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Site Management

There are three types of users on the server: the RaQ Administrator, Site Administrators, and site users. The Site Administrator accesses these functions from the Site Management screen on the RaQ. The Site Management screen has a green strip on the left side. A Site Administrator can add or remove a site user, create a mailing list, manage disk space, back up and restore files and perform other virtual-site-related administrative tasks.

A Site Administrator can manage a virtual site using any standard Web browser. To access the Site Management screen for a site, go to the URL http://www.sitedomain.com/siteadmin/. The Site Administrator login and password must be entered. The Site Management screen can only be accessed using the site domain name in the Web browser. If the domain name has not yet propagated, been registered or modified yet, access the Site Management section using the following URL: http://111.222.111.222:81/.cobalt/siteManage/www.sitedomain.com/index.html (where 111.222.111.222 is the site IP, and www.sitedomain.com is the full site domain name as set-up on the RaQ). Accessing the site by IPAddress/siteadmin will not work.

The RaQ Administrator can access the Site Management screen by clicking Site Management on the Server Management screen.

User management

The User Management section on the Site Management screen allows you to perform administrative functions related to site users: setting the site user defaults, adding or removing users; entering and modifying user names and passwords; managing users' disk space allocations, telnet access and E-mail aliases.

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Setting defaults for a site user

Before assigning the default values for a site user, you must decide on the needs of your users. Both the Site Administrator and the RaQ Administrator can configure the site user default settings.

To edit the default settings for a site user:

  1. On the Server Management screen, click Site Management.
  2. Click on the wrench icon beside the virtual site for which you want to configure the default settings for the site user.
  3. Click Set User Defaults.
  4. Enter the information for the site. You can set the default value for:
    • the maximum allowed disk space (MB) available to a newly created user for their file storage and Web pages
    • the number of sites users to display at one time in the user list on the screen. If there are more site users on a virtual site than the value you enter here, navigation buttons for scrolling through the User List table become active at the top of the table.
    • the format for generating default user login names - initial plus last name, last name, or first name.
    • You can also enable or disable services for telnet/shell access, FrontPage user Web and Secure POP3 (APOP), if the RaQ Administrator has enabled them for the virtual site.
  5. Click Save Changes. Once you have configured the default settings, you can adjust the settings for each site user that you add.

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Adding a site user

You can add or remove users for a virtual site, and assign a Site Administrator for the site.

To add a site user or Site Administrator:

  1. On the Server Management screen, click Site Management.
  2. Click the green wrench icon next to the site to which you want add a user.
  3. Click Add User.
  4. Enter the information for the site user. Enter the site user's name and password, set the allocation of total disk space for the user, enable telnet/shell access (if appropriate), make them a Site Administrator (if appropriate), enable FrontPage user Web (if appropriate) and enable Secure POP3 (if appropriate). You can also enter E-mail aliases for this user here.
  5. Click Confirm New User.

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Removing a site user

To remove a site user:

  1. On the Server Management screen, click Site Management.
  2. Click the green wrench icon next to the virtual site to which the user belongs. The User Management table appears.
  3. In the User Management table, locate the site user that you want to remove.
  4. Click the brown trashcan icon next to the site user. A confirmation dialog box appears.
  5. Click OK to delete the site user's account and files.

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Entering user E-mail settings and aliases

Mail Forwarding and Vacation Reply

Individual site users can choose to have their E-mail forwarded to another E-mail account. Site users can also choose to enable a vacation-reply message that is automatically sent to each person who sends the user an E-mail. This feature is useful when users know they will not be reading or responding to incoming E-mail messages for a period of time.

E-mail aliases

The E-mail Alias feature allows you to create an arbitrary e-mail addresses without creating a user account on the RaQ. An E-mail message addressed to the alias is forwarded to an existing E-mail address. For example, an E-mail alias lets you setup a temporary or permanent alias E-mail address such as sales@mycompany.com and automatically route messages to a specific E-mail user's mailbox. (To this, you'd enter sales in the E-mail Aliases field under user's E-mail settings for the user whom you want to receive this mail.)

Each user's login must be unique, even between separate sites (eg. there can be only one jsmith for the entire server). However, there can be same E-mail addresses @ different domain names. For example, user jsmith of abc.com can have an E-mail alias of john@abc.com. User john of xyz.com would have an E-mail address of john@xyz.com, but, it would not conflict with john@abc.com - as it is a separate, unique virtual site. So, if a user's desired user name is not available, a different username must be used; however, an E-mail address with the user's desired name is still possible, even if there is a user with that username under another virtual site.

