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December 03, 2010

A Guide to Installing MIME via cPanel

MIME, or Multipurpose Mail Extensions, are standards that instruct web browsers how to view and interpret different files on the internet. A lot of MIME types come preinstalled, depending on what web server you use. However, there are quite a few, especially the new technologies that must be manually entered into cPanel, for your website to function properly. This guide will seek to show you these MIME types and give you an example of how to install them through cPanel.

Application Types

These types are usually archive files, such as zip or tar. They can also be things like PDFs and other document types.

Video

This can range anywhere from MPEGs, to AVIS, to Quicktime movies, depending on the application.

Text

Yes, there are also subtypes here as well. These are used to execute different types of HTML and various text files.

Image

These subtypes seek to handle image formats such as JPEG and PNG.

Audio

This group has types like MPEG and WAV and handles general audio files.

Adding MIME Types to cPanel

Adding MIME Types in cPanel is a snap. Just follow the steps below:

Step 1: Login to the cPanel and click on the “MIME types” icon. This is generally located in the advanced section.

Step 2: Click “Create a MIME Type” and simply enter the type you want to add to the server, along with its corresponding extension.

Step 3: Finally click the “add” button to finish the process. Keep in mind that you can always edit, add or even delete MIME types that you’ve added to your server. This is generally needed as technology changes.

How to Find MIME Types and Extensions

Generally speaking, the production company of the product will have the appropriate information to enter in the cPanel. For instance, for all of Adobe Flash products you can visit the Adobe site and look in the FAQ for MIME Types for all the information you need to add this particular type to your cPanel.

Conclusion

Don’t be surprised if you try and leverage a brand new technology in your website, upload it and it doesn’t work. This is usually because your server doesn’t have the MIME type set up and the browser simply doesn’t know how to interpret what it’s reading. Simply find the information on the internet and add it to the cPanel to correct the problem and the site should load just fine.

Tags: MIME,  Multipurpose Mail Extensions,  cPanel,  MIME extension