Cumulus Support

After many hours of reading and research, and at the risk of making myself look a bit silly, I am hoping someone can give me some very basic advice, please.

I have just started trying to build my first ever website and, although I have been using and am very competent with desktop publishing for creating artwork, I am finding the world of website building very different and confusing!

I have registered my domain and have built the basics of a website with my hosting company's on-line website builder software, but now I want to be able to display Cumulus on it. I have created a page on my website called 'Weather' but what do I have to do to the page to enable it to display my Cumulus data? In other words how do I create the space on my website to accommodate the Cumulus display?

I have installed Filezilla and have successfully uploaded my Cumulus files to my host computer as instructed in the Cumulus Wiki Simple Website Setup document, but am now stuck.

Thanks for any help and advice.

Chris
(West Sussex, UK)

If you want to use the 'standard' Cumulus web site, and you have uploaded the necessary files and directories, then you have done all you need to do on the server. You now need to supply Cumulus with the details of your ftp server, so that it can upload the pages with the actual data, as described in the 'Configuration' section on the 'simple website setup' wiki page. The tricky part for the inexperienced is usually getting the 'directory' path correct, and the setting you need depends on how your web space has been set up by your provider.

Note that the pages in the standard web site have fixed names and the entire pages are uploaded by Cumulus. You can't create an html page on the server and then get Cumulus to insert data into it; that kind of thing is possible using PHP etc, but that's something you can look at later if you wish. You can however create a directory on the server called 'weather' (for example) and get Cumulus to upload the pages into that directory. You would normally do this if you don't want the Cumulus index page to be the 'home' page on your web site, e.g. if you plan to put other stuff on the site as well as Cumulus data.

Thanks for your speedy reply, Steve, and yes I want use the 'standard' Cumulus web site.

I created a folder called Weather on the Remote Host and uploaded the Cumulus files into that. I can see that in the appropriate Folder in Filezilla, that also contains an index.htm file, but what I don't understand is how the Remote Host knows where to display the Cumulus data on my website? My web page is currently five pages, of which one is the Home Page, one is Weather (intended for Cumulus) and three for other things. What do I have to set up on my website to get Cumulus to display its data on my weather page? Is that done by using the directory path you mention and if so, how do I find the correct directory path to my weather page?

Thanks and regards

Chris

It would be useful if you posted your website URL so we can look at it and help.

If you are uploading to www.mydomain.co.uk/weather then the URL to view the site would be http://www.mydomain.co.uk/weather/index.htm

Flosex wrote:I created a folder called Weather on the Remote Host and uploaded the Cumulus files into that. I can see that in the appropriate Folder in Filezilla, that also contains an index.htm file, but what I don't understand is how the Remote Host knows where to display the Cumulus data on my website?

It knows because the structure as seen from the web mirrors the structure as seen on the ftp server. You have a 'root' directory, and a page called "index.html" in there would get displayed when someone types "http://www.yoursite.com" into their browser. You've created a directory called "Weather" on the server, presumably under the root directory, so when someone types "http://www.yoursite.com/Weather" into their browser, they will get to see the Cumulus index.htm page, which Cumulus has uploaded. They can also explicitly type "http://www.yoursite.com/Weather/index.htm", or "http://www.yoursite.com/Weather/today.htm" etc to see those pages.

What do I have to set up on my website to get Cumulus to display its data on my weather page? Is that done by using the directory path you mention and if so, how do I find the correct directory path to my weather page?

You don't do anything on the server, you put the details into Cumulus so that Cumulus puts the files in the correct place. I can't tell you what to put, as it depends on how your server is set up. As you want the files in a 'Weather' directory, whatever you put will have to end in "Weather". That might be all you need, or you might need "public_html/Weather" or "www/Weather" or something more complicated. You will have to either refer to the documentation provided by your web host, or deduce the path from what you see when you're logged in using ftp.

Thanks David. It is <www.n4cj.com/weather>

Regards

Chris

Actually it is http://n4cj.com/Weather/, the capital W is very important as it looks as though your host is a Linux server and unlike Windows which ignores capitals an Apache based Linux host does not.

My guess would be that, given what I have seen, your Directory in Cumulus for the FTP upload should be /htttpdocs/Weather, but as you say you have used FileZilla to upload the Cumulus web site contents you should be able to confirm this by using it to access your site and make a note the directories within the server. You should see either httpdocs or public_html or something like that and in that directory should be the Weather directory.

Once you have found this out use the FileZilla login details (i.e. Hostname, Login and Password ) in the Cumulus/ configuration/Internet page and set the directory to the right place, and just in case you haven't put them in the right place as well, the entire contents of the Cumulus folder webfiles should also be there.

In Cumulus / Configuration / Internet make sure you have also clicked on Auto Update, Use FTP Rename (good idea to use this), set the Interval (mine is 15 mins), and ticked Enable Realtime, Enable Realtime FTP and realtime.txt Ftp and set the Interval (mine is 30 seconds), then click on the Files tab and make sure there is a tick in Include Standard Images and Include Standard Files. Click on OK and then click on File / Web Update and with a bit of luck your files should be seen to upload.

Thanks to Steve and David I now have a much better understanding of how websites and FTP files work - many thanks to you both.

As a result of their help, I now have my Cumulus data displayed on my website, but to do so I had to delete the Weather folder I had created on the host server, and upload all the Cumulus files into the host's public_html folder (where I had created the Weather folder). No matter, I can live with that.

One thing that is odd is that the heading of my Cumulus data on my web page is 'highcroft weather weather' (all lower case), whereas I would prefer it to be 'Highcroft Weather'. Is it possible to change it to that?

Thanks again for you help.

Chris
(West Sussex, UK)

Flosex wrote:One thing that is odd is that the heading of my Cumulus data on my web page is 'highcroft weather weather' (all lower case), whereas I would prefer it to be 'Highcroft Weather'. Is it possible to change it to that?

To stop the lower case conversion of your supplied location name, see the FAQ: http://wiki.sandaysoft.com/a/FAQ#I.27m_ ... upper_case

The heading comes from the text in the location name on the station settings screen plus the word "weather" which is in the indexT.htm template, so normally you just wouldn't include the word "weather" in your location name and the template would add it for you. But as you want the word "weather" to start with a capital letter, you will have to edit the indexT.htm file.

I have changed the title to upper case as you told me to, Steve, and that is how fine.

I also changed the word weather to start with an upper case W in the index.htm file as you told me to, and it is fine on the 'now' page, but is still in lower case on all the other pages. I have gone right through the index.htm file and cannot see anything else to change.

Thanks and regards

Chris

Flosex wrote:I also changed the word weather to start with an upper case W in the index.htm file as you told me to

You mean you changed indexT.htm, as I told you to, presumably?

and it is fine on the 'now' page, but is still in lower case on all the other pages. I have gone right through the index.htm file and cannot see anything else to change.

Yes, changing that template can only affect that page. You will need to do the same on all of the other templates, e.g. todayT.htm, yesterdayT.htm etc.