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Mailing list management

In the List Management section of the Site Management screen, you can create and manage mailing lists for the virtual site. A mailing list allows a discussion by E-mail between a group of people; the E-mail addresses of the people in the group make up the list. The mailing list is given a name, for example AlphaProject. The mailing list can include users on the RaQ as well as external users. A message addressed to the name of the mailing list is delivered to each person on the list. If one person replies to the message, the reply is also delivered to each person on the list (and not just to the original sender).

To allow users to subscribe and unsubscribe from a list directly (without having to add and remove each user manually using the web interface), make sure to enable the Allow User Subscriptions to List option. Users can then un/subsbcribe to the list by sending E-mail to majordomo@sitedomain.com with the words subscribe listname or unsubscribe listname in the body (where listname is the list's name, for example AlphaProject).

Note that while the list name will appear as listname@www.sitedomain.com, if the site is configured to accept E-mail for sitedomain.com, mail can be also sent to listname@sitedomain.com and majordomo@sitedomain.com (without the www prefix).

For more detailed information, including sample configurations files Download This File

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Developing Web Pages and Sites


You can create complex web pages using any of the standard HTML editors and the HTML publishing capabilities of many popular desktop productivity applications. You can create and link the web pages themselves on your desktop computer, and then move them to the appropriate subdirectory in the RaQ via an FTP application (as described below).

CGI Scripts

The RaQ supports CGI scripts, such as those written in Perl, C, or other languages. If CGI is enabled for your site (in the Site Settings section of the Site Management screen), then you can add CGI scripts to work with your web content. This enables you to develop interactive and powerful web-based applications by building server-side CGI scripts that generate web pages in response to specific user inputs. These applications range from simple scheduling and conferencing applications to sophisticated electronic commerce solutions. You can develop CGI scripts on your desktop machine or, and then transfer them to the RaQ by means of any FTP-based application that allows permission bits to be set to "Executable." (In most cases, CGIs are found at and downloaded from sites such as cgi-resources.com.)

Use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to upload .cgi or .pl files. You should use ASCII mode to upload text-based CGI files (ie. CGIs written in perl). Once the file is on the RaQ, use your FTP program if it supports or, or else use the Telnet command chmod 775 filename.cgi , to make the script executable. The path to Perl is /usr/bin/perl. In order for users (other than the RaQ Administrator) to add CGI files, CGI must be enabled for the user's site (in the Site Settings section of the Site Management screen). CGI scripts must use .pl or .cgi filename extensions in order to be executed by the web server.

For more information see CGI FAQ

Publishing Web Pages via FTP

After creating your web pages, you can publish them to the server using FTP. By default, the files you upload via FTP are stored in your personal directory, the directory path for which is /home/sites/sitename/users/username where sitename is the fully qualified domain name of your site and username is your user name.
Note to site administrators: To post web pages for your site, you must upload to the directory /home/sites/sitename/web. (Only site administrators or the RaQ administrator can upload to this directory.) Unless you specify this directory, your web pages will be stored in your personal directory which is not accessible on the web.

Site administrators may access and edit the site root content in the directory web during an FTP session. Site administrators may edit their personal web pages in the directory users/username/web during an FTP session. Personal web sites are accessible on the web at http://sitename/users/username/ and http://sitename/~username/. Users who are not site administrators may edit their personal web sites in the directory web during an FTP session.

Publishing Web Pages with FrontPage

If FrontPage 2000 Server Extensions are enabled on a site, any site administrator may open the site "root web" using Microsoft FrontPage software. To publish a web page using FrontPage:

  1. Using FrontPage Explorer on a personal computer, select Open FrontPage Web.
  2. Select More Webs.
  3. Type the exact site hostname into the Web Server field.
  4. Click the List Webs button.
  5. Choose the web named root web.
  6. Click OK.
Note: refer to http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/ and http://www.rtr.com/fpsupport/ for FrontPage and FrontPage web information and technical support.

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Using Telnet

Telnet access is available and it can be turned on for individual users by the site administrator (via the User Management section of the Site Management screen). Telnet should be used by advanced users only: users who want to run shell scripts or use shell commands and know how to do so. An advanced user is someone who is proficient in the internal workings of the Unix/Linux operating system and is a well trusted individual (not to attempt to cause problems to the server).

You may log in via telnet prior to DNS Propogation by issuing the command telnet 111.222.111.222, where 111.222.111.222 is the address provided to you.
If logging on after the DNS has propogated, you would issue the command telnet www.your_domain.com (Your domain name)

Once logged in you will be in /home/sites/sitenumber/users/username
To change to your personal web directory you will need to issue the command cd web .

Site Administrators who have a requirement to access the domain web page should issue the command
cd ../../web

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