You don’t need to set up a web server in order to automate the delivery of your information products. This section is for people who don’t want to pay a cent for hosting their downloadable information products and web sites. Hosting your own web pages gives you much more hard drive space and easier control of your HTML documents. This section will also go over typical issues when setting up a web server and a solution for each issue.

Internet Service Providers (ISP’s)

Here is a little information on most Internet Service Providers (ISP’s). If you’re on a basic ADSL or Cable package, then chances are you have some restrictions on your Internet account. Common limitations are certain port blockages, and IP address assignment process. First, let’s look at ports.

Ports

Ports are used for communication on the Internet. There are a lot of them, and knowing what they all do is not important for this document. What is important is that your ISP may be blocking you from accepting requests on port 80, which is the HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) port. HTTP allows you to surf the Internet. If you look at the address bar on your browser, you will always see “HTTP”. This means that you can access the Internet on an outgoing basis, but you can’t accept incoming HTTP connections. Why? Think of your ISP as doing you a favor. By blocking port 80, they are eliminating the chance of your computer from ACCEPTING viruses, spyware, and all sorts of other malicious activity. The problem is, this also blocks your ability of accepting other HTTP (port 80) requests, therefore preventing you from being a web server. To find out if your port 80 is blocked, you will either have to go to your ISP’s web site and find your license agreement, or call their technical support line and ask. Either way, this problem is easily solved in the next few pages. We will now move on to the next issue, IP Address Assignment.

IP Address Assignment

An IP (Internet Protocol) address is a unique identifier that gives your computer a “home” on the World Wide Web. Most basic Internet packages, including all dial-up connections, work on a dynamic IP address assignment process. The problem this causes is that if your IP address is always changing, how is anyone supposed to find your “home”? It would be like you lived in your house for 5 hours, and then left. Even your trusty mailman would get confused! One solution is to call your ISP and get your Internet package upgraded to a business plan, which will change your IP from dynamic to static, but at an extra cost. The other is to use a great free tool that we will explain in the next section.

To find out your IP address, click “Start”, then Run, type “Command”, click “OK”. When the black window, known as the “Command” window opens, type “ipconfig /all”. This will yield your current IP configuration. If you see a line that says “Lease Expires”, and it’s soon, then you definitely have a dynamic IP. Don’t worry if it expires soon, you’ll get a new one as soon as it does. You will also notice a 4-octet number, seperated by 3 periods next to its appropriate description, “IP Address”. This is your IP address.

No-IP.com

Who is No-IP?

These guys are great!

Before we get into it, lets define what a domain name is. A domain name is a alphanumeric representation of your IP address. In other words, any “www” name you enter into your address bar actually reflects an IP address. If you open up your command window again and type “ping www.articleautomate.com”, you will notice there is an IP
address in square brackets next to my domain name in the results.

Now, let’s move on.

First, No-IP will give you a web name and you don’t even have to pay for it! That means you don’t have to purchase a domain name. Any “www” address you see in your address bar is a domain name. When you use No-IP.com, you will receive a domain name that looks like www.yourname.no-ip.com. Notice the “no-IP” part. Since No-IP.com is a free service, they add that to your “www” name. This is fine because the purpose of your site is to serve your articles to your customers through your eBay and Paypal “Instant Purchase” sales, although you can also serve web pages. Your domain name also remains easy to remember.

Second, your dynamic IP address issue simply disappears. No-IP.com has developed a free piece of software that you download from them and install on your PC. What it does is monitor your IP address, and when your IP changes, it tells the No- IP.com server, which updates your “www” name to reflect your new IP address.

No-IP.com Registration

Now that you understand what No-IP is, you are ready to go out and get registered. Click the link below, find their “Sign-up Free” link, and fill in the blanks.

www.articleautomate.com/no-ip

Once you have fully registered, you will receive a confirmation email. Follow the directions on the email. Next, log into your No-IP.com account, and click on the “Add” link under the “Hosts/Redirects” header.

