One of the legacies of command-line FTP clients is the use of a startup or login message. These messages were used as a means of sending users a message detailing an acceptable use policy, server downtimes, how to request help, etc. Login messages aren't used as much these days because FTP clients that use a graphical interface sometimes don't have the ability to display such messages, even though the information is sent by the server. Most popular FTP clients for the Mac OS, including Fetch, Anarchy, NetFinder and Netscape Navigator, are capable of displaying messages from an FTP server.

The Messages configuration tab, shown in Figure 8, allows you to set the Welcome and Goodbye message, as well as select the name of a "message" file for each folder. The Welcome Message is displayed when users log in, and the Goodbye Message is sent when users log out.

Figure 8: The Messages configuration tab.

If the "Display Folder Messages" checkbox is selected, Rumpus will send the contents of the file with the specified name when a user accesses a particular folder, including the root folder. Message files should be plain text with line breaks and are completely optional. Rumpus does not require a message file in every folder if this option is on, and will simply not send a message when the user moves into a folder that doesn't have a message file.

For example, Figure 9 shows how Fetch handles the displaying of messages when the "Display Server Messages" option is selected in the "General" section of the "Preferences" window.

Figure 9: Use customized messages to share information about your FTP site.

Please note that some older text editors may crash when opening a file beginningwith a period (".") because they think it is actually a reference to a device driver and try to open up the driver instead of the message file. Most modern editors are immune to this problem, but be careful when using message file names with a leading period, as in the default ".message".