This article is the About Personal Web Sharing Read Me file that comes with Mac OS 8.0.

Important information about Mac OS Personal Web Sharing
Welcome to Mac OS Personal Web Sharing. This read me document introduces the software and contains late-breaking information about setting up and using your own Web server.

Mac OS Personal Web Sharing is the easiest way to share your information with everyone on your intranet, no matter what type of computer or browser they are using. All you do is put the items you want to share in the server folder and turn on the server.

Installing Personal Web Sharing
To install Personal Web Sharing, double-click the WebScript icon in the Web Sharing folder. To set up your Web server, see the instructions in Using Personal Web Sharing in the Web Pages folder (which is created when the software is installed) at the root level of your hard disk.

The Web Pages folder also contains a file named Default.html which you can use as the home page for your server. You can modify this file or choose a different home page (see Using Personal Web Sharing for instructions).

Compatibility
Personal Web Sharing is compatible with Open Transport 1.1.1 (or a more recent version). MacTCP 2.0.6 is supported only with System 7.5.5, but we have noticed some inconsistencies with large volume connections.

Important: A continuous TCP/IP connection and a static IP address are strongly recommended for use of Personal Web Sharing. If your system does not have a persistent connection and a static IP address, any interruption in the network connection could negatively affect TCP/IP signals. In some circumstances, this could cause the system to appear to hang. To avoid this problem, always use a continuous TCP/IP connection and a static IP address.

Note: This problem could also occur with other server applications.

Known Problems

Virtual memory off
Web servers expose a bug in the Ethernet driver for PCI-based computers. To ensure that your server works correctly, either turn off virtual memory (VM) or install Mac OS System 7.6.

OT/PPP
There is a known problem using OT/PPP 1.0 with Personal Web Sharing. This software runs as a background application, which conflicts with the dialog box that PPP tries to display when reconnecting (if the connection has been broken). This can cause your system to crash. To work around this problem, turn off the automatic reconnect option in the PPP control panel.

Follow these steps to turn off the automatic reconnect option:

1. Open the PPP control panel.

2. Click the Options button.

3. Click the Connection tab.

4. Click to remove the X from the box labeled Connect automatically when starting TCP/IP applications, and click OK.

5. Close the PPP control panel.

Location of server folder
To ensure that the correct content is served, the Web Pages folder (or other server folder) should be located no more than five levels below the root level of the hard disk.

Browsers look for index.html document
Visitors to your Web server may use a browser that automatically looks for a document named default.html or one named index.html as the point of entry (home page) to your server, regardless of the home page you select in the Web Sharing control panel. This occurs because some browsers assume that the home page will have one of the names noted above, and they only look for the home page name you specified after looking for either default.html or index.html.

You can avoid having visitors inadvertently see the wrong document by renaming any files named default.html and index.html (whether at root level or inside a nested folder on the server). If you change document names, be sure to revise any links to the renamed documents so they reflect the new name.

Personal NetFinder and an index.html document
In Personal NetFinder view (similar to list view in the Finder), if there is a document named index.html, it will open in the visitor's browser. Therefore visitors will see that document as if it were a home page, and the list view of files at that level of the server will not be displayed. If you do not want visitors to see the list of files in a certain folder on your server, you can put an index.html document in that folder. By contrast, if you want visitors always to see a list of files at each level of the server's content, do not include any files named index.html.

File sharing and AppleShare
If you want to use access privileges for your server, you must use the File Sharing privileges, which you set in the Users & Groups control panel of your system software. Personal Web Sharing is incompatible with the Users & Groups component of the AppleShare Server Software; do not use AppleShare Server Software's privileges for your Web server. If you want to use the AppleShare Server Software and Personal Web Sharing, configure the Web server to give everyone read-only access in the Web Sharing control panel.

MacIP via LocalTalk
Some computers providing a server may experience slower performance overall during times of heavy activity on the Personal Web Sharing server over LocalTalk.

IP Addressing
Every Personal Web Sharing server will need a unique assigned IP address. Do not use nonstandard IP addressing with your server. Some IP addresses (0.0.0.0 or 1.1.1.1, for example) are reserved for network hardware such as routers and gateways. If you are not sure how to assign an IP address to your server, contact your network administrator.

Optimizing Personal NetFinder
As with the Finder, Personal NetFinder will take a longer time to display its list of files if the server contains a large number of files. To optimize performance, limit the number of items in any one folder in your server content.

CGIs (Common Gateway Interfaces)
CGIs are applications, created by developers, that add functionality such as counters, image maps, and database access to your server. Personal Web Sharing supports CGIs that are compatible with MacHTTP 2.2 and WebStar 1.3.1. To obtain information about CGIs, contact your Internet Service Provider, a user group, or your network administrator.

Mixed-Platform Environment
Personal Web Sharing allows you to publish documents across multiple platforms. Because character sets may differ from one platform to another, you may notice a difference in how data is displayed on some other types of computers on the network. To get a more accurate representation of HTML documents in a cross-platform environment, we recommend that you use Personal NetFinder to display the documents on your server.

File formats also vary from one type of computer to another in a cross-platform environment. Each computer on the network should have its browser's helper applications configured correctly for the types of files your server contains before connecting to your server.

Non-English-Language Documents
Mac to Mac: If your server contains non-English-language pages, the client's browser should be set to the appropriate document encoding option. Please review your browser documentation for more information on document encoding.

Mac to non-Mac: If your server contains non-English-language pages, a non-Mac OS computer will encounter some incompatibilities. For example, character sets may differ from one type of computer to another.

Non-English System Software
Personal NetFinder displays header information in the language of the Finder (part of the system software) used by the server.

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