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Services Offered

Our goal is to keep adding free services. If your nonprofit organization needs something that isn't on the list below, please send email to help@thecsl.org. If your need is especially urgent or unique, we may ask you for some money to help cover the costs of adding a new service.

We offer these services, most of them are no cost.

Domain registration

To have a website for www.savetheworld.org or an email address servant_leader@savetheworld.org, you need to register your domain with the central Internet authorities. For $10 per year, you can register your domain through us. This is a fee we pass on the the central registrar. Registering a domain though us, does not require you us us to run your email or web service. You can change registrars at any tine.

Anti virus filtering

All the email we handle is scanned for viruses. Any suspicious email is quarantined. Once a week you get an email message reminding you to goto a web page and check the quarantine. You can release the message from quarantine if it turns out not to have a virus.

SPAM filtering

It would be very satisfying to remove all the SPAM before it got to you. However Spamassassin, the software we use, is only 99 percent effective. If we drop SPAM there is a small chance we might keep you from reading Grandpaw's excited message about the large new rooster on the neighbor's farm. Therefore we content ourselves with quarintining your SPAM for you to review (or not) at your leasure.

Nightly backups.

Every night, we make (2) copies of all web sites, database and system files. Every day we copy one set of backups to a building (2) miles away from our servers. Typically, we restore a file within a a few hours of request. We keep backups for 28 days.

CGI scripts

CGI stands for "Common Gateway Interface." With CGI scripts you can run software through your website. For example, you can add a guest book or a forum to your site. To create a CGI script, you need to know how to program. To install a CGI script that somebody else has written, you need to be a relatively skilled computer user.

For your convenience, we have already installed some useful CGI scripts.

Databases

The database software we provide is called Postgresql. For most purposes, it is comparable to Oracle or Microsoft SQL server. We also offer MySQL, but do not have a web-based interface for it yet.

DNS

DNS, or Domain Name Service, maps domain names to TCP/IP numbers. We have three DNS servers for extra reliability. Unless you want sub domains, (like: lists.ltc.org) you don't really need to worry about DNS. However it is important to know it is there.

Email

Of course everyone in your organization can get a hotmail account, However, there are several advantages to yourname@yourdomain.org email addresses.

You don't have to read advertising
It looks a bit slicker on a business card
When you leave, messages can be forwarded to your replacement

Our email service also includes the ability to access your email from the web.

Email Lists (3000 people)

The lists we provide are like yahoo groups or topica. The difference is that our lists are easier to use and are free of advertising. You can browse the archives of public lists we serve at lists.thecsl.org.

If you are used to managing your email lists in Outlook Express, these advantages to mailing lists software may appeal to you:

People can subscribe or unsubscribe without bugging you
Bounces are handled automatically
An web archive of messages is kept automatically

Graphic Design & Programming

We pay for our free services by offering other services for a small fee. If you need a database or website, please email us at help@thecsl.org to discuss the matter.

Log Files

Every time a web browser reads a page on your website, the visit is recorded in a log file. Information like the type of computer (Macintosh, Windows XP, Linux, etc.) and the type of browser (Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox) is also recorded. Every time there is an error associated with your site, the error is logged.

The error log is especially helpful if you are programming. However access to logs allows you access to traffic reports, which are useful to everyone.

Perl, PHP and Python

If you are a programmer, this should be good news. If you are not a programmer, access to these languages probably doesn't mean much to you.

Server Side Includes

It is a pain to change the same piece of text on every page in your website. SSI lets you create the common elements of your web page in one file and then use (include) that file in every page that needs these elements.

Traffic Reports

Traffic reports let you answer questions like:

How much traffic does your web site get in a month?
Which sections of your web site are the most popular?
What operating systems do your visitors use?

Web Forms

Your organization uses paper forms like job applications, class registrations, work orders or timesheets. You can put these forms on the web, allow people to fill them in 24 hours a day and have the results sent to your mailbox or stored to a file for import into a spreadsheet or database.

The nicest thing about is that you don't have to read people's handwriting!

Web Pages

It is probably not a good idea to have a website because everyone else has one and you don't want to feel inferior. However, if you have ever had somebody ask for information and wished you could say "It is on our website," you might seriously consider a website.

Wiki Web

Sometimes the uploading and downloading of web pages gets a bit tedious. The Wiki web allows you to mark some pages for anyone to update and improve, just by clicking an "Update" button. A Wiki may not be good for maintaining your legal documents. However, it can be quite handy for keeping free encyclopedias up to date. In an active set of wiki pages, the majority of helpful people keep the pages from being defaced. In an inactive community, few people bother to deface pages and fewer people notice when they have been defaced.