SBC Personal Web Pages

Scheduled Outage: Tuesday, August 8, 2006, from 03:00 to 08:00 EDT

Will — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 20:56:00 +0000

On Tuesday, August 8, 2006, we will be upgrading equipment supporting the Personal Web Pages environment. In order to prevent any data loss, all SBC Personal Web Pages will be read-only for that time.

To repeat, you will be able to READ pages at

http://home.ameritech.net/
http://pages.cthome.net/
http://home.nvbell.net/
http://home.pacbell.net/
http://home.swbell.net/
http://pages.prodigy.com/
http://pages.prodigy.net/
http://pages.sbcglobal.net/
http://flashpages.prodigy.net/
http://wanspages.prodigy.net/

You will not be able to upload pages using FTP. Nor will the various web editors be available at

http://publish.ameritech.net/
http://php2.cthome.net/
http://home.nvbell.net/
http://home.pacbell.net/
http://home.swbell.net/
http://bldblocks.prodigy.net/

A maintenance notice will be in place during the outage.

We appreciate your patience as we work to make SBC Personal Web Pages better.

Sorry We've Been Unresponsive

Will — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 21:00:00 +0000

If you have sent mail to the PWP help mailbox in the past month, please accept my apologies. We've been inundated with spam, and the squirrel pressing the DELETE key is not working fast enough. Maybe we should get one of those drinking birds.

Scheduled Outage: Sunday, November 13, 2005, from 05:00 to 08:30 Eastern Time

Will — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 21:54:00 +0000

On Sunday, November 13, 2005, between 05:00 and 08:30 a.m. EST, SBC Internet Services will be making changes to backend systems to improve performance and reliability. During this time, some SBC Personal Web Page services will be unavailable.

The Page Creator/Manager and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) services for members in nvbell.net, pacbell.net, snet.net, and swbell.net will be unavailable.

Your personal web pages will be readable, but you will be unable to make changes to them.

Affected Services:

https://home.nvbell.net/pagetools/cgi-bin/creator.cgi
https://home.nvbell.net/pagetools/cgi-bin/start.cgi
ftp://home.nvbell.net/

https://home.pacbell.net/pagetools/cgi-bin/creator.cgi
https://home.pacbell.net/pagetools/cgi-bin/start.cgi
ftp://home.pacbell.net/

https://home.swbell.net/pagetools/cgi-bin/creator.cgi
https://home.swbell.net/pagetools/cgi-bin/start.cgi
ftp://home.swbell.net/

http://php2.cthome.net/
ftp://pages.cthome.net/

Extended Outage: Sunday, October 16, 2005, from 05:00 to 11:00 Eastern Time

Will — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 15:30:00 +0000

On Sunday, 16 October, between 04:00 and 10:00 CDT, SBC Internet Services will be making changes to backend systems to improve performance and reliability. During this time, some SBC Personal Web Page services will be unavailable.

The Page Creator/Manager and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) services for members in nvbell.net, pacbell.net, snet.net, and swbell.net will be unavailable.

Your personal web pages will be readable, but you will be unable to make changes to them.

Affected Services:

https://home.nvbell.net/pagetools/cgi-bin/creator.cgi
https://home.nvbell.net/pagetools/cgi-bin/start.cgi
ftp://home.nvbell.net/

https://home.pacbell.net/pagetools/cgi-bin/creator.cgi
https://home.pacbell.net/pagetools/cgi-bin/start.cgi
ftp://home.pacbell.net/

https://home.swbell.net/pagetools/cgi-bin/creator.cgi
https://home.swbell.net/pagetools/cgi-bin/start.cgi
ftp://home.swbell.net/

http://php2.cthome.net/
ftp://pages.cthome.net/

Podcasting with SBC Personal Web Pages

Will — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 17:41:00 +0000

Your SBC Personal Web Page is your space on the Web. You can do anything you like with that space, except violate the Acceptable Use Policy. We provide you with 15MB of space to store your HTML, your images, and your media. If you are making music with Apple's GarageBand, then you can upload the files to your Personal Web Page space. If you are writing a novel with Blogger, then you can publish it in your Personal Web Page space. And if you are podcasting, you can podcast from your Personal Web Page space.

What's podcasting?

