Host
A site's host is the location it is published to and the company that provides that space. Depending on your situation, your host might be:
- Sandvox Hosting
- Karelia Software's own system for Sandvox-built websites
- A Dedicated Hosting Company
- For most sites, hosting will be provided by a dedicated company that you pay. For instance, A2 Hosting is a company that Karelia recommends.
- Your ISP
- Your Internet Service Provider (e.g. AOL or BT) may provide free webspace for you.
- An Institution
- If you are a member of an academic institution (such as a University), they may provide webspace for you.
- Your Computer
- In some cases, you may wish to publish to your own computer. This is only really suitable for Intranet sites, or if you have a static IP address, and you have a web server enabled on your computer. (This is for advanced users only!)
Note: Sandvox makes use of an open-source FTP/SFTP/WebDAV library that works well with most hosts. However, not all hosts are alike, so it is possible that you may have trouble uploading. This is why we allow publication of a few pages from Sandvox when it is in unlicensed, trial mode. (Not Applicable in Mac App Store edition) so you can verify for yourself that Sandvox can upload to your host. If you do have problems, please visit our support forum to let us know about the problem, and then use an FTP program to upload your site.
To publish your site, Sandvox normally requires you to enter your host's settings. They should provide this information when you sign up to their services. If you do not have the information when Sandvox requests it, you will have to contact your Host.
Host Specific Features
Some hosts offer additional specialized functionality to their webhosting services, or provide you with the ability to add custom back-end scripts and features to a website.
For instance, one might see these kinds of features on a server with a custom configuration:
- Password protection of certain pages
- Database of contacts or customers
- File upload and storage for site visitors
- "Cookies" where visitors are tracked from page to page
- Forum/Bulletin Board
- Arbitrary form processing
Due to the wide variety of web servers in use, Sandvox is unable to support such features "out of the box." To use functionality like this, you will have to configure your host's server manually using host-provided tools, and create Raw HTML content that integrates with the server. You may possibly have to write your own server-side scripts (using, for example, PHP) and set up a database.
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