• Does PSIWeb support CGI and Perl scripting?

Yes. We support Perl 4, Perl 5 and TCL scripting.

• Are there any built-in scripts available?

We have a script to handle email from forms - cgiemail - that is functionally equivalent to the popular FormMail. (FormMail itself will not run on PSIWeb "Classic").

• Is it possible to run anything that requires root access?

No.

• Is SendMail present on the server?

Yes, on the "Finsbury and "AFS" services, but not on the "Classic" service (That's why we provide cgiemail (see above) to handle the same function).

• What format Imagemaps does PSIWeb support

CERN and NCSA.

• Can we run Server Side Includes (SSIs)?

Yes, mostly. The "exec" function is not enabled.

• Can I have telnet access to my website?

No.

• Can we use Microsoft FrontPage?

Yes. We support the current fully released (not beta) version of FrontPage in it's standard edition (not the extended version) on the "AFS" Service. FrontPage 97 (not 98) is available on the "Classic" service, but no version of FrontPage is available on the "Finsbury" service.

• Can we use a secure server (to process credit card payments, etc)?

Yes, on the "Classic" or "AFS" services. You can set up a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) on your website, once you have obtained an SSL certificate from Verisign.

• Can we setup a shopping cart system?

Yes, on the "Classic" or "AFS" services.

• If we want to setup our site to do something unusual, that isn't covered by the standard PSIWeb system, what are our chances of being able to do that?

Zero. PSIWeb has a large number of options and built-in functions, but we cannot - under any circumstances - add extra functionality on a one-off basis for individual customers. We do, of course, continually upgrade our service, and we aim to keep up with any new developments with web hosting in general. However, the basic principle is that all our customers have exactly the same service options - we can't do "specials".

• What type of access statistics ("hit counts") are available, and how do I interpret them?

The "Finsbury" service provides stats from the http-analyze program, and the "Classic" service uses Analog. The "AFS" service offers both kinds of stats, as well as referrer logs. We have a separate page explaining how to interpret Analog stats, and guidelines for intepreting http-analyze stats can be found on Netstore website.

There is a separate document available on interpreting website statistics.

It's important to note that web stats are extremely unreliable, and should not be used for anything more than a rough guide to how popular your site is. There are several documents available that explain why stats are unreliable, one of the most useful is provided by Cranfield University.

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