check the new version of your icon
• Repeat until you're satisfied your icon is suitably eye-catching

Using Meta Tags to your advantage.

meta tags

• Meta tags are included in the html, between the and at the top of the document
• It is crucial to get the correct information in these as this could decide whether or not your web site is listed
• The meta tags (in the HTML of each page) for title , keywords and description should be utilized to their full value, and match keywords that appear in the body of the page
• Some search engines (not all) use meta tags to obtain the information about your site - directories don't use them
• Meta tags are an important aspect of search engine optimization 

My Domain name isn't resolving to my new account yet, so I have to visit my Word Press install with a url like http://70.103.189.86/~username/wordpress/ . I don't get any images or themes to show up, just the text. I also can't log into my Administrator Panel, because logging in wants to take me to a url with my domain name in it. How can I change my settings to allow me to view my Word Press Blog before my domain name resolves?

This requires a little MySQL trick. It's one simple edit in the database.

First, make sure that your Word Press installation is complete, and you know what the name of the database is. If Fantastico installed wordpress for you, it's likely the name of the database is something like:
username_wrdp1
or
username_wrdp2
and so forth.

Next, log into your cPanel. Select the function "MySQL Databases". Down at the bottom, there is a link to phpMyAdmin (looks like a sailboat.)

Once here, you need to select your database name from the drop down box on the left. (ie "_wrdp1")

This will display the names of the Tables underneath the dropdown box. Click on the one called "wp_options".

Now there is a list of tabs at the top of the page to the right of the drop down box. The First one is called "Browse". Click there.

Next, the database entries are listed in columns and rows. You want to select the Pencil Icon (for Edit) on the left for the VERY TOP row (option_name is "site url")

Once you've clicked the Pencil Icon, you will see your domain name listed something like this:
http://ineedtotest.com

You want to change that to something like this:
http://70.103.189.86/~username/wordpress/
This step is crucial you don't make a mistake. Please take a moment to verify the url you are typing in here is correct, or you won't see any change.

Once you've changed the url, down at the bottom there is a Dropdown Box that says "Save". If it does not say Save, change it to Save, then select the "Go" button. After you hit "Go", you're done. Visit your temporary URL for your blog, and all the images will show up just fine.

***Follow-up
Once you've changed your name servers so your domain name resolves to your account, you don't have to go back into phpMyAdmin to make the change again. Simply log into your Admin Panel, there is a tab for "Options". In there you will see:
WordPress address (URI):
Is set to your temporary url. Change this to your domain name with any folders required, and you're back to normal.

How can I protect the images on my website?

Here is the 'no right clicks' script.
You can stop right clicks with a script (copy and paste it from this page if you want to) in the HEAD section of your page.

<script type="text/javascript">

var msg="mouse right click disabled.nn(or any message you want)";<BR><BR>

function click(e) {
if (document.all) {
if (event.button == 2) {
alert(msg);
return false;
}
}

if (document.layers) {
if (e.which == 3) {
alert(msg);
return false;
}
}
}

if (document.layers) {
document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN);
}
document.onmousedown=click;

</script>

Instructions to set different character sets in HTML.

NOTE: Not all character sets will be correctly rendered with this encoding format, but most will. You can find specific information about which character encoding will display http://www.w3.org/International/O-charset.en.php.

Many web browsers display Western Character Encoding (ISO-8859-1) by default. This means that pages with text in a non Western alphabet, like Cyrillic or Arabic, will often look garbled. Unicode, on the other hand, is capable of displaying several alphabets; the standard Unicode encoding is UTF-8.

Not all character sets will be correctly rendered with this encoding format, but most will. You can find specific information about which character encoding will display http://www.w3.org/International/O-charset.en.php.

To ensure that your web page displays correctly across different web browsers and platforms (if it's not in English), you should take the following steps:

1. In your HTML document, insert an XML line which specifies your character encoding under your Doc Type Declaration (DTD). If you're using UTF-8, then the line will look like this:

<?xml encoding="UTF-8"?>

2. When coding your HTML, be sure to include a META tag in your header specifying the character set. If you're going to encode your page in Unicode, specify UTF-8 as your character set in the META tag. If you're going to use UTF-8 encoding, your META tag will look like this:

<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">

3. When saving your HTML, be sure that the character encoding is set to whatever you've specified it to be. If you choose UTF-8, then you will need to save your page in that type of encoding.