Podcasting is recording your voice, or whatnot; providing some meta-data in a file in the RSS format; and telling your friends where to find it. They then subscribe to your podcast with an aggregator of some sort, such as iTunes, and listen to it at their leisure, either on their iPod or other media player, or on their desk.

So, how does one podcast using one's SBC Personal Web Page? I'm glad you asked.

Upload your MP3 file to your Personal Web Page site.
Make an RSS file about the MP3 file.
Upload that to your Personal Web Page site
Tell your friends where to find the RSS file.

A minimal RSS file containing a podcast looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?> <rss version="2.0"> <channel> <title>SBC Personal Web Pages Sample</title> <link>http://pages.prodigy.net/</link> <item> <description>This is a sample <a href="http://pages.prodigy.net/charles.cox/my.mp3">podcast</a>. </description> <enclosure url="http://pages.prodigy.net/charles.cox/my.mp3" length="10" type="audio/mpeg"/> </item> </channel> </rss>

If you use FeedBurner in conjunction with Blogger, making the RSS file with the necessary elements is not much work. FeedBurner takes care of all the niggling details.

Your Very Own Domain Name!

Will — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 22:05:00 +0000

I received an e-mail from a Prodigy member, in which he asked if SBC Yahoo! is a real ISP, and if we sold domain names.

Yes, SBC Yahoo! is an Internet Service Provider (ISP). The features offered under the SBC Yahoo! brand differ slightly from those offered under the Prodigy brand. However, as far as Internet access goes they are identical.

If I understand you correctly, you would like a domain name to use with the web pages you now have in your Personal Web Page space. The Personal Web Page environment does not directly support displaying those pages under your own domain. There are third parties which offer domain forwarding services; however, since I am unfamiliar with those providers, I hesitate to recommend one over the other.

There are two separate products which you will need to purchase, but those can be purchased together. You will need to register a domain name. Any of the ICANN-accredited registrars, such as SBC Yahoo!, can do this for you. Once you have a domain name, you will need to host your site somewhere. If you use a domain forwarder, this can be your SBC Personal Web Page. If not, you might consider SBC Yahoo! Small Business Web Hosting or SBC Yahoo! GeoCities Pro. Signing up for either of these hosting products will allow you register a domain name at the same time.

If you have upgraded your Prodigy account to SBC Yahoo!, you already have access to SBC Yahoo! GeoCities Free, and may find it easiest to upgrade that product to the SBC Yahoo! GeoCities Pro plan.

Feel free to write us if you have further questions about domain registration or these SBC Yahoo! products. You may also find the ICANN FAQ helpful.

Extended Outage: Thursday, May 12, 2005, from 03:00 to 08:00 Eastern Time

Will — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 21:06:00 +0000

On Thursday, May 12, 2005, we will be upgrading equipment to support the Personal Web Pages environment. In order to prevent any data loss, all SBC Personal Web Pages will be read-only for that time.

To repeat, you will be able to READ pages at

http://home.ameritech.net/
http://pages.cthome.net/
http://home.nvbell.net/
http://home.pacbell.net/
http://home.swbell.net/
http://pages.prodigy.com/
http://pages.prodigy.net/
http://pages.sbcglobal.net/
http://flashpages.prodigy.net/
http://wanspages.prodigy.net/

You will not be able to upload pages using FTP. Nor will the various web editors be available at

http://publish.ameritech.net/
http://php2.cthome.net/
http://home.nvbell.net/
http://home.pacbell.net/
http://home.swbell.net/
http://bldblocks.prodigy.net/

A maintenance notice will be in place during the outage.

We appreciate your patience as we work to make SBC Personal Web Pages better.

ProdigyBiz

Will — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 02:07:00 +0000

This news is only tangentially related to Personal Web Pages, in the sense that I'm one of the administrators on both systems and that both bear the Prodigy name, but the ProdigyBiz hosting service is departing the net on April 1st, 2005. It will be succeeded by offerings at webhosting.com and SMARTpages.

Changes to Ameritech.net Personal Web Pages

Will — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 19:37:15 +0000

On Sunday, 14 November, we will make a number of changes to the Ameritech.net personal web pages.

The URI

Ameritech.net PWP URIs look like this.

http://www.ameritech.net/users/myMemberName/

On Sunday, they will become like this.

http://users.ameritech.net/myMemberName/

Your existing URIs will continue to function [1]. However, please do not use the old URI; it may cease to work in future.

