From Apis Networks Wiki

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Filesystem organization 3 Setting up additional e-mail accounts 3.1 Desktop access 3.2 Webmail 4 Adding new users 5 Managing Your Website 5.1 Uploading Files 5.2 Generating Website Statistics 5.3 Adding new domains 6 And beyond... 6.1 Shell access 6.2 Trac, Rails, Django

Introduction

Welcome to Apis Networks. We have written this guide as a brief introduction to managing your hosting account. This guide will cover the basics, but for more advanced topics please see the Resource Center. To make things simple, we will assume three things:

1. Your domain name is example.com
2. Your primary username is euser
3. Your password for euser is epassword

Everything beyond these three minor differences will apply to your account.

Filesystem organization

Three methods exist to upload files to your Web site, FTP, the File Manager from within the control panel under the Files section, and WebDisk, accessible from the Files section of the control panel. FTP login information is provided within your welcome e-mail and file manager access is a few clicks away. Your basic home directory is organized as follows:

/home/euser |-- .mailfilter |-- Mail/ | `-- .Spam/ |-- mainwebsite_cgi -> ../../var/www/cgi-bin/ `-- mainwebsite_html -> ../../var/www/html/ `-- index.html

Additional files may be located inside your home directory, but are rarely used.

.mailfilter

Basic e-mail filtering skeleton used by maildrop

Mail/

Stores all of the e-mail for this particular account.

mainwebsite_cgi/

Main Website CGI files should be uploaded here and are accessible via http://www.example.com/cgi-bin/. This directory may also be accessed as /var/www/cgi-bin.

mainwebsite_html/

Main Website files should be uploaded here and are accessible via http://www.example.com/. This is your document root for the primary domain. This directory may also be accessed as /var/www/html.

mainwebsite_html/index.html

Placeholder page for your Web site. Remove this file once you are ready to begin working on your site.

Setting up additional e-mail accounts

Every account starts off with two e-mail addresses and one user account. Two sections of the control panel are used to create new e-mail accounts, first Manage Mailboxes maps e-mail addresses to user accounts active on the server. It also allows you to setup forwarding to external e-mail accounts. Creating a new user account can be accomplished under Add User. Once added to the system an e-mail address is implicitly created for the user unless an alias named after the user exists in the system. This behavior allows you to create a new user on the system and not worry about mapping an e-mail address to the user.

Desktop access

Configuring your e-mail client to connect to the server is simple. Setup a new e-mail profile as you normally would in your respective e-mail client. POP3 and IMAP are supported; however, we recommend using IMAP for its inherent flexibility. Your incoming (IMAP or POP3) and outgoing (SMTP) mail server is your domain name, mail.example.com. Your login is your full login, euser@example.com, and lastly be sure to enable outgoing authentication within your e-mail client otherwise you will be unable to send e-mail from the server.

Webmail

Sometimes you are away from your desktop and need to check your e-mail. You may also access e-mail through a webmail client. Three webmail clients exist, whichever one you choose is your preference. All three e-mail clients access your e-mail on the server in the same process and you may switch between any of the three, but remember address books and custom options do not transfer over to other webmail clients.

• Horde: http://horde.example.com/
• SquirrelMail: http://mail.example.com/
• RoundCube: http://roundcube.example.com/

Adding new users

It may be necessary to create additional logins on the server to give untrusted users access to your hosting account for add-on domain management or e-mail access. New users are created through the "Add User" link in the control panel under Users. After a user is created, a home directory is created named after the username in /home. This directory may only be accessed by you from within the File Manager.

Users given FTP access to upload and download files from their Web space may be untrusted. Untrusted users may be restricted to just their home directory for security reasons. Restricting access to a particular directory is called jailing. Jailing is configured by editing /etc/vsftpd.chroot_list.

Managing Your Website

Uploading Files

Your document root represents the location from which all files are served. This location is /var/www/html, which is also accessible via mainwebsite_html/ inside your home directory -- remember seeing `-- mainwebsite_html -> ../../var/www/html/ in "Filesystem organization"? The entry on the left side is called a symbolic link. ../../var/www/html is its referent, better understood as "the directory to which it links".

Before uploading your Web site, be sure to remove your placeholder page named index.html. Your main page must be named index.html, index.htm, index.php, or any supported extension.

Files may be uploaded either through the File Manager, a FTP client, or WebDisk. Your File Manager allows you to extract files on-the-fly. After creating the zip file on computer with your files, upload it, then visit the File Manager. The control panel will recognize it is a compressed file by attaching the compressed icon () next to the file name. Click on the icon to view the compressed file and extract the contents to the directory of your choice, e.g. /var/www/html.

Going through the File Manager may be too slow for some individuals. You connect to the server directly with a FTP client. We recommend the following freeware FTP clients: SmartFTP for Windows, CyberDuck for Mac, and gFTP for Linux. The directory layout is the exact same as within the File Manager. Additional details are available under the FTP section of our resource center. Like connecting to the mail server, your login is euser@example.com and password epassword.

Finally, our newest addition to file management is our WebDisk utility. This is a fully compliant level 1 WebDAV server that you can access from your desktop. Visit Files -> WebDisk to download the setup files. Follow the instructions on the screen and you may access the server as a regular disk drive. Please note that there are some limitations with managing files from the WebDisk interface. Always be sure to download the file to your computer first before attempting to open it.

Generating Website Statistics

Every account includes at least one Urchin profile for reporting Website statistics. Additional profiles may be purchased for $1 per month by filing a ticket. Before Urchin can generate statistics, it must be manually enabled for your account. Visit Urchin 5 under Reports to enable Urchin. Once Urchin is setup it will begin generating statistics at 12 AM EST every night.

Adding new domains

An unlimited number of domains may be bound to your account through Multiple Domain Manager. You must purchase the domain through a registrar prior to adding it onto your account. We do not provide direct domain registration services. New domains clone all e-mail addresses attached to the primary domain automatically. E-mail addresses that are not in use should be removed separately through Manage Mailboxes.

And beyond...

Shell access

Basic and higher packages include shell access. Shell access gives you direct command-line access to the server. You may use the shell to run a lightweight service bound to a reserved port or kill a runaway process (don't forget to mount procfs first!). More advanced usage information may be found in the "Shell Quickstart" guide. We have designed the server to resemble a RedHat/CentOS filesystem layout. If you are familiar with either Linux distribution, then usage should be extremely simple.

Trac, Rails, Django

For the adventurous types we have quickstart guides available for Trac, Django, and Ruby on Rails.