Internet Help Desk - Webspace - Muscatine Power & Water

My Website is Too Big
MachLink Webspace Storage
Posting Personal Web Pages

NOTICE - BACK UP YOUR WEBSITE! Always keep a backup of your website on your hard drive. MP&W is not responsible for any user's personal files residing on our system(s). You are responsible for backup of personal data stored on on MachLink's system(s).

If it's a personal space with small amount of content or pictures, your free MachLink space will work great. If it is a business with a large amount of content, pictures, or a large database, another service might be best.

My Website is Too Big

Most people don't think about it until they receive the notice and you find out your website has taken too much space.

Check Personal Web Space Utilization - you can check utilization of your personal web space to avoid the additional charges associated with exceeding the limit.

If you click on CHECK PERSONAL WEB SPACE UTILIZATION on the user control page, you will be taken to a page that returns the utilization of personal web space associated with the email address you are logged in to Mailbox Manager with. The following statement will be presented:

The personal web space utilization displayed is for the user associated with the email address used to log into Mailbox Manager. Please note that personal web space is allocated on a per account basis; the included amount of space is 50MB. If you have for example, 3 email addresses, the total for these 3 addresses can not exceed 50MB. Utilization of personal web space in excess of 50MB will be billed at prices in effect at the time and can be found on our web site www.mpw.org.

If there are additional email addresses associated with your account using personal web space, it is suggested that you check the utilization of those email addresses as well to determine the total utilization for your account.

How do I know how much space I’m using or will use?
Check your web site before you upload. You can do this by locating the folder your website is stored in on your computer and then right-clicking on that folder. Click on PROPERTIES in the menu that appears. At the bottom you will see the size of the entire folder, as well as how many files and sub-folders are in it. Most of the time, if you know what you have in your folder from the start, you can avoid going over on the account size limits and you will know how much more you can add later.

Check your web space on the server. You can log in to the Mail Manager web site to do this. Point your browser to http://mailmanager.machlink.com or http://mailmanager.muscanet.com if your account is on Muscanet. Use your email username and password to log in to the site. Once logged in click the link CHECK PERSONAL WEBSPACE UTILIZATION.

Organize your site from the beginning. If you organize the folders for your site before you begin creating your pages, you will always be able to find your pages or pictures when you need them. Create folders for different types of files. If you are adding pictures to your site, you should have a folder named something like "graphics" "images", or "pictures". This is where you should always store your pictures. If you have different subjects make a folder for each subject to store the pictures (e.g. pictures_home or images_kids). Name your pages, folders, and graphics in a way in which it will be easy to find them later. When you have groups of pages or graphics that are similar, give them similar names. For instance, if you have a group of pages with stories and pictures about your son, start the name of each file with "son" (e.g. sonpark.jpg, sonschool.gif).

So how do I actually reduce my web space?
Get rid of anything that is no longer part of the site. Part of the fun of doing a web site is designing and updating your pages and pictures. The problem is most people don't think about removing the old materials from the site when they update. How do you do that?

Most FTP programs allow a two-window view when you connect to a web server. One side is your computer the other represents the web server. From that you can delete old files and pictures. This is also why you need to be organized with your folders. It makes finding outdated files easy to find.

Don't store any extra files on the server. Some people like to upload their EBay pictures or other files to the server to store them. This is not only frowned upon but is not what your web space was intended for. MachLink’s web space is intended for personal home pages, not storage for EBay. There are other services online that will allow you to store files on their server for a small fee.

Keep your graphics sizes small. Check the size of the graphic by right-clicking and choosing PROPERTIES. If a graphic is larger than 100k, you can preserve space by shrinking the image file size. If it is larger than 250k then it doesn't take long to fill up your space. To reduce the file size, open the image stored in the image folder on your computer with your favorite paint program. Resize the image (check your program's instructions on how to do this). Start with resizing it to 50%. If too small, undo the changes and try resizing it 25-30% less. If this is not enough, try 10% more.

Remember that when resizing a graphic with your mouse in the web editor, you will not change the file size, only the appearance. Another thing to keep in mind is that when the file sizes of your images are too large, it takes too long for your page to load. Your readers may not stick around long enough to see your graphics if they have to wait. Therefore, resizing your images can help the page load quicker and provide you with more space for your website.

Have you outgrown your space?
Is your business looking to expand your web presence? Do you need more space for EBay photos or files you would like to have available for others to download? If so, there are web hosting services online that have web space available for a fee and most offer email and sub-domains along with the package. To find these services just type “web hosting” in your favorite search engine.

MachLink's Webspace & Email File Storage Specifications

MAIL STORAGE - 50MB
PERSONAL WEB SPACE - 50MB
MAXIMUM EMAIL MESSAGE SIZE - 20MB

Posting Personal Web Pages

Step 1: Create Your Web Pages
Be sure to test your web pages/web site thoroughly before uploading. Use your browser to view all your pages, test all your links, and make sure all the images load like they should. Ideally, use all the different browser versions that you think people will be using to view your site - i.e. Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, etc. Make sure that your initial web page, the homepage, is named “index.html” or web browsers will not be able to see the page to load it.

Step 2: Be Sure to Keep a Complete, Current Copy of Your Site
Make sure you always have a complete, current copy of your web site saved on your own computer in case you ever need to restore the site.

Step 3: Upload the Pages to Your Account Site on MachLink's Server
Once you have created your web pages/web site, you need to upload the pages to your account site on MachLink's server. To do this, you will need an FTP Client (software that allows you to send your files to another computer over the internet), an Internet connection - which you already have if you are reading this, and files to send (web pages).

What is an FTP Client?
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. When you FTP files, you are simply transferring or copying files from one computer to another via the Internet. It may sound intimidating, but in practice it's about as easy as email and is very similar to copying files from your harddrive to a floppy disk.

How can I get an FTP Client?
If you used an HTML editor to create your pages, such as Microsoft Frontpage, or Macromedia Dreamweaver, then you may already have an FTP Client—check your software manual. If not, there are many FTP Clients available that you can download from the Internet. Two popular programs for the PC are CuteFTP and WS_FTP. If you use a Macintosh computer, you might want to try Fetch. To find these and other suitable FTP Clients, we suggest you visit www.shareware.com.

I have my FTP Client installed. Now what?
Once you have an FTP Client installed on your computer, please be sure to read all of the software’s documentation, especially the directions and registration information. In order to use your FTP Client software to connect to our web server, you will need to know a few things. The information that will be required by your FTP client is as follows:

@MachLink.com Customers
FTP Address (hostname): machlink.com
User Name: same as the main user name for your MachLink account
Your Password: same as the password for your account
Directory: the folder where you will transfer your web site files - you will see the directory that your FTP application connects to your web space on MachLink's server

Other Important Notes:
If you are using WS_FTP, choose AUTO UPLOAD.
If you are using Fetch, choose RAW DATA.

Step 4: View Your Web Site
Once you have loaded your pages into your site area on MachLink's web server, point your browser to the appropriate URL below (substituting your own username):

@MachLink Customers:
http://www.machlink.com/~username/