The Index

The Ameritech.net PWP environment does not currently permit members to create their own index page. Instead, we display a generic index listing the member's information and the pages they may wish the public to view.

On Sunday, you will be able to upload your own index page.

The Space

Ameritech.net currently limits disk usage to 2MB.

On Sunday, the disk usage limit will be increased to 15MB.

The Editor

The Ameritech.net PWP editor prohibits the use of Internet Explorer. In 1997, Internet Explorer did not support HTTP uploads.

On Sunday, the editor will work with any modern browser.

You may have some questions about these changes. We've anticipated three:

But how do I make use of all these nifty features
The Ameritech editor is currently found at http://www.ameritech.net/pubsys/create.html.
On Sunday, it will be http://publish.ameritech.net/.
What about FTP?
Patience, Grasshopper.
What happened to my feedback form?
The feedback form CGI has been replaced with a mailto: URI

[1] for the technically inclined, we will be issuing a 302 Found status for these URIs. The 302 Found may become a 301 Moved Permanently before it becomes a 410 Gone.

Scheduled Maintenance: Saturday, 13 November, at 21:30 EST

Will — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 19:39:35 +0000

We will be performing maintenance work on the following personal web page sites from 21:30 EST on Saturday, 13 November 2004, to 02:30 EST on Sunday, 14 November 2004.

pages.prodigy.net
pages.sbcglobal.net
flashpages.prodigy.net
wanspages.prodigy.net
bldblocks.prodigy.net
www.ameritech.net

During this maintenance window, FTP services, the on-line site editor, and PWP enrollment will be unavailable. Web service will not be affected.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Some PWP Counters are unviewable with Internet Explorer on Windows XP SP2

Will — Thu, 07 Oct 2004 13:18:26 +0000

Microsoft has disabled support for the XBM graphic format in Windows XP Service Pack 2 in order to avoid security issues.

This breaks the counters supplied with SBC Personal Web Pages for

It does not affect the counters supplied with

Prodigy BuildingBlocks
SBC Central (Southwest Bell)
SBC West (PacBell and Nevada Bell)
SBC North (Ameritech)

No counters are provided for SBC East (SNET) Personal Web Pages.

SBC would like to thank our user community for bringing this matter to our attention.

While we continue to investigate this issue, Prodigy Internet members may choose to replace the affected counters with the BuildingBlocks counter. This will reset your page counts.

To replace the counter, change the IMG SRC you use from
<img src="http://pages.prodigy.net:8989/your_name/your_name.xbm" alt="counter" />
to
<img src="http://pages.prodigy.net/cgi-bin/commoncgi/counter.cgi?cname=your_name@sbcglobal.net&style=LEDGOLD" alt="counter" />.

Styles available for BuildingBlocks' Counter

Style Name	Sample
ITALIC
LEDGOLD
LEDGREEN
MINIBLUE
ODOMETER
PENGUIN
REDSHADOW
YELLOWGOLD

SNET Personal Web Pages

Will — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 11:36:29 +0000

SBC supports many different PWP environments because of various acquisitions over the years. One of these arrived with SNET. Most of these environments are insufficiently documented, for one reason or another.

In order to reduce costs and provide improved service, we are consolidating the environments. The first phase simplifies their deployment, while the second phase will simplify what you see.

As of this morning, the SNET Personal Web Pages are living in their new home, and appear to be doing fine. If you find that this is not the case, we'd love to hear about it.

Scheduled Maintenance: Monday, 04 October 2004, at 03:00 EDT

Will — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 16:33:06 +0000

On Monday, 4 October 2004, from 03:00 to 06:00 EDT, we will be performing maintenance work on the following personal web page sites:

During this maintenance window, FTP services, the on-line site editor, and PWP enrollment will be unavailable. Web service will not be affected.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

REFERENCES: http://help.sbcglobal.net/article.php?item=4800

Using Blogger with SBC Personal Web Pages

Will — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 16:14:36 +0000

Howdy. I'm a System Mangler here with SBC, and am somewhat responsible for the state of the PWP servers.

This page was composed and published using Blogger, a very useful little web service from Pyra, recently bought by Google. It can be used to publish to any site that uses FTP. Since we use FTP, it can be used with our services.

Bear in mind, however, that this is a third-party service, and so we cannot guarantee the privacy of any data you may submit to them. We highly recommend that you do not permit Blogger to save your username and password information.