4. In your Modwest account, add an .htaccess file in the directory where your web pages using non Western encoding will be. If your entire site uses different characters, then you can put your .htaccess file in /htdocs. Inside of the .htaccess file, add this line:

AddDefaultCharset Off

How do I create a PGP certificate?

First you will need to go to the File Manager and create a folder with the name of .gnupg in the root folder (the folder File Manager opens to initially).
After you have created this folder with the permissions of 755 then you can go back to the control panel and click on "Manage OpenPGP Keys." From here click on "Add Key," fill out the requested information and click on "Generate Key."

I am having problems with running CGI scripts for addon domains what should I do?

Solution: Open the .htaccess file for the domain that you are having problems with and enter this in

"Options ExecCGI"

and click save

Example of how to stop people from being able to use the subdomain to get to your addon domain.

Put this in the .htaccess file located at the subdomains folder


RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^subdomain.domain.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.subdomain.domain.com$
RewriteRule .* http://otherdomain.com/ [r]

How to stop a directory index from being shown

Sometimes, for one reason or another, you will have no index file in your directory. This will, of course, mean that if someone types the directory name into their browser, a full listing of all the files in that directory will be shown. This could be a security risk for your site.

To prevent against this (without creating lots of new 'index' files, you can enter a command into your .htaccess file to stop the directory list from being shown:

Options -Indexes

When I try to log into my OSCommerce shopping cart, my shopping cart isn't the same. It's like I have 2 carts, one for HTTP (unsecure) and one for HTTPS (secure).

This is a problem with the cookie settings. These are easy to fix with a simple change in the includes/configure.php file.

Edit the configure.php file located in the includes directory for your OSCommerce install. For this example it is:
~/public_html/catalog/includes

I have 5 lines I am concerned with:

define('HTTP_SERVER', 'http://www.domain.com'); // eg, http://localhost - should not be empty for productive servers
define('HTTPS_SERVER', ' https://localhost '- should not be empty for productive servers
define('ENABLE_SSL', true); // secure webserver for checkout procedure?
define('HTTP_COOKIE_DOMAIN', 'www.domain.com');
define('HTTPS_COOKIE_DOMAIN', 'secure.<hostingcompany>.com');

The third line defines that when you are dealing with checking out and account configuration, it uses a secure link. ALl other links will be unsecure. You want to make sure that the HTTP_SERVER and HTTPS_SERVER domain names are equal to the HTTP_COOKIE_DOMAIN and HTTPS_COOKIE_DOMAIN setting as well. You will notice you do not include the "https" or the "~username" or any other folders at all, just the domain name.

With these settings, your viewers will have a seamless transition between secure and non-secure sites.

How to Set different character sets with php to display correctly.

There is a character encoding setting inside of your php.ini file. By default, this is set to the standard Latin encoding (ISO-8859). If you would like to encode your page with different characters, like Arabic or Hindi, you will need to change this.

Most character sets will display correctly with UTF-8 encoding. If you're using an Asian character set, you may need to select a different encoding standard; you can find out specific information about which character encoding will display your characters correctly here.

You can find your php.ini file in this directory:

/public_html/php.ini

To change the character encoding in your php.ini file, find the following line and input your preferred character encoding. In the example below, UTF-8 is the character set.

default_charset = "UTF-8"

Note that by default, the default_charset option is commented out. Be sure to delete the leading semi-colon so it does not look like this:

;default_charset = "UTF-8"

Installing Ventrilo for voice chat on a server.

Ventrilo is a voice chat program (VOIP) that you can install on your account. Dedicated IP and SSH access required. Download the latest linux server binary from ventrilo.com
Upload the tar.gz to your home directory
Do the following:

mkdir ventrilo

mv ventrilo_srv-2.3.1-Linux-i386.tar.gz ventrilo

cd ventrilo

tar xzf ventrilo_srv-2.3.1-Linux-i386.tar.gz

You will want to configure your ventrilo_srv.ini with the name you would like of the server, and the passwords.
Down at the bottom you need to put in Intf= and your dedicated IP address after the [Intf].
Once you have changed the configuration in the ventrilo_srv.ini file, you can start the server by typing "./ventrilo_srv -d".
This will start the server in a background state.
To stop server type: kill `cat ventrilo_srv.pid`

How to reset your password for Advanced Guestbook when you have lost it.

