Personal web pages

This page covers the personal web page service operated by CSG for DoC staff and students. The commands listed here should be run on a DoC Linux workstation or remote access server.

Note: All pages hosted on DoC or other College resources must be non-political, legal, and must not bring the Department or the College into disrepute. Your personal web page must contain a link back to the Department's home page. In short, any content you publish via our resources must abide by the Departmental and College regulations.

Enabling your personal web pages

DoC runs the Apache web server, version 2.2.6.

• Make your home directory publicly accessible (but not readable!):

  chmod a+x ~

  Note: On directories, the permissions set by the chmod command are interpreted as follows:

  • r = permission to get a directory listing

  • w = permission to create and delete files in the directory

  • x = permission to access files in the directory provided the name of the files are known

• If it doesn't already exist, create a directory called public_html:

  mkdir public_html

• Make this subdirectory publicly accessible:

  chmod a+x public_html

• Create a file called index.html within this directory and make this readable by all:

  cd public_html
  chmod a+r index.html
  This will be your main personal web page (a.k.a. your "home page").

• Then for each file you have created that you want to make available on the web:

  chmod a+r filename

• Your main personal web page, index.html, will then be visible around the world as the following URL:

  http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~username/

  The webserver automatically maps URLs of the form http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~username/ to the Unix path /homes/username/public_html/.

• Other web pages in your public_html directory area will be visible as URLs of the form:

  http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~username/somefile.html

Editing your web pages under Windows

CSG do not advise editing web pages on Windows due to incompatibilities between line-endings on Windows and Unix. More precisely, you must not edit CGI scripts on Windows, as the line-ending incompatibility will stop the script from running completely.

If you must edit plain HTML web pages on Windows, proceed as follows:

• Once you have a public_html folder you can save files to it from Windows systems with the correct permissions in the following way:

  • Right click on My Computer.

  • Select Map network drive.

  • In the Folder: box type:

    \\fs-homes\public_html

  • Tick Reconnect at logon.

  • Click Ok.

• Note the drive letter that the folder is allocated to, and always save web pages to this location. The reason for this is that the user files saved to your home directory via the H: drive is private. Files saved directly to the public_html share are publicly readable.