Roger,
I did some poking around. After you log into admin.1and1.com, you
arrive at a "control panel" web application. There are hints that it
might be based on "Plex" (http://www.plextk.org), but I didn't try to
figure that out.
Midway down the page are links to "FTP Account" and "Secure Shell (SSH)
Access". Clicking on either reveals that both FTP and SSH currently use
the same user ID and password, but they are different than the ones you
use to sign into the web page!
It appears you're allowed to add other FTP "accounts" (and perhaps
restrict their access), but you're restricted to just one SSH account.
I was curious if changing the password for the one FTP account would
also change it for the SSH account, but I didn't try it.
The SSH/FTP user ID and password appear to be randomly assigned.
Presumably this make them a little harder to sniff out from the deluge
of raw packet data rushing by. (Of course, in SSH, this doesn't matter;
the ID and password are both encrypted, but in simple FTP, it may help).
If you're using FTP to "publish" your pages, you should probably switch
to scp or sftp. Various Windows "clients" are mentioned here:
http://www.openssh.com/windows.html
The server appears to be running Linux kernel 2.6.16. The latest kernel
is 2.6.21, so the kernel they're running is about a year old.
The C compiler is ancient (2.95.4), but reliable. Some people feel the
'57 Chevy was the best car to ever come from Detroit. GCC 2.95.4 enjoys
a similar reputation among programmers.
I infer the 1and1 webserver supports "mod_perl" and "mod_php", but not
"mod_python". As I understand it, the "mod_xxx" Apache plugins tie the
scripting language much more tightly into the server, work better under
heavy load, and provide more authentication options than the
alternative, CGI.
You can choose CGI or mod_xxx for Perl and PHP, but you're restricted to
CGI if you want to use Python. I'm not sure that matters for a
low-traffic website like ours.
Python does feature a quite complete library of CGI functions (filling
out forms, returning their contents, setting and retrieving cookies,
etc.), but I've never used them, so I can't give much guidance.
I was disappointed to find the Python version was only 2.2.1. This may
rule out one of the better frameworks, Django:
http://www.djangoproject.com/
although I suppose one could install a later version of Python for our
own private use.
Alex Martelli is a very smart guy. In his book, he mentions some other
web-programming libraries and frameworks. He is particularly fond of
http://webpy.org/ which looks very simple
Their Python installation does include two (or three?) add-on packages.
As far as I can tell, they provide various ways to hook Python into MySQL:
mx: http://www.egenix.com/files/python/eGenix-mx-Extensions.html
mysqlpy: http://mysql-python.sourceforge.net/
but, both may be obsolete! The trend is toward a standardized "DB API"
which restricts you to some ubiquitous functions that don't change
regardless of the underlying DB. You can start off with MySQL and if
that runs out of steam, switch to PostgreSQL or Oracle without changing
a line of code. I'm not sure mx or mysqlpy were written before or after
this standardization crystallized.
I'm not sure why, but the Python Imaging Library is also there
(http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/). I suppose, this somehow
allows you to serve up images for your Python-generated web pages.
Learning Python: I found the tutorial included in the Python install a
little hard to follow. If you're interested in Python, I have three
books to consider:
Zelle's "Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science" was
written by some prof at a small college in Iowa for his "Programming
101" course. Marly liked it a lot. MIT picked it when they recently
decided to abandon LISP in favor of Python for their introductory
course. If you already know programming, it may be too basic, but it is
very readable.
Martelli's "Python in a Nutshell" is good if you've at least done some
programming in a structured and/or object-oriented language (Java, C,
Pascal, etc.) I found it was about right for me.
Others seem to prefer Pilgrim's "Dive into Python", but I found it a
little too dense for my taste. It is available for free; you can't beat
the cost: http://www.diveintopython.org/
Jim
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