To retrive the guestbook password select the guest book db in PHPMyAdmin and the table book_auth. While browsing it will show you the user name.
run this sql command to change the password at the SQL query box in PHPMyAdmin

update book_auth set password=PASSWORD('pass') where username='user';

where 'pass' is your password and 'user' is the user name.

How do I create a custom redirect?

Open the .htaccess for proper domain and use the following pattern:

Redirect /olddirectory/oldfile.html http://yoursite.com/newdirectory/newfile.html

When browsing in Internet Explorer, my favicon.ico doesn't load.

There are a few solutions for this problem.
* Add the page to your favorites. If you already have the page in your favorites folder, remove it and add it again.
* Make sure, the icon file is called favicon.ico and it is placed in the root folder of your web server.
* Make sure, the path to the favicon in the header of your page is absolute, not relative.
* Delete your temporary internet files. If the folder with temporary files has reached its maximum, the favicon may not be used.
(Courtesy of http://www.rw-designer.com/favicon)

How do I display my home page which is using a different name? A name other than index.html.

You can add a line to your .htaccess file telling the server which file name you want as the home page.

Example: DirectoryIndex home.htm index3.php index.htm index.html default.htm

I have lost my login and password to Advanced Guestbook

To retrieve the guestbook password select the guest book db and the table book_auth. While browsing it will show you the user name.
run this sql command to change the password

update book_auth set password=PASSWORD('pass') where username='user';

where 'pass' is your password and 'user' is the user name.

How do I change the way webalizer looks?

There is a file in your home directory with a file called "webalizer.conf". You can make any changes to this file you like, and the next time stats are run, you will see the changes.

Is there a way for me to have an add-on domain and check the stats for that site outside of the control panel?

Yes there is with Webalizer, follow these steps:

Note: You will need SSH Access to complete these steps, it is also recommended to have some Linux background.

1) Log into your cpanel and look for SSH/Shell. (This is the direct access to the Server it will be a command prompt It will look something like this:
username@box** [/home/username]#

2)Once logged into the account you will want to navigate to the desired folder (I.E. cd to public_html/AddonDomainFolder)


3)Once in the addon domain folder you will want to create a symbolic link
* To create a symbolic link use the syntax: ln -s TARGET stats   (I.E. ln -s /home/USERNAME/tmp/webalizer/subdomain.mainaccount.com stats)


The target directory will be /home/username/tmp/webalizer/SubDomain.MainAccount.com (the subdomain that was created when you made the add-on domain)

Setting for Pine.

in the role setup set option "Use SMTP Server" to
"mail.*YOURDOMAIN*.com:25/tls/user=*username@yourdomain.com*/novalidate-cert"

in ~/.pinerc set the following config option:
"disable-these-authenticators=PLAIN"
(disable-these-authenticators is already there just empty)

Please also note that you wont' be able to use any smtp server that doesn't
require any authentication

The TLS Option also have to be put into the server configuration line...
otherwise it won't work. novalidate-cert or whatever makes it so the certificate ya'll have on there doesn't say "hey
the servers invalid".

I have an application that requires Sox binaries to operate.

Warning you absolutely need ssh to do this.

First proceed to http://sox.sourceforge.net/ and download a build of the software, for instance sox-12.17.9.tar.gz for instance was what I downloaded. Make sure you have SSH enabled for your hosting account, ftp the file to root of your ftp account. Execute the commands contained within the single quotes 'tar -xfvz sox-12.17.9.tar.gz' then 'cd sox-12.17.9'. After you have done this its now time to compile and build. Type in './configure ; make'. After the binaries of the application are made 'cd src' then 'mkdir ../../public_html/sox' after doing this 'cp -v sox soxmix tests.sh testall.sh play play.in ../../public_html/sox/' and now your domain.com/sox/ contains the program files you need.