diff --git a/en/ports/portindex b/en/ports/portindex
index ec1a1d3038..cdd1a3968d 100755
--- a/en/ports/portindex
+++ b/en/ports/portindex
@@ -7,11 +7,27 @@
 
 ############################################################
 
+# Load local config file. You can override in portindex.conf
+# the variables for the default web and the ftp server. This
+# make it easy to maintain a local web mirror and let the
+# URL point to yourself and not to the standard FreeBSD FTP server.
+$config = $0 . '.' . 'conf';
+do $config if -f $config;
+    
+
 # This is the base of where we ftp stuff from
-$base = "ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-current";
-$baseHTTP = "ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-current";
-$urlcgi = 'http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/url.cgi';
-$packagesURL = 'ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/packages-stable/All/';
+if ($ENV{'MASTER_FTP_SERVER'}) {
+    $ftpserver = $ENV{'MASTER_FTP_SERVER'};
+} else {
+    $ftpserver = 'ftp://ftp.freebsd.org' if !$ftpserver;
+}
+$base = "$ftpserver/pub/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-current" if !$base;
+$baseHTTP = $base if !$baseHTTP;
+$urlcgi = 'http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/url.cgi' if !$urlcgi;
+$packagesURL = "$ftpserver/pub/FreeBSD/packages-stable/All/"
+    if !$packagesURL;
+# support tar on the fly or gzip'ed tar on the fly
+$ftparchive = 'tar' if !$ftparchive;
 
 # better layout and link to the sources
 if ($urlcgi) {
@@ -100,7 +116,7 @@ sub main {
 	    $ldesc =~ s/\/usr/$baseHTTP/;
 
     	    # The name description and maintainer
-	    $data{$i} .= "<DT><B><A NAME=\"$name\"></A><A HREF=\"$loc.tar\">$name</A></B> ";
+	    $data{$i} .= "<DT><B><A NAME=\"$name\"></A><A HREF=\"$loc.$ftparchive\">$name</A></B> ";
      
 
 	    $data{$i} .= "<DD>$desc<BR><A HREF=\"$ldesc\">Long description</A>";