Your Home Page Goes Here

This is where you should put the home page for your server. Note that this file is named index.htm, the default name for a "directory index" document. When a client asks for http://your.host/, it will find this document and display your home page. Rename this file and then create your home page as index.htm.

Server Demonstration & Test (Please... read the stuff below!)

Server Documentation

Before you do anything, please review this. The four most common problems you can encounter are:

Timezone environment variable not set
The Common Log Format requires that times be recorded in GMT. Therefore, httpd must know what timezone your computer's local clock is set for. The TZ environment variable is used for this purpose.
Add a line to your AUTOEXEC.BAT to set the TZ variable. Within the US, the syntax is as follows:
```
SET TZ=sssnddd
```
where sss is the 3-letter abbreviation for your standard timezone (e.g. EST), n is the standard time offset of your timezone from GMT (e.g. for Eastern, 4), and ddd is the 3-letter abbreviation for your daylight time (if your state has daylight time, e.g., for Eastern, EDT). For example:
```
SET TZ=EST4EDT
SET TZ=MST7    <== for Arizona, no daylight time
```
Insufficient memory and/or CPU power
To run httpd and Mosaic together, you should have a 486/33 and 8MB of memory. Anything less will probably be agonizingly slow.
Insufficient DOS environment space
The demo page and many examples in the documentation require the server to run back-end scripts in a DOS window. They will fail if you don't have enough environment space. Add a line
```
CommandEnvSize=8192
```
to the [NonWindowsApp] section of SYSTEM.INI.
Insufficient Windows Message Queue Size
If you expect your server to be very busy, it may run out of room in the Windows message queue, which defaults to holding only 8 messages. The asynchronous API of WinSock generates lots of messages, and the multi-threading executive in the server generates even more. To increase the size of the application message queue, add a line
```
DefaultQueueSize=32
```
to the [Windows] section of WIN.INI.
Non-compliant or buggy Windows Sockets support
Some WinSock packages are missing functionality needed for servers that do non-blocking I/O. Others have bugs in this same area. If you have problems, add "-n" to your server's command line and try again. This disables multi-threading and increases the load placed on your system by the server. Use it only if absolutely necessary!.
Display bugs in Windows Mosaic
The current release of Windows Mosaic (2.0a4) has problems with it's display updating. This can get serious if you are short of memory, or if Mosaic gets connection errors. Most often, this shows up as missing chunks of data or a scrambled display, and sometimes Mosaic will simply display nothing at all. These are not server problems. Stop and restart Mosaic.

If you installed your server into the normal location C:\HTTPD, it is most likely ready to run without any further configuration needed. To take full advantage of the capabilities of your server, you should be using NCSA Mosaic for Windows 2.0a4 or equivalent. Other browsers may lack support for advanced features such as "fill-in forms".

Turn on automatic downloading of inline GIF images now. Start your server. Then have a look at this demonstration, which illustrates some of the great features of the NCSA httpd for Windows package.

Since this is a new installation, please browse the online documentation for your server. There is a lot of useful information in the online docs, including tutorials on HTML, the language used to construct Web documents, URL's, the addressing scheme used for documents, access and authorization, and much much more.

Robert B. Denny <rdenny@netcom.com>