Frequently Asked Questions

This is the entire list of Igloo Cafe's frequently asked questions.

General

What's Igloo Cafe?

Igloo Cafe is a tiny community and hobby project focused mostly on retro-technology and videogames, following (but not entirely) the ideals of the Tildeverse, SDF, those old shell account services and on the old Internet ambience.

What's the story behind this?

This thing started in September 2020 as a tiny server for hosting personal web homepages and gopherholes for some certain friends. Soon other things such as gameservers, an IRC server and a Icecast music radio stream were being hosted. Due to economic issues, the server (a cheap Contabo VPS) closed two months later and the project was put on hiatus until August 2021, where the project revived but with new intentions in mind.

And here we are, fighting to finish all those unfinished projects, continuing to grow and most importantly, to have a lot of fun!

How can I be a Igloo Cafe member?

Unfortunately at the moment the registrations are invitation-only, we will try to make them public soon but with some limitations.

Please stay tuned on this page to know when new user registration is available.

Where is the server hosted?

Our main server is hosted on DataWagon. Visit this page to see the current hardware we use in this and other servers.

How can I contact with the sysop?

Please check out the contact page.

User igloos

What's a user/personal igloo?

It's a term used in Igloo Cafe to refer to users' personal web/gopher spaces on this server. It's also one of the main services offered here since its beginnings.

How much storage space do I have in my personal igloo?

All users have a quota limit of 200MB. If you're already a member with personal igloo and donated to the project, your quota will permanently increase to 1GB.

What can I do with a user igloo?

You can create any static content about your hobbies, tests, a simple blog, or anything you want and share it to the world in different protocols (gopher, gemini and web). Think of it as on the old days of Web 1.0 or as a modern GeoCities.

What I CAN'T do on my igloo?

Everything that is indicated in our ToS.

Where can I get an igloo?

Personal igloos are a default service that comes as part of the Igloo Cafe member registration process.

How can I manage and edit the content of my igloo?

You will need to have an SFTP client on your computer along with your private SSH key that you used to register here.

Can I access from SSH instead of SFTP?

No. All accounts offered here are for SFTP access only. Any attempt to access to SSH with your private key will be useless.

I just lost my SSH privkey! How can I send you a new one?

Get in contact to a sysop, verify that you are responsible for the account and send us your new public key. Your previous key will be removed from your account after this process for security reasons.

Why SFTP and not normal FTP?

Generating random passwords and not giving the user the possibility to change them has generated some security concerns.

Can I use PHP or CGI on my website?

At this moment we don't have intentions on offering those things to users.

Can I use SSI on my website?

Yes, the use of SSI (Server-Side Includes) is available for users. Note that since this web server is running on Nginx, many directives may not work properly.

How do I start creating my website?

Inside the "public_html" directory, create a file with the name index.htm/html (or any other name but keeping the HTML file format) and from there start writing all the content of your homepage.

If you have no HTML (and CSS) knowledge, we recommend you to visit W3Schools, TutorialsPoint or Simple HTML Guide.

Why do I get a 403 Forbidden error on one of my pages?

Check if your file to be requested has read permissions for everyone (0644) or if your directory has read and execute permissions also for everyone (0755).

In case you continue to experience problems, please read this article.

How can I put a hit counter on my website?

Check this article for get more information about how to use web hit counters on your igloo.

What's Gopher and why I have a "public_gopher" directory?

Gopher is an Internet protocol [...]

What's Finger and why I have a "public_finger" directory?

Finger is an Internet protocol which allows you to obtain information about a user on a UNIX system. It used to be used a lot in the mid 90s as a kind of personal diary (like a micro-blog) when people used to update their ".plan files" often to show information and updates about projects or everyday things. Nowadays its use has decreased a lot (like Gopher, duh) but it's still used by developers and retro enthusiasts.

At Igloo Cafe we offer our users a small Finger space a la old-school. Your "public_finger" directory is used to post content in your Finger space by simply editing your ".plan" file. All changes you make to this file will be reflected on your Finger space every 10 minutes and are archived to our database after 1 hour.

How can I use Finger?

You can use our web interface of the Finger server software we are using (IcculusFinger) at "http(s)://finger.igloocafe.xyz/?user=yourusername" or you can use in the terminal of your system the command "finger yourusername@igl01.igloocafe.xyz" (it comes by default on Windows and in some Linux distros, check if you have it installed).

How can I delete an old Finger .plan archive?

Unfortunately you can't do it yourself, but you can contact sysops to remove any saved .plan archive.

How can I delete my account?

Please get in touch with the sysops and ask them for a request to delete your account. Take in mind that actions such as these permanently delete all your content both in your personal igloo as in other services, so it's recommended that you save everything in your computer before proceeding.

Can I use a custom domain for my igloo?

Yes, point your domain to our IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and contact to sysop "gecko" so that we can create a virtual host to your webspace with your domain. Any inactive domain will be removed from our web server configuration after 1 week (or instantly if your account was deleted).

This doesn't work on other protocols such as Gopher due to limitations.

Can my user igloo (and my other accounts in other services) be deleted if I'm inactive?

No. We will only delete personal igloos that have not changed their default pages in 5 months. All other services like your BBS and your gallery account will stay there.

Donations

What do I receive when I donate?

If you're a Igloo Cafe member, this is what you will receive in appreciation of your contribution:

In case you are not part of Igloo Cafe but you are interested in contributing, this is what you can receive:

How does it work?

Visit our Liberapay account, choose the amount you want (of minimum 4 or 5 USD) and after the transaction has been successfully processed I will send you an email to let you know about your rewards (please note that this may take hours or even days). What you will receive with your donation will be for life and you will not be asked for monthly payments or similar.

Why 4/5 USD minimum?

Because maintaining servers and domain names is not something cheap. Also because it seems to me very bad faith to do that with the work that I dedicate to this project and all other services and besides that, everyone could abuse our benefits system and it ends up losing sense.

This may also serve as an example.

Is this mandatory?

No.

Wiki

Why has the old wiki been closed?

Due to low interest in maintaining it. Instead, this website was created to serve as a wiki-style help pages where only sysops can contribute.

WAP/WML

How can I browse on WAP nowadays?

We recommend using the Perl-based WML browser wApua, available for Unix/Linux computers (if you're on Windows 10, use WSL2 along with VcXsrv).

Why when I visit Igloo Cafe WAP/WML a file is downloaded to my browser?

That's because your browser doesn't support WML (this doesn't seem to happen in Chromium browsers or in latest Firefox versions), don't panic.