Introduction

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How much space do I get?
Where is my control panel?
What will my URL be?
Can I keep my URL if I upgrade?
Can I run scripts?
Can I use Server Side Includes?
Can I have custom HTTP error code pages (e.g. 404 not found)?
Are subdirectories allowed?
Can I use the space for commercial purposes?
Can I have private FTP space?
Do I get logs for my website?
How can I get help with my webpages?

How much space do I get?

Each user has 20MB of space on the Homepages server, which can be divided up into different directories. For more details on your disk space and bandwidth allowance please see the 'Quotas' section of your control panel. To get more disk space, you can upgrade to one of the commercial packages via your control panel.

Where is my control panel?

The customer control panel is located at https://admin.dwh.demon.net. The username and password will initially be the same as the details for your Dialup or Broadband account.

If your homepages web address is http://www.sample.demon.co.uk and/or your email address is someone@sample.demon.co.uk, then please follow these steps to log in to your Homepages control panel smoothly:

visit https://admin.dwh.demon.net.
In the "User name" field insert your account's name (in the example above that would be "sample" without the ""). Note that you must not include ".demon.co.uk" in the User name field.
In the "Password" field use your account's Connection password (if you changed your password since Saturday 16th June 2007 please use your latest password)
Once logged in to your control panel you may change the password. By doing this you will also change your FTP password - used for uploading changes to your website, so you must make sure the password used in your FTP client is the same password that applies to your control panel.
Once you have logged in to your Homepages control panel you can set a different password for your website if you wish. One advantage to having a separate password is that if you have a third party designer managing your website you will not have to reveal your Dialup or Broadband connection password to that third party.

What will my URL be?

If your Demon host name is sample then the address of your web site will be http://www.sample.demon.co.uk/

When a URL of that form is called (in other words, one without the name of a file on the end) the web server will automatically display a file called either index.html or index.htm in lower case letters. For other pages, people will need to give the name of the page; so to see the page Welcome.html you would need to ask your web browser to fetch http://www.sample.demon.co.uk/Welcome.html

For more information about this, see the information regarding setting up your pages .

Can I keep my URL if I upgrade?

The new Homepages service provides a smooth upgrade path from Homepages to our commercial web hosting services. When you upgrade via your control panel you will keep the same username and password. You will not have to re-upload your content to a different server.

In addition to having a domain name for your commercial website, such as www.somedomain.com, you will also be able to use your original Homepages URL for your site, provided the SDU or Broadband service associated with that Homepages URL remains open .

If you would prefer to have a commercial web hosting site that has not been upgraded from Homepages (in other words, a completely separate webspace account with a different username and password) then please sign up via http://www.demon.net/webhosting rather than using the upgrade button on your homepages control panel .

Can I run scripts?

There are four scripts supplied as part of your webspace, but you cannot run any other scripts on the Homepages service. If you wish to run your own custom CGI scripts then please upgrade to one of our commercial web offerings via your control panel.

The provided scripts for Homepages are an access counter, an image mapper (for pictures with clickable hot spots), an email form processor and a script to test your email forms.

More details about this are included in this FAQ in the section about Running Scripts .

Can I use Server Side Includes (SSI)?

Yes, there is some basic SSI functionality. To make use of these functions, your pages inside the docroot folder must end with the file extension of '.shtml' instead of '.htm' or '.html' (it is not possible to use .htaccess to change the Mime type for .htm or .html files)
Please note that these functions are not supported by the helpdesk.

Find out which SSI functions are allowed on the Homepages service.
Find out which SSI functions are not allowed on the Homepages service

Can I have custom HTTP error code pages (e.g. 404 not found)?

Yes you can. Edit the templates inside the /errpages/ directory at the root level of your FTP upload directory.
You can also use basic Server Side Includes (SSI) functions within these pages, even though the file extension ends with .html instead of .shtml.

Please note that Internet Explorer will ignore your custom error codes and display its own internal error message if the file size of your custom error code page is less than 512 bytes.

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Are subdirectories allowed?

Your website content needs to be uploaded into the 'docroot' folder on the FTP server: homepages.demon.co.uk
You can create subdirectories inside this folder if you wish, e.g. docroot/images or docroot/my-sub-directory/another-sub-directory

Your docroot directory must include an index page (index.html or index.htm in lower case) for standard accesses, in addition to any other pages and directories you set up. This is used to indicate that your site is active.

The following directory names can not be used as subdirectories within the docroot folder:

/logs/	Used to store logs for customers' sites (password protected)
/stats/	Used to store Webalizer stats for customers' sites (password protected )
/i/	This links to a set of images used for branding on the server
/icons/	Standard image library
/controlpanel/	NOTE: The customer control panel is actually at: https://admin.dwh.demon.net
/default-err/	Links to /errpages in the root of your directory. You can put custom 404 messages etc. in the /errpages directory

Can I use the space for commercial purposes?

Commercial use of the space is permitted. However, the terms of use for the standard dialup account relating to disclosure of your password apply. In particular, your password is your responsibility and must not be disclosed to any third party. See the Acceptable Use Policy for more information.

Homepages FTP and Dialup/Broadband passwords are no longer linked together, so you can set a separate FTP password for your Homepages webspace.

Can I have private FTP space?

FTP space is not provided as part of this service. If you have public domain information which you want to make available for users to download, then you may be able to offer it via the publicly accessible Demon FTP server .

You can also include items in your webspace for people to download using their browser. The extensions recognized by browsers as files to be downloaded include .zip, .exe, and .hqx. For example, if your host name is sample and you place an archive myfiles.zip in a directory called archives inside your docroot folder, it could be accessed with a link to http://www.sample.demon.co.uk/archives/myfiles.zip.

Many browsers will automatically detect this as a file to be downloaded, and will start the process for the user.

Do I get logs for my website?

Yes. If you look at your control panel you will see a section for 'Statistics' which gives a basic view of the amount of hits and bytes being transferred from your site, and you can view the 'Log file analysis' which gives a more detailed breakdown of your site usage via 'Webalizer'. For more help on using these facilities, please refer to the context-sensitive help guides on your control panel.

You can also download the 'Raw' HTTP logs from your site. These are located in the /logs/ folder. The raw HTTP logs are currently kept for seven days for each site; however, if customer log files begin to consume too much disk space then it may be necessary to reduce the length of time these raw logs are kept on the server. Please note that the helpdesk does not give support for analyzing the Raw HTTP logs .

How can I get help with my webpages?

This FAQ should answer the most common questions regarding using your webspace. You can also access some useful tutorials to help you to find out more. A self-help newsgroup, demon.homepages.authoring , is also available.

Support is only available relating to use of the service. No support will be given for HTML authoring or page design.

Click here for a fully functioning free trial of Terrapin FTP Browser to upload websites. Defaults are optimised for Demon Homepages and a link checker is included. This software requires Windows™ 95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000 or XP.