your organization's web site

Indra's Net helps all sized organizations, from the smallest neighborhood business, to national non-profits, to Fortune 500 companies, make the most out of their Web presence. This section details the steps involved in setting up and maintaining your organization's Web site, and what tools and services Indra's Net can offer to assist you.

Part I: Designing Your Web Site

Indra's Net offers a full suite of professional design, programming, and consulting services to architect your organization's Web presence, from elegant graphic design and textual information presentation through complex e-commerce and database solutions. Learn how our artistry and experience can help your organization, regardless of size.

Alternately, many larger organizations have evolved their own graphic designers and programmers into Web developers and are developing their Web sites internally. Since Indra's Net also provides Web hosting services ala carte, we are pleased to assist our hosting-only customers with preparing their sites for hosting on our server.

A note about Microsoft FrontPage: Microsoft FrontPage is a Web site development tool which requires a Microsoft-based Web server to utilize some of its features. Due to some fairly severe security holes in the Microsoft NT Web server, Indra's Net does not currently support the Microsoft Web server platform. You can still use FrontPage to design your site, but some of the features (such as webbots) will not function. Alternative methods for the replicating FrontPage extensions' functionality are available without sacrificing the security of your Web site. Please contact us for details.

Part II: Registering Your Domain

Having your own Internet domain (in the form of yourorganization.com) is an important part of any organization's corporate identity. For a nominal fee, Indra's Net will register and configure your own Internet domain, allowing you to use it in both your email communications, as well as for your Web address (e.g. www.yourorganization.com). We can also set up custom configurations, such as allowing the address youorganization.com (without the preceeding www) also point to your Web site, or, if you have multiple domain names (such as yourorganization.com and yourorganization.net), making them all point to a single Web address. Just contact us with your specific needs!

Part III: Identifying Your Web Directory

When you sign up for Web hosting services with Indra's Net, we will create a directory on the appropriate server for you to store the files related to your site. The Support staff will provide you with the exact name of this directory, but the basic form is:

/WWW#/<letter>/<your-domain>

Where # is a number relating to the specific Web server your site is hosted on, <letter> is the first letter of your domain name and <your-domain> is your full domain name. For example, for a domain yourorganization.com, the directory might be:

/WWW1/y/yourorganization.com

Within that main directory, we'll also create a subdirectory called html. This is the root directory of your Web site; all HTML files, images, and other files to be accessed though the site go in this directory. If you have requested CGI capabilities, we will also create a directory called cgi-bin into which you should store your CGI program files. Finally, if you have chosen the Secure Hosting Option, we will create a directory secure, in which any secure (https) pages are stored.

You may also create your own subdirectories under your main Web directory. These directories will not be accessable directly from the Web but can be used to store information relating to the site. For example, one might make a templates directory to store templates used by a CGI form, or a data directory to store information collected from the site. All hosted Web sites receive 10 MB of disk storage to use as they see fit; additional storage is available for the monthly fee of $1 per MB.

About Index Files:

The Web server uses index.html or index.htm for the default Web page. This means that the file index.html or index.htm in your html directory will be the front page of your site. For example the yourorganization.com Web site's front page would be:

/WWW1/y/yourorganization.com/html/index.html

If you create subdirectories within your site, they should also have an index file. For example if yourorganization.com's site has a subdirectory called "support", it's front page would be:

/WWW1/y/yourorganization.com/html/support/index.html

Part IV: Uploading Files

Once your pages have been created and your domain and Web directory have been set up on the server, you will want to begin uploading your files.

Most people use an FTP program to upload their site (you can download one from our Downloads page). FTP programs vary greatly, but all will require the same basic information:

Hostname: indra.com
Account/User ID: <username>
Password: <password>
Remote Directory: <Your Web Directory>, as described above

(If you need additional assistance using your FTP software, please feel free to contact us.)

Once you have connected to the server with your FTP software, you can upload files to your Web site. Again, most files will go into the html directory. If you have CGI programs, they should go into cgi-bin, and files for secure transactions go in secure. With most FTP applications, it's as simple as dragging and dropping the files into their appropriate locations.

Part V: Maintaining and Enhancing Your Site

Once your site is up and running, you'll want to make sure you keep track of its progress. Indra's Net provides Web promotion and progress services, including search engine listings and statistical reports on Web traffic to help you increase and monitor your Web traffic.