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Affiliate FAQs
If you need help or have some unanswered this is the place for you!
We have put together a comprehensive list of FAQs broken down into three
general categories. We hope this helps answer most of your questions, if you
still have questions please contact us.
General FAQs
Choose your question:
- Why is mirroring Tucows content for my users a free service? How does Tucows make money from all this?
A: Tucows sells banner-ad space on every page that is served.
- Can I make money?
A: The Tucows Affiliate program is designed to be an added value to existing clients
and customers.
- How much bandwidth will my ISP save if I host a Tucows mirror?
A: Judging how much bandwidth your ISP will save if you host a Tucows mirror depends
on many factors. The savings are determined by the number of users who take advantage of
your mirror, as well as your mirror's popularity.
- Will Tucows promote my ISP?
A: Yes. We will in two ways:
- Tucows has a listing of all of our affiliates. When someone goes to any Tucows
Network site to download software, they must first choose which region of the world they
will download from. Once they do that, they will be faced with choosing various ISPs in
their local download region. Your ISPs name will be listed in your region.
- When someone in your region uses Tucows, they will be using your Tucows Network
Mirror. They will see your ISP logo if you choose to put it on the mirror page. (See
Affiliate Advertising for more information.)
- How do I promote the fact that I am a Tucows affiliate?
A: We encourage you to put a Tucows mirror button somewhere on the front page of
your company's Web site. What better way to promote the fact you are a Tucows affiliate?
Check our Affiliate Resource Center for some great buttons, as well as for instructions
on how to use them.
- What are my responsibilities as a mirror?
A: You are responsible for:
- The technical operation of your site and all related equipment.
- Updating the site a minimum of two times daily to ensure that the most
up-to-date content is available to your users. We reserve the right to monitor
your mirror site(s), as well as disable any that are not updating on a regular basis.
- Ensuring that minimum hardware and bandwidth requirements are satisfied
before proceeding to set up your mirror.
- Ensuring that the mirrored site is open to the public. All mirrored sites
must be publicly accessible. No private mirrors are allowed.
- Ensuring that no third-party introductory screens are introduced before
users see the Tucows mirror site. This means that your Tucows URL (yourdomain.tucows.com
or yourdomain.musicortukids.tucows.com) can only link directly to the mirror.
- Ensuring that all advertising on the Tucows mirror must remain untouched,
save for the advertising in the space reserved for you. Please check the advertisers we currently have online, as some of them may conflict with the services that you offer.
- Ensuring that all data must be downloaded via the mirroring program,
as we update a minimum of two times each day. No CD-ROMs are available.
- I am a virtual ISP. Can I host a Tucows mirror?
A: Tucows requires that your company owns and is responsible for your Tucows server
hardware, your IP addresses and your DNS entries. Much of the time, being a Virtual ISP
will conflict with this. If you do fall under these requirements, you should be able to host a mirror.
- Can I mirror only one section of a Tucows mirror?
A: Each Tucows library must be mirrored in full. Mirroring only parts of a library
breaks up much of the content that is provided. However, the Tucows libraries are separated
into many different categories. The best option is to evaluate what libraries would be best
for your userbase, and choose from there.
- How much space is required to host the Tucows mirrors?
A: Each library requires a minimum of 20GB of free space (with 10GB required for Tucows PDA).
- Can I add my own content to my Tucows mirror?
A: The Tucows libraries must remain as they are in order to keep the user experience
as consistent as possible. Modifying Tucows content is not permitted under our user agreement.
- Can I be a mirror/affiliate of other software distribution sites?
A: Yes you can. Unlike other software-site affiliation programs Tucows does not ask for
exclusivity. Let your users try Tucows and decide on their own whether we are the best
software resource on the Net.
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Support FAQs
Choose your question:
- What's on the Affiliate Login page?
A: The affiliate login page, located at
here, and contains sections that will allow you to:
- Edit your company information
- Add more mirrors
- Check your mirror status and remote logs
- Download instructions and the mirror script
- Get access to the Affiliate mailing lists
- I can't find my Affiliate Log in password. What do I do?
A: You can enter your e-mail address at the main login screen. If we have your e-mail
address on record, we will send you your username and password right away.
- The Affiliate Log in page won't accept my e-mail address! What do I do?
A: If you are the primary contact for a mirror, but we don't have your e-mail address
on record, you can e-mail content.partners@tucows.com with a request to change it or be added
to the database. We will review the request and process it accordingly after verifying your
identity.
- I'd like to sign up for more mirrors! How do I do that?
A: Go to the Affiliate Login page and select Edit/Add Mirror from the toolbar
at the top of the page. On the next page you will need to select "add mirror".
Finally, you will need to enter in the information about that mirror and click submit.
- My mirror site is up and running. Now what?
A: If your mirror is complete and you aren't "live" yet, please e-mail us so that we
can check it and bring it to life!
- How can I manage my Company Info?
A: Click the Edit Company link on the Affiliate Login page.
- My mirror isn't listed! Why not?
A: Your mirror might not be listed as "live" in our tracking system. If your mirror was
listed, but now it is not, you might be in a NOLIVE state, which means that there was a problem
with your mirror, and it was temporarily removed from our listings. If you were never "live,"
but your mirror looks OK, please e-mail content.partners@tucows.com,
and we'll take a look at it. In rare cases, if you are a legacy affiliate and your listing has
recently disappeared, we may not have the correct region information for you. Please e-mail us!
- The number of updates on my listing is at one, but I update more often. Why?
A: If you just started mirroring regularly, our system takes 24 to 48 hours to register
the correct number of updates. If you have been mirroring for a while and it still hasn't updated,
our system may be looking for the wrong IP address in our logs. This happens when the mirror
script collects the FTP data for the Tucows mirror from an IP or interface other than the IP that
we have on record. If this is the case, please send us an e-mail with the first IP of your server,
and we will add it to our records.
- My mirror appears to be in the wrong region.
A: Oops! Send us an e-mail at content.partners@tucows.com
and we will change the region for you.
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Technical FAQs
Choose your question:
- What is mirroring?
A: Mirroring is the process of creating an exact copy of a Web site. When a site is
mirrored, it looks exactly like the parent site, save for the fact that it runs locally.
- What are the technical requirements?
A: Please see our technical requirements page for a more in-depth look.
- How do I place my Advertising online?
As a mirror site operator, you have the opportunity to to have your
logo image placed on all Tucows content library pages that are referred
from your mirror. For an example of how this will work, please see
http://ewetel.tucows.com/
In order to put this in place, you must either enable .htaccess files to
allow redirects, or cut and paste the .htaccess files (the .htaccess
files are already in your document root directory for your Tucows mirror site)
into your Apache httpd.conf configuration file. If you are not using
Apache as your web server, please see your server documentation for
details about how to implement redirects.
You can provide the logo itself directly to us via your
Mirror Management interface.
Login, click 'EDIT COMPANY' link and upload image with Upload Logo Menu.
Click throughs on the logo will go to the company URL
that is stored in your Mirror Management profile. If you are having
problems uploading your logo via Mirror Manager, please contact us at
webmaster@tucows.com.
If you choose not to supply a logo and enable the redirects your company
will still be acknowledged via a text link.
There are basically three levels of participation.
- If you supply a logo and enable .htaccess files or include the
redirect directives in your httpd.conf your company site will be
acknowledged as a sponsor on all content library pages referred from
your mirror URL with the logo appearing on all pages.
- If you do not supply a logo, but you do enable .htaccess files
or include the redirect directives in your httpd.conf, your company site
will be acknowledged as a sponsor on all content library pages referred from
your mirror URL with a text link appearing on all pages.
- If you do not enable .htaccess files or include the redirect
directives in you httpd.conf, your company site will be acknowledged as
a sponsor on all content library pages referred from your mirror URL with
a text link appearing on all pages, but redirection will occur through
META refresh directives in the HTML of the page, which will present end users
with a page telling them that they are being redirected to the new page
design, before the new page loads.
- How often do I have to update my mirror site?
A: We require that you update your mirror site at a minimum of every 12 hours.
- How much UNIX knowledge do I need to have a Tucows mirror?
A: A knowledge of UNIX System Administration would be helpful, as well as knowledge
about how to maintain and admin the Web server of your choice (we will use Apache for any examples).
- Where can I get a copy of your mirroring software?
A: When you sign up to be a Tucows mirror, you will be given access to it from
administer.
- If I choose to mirror more than one Tucows Network site, will each of the mirrors need a separate host machine?
A: They can all be hosted on one server or multiple servers. You don't have to
have one dedicated server per library.
- I am running Windows 98/NT/2000. Can I mirror?
A: Unfortunately, at this time, our mirror script solution only runs reliably
under UNIX and Linux systems. There are known security and file-locking issues associated
with Windows NT and IIS that we can't work around.
- How do I decompress the Tucows mirror software?
A: Please see the INSTALL and README files at Tucopy
- How do I install the Tucows mirror script?
A: Please see the INSTALL and README files at Tucopy
- Do all the Tucows mirrors have to be in one directory?
A: No. In fact, they need to be in separate directories. If all the Tucows mirrors
were assigned to the same directory, they would over-write each other.
- How do I set up a virtual-host entry in Apache?
A: Please see this link for more information on Virtual Hosting:
http://www.apache.org/docs/vhosts/examples.html
- How do I name my Tucows Network mirror site?
A:
The naming convention for windows mirror is yourcompany.tucows.com
The naming convention for other mirror (mac, linux, pda, games and themes)
is yourcompany.mirror.tucows.com
For example, the URL for the Tucows Windows mirror for Outbound Inc would be
http://outbound.tucows.com. The Tucows Linux mirror for Outbound Inc would be
http://outbound.linux.tucows.com.
Please note that your company name must be displayed with more than two characters.
- Can I setup multiple packages in the mirror.defaults file?
A: Yes. But the best way to do it is to create individual package files.
- What is the estimated amount of daily update data?
A: Daily updates depend on many factors. Each Tucows mirror will be different, but
you can expect anywhere from 50 megs a day to 200 megs a day.
- How do I automate my mirror updates? How do I install a crontab entry?
A: The best way to automate your updates is through the CRON daemon. By default, most
UNIX systems will have the CRON daemon running. To edit your crontab, you can issue the command:
># crontab -e
This will edit the crontab. Please see the cron and crontab manual pages for more information
(type man cron or man crontab at the shell console).
- My mirror has outgrown my hard drive. What do I do now?
A: Your best bet is to move the entire mirror to a larger hard drive or mount point.
This can be accomplished by using "cp pr," so that the file modification dates remain the
same. If you're going to cut the mirror into smaller pieces by symlinking some of the
directories, you can use the mirror script follow_local_symlinks=(^directory) command to create
symlinks that the mirror script will follow.
- Why can't I use rsync? Why doesn't Tucows use rsync?
A: Tucows no longer provides new rsync accounts, due to the server-side load produced
by the rsync daemon. Rsync is a good solution for smaller archives that have fewer mirrors,
but the scalability of FTP makes that a much better option for us.
- What is the Mime.type configuration?
A: The following is the Mime.type configuration, these need to be added to your list
to allow the various software packages on your mirror to be
recognized by different browsers:
| application/self-extracting
| exe
| | application/self-extracting
| sea
| | application/x-stuffit
| sit
| | application/mac-binhex40
| hqx
| | application/x-macbinary
| bin
| | application/x-rpm
| rpm
| | application/x-gtar
| gtar tgz
| | application/x-tar
| tar
| | application/x-tarz
| Z
| | application/x-prc
| prc
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- I need more help! What can I do?
A: You can e-mail content.partners@tucows.com!
We will try to answer as many of your questions as we can.
[Back to Top]
If you have any other questions please
e-mail us.
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