Help:Web hosting account

The website has two billable components: the domain name (i.e., the address “driedfishmatters.org”) and the hosting package (i.e., use of a shared web server). Currently both are registered through HostGator.

Domain name

The address “driedfishmatters.org” was registered on 2018-05-17 to Derek Johnson, at the Department of Anthropology mailing address and the contact email dried.fish.matters@umanitoba.ca.

The domain expires 2024-05-17. The domain name full cost is $15/year with a three-year term.

The domain is currently managed in Eric's HostGator client account. It is possible to transfer the domain to a different registrar at the time of renewal, or even beforehand, but this will require the new domain manager to open an account and transfer the domain with Eric's involvement.

Hosting package

Our hosting package expires 2024-05-17. The initial cost of the hosting is $250.20 for a three-year term, reflecting an introductory discount; the full price is expected to be $10-12/month depending on the length of the renewal term. This is the “hatchling” (least expensive) plan, which has unmetered storage and bandwidth for one domain (i.e., a single web site).

The “control panel” (cpanel) for the Dried Fish Matters server is available at https://gator4275.hostgator.com:2083. You will not need to access this unless you are trying to set up new software or accounts on the server. (To interact with the content and configuration of the website itself, see Help:WordPress and Help:MediaWiki administration.) The login credentials are:

• Login ID: ethrift
• Password: ********

The same credentials can be used to access the web server from the command line.

Files on the web server

From cPanel, go to "File Manager" to access the files on the web server. In general it is not necessary to modify these files and directories directly on the server. Some key files and folders are:

/public_html/cgi-bin/

Directory containing various standalone scripts that run on the web server. Most of these are not actively used, but the zoterotags.py script serves to generate graphs based on the Zotero shared library.

/zotero_query_cache/

Stored queries used in the graph tool

/public_html/kb/

The MediaWiki installation. Look for LocalSettings.php in the top-level directory to set configuration parameters. Any extensions go in /public_html/kb/extensions/.

/public_html/dfm/

The WordPress installation. Everything can be managed/updated through the web interface; no need to go here.

/public_html/files/

Static files that can be accessed via a web browser or through WebDAV. We have some links to these files on the wiki as we had experimented with using WebDAV on our own server instead of OneDrive. The TOR subdirectory is password-protected when accessed from the web.

/public_html/static/

Stylesheets and javascript libraries used in rendering web pages on the server (other than WordPress and MediaWiki). Delete these and things will potentially break!

/public_html/static/zotero_query_graphs/

Cached graphs generated by the zotero query tool. The graphs can be deleted but the directory needs to stay there.

/public_html/pub/

Public web pages exported from the DFM Wiki by the wiki2html bot script. Anything in Category:Public on the wiki will be exported to this directory -- along with included images -- whenever the bot runs. These files can be accessed at https://driedfishmatters.org/pub.