Past experience with my connection had been faultless; at one point I was connected for around 4 months straight with no glitches, only disconnecting when I needed to ‘bounce’ my gateway PC for updates. This is also testament to the connection provided by my ISP, PlusNet who for all their faults provide rock solid connections for most of their customers (current trial MaxDSL issues aside!).

The answer to the ADSL issue I was experiencing came about almost by chance, the battery in my mobile phone drained after a particulary long working day. Due to this I was forced to use a landline, after finding my telephone I was dismayed to find no dialtone. I probably should say at this point that I’m part of a growing number of people with no need for a landline for day-to-day use, it is there for ADSL only.

After breathing some life back into my mobile, one of my first calls was to BT faults. I could have used the BT website to report the fault, oddly something tells me to use a phone to report a phone fault! As it happens the service is completely automated with various options such as SMS text updates etc.

Roll on Saturday morning, I get a phone call from a BT engineer who is on his way to investigate the problem with the line. Within 10 minutes of his arrival he’s identified the problem as being 15 metres down the line, which just so happens to coincide with the junction box on the wall. Outside and up the ladder he goes, almost instantly proclaiming “think I’ve found the problem!”, pointing feverishly at a single wire that is completely disconnected from the rest and sticking out at right-angles from the wall.

Reconnection of my second wire solved the ‘dialtone’ problem, a fully working phone line again, and resolved my ADSL ‘hiccups’. I queried the BT engineer as to how the ADSL continued to work at full capacity for the most part with so few problems…..

“Even we don’t understand how it works, it’s magic”

Activation

By default you do not have any CCGI space at PlusNet, you need to activate it via your portal. CCGI and MySQL require seperate activation. In the case of MySQL you will receive an email with a database name and password once it is setup. For CCGI, you use your normal username and password, but bear in mind you can only access CCGI from your PlusNet connection for many tasks (this is for security reasons).

PHP Location and Permissions

PHP files can be FTP’ed to your CCGI space using ftp://ccgi.plus.net. Do not put PHP files in the cgi-bin folder, unlike the homepages server there is no ‘htdocs’. You can put files in the root or create folders yourself.

Permissions of PHP files are specific to PlusNet’s setup, you must have owner execute permission set for files to run correctly, public execute will stop them running. Many FTP clients have a permission or CHMOD facility for files, basic permissions required are ‘740′. When installing packages, it is often easier to follow the guide with the package with regard to permissions, then run the ‘fixphpperms.sh’ script provided by PlusNet before any step that requires using a PHP page for configuration.

To execute ‘fixphpperms.sh’ via telnet

• Start->Run->Cmd
• In the command prompt type ‘telnet ccgi.plus.net’ and hit return
• Login using your normal username and password
• Type ‘fixphpperms.sh -r’ and hit return
• Type ‘exit’ and hit return to leave

‘Fixphpperms.sh’ takes a number of parameters:-

• -c will fix all .php files in your current directory AND all subdirs
• -r will fix ALL .php files from your homedirectory down
• -s will fix all .php files in your current directory only.

MySQL

MySQL is located on ‘rumpus’ or ‘humbug’ server, you will be notified which when it is activated. Note that you have a new password just for MySQL and a database name. All packages that use MySQL require these connection details to work, and are often sorted in a file called ‘config.php’ or similar (your package will detail which file to edit).

Basic MySQL connection from PHP is as follows:-
function opendb()
  {
    $db_host  = "humbug";
    $username = "username";
    $password = "password";
    $DB_name  = "databasename";
 
    $chan = mysql_connect ($db_host, $username, $password);
    mysql_select_db ($DB_name, $chan);
 
    return $chan;
  }


NB. ‘Humbug’ could be ‘Rumpus’, and will never be ‘localhost’ as most packages specify by default.

Once you have made the MySQL connection you can query the database:-

$chan = opendb();
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM myfirsttable", $chan);

… then interrogate $result with one of the ‘mysql_fetch’ family of PHP functions.

As I said at the beginning, this is only intended as a brief overview/guide. Other topics, some more advanced can be found in the PlusNet category of this blog, the UserTools tutorials and of course PlusNets own help. It’s also worth hunting around the forum signatures of the regular users of PlusNets Webspace Help forum, which often contain very useful information!

Like many people I’m sure, I work on Windows 99% of the time. However much you want to knock Microsoft, it really is still the platform of choice for most purposes. In my case, I’ve little choice anyway, it is the platform for which I develop software.

Also like many people, I have a website and the same as many ISPs, my ISP PlusNet offer a package comprising of something other than Windows based webserver software, namely the all too common Apache, PHP, MySQL combination.

This is a complete pain, this ‘alien’ software package is very good for developing dynamic websites etc, but the problem is how to develop and test them locally, i.e. on your PC before publishing them to the big wide world of the internet. Of course you can download Windows ‘flavours’ of all these packages, and spend another week configuring them.

Or you can download Webserver On A Stick.

As I started out, yes it’s a simple idea. Bundle Apache, PHP and MySQL, add a front end control program and away you go. Of course the author’s original intention was to produce a minimal footprint webserver environment for use on a USB stick, however there is nothing to stop you running it off your local hard drive. Simply unzip the package, and throw your website at it’s ‘www’ folder and away you go.

It’s certainly something I wish I’d found sooner, according to the copyright notice it started in 2003, maybe if more people shout about it, more will find this remarkably useful little piece of software.

The file for PHPBB 2.0.16. It may or may not work for earlier versions.

The single file enclosed in the ZIP file is to replace {boardroot}/includes/emailer.php , I strongly advise backing up your current copy of this file first. You may wish to revert to your original file once the problem has been fixed by PlusNet.

Download Here

At the end you will have both http://{domainname}.co.uk and http://www.{domainname}.co.uk pointing to the ‘ccgi’ server. You will only have 1 place to worry about uploading files to (both html and php etc).

1) You need to create 2 DNS entries (Domain Settings->Configure):-

Left: {domainname}.co.uk.
Type: A
Right: 84.92.1.4
 
Left: www
Type: CNAME
Right: ccgi.{username}.plus.com.


Note well, there is a full stop after {domainname}.co.uk in the first record and after ccgi.{username}.plus.com. in the second record.
You may be able to use variations of the URLs, but these definitely work!

2) You need to change “Domain Hostings Settings” to other aka “I wish to specify DNS records for hosts under this domain”

3) You need to raise a support ticket – Request a change for the WWW and CGI services for your domain, and let them know you have created the 2 records required.