"members.aol.com" Frequently Asked Questions For complete instructions regarding using AOL's member FTP/WWW site, please use keywords MYPLACE and NETHELP on AOL. The "members.aol.com" FTP/WWW site is the server that allows AOL members to post independently authored Web pages or files for FTP to Internet accessible disk and servers. The alias "users.aol.com" refers to the same server machines, and the two names can be used interchangeably. Table of Contents 1. How do I get a home directory on the "members.aol.com" site? 2. How do I upload files? 3. What is the URL of my Web page? 4. What cgi-bin programs are available on members.aol.com? 5. Can I accept uploads off the Internet? 6. Can non-AOL members access this space? 7. How much disk space do I have to work with? 8. Can I use my AOL login/password when ftping from outside of AOL? 9. How about using a different FTP/WEB-update programs while on AOL? 10. How can I best import files from other Internet accounts? ----- 1. How do I get a home directory on the "members.aol.com" site? The first time you use the (keyword FTP) AOL FTP client to go to the Favorite Site "members.aol.com", a "/screename" directory is created. A "private" subdirectory is also created by default; this is used by the AOL personal publishing tools and should be left in place. A "README" file which is a pointer to the latest copy of this FAQ is also installed. 2. How do I upload files? There are 3 new icon buttons at the bottom of the directory screen: o Upload - upload a file o Create Directory - create a new subdirectory o Utilities - delete or rename an existing file or directory The Upload and Create Directory function will ask for the file/directory name to be created on the members.aol.com server. The Utilities button will operate on the item selected in the directory listing on this form. These upload function buttons are also available when you use a real (non-anonymous) login to other remote FTP sites, and in some directories on remote systems that the FTP client believes to be for anonymous uploading. 3. What is the URL of my Web page? Well, if AOL screen name "JoeUser" uploaded an "index.html" file to his directory, the URL would be either http://members.aol.com/joeuser/index.html http://members.aol.com/joeuser/ These two are equivalent, since the web server will search for either an "index.htm" or "index.html" filename when given a directory name in an http URL. The "/screenname" portion of the path is not case sensitive (upper and lower case are interchangeable), but all trailing path components will be case sensitive (eg., INDEX.HTML and index.html are not the same!). MS/DOS members *please* keep this in mind. The casing of the file names in your HTML documents must match the casing of the file names on the Unix disk. Also, the file/directory names must consist of alphanumerics, underscores, hyphens and periods (and must not begin with a period or hyphen). No spaces are currently allowed in file or directory names. 4. What cgi-bin programs are available on members.aol.com? See http://members.aol.com/wwwadmin for cgi-bin and other web publishing details. 5. Can I accept uploads off the Internet? Yes. You have to create an "incoming" directory, which will give the world write access. But only you will be able to read the files that other people place there; other users - including the web server - will not have access. Be aware that this may take up a large part of your 2MB FTPspace. All other directories and files you create will be readable/writable by you from the AOL service, and readable by everyone else. 6. Can non-AOL members access this space? Yes. Anyone able to run anonymous FTP or a web browser can access this site. We do not allow browsing of AOL user names, so someone wishing to access your space needs to know your screen name. For example, a non-AOL member would have to FTP to the members.aol.com site, then immediately do a cd /screenname An AOL member would have to FTP to the Other Site members:/screenname 7. How much disk space do I have to work with? The default is 2MB of space per screen name. After this limit has been reached, no further uploads will be allowed. 8. Can I use my AOL login/password when FTPing from outside of AOL? No (well, not yet). The Internet-connected machines at AOL do not have access back to the systems where the membership data is kept, so there is currently no way to verify login/password information on external connects. 9. How about using a different FTP/WEB-update programs while on AOL? You should be able to use any TCP/IP FTP client you want. The keys are: (a) Set up ftp using the client-dependent instructions given below. (b) You must be logged into AOL at the same time. (c) You should login anonymously to members.aol.com with "@aol.com" in your password, i.e., - login as "ftp" or "anonymous" - password "yourscreenname@aol.com" That's it. The server will identify the connect as originating from an AOL user and give full access to the appropriate ("/yourscreenname") file hierarchy. Here are the client-dependent instructions. A quick summary by AOL client type follows. AOL2.5 for Windows - Keyword "winsock" on AOL, download the AOL winsock into c:\windows. If you already have a winsock there, rename the old one first (you may need to shuffle winsocks). - Get a windows FTP client. The ws_ftp client, available from the FTP Favorite Site ftp.winsite.com mirror in win3/winsock/ws_ftp32.zip (a 16-bit Windows3.1X version is included here) is fairly popular. AOL3.0 for Mac or Windows - Get an FTP client. Macintosh: Both the "Fetch" and "Anarchie" clients are available from the FTP Favorite Site sumex-aim.stanford.edu:/info-mac mirror in the comm/inet directory as "fetch-301.hqx" and "anarchie-16.hqx", respectively. Both of these are shareware programs; please remember to pay the licensing fee if you keep and use them. The ".hqx" suffix indicates BinHex encoding. Windows: The ws_ftp client, available from the FTP Favorite Site ftp.winsite.com mirror in win3/winsock/ws_ftp32.zip (a 16-bit Windows3.1X version is included here) is fairly popular. You must use the 16 bit version unless you have the Windows95 native version of the AOL3.0 client. 10. How can I best import files from other internet accounts? Create an "incoming" directory, and upload the files there. You can then use the FTP client on AOL to rename the files to another directory (this is the way you move files on Unix system). For instance, if you uploaded the file "somefile.ext" to the directory /screenname/incoming and then went into the incoming directory on AOL, you could select this file, click on the "Utilities" icon, and then "Rename" to the new name ../somefile.ext (the ".." is a Unix-ism for the parent directory) to move the file from the incoming subdirectory up into to the /screenname directory. You will have to close the /screenname directory window and reenter the site in order to force an update of the on-screen "to" directory listing. At this time, renaming the "incoming" directory itself will not always make all the files in that directory readable by the web server. ----- Questions/comments to "ftpmaster@aol.com". 24Jan1997