The “Hostname” textbox is where you will enter your “www” name, and the dropdown is the No-IP.com extension of your choice.

If your ISP does not block port 80 then you don’t need to do any port redirecting. Just click the “Create Host” button at the bottom of the page.

If your ISP does block port 80 then click on the “Port 80 Redirect”. A new page will load, but will look almost the same. For the “Port”, enter 8000. Click the “Create Port Redirect” at the bottom of the page.

Registration is complete – on to the software!

Click on the “Downloads” tab at the top and then click “Windows” on the left column. Click on the No-IP DUC v x.x.x link. (x.x.x because the version is always changing)

Follow the wizard to install the program. Once installation is complete, you will be prompted for the email address and password you entered during registration. After entering this, the console will open. Turn to the next page to see what your console will look like.

Notice the smiley face. That means the No-IP.com server has been updated with your current IP address.

Now that you have your domain name set up, you have to start hosting your pages! The next section will introduce you to an excellent program called Abyss Web Server by Aprelium.

Abyss Web Server

What is Abyss?

Simply put, Abyss is a free personal web server for Windows, MacOS X, Linux, and FreeBSD. Abyss is just a web server, and does not allow for any FTP protocol. You can access your console remotely to update directory and user settings, but you can’t upload any files unless you are at the computer running the web server.

Installation

Click on the following link:
www.articleautomate.com\abyss

Find the “Download” link under the “Software Resources” header near the bottom of the page. Click on the “Download Abyss Web Server X1 for Windows” link and install the software.

Once the installation is complete, you will be asked for a username and a password. This identifier will then be your login to your web server. You will also see the Abyss icon in your system tray. After entering your login info, you will be prompted again for a username and password. You will always be prompted for your login information with this screen whenever you start your console.

You should get a console that looks something like this:

Do not change the “Server Root”. This is where your web server runs.

Change your “Documents Path” to the path you wish to host your pages from. For this book, I will use “c:\article”.

If your “Port” isn’t already set to 8000, do that now.

Any changes that you make will require a server restart, which is nothing more than clicking a button when you are prompted.

If you ever need to access your console again, right click on the Abyss icon in the system tray, and select “Show Console”. Please take into consideration that we have only skimmed the surface with Abyss Web Server and that there is much more to learn about it, such as setting up directory and user permissions, and your access statistics.

We will now move on to a “suggested” method of setting up your web server directory.

Directory Structure

Before you start creating HTML and putting your article online, you may want to look at how you want your web server’s file system to be set up. I have found that it is easier to maintain when you have the following setup: For this example, I have set my “Documents Path” to c:\article. To create a directory, read “Directory Creation”.

Take a look at the image below:

You will notice that we are in the article directory, and there is an index.htm file. This file will be your website’s home page. Next, you will see an images folder and a widgets folder. You will store all of your website’s images in the image folder. The widgets folder will contain another “index.html” file, which will contain the download link to your article.

Directory Creation

To create your “article” directory:

1. Right-Click the “Start” menu.
2. Click on “Explore”.
3. Navigate through the tree until you find “C:” and click on it.
4. In the right window pane, right-click on some white-space, and select “New”, then “Folder”.
5. Name your folder “article”.

Follow this process to create your “images” and “widgets” directory. We will look at creating your “index.html” file in Section 4 or this article.

Test Your Server

Next, test your server. Run the “ipconfig” command, and write down your IP address. Open a new web browser and in the address bar type: yo.ur.ip.addy:8000/

If you get the Paypal button you created and tested earlier, you have correctly installed Abyss. Notice the “8000”. This directs the website to your port 8000. If you decide to run your server on a different port, you will need to change this figure to be the same.

Now try your No-IP domain name “http://yourname.no-ip.com”. Notice that your address bar changes to your IP address?

If you don’t want the address to change to your IP, then you will have to log into your No-IP account and edit your Host settings from “Port 80 Redirect” to “DNS Host,” but the difference will be that your domain will look like www.yourname.no-ip.com:8000.

