By default, the Web Engage! plug-in will register on AppleTalk the Web server under which it is running. Also by default, the plug-in will not attempt to register an FTP server, since it cannot know if such a server exists. How to configure the plug-in to register an FTP server is covered in the next section. The Web Engage! plug-in will register your Web server using the Macintosh name (called "Computer name" on Mac OS 8) of the machine where the server is installed. By default, the Web Engage! plug-in will register the Web server such that when that server is accessed through the Web Engage! Chooser extension, the server's home page will be displayed in the Web browser. Also by default, if you do configure the Web Engage! plug-in to register an FTP server, the server's home directory will be displayed using the FTP application when accessed through the FTP Engage! Chooser extension.All the above settings are changeable through the remote administration feature of Web Engage!
Administration of the Web Engage! plug-in is done through your Web browser. To administer the plug-in, enter a URL of the form
http://www.yourwebserver.com/pi_admin.engage
where "www.yourwebserver.com" is the host name of the Web server on which the plug-in is installed. If your Macintosh is running multiple Web servers, see Multiple Web Servers below for special URL considerations. You may wish to password-protect this URL to prevent unauthorized administration of the Web Engage! plug-in. See your Web server's user's guide for details on how to password-protect URLs. When the remote administration page appears, note that there are two sections: one for the Web server and one for the FTP server. See Figure 1 below.
Figure 1. Remote Administration Web Page
If you wish to register the Web server on AppleTalk, check the "Register Web Server on AppleTalk" checkbox.
By default, the server will be registered on AppleTalk using the name of the Macintosh on which the server resides. If you wish to change the Web server's registration name, click the "Alternate name" radio button and enter the name you wish to use. The standard limit of 31 characters for AppleTalk names applies. Note that special Macintosh characters, such as smart quotes, should be avoided where possible, as they may not display correctly on the Remote Administration Web page or the Chooser.
Why would you want to register a server with an alternate name? The most common reason would be to register the server with a more descriptive name. For example, instead of registering a Web server using the machine name "My Power Mac", you might want to register it using the more descriptive name "My Web Server". Another reason would be to avoid name conflicts when registering multiple Web servers on the same Macintosh. AppleTalk does not allow duplicate names for the same type of service in the same zone.
Finally, it is possible to specify the path to be registered with a Web server. By default, the path registered with a Web server is simply "/". With this path, when the server is accessed through the Chooser, the home page for the server will be displayed. To have a different page displayed, enter the pathname (starting from the root of the Web server) to that page in the "Path on server to register" text box.
In addition to registering the Web server under which it is running, the Web Engage! plug-in can also register an FTP server which is assumed to be on the same Macintosh as that Web server. Since the plug-in cannot know if an FTP server exists, the default action is to not register an FTP server. If you wish to register an FTP server on AppleTalk, check the "Register FTP Server on AppleTalk" checkbox. Verify that an FTP server exists before registering it. Web Engage! does not confirm the existence of a server before registering it on AppleTalk. All other administration controls for FTP servers are analogous to the controls for Web servers covered above.
When you have entered the changes you want, click the "OK" button. Another page will be returned showing the status of the registration. If an error occurred while attempting registration, that error will be reported and the registration will not be complete. The most common error is that the registration name for that server is already in use in the server's AppleTalk zone. Choose another name for that server.
Once you click the "OK" button and a successful registration is confirmed, the changes you made on the Admin page are active immediately. They are also remembered by Web Engage! and used each time the Web server restarts.
If you have a Macintosh running multiple Web servers, the Remote Admin page for a given server must be accessed using a URL which points to the correct server. For instance, it is common to run a standard server and an SSL server on the same machine. Alternately, two servers could be run on the same machine using different ports. The correct URLs for accessing the Web Engage! plug-in admin page are:
where "www.yourwebserver.com" is the host name of the server.
If a Macintosh is running a multi-domain Web service manager, such as HomeDoor, Web Engage! only registers the Web server indicated at the top of the Remote Admin page. This will normally be the "real" Web server. Specifically, it will be whatever server name (or IP address if no server name is available) the Web server returns for its actual name. For WebSTAR, this will usually be the name which a reverse DNS lookup of its IP address returns. Under WebSTAR 2.0 or later, however, this name can be overridden by the "Server Name" field under "Miscellaneous settings" in WebSTAR Admin. For AppleShare IP, the IP address of the server is always returned and registered by Web Engage!.
With WebSTAR 2.0 and later you can tell WebSTAR the name to use for the Web server. Web Engage! will pick up this name and return it in the URL to be used by the Web browser to display the page. That name will thus show up in the location field of the browser. In general this is simply an aesthetic issue -- things will work regardless of what shows up in the location field (an IP address for instance, or an alias for the server). In the case of an SSL server, however, it's more than aesthetics. The SSL protocol expects the name sent by the browser to precisely conform to the name on the digital certificate used in the server. Thus, in an SSL server, the server name must be set to match the certificate. If it is not, Web Engage! will pick up the wrong name, return it to the browser, and the browser will get an error when trying to access the SSL server
The Web Engage! plug-in will write a message to the plug-in display whenever it registers or deregisters a server on AppleTalk. You can review the plug-in display to verify that a server has been successfully registered, or to see if an error occurred. See your Web server's user guide to determine how to access the plug-in display.
The Web Engage! Chooser extension invokes a Web browser to display Web server pages. Which Web browser to use is specified through the Web Engage! Chooser extension interface.
If you have Internet Config installed on the client machine and configured to indicate a preferred Web browser (under the http helpers option), the Chooser extension will automatically use that browser. Otherwise, the Chooser extension will search for a Web browser and use the first one it finds. This is the default behavior. If you wish to override this behavior and indicate a specific browser, select the Chooser from your Apple menu, click on the Web Engage! icon and then click on the "Setup..." button. When the browser selection dialog is displayed, choose "Use Browser" and then click the "Select" button and indicate a particular browser. The indicated browser will be used from then on. You can switch back to Internet Config later if desired.
The FTP Engage! Chooser extension invokes either a Web browser or an FTP application to access an FTP server. Which application to use is specified through the FTP Engage! Chooser extension interface, just as with the Web Engage! Chooser extension. That is, if you have Internet Config installed on the client machine and configured to indicate a preferred FTP application (under the ftp helpers option), the Chooser extension will automatically use that application. Otherwise, the Chooser extension will search for a Web browser and use the first one it finds. This is the default behavior. If you wish to override this behavior and indicate a specific FTP application, select the Chooser from your Apple menu, click on the FTP Engage! icon and then click on the "Setup..." button. When the FTP application selection dialog is displayed, choose "Use FTP Application" and then click the "Select" button and indicate a particular FTP application. The indicated FTP application will be used from then on. You can switch back to Internet Config later if desired.
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