Last Updated: April 2006 (documentation incomplete)
Copyright © 2006 Fresh Software
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Warden 1.0 Last Updated: April 2006 (documentation incomplete) Copyright © 2006 Fresh Software |
Note: This documentation is incomplete. Please contact Fresh Software with any bugs, suggestions, etc.
Contents
What Is Warden?
WebServer Requirements
How to Use Warden
Step 1 - Edit Users (Create, Edit, Manage your User List)
Step 2 - Enter Website/FTP Settings
Step 3 - Apply to WebsiteSearching For Users
Emailing Users
Options
Contact Fresh Software
Warden is a website user-manager and .htpasswd generator. It controls access to any webpage running Apache in three quick steps and is currently in development. We're going to do a public beta test running up to the full release of the program, more information will be posted soon.
Do you run your own website? Want to apply password protection to one or more webpages? Fresh Software's Warden project will make it a snap to manage web accounts for multiple users. Add new accounts in seconds, suspend them in a single click, or send email to one or many users from within the program. If you don't like making .htpasswd and .htaccess files the old fashioned way, try it the Fresh Software way.
Warden password-protects Apache & Apache compatible web servers. Your webserver should support the .htpasswd and .htaccess standards outlined by Apache:
Turn on mod_auth
Locate your httpd.conf file (usually in \conf\) and make sure the following line is not commented out with a #:
LoadModule auth_module modules/mod_auth.so
Turn on AllowOverride
The AllowOverride directive tells Apache that authentication settings (including usernames, passwords, etc) can be specified for individual directories (folders). There should be a line in your httpd.conf file that reads:
AllowOverride AuthConfig
If there is already a line that reads AllowOverride All , leave it be.
For more information on Apache authentication:
Apache Tutorial: Authentication, Authorization and Access Control (2.2) (2.0) (1.3)
The program is broken down into three steps.
Step 1 - Edit Users (Create and Edit your User List)
The first step in the process is to specify who you want to have access to your protected resource (Warden first starts with a blank project that contains no users)
Create a list of users who you want to have
access to the webpage. Click the "Add New User" button to add a new user.
The process is straightforward. To add a new user, click the Add New User button. The Add/Edit user dialog comes up.
| Enter a username and
password for the account. These two fields are always required.
Click the
Optionally, you can enter in the Name and Email address of the user, along with any notes.
By default, the user's account will be
enabled. |
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The user now appears in the list.
To add more users, repeat the step above by clicking the Add New User button.
To change the details of any existing user, select the user and click the Edit User button. Or, just double-click the user.
To toggle account access on or off, check or uncheck the box under the Access column.
To remove a user permanently, select a user and click the Delete User button.
Tip
In the Edit Users step, you can also search for specific users and/or send them an email.
See Searching For Users and Emailing Users.
Click Next to advance to the FTP information page.
Next, enter in details for your Website's FTP server so that Warden can log in and protect your web folder.
If you think there is a better way to describe the following, please email
| Name of Resource: | Enter in the name of the resource to protect. It will appear in the password dialog box when users browser to the URL. | |
| URL of Resource: | Optionally, enter in the URL to the resource, so you can browse to it from Warden. | |
| FTP Server: | Enter in the hostname or IP address of your FTP server. Often in the form of ftp.website.com | |
| FTP Username: | Enter in the FTP username used to access your website | |
| FTP Password: | Enter in the FTP password that goes with the username. | |
| Full Host Path to Dir: | Enter in the full server
path to your home directory, where you go
after logging in to your FTP server. Example: /home/httpd/vhosts/mydomain.com/ If you don't know your Full Host path to your home directory, contact your network administrator or your web host provider. |
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| FTP Path to folder: | Enter in the path of the
folder you wish to protect. This may look something like /httpdocs/myfolder/ or /public_html/members/ If you don't know your FTP Path to folder, contact your network administrator or your web host provider.
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Browser Authentication Windows
Authentication Dialog on Internet Explorer 6.0
Authentication Dialog on Firefox 1.5
Click Next to advance to the Action page.
After you have edited your user list and FTP
information, click Save Settings & Project to save
your project to a file that you can access later.
Click Apply to Website to log in to your FTP server and apply password protection.
Optionally, you can click Export files to folder to
create a .htaccess and .htpasswd file. You can then
upload these files to your web server manually.
FTP Upload Status
This step shows the progress of the FTP transactions
to apply password protection to your website. If you
entered in incorrect information, an error may appear
here.
If you are managing a large user list, you may
find yourself in a situation where you need to locate a particular user.
Warden's search function makes this easy, just click the
button .
Warden Search Mode
In the column you want to search, type in what you want to search for. For example, to find people whose Real Name contains "An" , type in "An" under the Real Name field.
Warden Search Mode: Type in what you want to look for
The results are shown in the window. Click the Search button again to stop searching.
Warden provides built-in email capabilities. You can send an emails out to invidual users, all enabled users, all disabled users, and all users.
To access the email tool, click the user you
would like to send an email to and then click the
button on
the toolbar.
Send Email Window
The Send Email window appears. Under Email Message, select who the message should go to. If you selected a user first, their email will appear in the To: field. You can also send email to three groups of users:
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Enter in the subject of the email and then the message itself. In the email body, certain key words surrounded by percent signs % will be replaced with different text. For example, the word %PASSWORD% will be replaced with the user's password before the email is actually sent.
| String | Replaced With |
| %USERNAME% | Username |
| %PASSWORD% | Password |
| %REALNAME% | Real Name |
| %EMAIL% | User's Email address |
| %NOTES% | The notes you have on file for the user |
| %ACCOUNTSTATUS% | "Enabled" for enabled accounts, "Disabled" for disabled accounts |
IMPORTANT! Before outgoing emails can be sent, you must enter in information for your outgoing mail server, including the address of the server and authentication information (username & password) if it is required to send mail. Usually these details are provided by your ISP. To enter in this information, Click Options and then Email, and look under the Email SMTP Server section.
To change options, click the Options button at the top of the main
window.
| Web: | http://www.freshsoftware.com |
| Email: | |
| Snail Mail: | Drew Niese Fresh Software 1236 S. Farwell St. #2 Eau Claire, WI 54701 USA |
| AIM: | FreshSoft (good for quick questions) |
| Fax: | (715) 836-5048 [Attention: Drew Niese]
Fresh Software uses UWEC Printing Services to handle faxes. Send us an email to let us know a fax is coming. |
| Phone: | If you require phone support, you can
call (715) 570-5076 Monday to Friday 12pm-5pm CST. Ask for Drew. Please be aware that this is my cell phone number and that email contact is preferred. |
button to generate a random password
as specified under