Site Layout
The basic 'architecture' of the site is that each user has a home
directory and a web directory, and also a place to put cgibin scripts.
"Home" versus "Web"
Your private area is in the /home area, i.e. "/home/joebob". This
is where you can keep your email and other personal files. Things
in this area are _not_ visible to web users.
There is a directory called 'www' in your home area. This is actually
a link to where all your web files can be kept. So anything you
put under 'www' will be visible to the web. We use 'www' as a link
to the '/web/virtual/' disk so that web-visible and personal files are
kept separate. This way, one is less likely to accidentally make
one's personal email or such publically available. Also, it means
a bad web script or web problem will only affect web stuff, and
can't mess with your personal files.
To the external world, all files in the /web area are visible
as being on rpg.net. So files in "/web/joebob/" are seen as:
http://www.rpg.net/joebob.
Remember, "/home/joebob/www" is actually a link to "/web/virtual/joebob",
so they're really the same thing.
Scripts
If you wish to write scripts, they should be placed in the 'cgibin'
directory of your web area, and should end in either ".cgi" or ".pl".
We provide this directory so you can develop your own scripts
safely, securely, and without conflict with others.
There are also other scripts in the global 'cgibin' directory,
"/web/virtual/rpgnet/cgibin". You can read these and use them, but (of course)
not edit or change them (only the RPGnet webmaster can do so).
From time to time we'll announce new tools here that you may want
to use.
Getting files here
A note on file transfers-- depending on your homemachine, a file
transfer in "binary" mode of a text-only file may leave embedded
"^M" (control-M) characters at the end of each line. This will
result in bad HTML and will make cgibin scripts fail. If you write
a perl script and it does not work, the best tests to do are:
- check for the presence of anomalous ^M characters in the file
- verify that the script works by running it at the command line
(i.e. just invoke it by hand, not using a browser) to see if the problem
is related to HTML, or is due to script programming.
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