Team Websites

Each team has a subdomain "teamname.jplsoftball.org" within the jplsoftball.org domain, where "teamname" is the team's full name (all lower case and run together with no spaces or punctuation). If your team's full name is very long, you may also request a shorter-named subdomain that automatically redirects to your official subdomain bearing your full teamname.

Click here to see the full list of subdomains currently established within the jplsoftball.org domain. Note that due to name length restrictions there are a couple of exceptions to the standard naming conventions for subdomains and subdomain resources.

Each subdomain is intended to function like a standalone site. Each team has control over the content of their own subdomain (subject to "reasonable and appropriate use" conditions).

Team Subdomain Resources

Each "teamname.jplsoftball.org" subdomain has the following resources already set up for you:

You have an ftp subaccount "teamname@jplsoftball.org" with (temporary) password obtainable from Sam Dolinar at 4-7403. Logging in to your ftp subaccount allows you to upload, download, or delete files from your "teamname.jplsoftball.org" subdomain, up to a current quota of about 1 GB per subdomain.
You have one (currently empty) password-protected subdirectory, "jplsoftballonly", within your "teamname.jplsoftball.org" subdomain. Files that you load into the "jplsoftballonly" subdirectory will only be viewable from your site if the user supplies a valid username and password. Since our web hosting service only gives us the capability to establish a single list of authorized users with access to all password-protected subdirectories, this means that all authorized users throughout the JPL Softball Program will be able to view every team's "jplsoftballonly" subdirectory. However, the "jplsoftballonly" subdirectory will be off-limits to viewers from the rest of the world. Your team's username for viewing the "jplsoftballonly" subdirectories is your "teamname". Contact Sam Dolinar at 4-7403 to obtain your initial (temporary) password.
You have several subdirectories (totaling around 50 MB) that were supplied by our web hosting service by default when your subdomain was established. The "images" folder contains a selection of images and logos (mostly advertisements). The "modlogan" and "webalizer" subdirectories are the places where stats are gathered on visits to your subdomain. The "cp" and "cgi-bin" subdirectories contain various scripts and cgi applications. You're free to keep these default subdirectories or delete them as you see fit.
You have three email accounts, "webmaster@teamname.jplsoftball.org", "postmaster@teamname.jplsoftball.org", and "catchall@teamname.jplsoftball.org". Your "postmaster" address is for official messages from our web host. Your "webmaster" address should be used for normal team business. For example, your visitors should write to your "webmaster" address if they wish to occasionally obtain very large files (such as high-resolution pictures) that are generally too large to post in large quantities. Your "catchall" address catches all messages sent to "name@teamname.jplsoftball.org" if "name" is not a registered email account. Currently your "postmaster" and "webmaster" addresses are set to automatically forward to the JPL email address of your team's (2007) manager. Your "catchall" address is not currently set to auto-forward. You can access your email for all three addresses via webmail at email.ixwebhosting.com. Contact Sam Dolinar (4-7403) if you wish to change the default forwarding options, or to establish a few (but not dozens) additional email accounts for "@teamname.jplsoftball.org".
If you can identify any additional subdomain resources that might be useful to you, inquire to Sam Dolinar (4-7403) whether they might be available from our web hosting service.

Passwords and Password Maintenance

Passwords can only be reset by an authorized "jplsoftball.org" administrator, not by the webmasters of individual teams. Contact Sam Dolinar at 4-7403 to reset your passwords. If you want to keep your passwords unknown to "jplsoftball.org" administrators, you should visit Sam at his office (238-434) and enter your passwords while Sam is logged in as an administrator.

You should be most protective of your team's ftp subaccount password. Any person logging in to your ftp subaccount will be able to upload, overwrite, or delete any files in your team's subdomain. This password should be known only to your team's webmaster and possibly one or two trusted alternates.
Your team's password for viewing "jplsoftballonly" files offers only a small modicum of privacy assurance. You should make this password known to anyone that you consider to be affiliated with your team. And you should be aware that other teams will be following the same policy for distributing their own "jplsoftballonly" passwords. So your "jplsoftballonly" files will be viewable by a very large group of people throughout the JPL Softball Program, but hopefully not by too many snoopers from the world at large.
You should select and protect your team's email account passwords as appropriate for email accounts. Since your email accounts at "teamname.jplsoftball.org" should not be used for personal messages, a compromise of your email password should not be devastating as it might be for a personal email account.

Initialization of Your Team's Subdomain

If your team previously posted site content (via Richard) to our old jplrecclubs.caltech.edu/softball domain, your "index.html" file and other files have been moved to our new web host. Please verify whether your site is working properly, and report any problems to Sam Dolinar (4-7403).

If your team did not post a website to our old jplrecclubs.caltech.edu/softball domain, you now have a default front page that simply introduces your team and says that your website is under construction. You should feel free to borrow "index.html" or other files from other teams' websites, if using such files as templates helps you to get started launching your own site with some real content of your own. If you've never written an html page before, Karen recommends a tutorial at http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/.

Links From/To Your Team's Website

Links from your team's website to the JPL Softball website or to the league websites or to individual team websites should spell out the full address "http://jplsoftball.org/" or "http://bleague.jplsoftball.org/" or "http://cleague.jplsoftball.org/" or http://teamname.jplsoftball.org/". Local relative references that you might have used in the past, such as "../../" or "../" or "../teamname/", will not work with the new directory structure. You have the responsibility to correct and maintain all links that you create from your site to other sites.

You should also check links to your site from jplsoftball.org or bleague.jplsoftball.org or cleague.jplsoftball.org. Contact Sam Dolinar (4-7403) to report any problems with such links to your site.

Reasonable and Appropriate Use Conditions

The contents of all subdomains will reflect on the good name of our entire "jplsoftball.org" website and on the JPL Softball Program. Therefore, even though other teams will not have access to change any files within your team's subdomain, the JPL Softball Program's site administrator(s) will have read/write access to the entire "jplsoftball.org" domain, including the subdomains of all teams.

All teams' usage of their subdomains is subject to "reasonable and appropriate use" conditions, including:

You must abide by all of the Terms of Service that govern our contract with our web hosting company.
Any offensive or inappropriate content posted to your subdomain will be removed by the JPL Softball Program's site administrator(s), and your subdomain will be locked from further use.
Repeated violations of the "reasonable and appropriate use" conditions will result in shutting down the entire "jplsoftball.org" domain, so it's in everybody's interest to make sure that all teams respect these rules.
You are responsible for maintaining a backup of your own subdomain's files off-site. Neither our hosting service nor the JPL Softball Program will be responsible for any files lost from the "jplsoftball.org" domain or any of its subdomains.
You are encouraged to post many pictures from your team's games and other activities, but refrain from uploading gobs of high-resolution originals. You should post low-resolution versions appropriate for screen viewing, and retain the full-resolution originals off-site. Visitors to your site may selectively request a few full-resolution originals via your "webmaster" email address. You may choose to limit this privilege to JPL Softball users by keeping your link to this email address inside your password-protected "jplsoftballonly" subdirectory.
Your quota on disk usage is currently about 1 GB, but this is not guaranteed. You should not aim to fill up your quota in one year. If you limit your new uploads to about 100 MB per year or less, you should have enough disk space for the next 5 to 10 years, even allowing for a little uncertainty in your overall quota of 1 GB.