ServiceLink Manual

Chapter 16. Information Bays (i-bays)

16.1. i-bay Directories

Each i-bay has three directories - html, files and cgi-bin. (The cgi-bin directory is set aside to hold cgi scripts used for that

i-bay’s web page. CGI scripts are tools used in advanced web-site creation and do not need to be discussed here.)

• the ﬁles directory: This directory holds ﬁles that can be accessed either locally only or publicly. It can be used for such things as a

company download site, a company-wide ﬁle sharing server, or a document sharing site for a speciﬁc customer.

• the HTML directory: When an i-bay is accessed using a web browser (via http), the user will enter the HTML directory and the

web browser will automatically open the index.html ﬁle in that i-bay. In other words, it will display the web page associated with

that i-bay. This means you can have different web sites running on your server, each associated with a speciﬁc i-bay. This can be

very powerful and useful, as you will see in the upcoming examples.

Note: If an i-bay is set for no public access via web or anonymous ftp, users connecting to the i-bay through Windows or

Macintosh ﬁle sharing will see only the contents of the files directory. However, if the i-bay settings are later changed to allow

public access through web or anonymous ftp, users will then see the top-level directory of the i-bay with the three subdirectories of

html, files and cgi-bin. The items they were used to seeing before will now be found in the files directory.

16.2. Accessing the i-bays

You can access the contents of an i-bay using a web browser, Windows ﬁle sharing / AppleTalk, or FTP.

• accessing an i-bay using a web browser (via http): To view an i-bay using a browser, enter "www.yourdomain.xxx/i-bayname".

For example, the URL for Samson’s Farms i-bay is "www.tofu-dog.com/samfarms". Assuming you are entitled to access this

i-bay, you will see the index.html page in the html directory in the Samson’s Farms i-bay. If a password is required to see the

contents of the i-bay, a password dialog box will appear before the contents of the i-bay are served to the web browser.