Troubleshooting

If you experience problems, such as “error 404 - Page cannot be found”, then try some of these suggestions:

1. Make sure there is an “index.html” file in your “c:\article” directory.
2. Make sure your “Documents Path” is set to “c:\article”
3. Make sure you see the following icons in your system tray (bottom right):
4. Make sure your web address DOES NOT contain a “WWW” in it. It should follow this exact protocol: yourname.no-ip.com.

If all none of these suggesstions work, the following link:
www.articleautomate.com/serverhelp

A standard FTP configuration file that provides far too many details about how de server is setup, includin’ installation paths, location of logfiles, generic username and associated group, etc.

To see results; just write in de (www.google.com/) search en’ine de code:

filetype:conf inurl:proftpd.conf -sample

Tools Needed:

SmartFTP [ smartftp.com ]
NAPALM FTP Search Site [ search.ftphost.net ]
vcdquality.com Release Nfo Site
DAMN NFO Viewer or just notepad [www.damn.to ]

This tutorial is so i can stop answerin’ tha same questions everyday in this tutorial I’ll explain how to use search sites like NAPALM effectively. basically better search results and a quality release. We are goin’ to use a movie as de example so here we go.

First thin’ I do is try and figure who released it and if any were nuked and why most of de time you can find de NFO at de sites below

www.deisonews.com - www.nforce.nl - www.vcdquality.com
we are goin’ use vcdquality to find out NFO on Tomb Raider: The Cradle Of Life
h**p://www.vcdquality.com/index.php?imdbid=0325703

Say you chose de copy Centropy released

Here is de link to de nfo file

h**p://www.vcdquality.com/nfo.php/ctp-tr2.nfo?id=16662&show=text&save=1

If you read it you see a section that says Archives [56/56*15]

Ok so now you know your lookin’ for 2 CD’s and that are Split RAR files at 15mb each. You will also see this (( password is “drudgereportdotcom” )). Im sure that will help later so now to go find de file names by doin’ a search.

Here are some sites you can use

NAPALM - RELIZ - AMUN - FTPSpider

Im goin’ to use NAPALM for de example do an un-filtered search for “tomb raider centropy” without de quotes. But I wouldn’t recommend always searchin’ as above because de name of tha Movie/App/Game/ReleaseGroup isnt always goin’ to be in file name or url. So results could be limited but it helps on gettin’ correct file names. You should notice that de file name seems to be in this format ctp-tr1.r54 and ctp-tr2.r54. “ctp-tr1.r54″ is in a file from CD1 and “ctp-tr2.r54″ is in a file from CD2

Ok so now we know de file names, so search for ctp-tr2.r54 and you will have more streamlined results before we had over 100 results from each ftp that had this movie. With one result per file at over 50 files per cd, that would take way to lon’ to go through page by page till you get to each FTP site.

Now that we have tha search narrowed down by a sin’le file name each result is a different ftp site. Notice also that I have searched for a high number file from cd 2. The reason for this is because it is more likely that it has been fully uploaded and not missin’ any files because most people start uploadin’ from cd1 and in order of first split file .rar .r00 .r01 and NOT from cd2 and backwards .r50 .r49 .r48.

Ok that was easy enough but now we get to de hopefully not slow part of DOWNLOADING de files. Normally you can get better speeds from an anonymous server because you can use multiple connections at once. Say de server only gives ya 4k download, you may be able to connect 50 times at once and get more like 200k download, but a FTP that needs a Password and user name normally isnt that easy. The reason is normally bacause only 1 connection per IP is allowed and amount of users at one time is limited to about 15 or less, so dere are always a lon’ line of peope waitin’ to get in. Basically even if we could have more than one connection per IP, if it took 9 hours to get access you would need to wait that lon’ for each connection or thread. By de time anoder thread connected you would have probably already finished downloadin’ de file anyway.

