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November 09, 2009

cPanel Tutorial: Working with MIME Types

Multipurpose Mail Extensions or simply MIME types, use an internet standard that instructs a web browser on how to process certain types of file extensions.  Many of them come pre-installed on web server configurations to support the most commonly used extensions.  For example, text/html is already preset so when a web browser loads htm, html and shtml file types, it knows how to read and properly display them to the viewer.  MIME types are typically used for technologies and standards that have yet to be implemented globally.  In this tutorial, we will give you a brief overview on MIME types and show you how easy it is to add them through your  cPanel control panel.

Main Content Types

A client browser primarily deals with six content types: audio, application, image, text video and x-world.  There is a large number of MIME types for these content types on most servers, but more than half typically are not used.

Audio

Audio content types are used for handling audio files such as MPEG, WAV, and AU.

Application

Application content types are primarily used for executing zip, gzip and tar.  They can also be used for popular document types such as PDF and Postscript.

Image

Image content types are actually subtypes used to handle a wide range of image formats such as JPEG, PNG, GIF and PBM.

Text

These are also subtypes.  They are used to execute various text and HTML files.

Video

Video content types are subtypes used to handle common video formats such as MPEG, AVI and Quick Time.

X-World

These are subtypes used for VRML and other 3D images.

How to Add MIME Types in cPanel.

If you have cPanel, adding MIME types is very easy.  Simply follow these steps:

- Login to cPanel and click the “MIME Types” icon underneath the “Advanced” section.

- On the MIME Types page underneath “Create a MIME type”, simply enter the MIME type you want to add to the server and the corresponding extension.

- Next, click on the “Add” button.

Keep in mind that you can only delete or edit the MIME types you added to the system.

- Once you create a MIME type, you can easily delete it under the “User Defined MIME Types” section.  Deleting it permanently removes it from your account.

Things to Keep in Mind

Because such a large number of MIME types are configured on the server, it is highly recommended to refer to the list to make sure the MIME type you want to add isn’t already set.  If not, conflicts will likely arise and result in errors.  Also take note that these preset MIME types cannot be altered via the standard cPanel interface by a regular user.  You would need root access on the server in order to change them.  You can view the complete list of preset MIME types on the MIME Types page in cPanel.

Tags: Multipurpose Mail Extensions,  MIME types,  MIME,  file types,  cPanel Tutorials,  cpanel tutorial,  User Defined MIME Types