Chapter 5 - Multimedia & Database Options

5.1 RealAudio/Video

Real Audio or Real Audio/Video is available for an extra charge. See our fee schedule for details.

Real Audio is a real time audio transmission/player system. A digital audio stream is transmitted from the server over the Internet to the destination and played immediately, rather than being stored to disk first and then played.

Each audio clip requires two files: a metafile with extension .ram, and the digital audio clip itself, with extension .ra.

The .ram file holds one or more lines of ASCII text, each of which references the .ra file to be played when the .ram file is accessed by the browser.

Entries in .ram files have the form:

pnm://machine-name.siteprotect.com/domainname/realaudio/file.ra

You can find the machine name by telnetting into your account. You will see a prompt such as "haydn:~$".  In this case "haydn" is your machine-name.

Place your .ram and .ra files in the realaudio subdirectory under your web directory. Remember that .ram files must be uploaded in ASCII mode while .ra files must be uploaded in BINARY mode. You may then access these files via a web browser at:

http://www.[yourdomain].com/realaudio/file.ram

REAL G2 SERVER INSTRUCTIONS (.rm files):

The setup is the same as above, except that you would use .rm instead of .ra. Also, the .ram file entries will be different. They will be in the form:

rtsp://machine-name.siteprotect.com:1554/domainname/file.rm

Please note the port 1554, which is necessary.  Also, unlike the other .ram files, you will not include /realaudio/. If you include this, then it will not stream as fast as it should.

5.2 Volano^® Java Chat

You can order Volano Java Chat to be installed by requesting it through Control Panel at http://YOURDOMAINNAME.com/cpanel

You will receive the following information in your email:

Getting Started

Add a link on your home page to point to the chat room. The link should be to:

http://volano.siteprotect.com/[username]/chat.htm

An example html code for this is as follows:

<a href="http://volano.siteprotect.com/[username]/chat.htm">Enter Chat Room</a>

IMPORTANT: You must use above specified url only. Any other url will not work. For example, http://www.volano.siteprotect.com/[username]/chat.htm will NOT work.

You are done! You are now ready to use your own chat room.

Customizing Your Chat Room

When Volano Chat is installed, a default chat.htm page is created. This is a fully functional page so you can start using the chat room right away. If you wish to modify your chat.htm page, you can do so by following the instructions below.

Step 1.

Please upload all your graphic files to the /www/volano/xyz directory and change the chat.htm file to something like this (do not try to upload to the vcclient subdirectory; you won't be able to).

IMPORTANT: The name of page should be "chat.htm". Any other name will NOT work. Make sure you replace [username] with your own username.

You will need to modify and add parameters to the applet tag to customize your chat room. Modify the parameters you wish to change or add new parameters inside the MyVolanoChat applet tag. We recommend that you do this only if you know what you are doing. If we have to rebuild your chat room, it will be charged at a $25 per incidence rate.

Parameter Definitions:

<param name="color.background" value="#C000FF">
This parameter changes the color of the chat room window, with color values defined in the format #RRGGBB.

<param name="color.foreground" value="#000040">
This parameter changes the color of the chat text and the chat room borders, with color values defined in the format #RRGGBB.

<param name="font.default" value="Helvetica-13">
This parameter changes the font type and font size. The font specification is in the format name-style-size. For the best cross platform support, the name should be limited to Helvetica, TimesRoman, Courier, or Dialog. The style is one of italic, bold, or bolditalic, and should be omitted for a plain style. The size is the font point size. For example, you could specify: Helvetica-bold-13 or Helvetica-italic-14. Be sure to use the correct cases as shown in this example.

<param name="banner.code" value="COM.volano.BannerPlayer.class">
This parameter points to the ad banner player applet that rotates banner ads in your chat room. To turn your banner ads off, add this parameter and leave it blank. For example: <param name="banner.code" value=>

<param name="banner.param.banner.1" value="60 welcome.gif http://www.volano.com/">
This parameter changes the first banner ad that shows up in your chat room. Ads can be GIFs, standard GIFs or JPEG images. The numeric suffix on each property (banner.param.banner.1, banner.param.banner.2,..., banner.param.banner.n) must be sequential and start with the number 1. This suffix gives the sequence of the advertisement banners.

You must define at least 3 banner ads in order to override each of the 3 default Volano banner ads. For instance, if you only define banner.param.banner.1 and banner.param.banner.2, then users will see the default Volano banner ad banner.param.banner.3. If you want to have only 1 banner ad, just list that one banner three times. Each banner must have three items, separated by spaces or tabs. The first item is the time (in seconds) to display the ad. The second item is the path to the image file (relative to the applet codebase or URL). The third item is the location of the Web page to display when the user clicks on the ad.

<param name="banner.param.banner.2" value="60 help.gif help.html">
This parameter changes the second banner ad that shows up in your chat room.

<param name="banner.param.banner.3" value="60 chatwithme.gif null">
This parameter changes the third banner ad that shows up in your chat room.

<param name="image.button.width" value="88">
This parameter defines the width in pixels of the button image that appears on your chat.html Web page to allow entry into your chat room.

<param name="image.button.height" value="31">
This parameter defines the height in pixels of the button image that appears on your chat.html Web page to allow entry into your chat room.

<param name="image.button1" value="button2.gif">
This parameter defines the button image that appears on your chat.html Web page when you move your mouse cursor over the button. The image may be in GIF or JPEG format. This image should have the same dimensions as image.button.1.

<param name="banner.param.background" value="#C0003F">
<param name="banner.param.foreground" value="#000080">
This parameter defines the foreground and background color of the cell where your banner ads are placed.

Step 2.

Upload the newly created chat.htm page using your FTP program. You should use following information to log onto your Volano Chat account:

IMPORTANT: Only following file types are allowed to be uploaded: html, jpg, gif. Any other file types will be rejected by the server.

Step 3.

To make sure that you are viewing your most recent chat room changes. Hold your 'shift' key and then choose the 'reload' or 'refresh' option on your browser to ensure that you download the latest applet when you reenter your your chat room. You may even need to clear your browser cache/temp files or restart your computer.

5.3 mSQL.

mSQL database can be requested through Control Panel.

Here are some relevant information:

1. Directory paths to mSQL related files: /usr/local/Hughes/bin
2. Installed components: msql.pm, w3-msql, lite,Msql.pm perl module

NOTE: Support for mSQL means that you can run an mSQL database on our servers. It does not mean that we provide any technical assistance or tutorial on the subject.

5.4 MySQL

MySQL database can be requested through Control Panel.

Here are some relevant information:

1. Hostserver for MySQL: YOURDOMAIN.com
2. You can access the database using Perl DBI (with DBD::mysql) or Mysql.pm module. You can also access it from the command line via SSH using mysql command. The path is /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql. Please make sure that you first connect through your shell account.

NOTE: Support for MySQL means that you can run a MySQL database on our servers. It does not mean that we provide any technical assistance or tutorial on the subject.