NAPALM search site has nice search and filter option that will only show anonymous servers in de results page. Now open up SmartFTP and dere are a few options we want to be sure and change.

Tools > Settin’s > General:
Set Default Download Path to whatever you want

Tools > Settin’s > Connection:
Set Max Retries to -1 (( -1 = unlimited ))
Set Retry Delay to @ least 40 sec.*

*(( because some ftp will ban if you hammer/try and login to often ))
*(( read welcome messages on tha ftp log/status window for possible hammer rules ))

Tools > Settin’s > Connection > Keep Alive:
Make sure Keepalive is checked
Set interval to about 40
(( if set to low will be anoyin’ & to high may not be effective on some sitez ))
Highlight NOOP in de list and push Remove
Now type LIST into de box and push tha Add
(( This is de command that keepalive uses to pretend your not idle ))
(( some ftps will kick you out if you are idle to lon’ ))
(( and some still do with tha NOOP command we so have changed it to LIST
(( if you want you can change it to somethin’ better all i know is this works for me ))
(( nobody wants to sit for 9 hours waitin’ to get in den get kicked out ))

SmartFTP also has Clipboard monitorin’, so all you need to do is have smart ftp runnin’. Go Back to NAPALM. Right click a link and select “Copy Shortcut” from tha menu and smartFtp will popup and say FTP URL in clipboard detected. If you want to open that site, just cick yes.

But it can be even more simple than that if you want.

Tools > Settin’s > Display > Prompts:
Uncheck: On URL Catch
(( Now it will just open tha FTP without any prompt ))

When you are conectin’ to ftp you need to watch tha log/status window

For possibe crap links (( dead links and/or ratio sites )), dese are tha most common errorz to look for:

530 Account Disabled.
No connection could be made because de target machine actively refused it. A connection attempt failed because de connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.

550 Permission denied
While tryin’ to download a file
(( this is probably a ratio site if it has everythin’ you ever wanted and more & looks to good to be true ))
(( it probably is and id just move on to tha next site ))

Anoder problem you may find on anonymous ftp is that tha files or folders are not dere. 2 reasons for that is dey were eider deleted or just moved. If dey were moved this could be a problem most people uploadin’ to anonymous ftp, made a huge maze of locked folders to hide deir files and that makes for an endless task tryin’ to find de files unless you have an application that can spider de ftp and has de capability to get through locked folders. To have a list of every file on de ftp I dont know of any public application i can recommend with that capability. But dey do exist. This app can get through locked folders and may help. It seems like a crap program, but de best i could find on google in about 5 min worth of searchin’ is:

PubView.zip - www.jtpfxp.net has nfo about dir lockin’ & breakin’ dirs

Ill go over some basic instructions on downloadin’ from Anonymous and NonAnonymous Sites, or maybe i should say sites that allow more than one connection per IP and ones that dont.

We will start with anonymous or multiple thread capable FTP

Once you have de ftp open and you see de files you want. Just drag and drop them into de Global Queue tab on de transfers window and den just push de start button. We should have de In Speed at bottom right status bar. If its not goin’ fast enough, you can adjust de amount of connections/threads you have runnin’. Keep addin’ threads until your bandwidth is maxed or until your total In Speed doesnt get any faster. Anoder thin’ you may wanna keep in mind is that you can connect to more than one ftp downloadin’ CD1 from one site and CD2 from de oder etc. for a combined speed.

Now we go onto NonAnonymous Sitez

You cant use Global Queue because you cant have multiple threads, so just right click de file or folder you want and select Download > Direct > Select Folder. Most of dese sites will be slow and could take hours maybe days to get into, so what i do is just open every sin’le result in NAPALM at de same time. I figure that i have a better chance waitin’ on 10 sites rader than 1. So when you have them all open just close out de ones that have de errors mentioned above, den you can walk away and check every so often to see if you have gotten in one yet. This is where de keepalive option helps out and of course if you happen to get into more than one at a time
just go for tha combined speed method if it is goin’ slow.