Getting
Started
Setting up your web site...
Getting Started with Bella Mia is very easy. Determine
the service level that's right for you. Visit the
sign-up form, review our
agreement
and submit your form. We'll confirm the information with
you, and set you up to serve your site right away. It's that
easy!
What do you do now that your Bella Mia account is
activated?
Your website folder
After you sign up and receive your Bella Mia account, a
directory will be set up on our server. This directory is
where your web site files will reside and be served from.
The server software will serve up the file
index.html if no file is specified by the
browser. This means that a web browser requesting
http://www.your-company.com
will actually receive
http://www.your-company.com/index.html
Be sure to name your initial page in your web site
(i.e. your "Home" page) index.html and only
index.html.
Using FTP to upload your files
To put your files in your web site folder, you will need
to FTP them there. FTP is an acronym for File
Transfer Protocol. Popular FTP programs
include: For Macintosh
NetFinder,
Anarchie
and Fetch. For Windows
CuteFTP.
Some HTML authoring programs, such as
PageSpinner, and
Netscape
have FTP capability built-in.
Point your FTP program to the domain where your web site
is being hosted, i.e. ftp.mia.net, then enter your username
and password in the provided boxes and click the OK button
to connect.
Once you are connected you will see your web site
directory.
You can now transfer files from your Mac or PC or
whatever, to your web site directory.
Standard CGI applications and how to
access them
Mia.Net has made available some standard CGI applications
tha you can use with your web sites as well.
Page Hit Counter -
Form to E-mail For Enhanced Web
Hosting Customers on Mac Servers
If you are using our Linux Based Servers you have access
to your own "CGI-BIN" where you are free to upload/use any
CGI applications you would like. You can find several at
either FreshMeat.Org or
SourceForge.Net.
If you cannot find what you need,
or need assistance installing a CGI, just email us at
support@mia.net and we will be happy to assist
you!!!
Counter
To place a counter add the following tag in your web page
(make sure to replace "yourname" with your username):
<img
src="http://www.mia.net/cgi-bin/counter/counter.acgi$main/your-page-name">
Standard counter: 
To add leading zeros to the counter add the width option
to the image tag:
<img
src="counter.count$yourname/main/width=5">
Form to E-mail
There are a wide range of options available for our Linux
based customers. You can use your own CGI's, or we can
certainly assist you in setting this up. We typically
recommend you use PHP to script your Form to E-mail pages.
Again, this is something we can assist you with if need by,
usually for a nominal charge.
We suppport the FlexMail plugin on our Mac Based Servers,
for form to e-mail capabilities. FlexMail is a very feature
rich form processor. Each form points to a Flex
configuration file. See the
Flex file
instructions on how to modify these files.
These examples show how you can use FlexMail to handle
some common tasks. They are all relatively simple examples
that you can easily edit for our own use.
Before using these examples, be sure to edit the hidden
"To" fields in the HTML files to point to your own email
address. You can use your favorite tool for editing the HTML
files, but you must use a text editor such as BBEdit or
SimpleText to edit the Flex files. Do not use an
HTML editor to create or modify Flex files. HTML
editors simply will not understand the Flex file format and
will ruin them, causing FlexMail to malfunction.
Note: the Flex files have been appended with .txt to
prevent the server from processing them. Remove the .txt
suffix before using with your own forms.
Web Server Log Files
Bella Mia provides server log files for your web site on
an ongoing basis. Logs are generated using Analog. Access to
your raw log files is achieved from your web site directory.
By simply typing in:
www.your-company.com/stats.html you will get a page
listing statisics in a graphical form for easy viewing.
Click here for an example.
This service is only available on our
Linux based serverrs.
Web Site Tips & Resources.
Tips for Creating HTML Pages
- Embed Copyright information and other comments in a
<!-- comment tag --> on your pages for
protection now and in the future.
- For a typeset look and feel, use "Spacer" tags which
put vertical and horizontal spacing at a pixel dimension
you specify.
Ex: <SPACER Type=Horizontal Size="32">
The first line in this text will be indented by 32
pixels. <SPACER Type=Vertical Size="3">
Puts space between lines.
- Use Alpha to create and execute MacPerl scripts.
- Always specify <TABLE> borders.
Netscape assumes a 1-pixel border, while Microsoft
Internet Explorer assumes you don't want any border at
all.
- Always close table cells and table rows. Not closing
table cells with </TD> or table rows
with </TR> can yield undesirable
results.
- Put a custom message into the results of many search
engines by including <META> tags. An
example follows:
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Your Site Name</TITLE>
<meta name="keywords" content="Bella Mia, Macintosh hosting, macintosh web
hosting, AppleHost, Apple Internet hosting, web hosting, internet service,
macintosh, mia, MacHosting, machosting, mac web designers, mac
internet, Apple graphic designers, lasso, filemaker pro, dynamic
database-driven web pages, low cost, web server, webstar, quid pro quo,
tango, free, domain name service, cgi scripts, macshowcase, mac showcase,
apple hot products, macintosh web services, mac web designer, MacHost,
machost, web traffic analysis, Mactivity, web out, chicago, illinois, IL,
macworld, macweek, macintouch">
<meta name="description" content="Host your Mac-designed web site on
high-performance Macintosh servers. Bella Mia. Friendly. Easy to Use. Just
Like Your Mac.">
</HEAD>
<META> tags must be placed between
the <HEAD> </HEAD> tags.
Useful Web Sites:
Tips for Handling Graphics
- Use HTML Grinder to automatically put image height
and width tags on images to help pages load more quickly.
- Stay abreast of the emerging PNG graphics standard.
Images will be compressed better, and will load more
quickly.
- Debabelizer Toolbox has many features to save you
time (and money!). Among its best features are batch
processing of large numbers of images and automatic
creation of the best color palettes for your images
optimized for both Mac and Windows.
- Windows based computers have slightly darker "gamma"
or brightness than Mac monitors, a factor you'll want to
consider when developing your images for the web.
- Design for the "horizontal" compression of GIFs. The
compression used in GIF graphics compresses only in the
in horizontal direction, so images with horizontal
designs are much smaller than similar images with
vertical designs!
- What's special about "468"? 468 is the width (in
pixels) of the 'content space' visible inside a new,
default-size Netscape window. If your page designs are
468 pixels across or less, visitors will not have to
resize their window. If your page design is wider than
468 pixels, it may appear cropped.
Useful Web Sites:
Tips for Web Site Maintenance
- Use BBEdit to perform Find/Replace on an entire web
site, including embedded folders. The "magic" of BBEdit
lets you perform revisions to all files in your web
folder without opening and closing each one!
- Use HTML Grinder to check code on your HTML pages, to
flag files that do not match certain criteria, and to
print an entire site with one mouse-click!
- Visit the Doctor HTML site to confirm the integrity
of your HTML files. The site will help you flag missing
tags, poor syntax and other potential problems.
- Use Adobe SiteMill when re-naming/moving a file or
image to have relevant pages automatically update links
to the renamed file.
- Try Submit-it to easily register your web site with
many search engines.
Useful Web Sites:
