# Administration Console

## Help

Expiration Date: If an expiration date is specified for a user, after midnight (the beginning) of that day they will no longer be able to access the proxy. You can also use this value to temporarily disable an account (rather than delete it) by setting the expiration date to a date that is in the past.

Homepage: A "user specific" homepage preference which will override the default homepage specified in the .conf file. This should be a complete URL which would include the http:// prefix.

MD5 Hash: An MD5 hash is a "one way" mathematical operation performed on data which yields a number representing that data. The first public release of HoTTProxy stored passwords in "plain text" due to the fact that password files had to be created manually with a text editor. This worked fine but had the disadvantage that anyone with access to the HoTTProxy directory could read all of the .password files and then know all the passwords. The second public release of HoTTProxy (0.24.0.0) included an administration console which made it convenient to add the option to store passwords in a more secure way. It is now an option to store user data in .user files instead of .password files. In the .user files the password is stored as the MD5 hash of the actual password (instead of the password itself). In this way, perusal of the .user files does not reveal the passwords. The end user does not know any difference - they enter their password as usual on their end, but if HoTTProxy sees that user's account is a .user file instead of a .password file, it will calculate the MD5 hash of the password the user supplies and compare it to the hash stored in the file. If the two values match, then the user has supplied the right password.

Plain-text: Simple human readable ASCII text. See "MD5" for more information.

Username: In HoTTProxy a username may not contain "whitespace" (the space character, tab, etc.) or any of the following: \ / : + * ? " < > | & ` and ASCII hex 0x00 through 0x21.