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You can publish files in your File Storage area on the web. The domains you can use include 'yourusername.yourmail.domain', any aliases you have, and anything you like inside your own domains if you have any.
However, it is possible that you would prefer NOT to do this, as in theory a spammer could deduce the existence of your email by trying random web addresses until they found one that gave a response.
So, to protect your privacy, we require that you explicitly create each website through the 'Websites' screen, and choose which folder is displayed at that site.
You can get to the websites screen by selecting "Files" from the top menu, and then clicking the "Websites" button on the top right above the listing of files and directories.
You can do these things too! Every website you create can be configured with a display mode from the following choices:
For the first 4, you need to provide a directory within your file storage to which the website will "map". Only files and directories inside this directory will be viewable via your website.
In this mode, people will get a "permission denied" message if they try to view a directory which doesn't contain an 'index.html' file. This is a good mode for a website where you have provided a top level index.html file and you don't want people poking around to find what other files you have.
This is the same as 'Files only' above, except that if a directory doesn't contain an index.html file then our system will generate a listing of all the files in that directory and present that to the user instead. This mode is great for making a bunch of files available online without having to bother to generate a fancy site to present them.
Your website viewers will be presented with thumbnails of all the photos in the directory, and can click on them to view a larger copy. You can manage the descriptions that are shown with your images by choosing "View as photos" from the action menu back on your File Storage screen. You can read more about managing your files here.
When you select a redirection option, the file storage directory is no longer used: instead, you enter a URL to which you want the user to be redirected (302 redirect in web server terms) when they access this website. If they enter any additional path then that will be added to the redirection, e.g. http://example.fastmail.fm/foo.jpg => http://mysite.example.com/~myfiles/foo.jpg
Instead of sending a "302 redirect" command, a cloaked redirect will generate a framed page with the redirection target inside the frame. This can be useful because it "hides" the URL of the site you're redirecting to, leaving just your website's address in the Location bar. NOTE: this can be confusing to users, so be careful with it!
You can also enter something to be displayed as the page title when you do a cloaked redirect.
While we don't have any blogging facilities by default, you can use Blogger to create a blog. Blogger includes the ability to publish via FTP, so each time you add to your blog, it will upload the new page to your file storage automatically.
To do this, create your blog at blogger, then in the Publishing tab, there is a field called FTP Path. You need to set that to /yourusername.yourdomain/files/webfolder/, obviously replacing yourusername and yourdomain as appropriate. The webfolder part needs to be the path to the directory you've published as a website.
Also note that on the Archiving tab, there is a Archive Path field. This is also a full path, so you should set it to something like /yourusername.yourdomain/files/webfolder/archive. Similarly the Site Feed tab, you should set the Site Feed Path to /yourusername.yourdomain/files/webfolder/.
Yes, if you have an alias that you are prepared to tell others about. If you have any aliases, they will appear in the drop down list in the 'Create Website' section of the Websites screen. If you only create websites with the alias in them then your username and domain will not be shown through the web.
You can create many different websites by adding extra leading sections to the hostname (e.g. http://photos.youraliasname.youraliasdomain/) or by adding extra path sections to the website (e.g. http://youraliasname.youraliasdomain/photos/).
In the old filesystem, a folder could be shared as 'private' and you would have to use your email username and password to view it. This functionality is now provided by the DAV server. Just go to https://dav.messagingengine.com/ with your web browser and log in with your username and password. Your '{My Files}' directory is at /yourusername.youruser.domain/files/ - this allows you to see all your filestorage with your username and password, so is actually more featureful than the old design.
If you are not hosting the domain's DNS records with us you will need to have the appropriate DNS records pointing to FastMail.FM servers. You need a CNAME record pointing to web.messagingengine.com for the name you want to use. If your DNS is hosted with us then this is already configured.
Note: It can be tricky to set up CNAME records properly. It is probably preferable to host your DNS with us, unless you thoroughly understand DNS, and know what you're doing.
Make sure you have the appropriate website name created , and you should then be able to access site.
Note: Even though you have updated DNS records, you still need to configure the website on the 'Websites' screen, otherwise the server will return a 'page not found' error.
In the past if you used a 'catchall' mail alias for your domain your public folder was be available at 'anything.domain.com', no matter what you substituted for 'anything'. This is no longer the case, you need to create an explicit website entry for each site you wish to use.
For the purposes of this tutorial, we will assume that your domain is called "my.domain.com". This tutorial will lead you through the steps required to make the files in your "public" folder viewable to others on the web, at the address "http://www.my.domain.com/". You may have already performed some of these steps.
You should now be able to access the contents of your public folder using the address http://my.domain.com/. If you also want the address http://www.my.domain.com/ to work, go back to the Websites screen and create another website, but in the first text box on the 'Website' line in the 'Add New Website' section type the text 'www'. After you have clicked 'Add Website' you should see an entry for http://www.my.domain.com/ in your website listing at the top of the page. Click 'Done' again.
Note: The information above should be sufficient to get you up and running with a web site in your own domain. However, there are lots of different ways to tweak the available settings. It is strongly recommended that when you have some time, you follow all the "more info" links above to find out more about how to configure things.
No. The website hosting facility is only designed to host simple static webpages. For scripting and database functionality, you should use a full web hosting provider.