Quick Start FAQ

The document covers some of the problems you may come across with the initial set up of your web pages.

Contents
Should I use upper or lower case filenames?
What should my first page be called?
Where can I store my images?
What does "Connection refused" mean?
How can I tell if the server is down?

Upper or lower case
It is important that you remember you are running in a UNIX environment which is case sensitive. So if you have upper case letters in your file name, then you should use the same case for all references to that file.

What should the first page be called?
We recommend that your initial page should be called index.html. If your initial file is called anything else then it must be explicitly referred to in your URL.

If there is no file referenced as index.html in your directory, a listing of the files on your directory will be shown when your site directory is accessed (e.g. http://<your-domain>).

You should also note that one of the features of Apache is that it will look for an index file in the following order:

index.asis
index.html

Storing your images
You should store your image files(GIFs or JPGs) in your docs directory or a subdirectory of docs. However, you should ensure that the directory name for these files is not gifs or icons as these are reserved directory names on the server.

What does "Connection refused" mean?
If you see a Connection refused message when you try and connect to the web server then this suggests that there may be a configuration problem with your connection. The servers do reverse DNS lookups, so if your connection is giving the wrong information you will be unable to connect - this is particularly true if you try and use a new Demon Dialup account when the DNS for the account hasn't propogated to all the name servers properly.

What to do if your pages won't serve
If you think the server is down then please check the following.

Check the Demon status messages by fingering status@gate.demon.co.uk and motd@gate.demon.co.uk.
Try to ping your site, i.e.
www.<your-domain>.
If this fails try to ping other sites to ensure that your set-up and the network in general is OK.
If you can ping the server but your browser will not show your pages, try to telnet to uk-upload.demon.co.uk, specifying port 80. If this works then the server is running and there may be fault in your browser. If telnet to port 80 does not work, then
Web support is available 24 hours on 0845 272 2555.