web page with single computer and using Home ftp Server app

[paulrickmakita]

Hi, thanks for your help.

I have a single computer, running Cumulus and I've installed and configured the app Home FTP Server s/w. Cumulus is updating the the correct folders and I can see the files using another computer to ftp into that directory. All seems fine. But I don't know how to see the Cumulus weather station web page from another computer. I know it's IP address, no problem there, ftp is of course set to port 21. I don't have website from my ISP so was hoping that using an app on the Cumulus computer would suffice. I can even configure it to have outside access via redirect in the router. But so far can't see it internally. Am I supposed to use port 80 to view it? Or run some file? I do have Silverlight installed. The Cumulus OS is 32 bit Windows 7.
Thanks
Paul

[steve]

Normally you would need to be running a web server on the machine with the files, then you just put the address of the machine into your browser. Without running a web server, you would need to access the files directly (i.e. use a file:// URL instead of an http:// URL) and then the location would need to be shared with the PC that wanted to view the files. That works OK for simple HTML files, but you'll find that some pages (which need to fetch files from the server) don't work when not using HTTP.

[paulrickmakita]

Thanks for the info, this makes sense.

I think then that I need to turn off FTP in Cumulus and have it put the files locally and then the web server will have them available. I'm looking for the settings to store the files locally. Thanks again.
ps: I'm looking at Abyss Web Server X1. I found it on CNET with some good ratings. Any thoughts or recommendations?
Paul

[uncle_bob]

ps: I'm looking at Abyss Web Server X1. I found it on CNET with some good ratings. Any thoughts or recommendations?

I haven't heard of it. That's doesn't mean it bad though.

Most people use remote hosting. There's even a few free ones around. Here's one recently recommended to me (by BTJ in another thread) http://www.jabry.net/
People who host it locally use something like Xampp or even the built in Windows one called "Internet Information Services".

[steve]

I think then that I need to turn off FTP in Cumulus and have it put the files locally and then the web server will have them available. I'm looking for the settings to store the files locally.

Yes, that would be a reasonable thing to do. You have to specify the files on the 'files' tab, see the FAQ: http://wiki.sandaysoft.com/a/FAQ#Runnin ... as_Cumulus

[SpaceWalker]

ps: I'm looking at Abyss Web Server X1. I found it on CNET with some good ratings. Any thoughts or recommendations?

Paul, I have been using both Abyss Web Server X2 and XAMPP one a dedicated office server for a few years (obviously, not running both server software at the same time). I have found both server software to be very reliable.

The main advantage of the Abyss Web Server package is that it is easy to set up and modify - all required modifications are done through the browser.

For the XAMPP package, configuration files have to be edited - but doing so allows better/more tweaking to the inner-operations of the XAMPP server package.

[paulrickmakita]

Thanks to all, this has been very helpful.

Now I have only one more issue that is probably just a newbie thing....
I have a website setup with Jabry as Uncle Bob recommended. And Cumulus is uploading files fine and I have copied in the required Cumulus files. But when I use a regular browser (Chrome or IE) to the website it shows the listing of files/folders, but does not do anything like show the weather details. OK, Jabry asks for a user login which I have done as well.

Is there one of the files on the main website that should be in the browser link to run? Seems like I'm missing something fundamental and obviously critical. Thanks for your help to this newbie...
Paul

[steve]

If a browser requests a directory (including the 'root') rather than asking for a specific page, the web server has to work out which page to send. The web server is normally configured with a list of page names which it works through until it finds one to send - index.html, index.php, index.htm etc. Your web server presumably doesn't have index.htm in its list.

[paulrickmakita]

There is an index.htm file in the main directory.
when I click on that I do get a window that opens up within the browser page that lists a bunch of weather info and even the menu at the bottom. But it seems like this is in some kind of text viewer rather than a live webpage. Do I have to have Java or something in my browser?

thanks again from the newest of newbies
Paul

[steve]

It sounds like you're missing the CSS file, so presumably you haven't followed the instructions for setting up a web site? You just need to copy the contents of the webfiles folder from Cumulus to your web site. See the help and/or the wiki - http://wiki.sandaysoft.com/a/Simple_Website_setup

I'm not sure what you're expecting, though, when you say "a live webpage". The page is just text. Most of the standard web page stuff supplied with Cumulus is just 'static' HTML. If you want something that updates automatically, there are options such as my Silverlight gauges, or (better) Mark's SteelSeries gauges, and there are alternative pages which update automatically using things like 'Ajax'.

[paulrickmakita]

Could this be the problem? I found this in FAQ on the Jabry FAQ page:

"Do you support Frontpage Extensions?
We do not support frontpage extensions however you can use our FTP service or the web-based file manager to publish your website."

[steve]

No, it's nothing to do with FrontPage.

[nitrx]

Did you remove the default.htm page as mentioned in the FAQ, it seems tot be a Microsoft server, the primarly page is mostly default.htm , default.html default.ASP etcetera the host doesnt support PHP but ASP its nog an Unix server.

[paulrickmakita]

I copied all of the webfiles content to the website again (using ftp). Attached is a snapshot of those files from FireFTP. Also a. ttached is a snapshot from the website itself, where we can see that Cumulus has added a number of htm files.
thanks again
Paul

[paulrickmakita]

Hi Ron,
I'm struggling to understand your question about default.htm. There is no default.htm in the Cumulus webfiles folder, and searching the FAQ I see no reference to default (only one occurrence of the word default and nothing to do with default.htm).

Sorry for being such a pain...

Paul