Setting up FTP download on a Cobalt server

If your web site is hosted on a Cobalt server there are two ways you can use FTP to get Stats to download your logs. The simplest way is to just use the site administrator account you were given when you set up your web site. The alternate, which is slightly more secure involves creating a specific user account to access the log files.

Using the site administrator account

When you set up your web site your hosting provider should have given you a login account that has site administrator capabilities. This would be the same account you use to upload new pages to your web site. You can configure Stats to use this account by giving the username and password to Stats when you create the report. For the Location field in the form use a URL of the form ftp://ftp.DOMAIN.COM/logs/ where DOMAIN.COM is the domain of your web site.

If your web site is www.website.com and your site administrator account is hkj5134 then your "Create a report" form might look like this:

Creating a new FTP account

For security reasons, you may not wish to provide Stats with the username and password of your site administrator account. In that case you can set up a new user on your Cobalt server that has access to the log files only. To do this you will need to be able to access the Site Management interface on the server and you will need shell or telnet access as well. If you do not have both of these, you should ask your hosting provider to set up this account for you.

The first step is to create a new user in the Site Management tools. You can access Site Management interface from the URL you were given by your hosting provider. It is usually something like this, where SERVER is the full name or IP number of the server you are hosted on and WWW.WEBSITE.COM is the full name of your web site:

		http://SERVER:81/.cobalt/siteManage/WWW.WEBSITE.COM/
	

The first screen presented will give you a list of current users on the site and a "Add User" button. Click this button and fill in the User name and two Password fields. You do not need to give this user Telnet/Shell access. You should not make this user a Site administrator. Here is a sample configuration:

Now you will need to login to your server with your site administrator account. You can do this with telnet or a secure shell (SSH) program (if your server supports that). If you are running Windows, you can use the Telnet program that comes with it. Select Start and then Run. Type in the following, where SERVER is the full name of the server where your site is hosted. You can also usually use your website name as the SERVER:

After logging into telnet (give the user name and password of your Site Administrator account), use the following commands to make the new user have access to the log files. In the example below, replace USER with the username you created in the first step above (e.g. 'logs' in the sample). The prompts may look slightly different since you are logged in under a different account with a different server. Commands begin after the '$' sign:

Your telnet window should close and you should now be able to complete the "Create a report" screen in your Stats account setup. Fill in the information for the website using the new user name and password. For the Location field in the form use a URL of the form ftp://ftp.DOMAIN.COM/logs/ where DOMAIN.COM is the domain of your web site.

For example, if your web site is www.website.com and the new account you created is logs then your "Create a report" form might look like this: