6.0 What is a Mini-BBS?

A mini-BBS could server a number of purposes. It is excellent for the small business to allow their customers to download or upload files to a quick and efficient server. An example could be a graphics design company who asks a client to upload a document for printing and they can only do this outside office hours. The BBS can be left on 24hours a day.

Another example could be where a company leaves some important files for a client in a closed door. The client can log onto the BBS in their free time, enter the closed door (with the user/pass) and download the files.

A family may benefit from a closed BBS. In this electronic age a lot of people are processing and developing digital pictures themselves, but how do you send these to your friends and relatives? They are too big to send by email, you might not have enough web space to put them on your free web site, so the other alternative is setup your own BBS!

This way a relative can call late at night, choose all the pictures they want to download and then just leave it going!

6.1 Configuring and Activating the BBS

Goto the preferences menu and select "BBS settings". On the General page (first page) check the activate button and leave the baud set at 38400.

Let's assume you are a small business and want two doors. The first door will be the main (default) unrestricted area for all users, the other will be the closed door for other employees.

In the doors folder press "Add" and "-Unnamed door-" will appear within the door name. Rename this to "Main", choose a directory where files will be stored and then add a greeting and menu if you require.

The greeting and menu can be a pre-created text file. If you do not want to create your own menu, leave STFax Pro to create its own. STFax Pro will create a menu from the files you want stored in that door.

The greeting message will be shown to users entering that particular door and, if no message is selected, they will be greeted with:

"You have entered the [name of door] door".

Ok, let's add another door. Click on "Add" again, rename this door "Internal", click the restricted button and enter a username and password so that only authorised users can enter this door.

When a caller enters the BBS and tries to search for other doors, restricted doors will be listed but the user will have to enter the correct user/pass in order to continue.

Press the quit button situated at the top left of the BBS Settings GUI and you will be back to the main interface. You should see your two new doors added to the listtree.

Finally, in order for your BBS to automatically answer an incoming data call you need to select "Mode: FAX/DATA" from the misc section within the STFax Pro preferences.

6.2 Adding or Removing Files

Now you have created your doors you will want to add some files for other users to download from your BBS.

On the main interface click on the "Files" section within one of your doors on the listtree. Now simply drag the files from Workbench to the files list on the main page or, by using the right mouse button context menu, add files by selecting "Add" and they should appear within the file list.

When you add a file a little window will appear asking you to add a note/information to the file.

This note/information will give your callers a brief description of the file.

6.4 Uploads and Recognising Filetypes

Callers can upload files to your BBS. If a caller (or callers) uploads a file(s) to your BBS they will appear within the "Uploads" list within a particular door within the listtree.

Using the right mouse button context menu you can choose to move a file to another location on your computer, rename the file or remove it. You can also view it by double-clicking on the file.

If STFax recognises the type of file you are trying to view, it will execute the correct program. However, you have to tell STFax which program you want to execute in order to we a particular file. You do this within the filetypes settings.

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