Introduction
to CSU, Chico Web Servers What
Do I Need To Do To Develop a Web Site? Additional
Tips for Contributors Using
the Group Directory and Other Fun Stuff
Many (World Wide) Web servers exist on the CSU, Chico campus. This document provides information concerning to the two "main" web servers maintained by Computing Services for general campus use: the www.csuchico.edu used by departments and faculty for web sites; and web.csuchico.edu used by students for personal web sites.
Take heart! While the steps described below may seem daunting at
first--they are really more time consuming than difficult! Anyone with
knowledge of a word processor or text editor, and mainframe log in and
uploading skills can become a Web contributor ! You can do it!
The main campus web server, www.csuchico.edu, and the student web server, web.csuchico.edu, are both administered by Computing Services and require an account for access. The main campus web server is reserved for departmental and faculty/staff areas. The student web server can be used for student web areas as well as personal faculty/staff areas.
Web addresses (URLs) on the main campus web server are of the form www.csuchico.edu/"dept_directory" for departmental areas, or www.csuchico.edu/~"userid" for personal areas, where "userid" is an individual's account name (userid). Web addresses on the student web server are all of the form web.csuchico.edu/~"userid" as web sites on the student web server are personal areas.
Personal Web Sites
If you are a student only in need of a personal web area, you should use Wildcat initialization to setup both your e-mail and web area. If you have already done this, you can skip to the Upload Your Document to the Web Server section.
If you are a faculty or staff member only in need of a personal web area, you should use Web server initialization to setup your web area. Setting up a Web server account will give you an additional e-mail account as well. This will not take the place of your Outlook/Exchange account, but will be an extra e-mail account (a Wildcat e-mail account) to be used internally as the need arises. You will be given instructions, upon completion of initialization, on how to forward this new e-mail account to any other e-mail account. If you have already done this, you can skip to the Upload Your Document to the Web Server section.
Departmental Web SitesIf you need access to the main campus Web server for departmental/organizational web sites (faculty, staff or student), you will need to fill out the WWW Account Application. This is the only method available for applying for a Web server account for departmental access.
Your account, if you are faculty or staff, will also create an empty private web area when it is activated, in addition to giving you access to the departmental area. If you are a student, you will be given access to the departmental area for which you applied.
Departmental web area access is controlled by a group access mechanism. The personal account you receive will be added to the Web area access group for the department for which you applied. This being the case, the idea of a single "group account" for access to a specific area does not apply. There are individual accounts with permissions to specific areas. All access to departmental web areas is controlled by the individual accounts which are members of a group or area.
For example, if you specified access to the Communications Design department, you will be a member of the cdes group. Group designations, because they are tied to system setup are case sensitive and directly correspond to storage areas on the server. You'll see how these are used in section 5, Upload Your Document to the Web Server.
There may be existing developers for your department in your Web group or others may be added as requested. Faculty and staff requesting admission to a Web group do not need any authorization! Student developers will need to supply either a faculty or staff sponsor before account approval. Other group members are notified when a new member is added.
Anyone in your group will be able to make changes to documents in your group's Web directory. You will need to know how to transfer information to your group directory for processing by the Web server so that others may access your information.
Your own private web area (faculty and staff), is not affected by group access rights.
Any written information you create should always comply with the standard CSU, Chico Web Guidelines and University Writing Style Guide. Your pages will need to comply with both of these before linking to the CSU, Chico Web.
Any pages developed for the CSU, Chico State web site should comply with accessibility standards and guidelines. Please refer to the ADA Links in the local Web Tools page to assist you with this goal.
You'll find it easier to begin departmental Web page construction if you start with one of the standard CSU, Chico Web templates.
Take a look at the standard new department template.
The syllabus template (source) should be used to create Web pages that are to be automatically indexed into the Web server's main syllabus index page localed at: www.csuchico.edu/syllabi. Complete instructions for how to use the syllabus template can be found at the local Web Helper site. After viewing the template you can save it using save to file options provided by the viewer you're using.
No template exists for indivudal faculty or staff home pages! You're on your own to be creative!
HTML, HyperText Markup Language, is what is used to create the documents that are processed by the Web. HTML is plain ASCII text with embedded markup tags that perform some action--formatting changes, linking to other documents, displaying images, etc. A good place to start learning about HTML is A Beginner's Guide to HTML. The Beginner's Guide links to a variety of other useful documents. Once you get going, you might just want to consult the HTML 4.0 tags reference (thanks to the WDVL site!).
Additionally, you'll probably want to review information provided at the
head World Wide
Web site for more extensive information about W3 and HTML,
and the Web Developer's Virtual Library for
loads of Web development information.
A variety of high-end products are available for designing complete and complex Web pages and sites. These are stand-alone applications that are similar to word processors but are designed specifically for HTML creation like HotMetal for Windows and Macintosh, Adobe's PageMill, or Macromedia's Dreamweaver. As of Spring, 2001, Dreamweaver is the officially supported Web development product for the CSU, Chico campus.
If you don't have access to any specialized HTML tools, you can readily create HTML documents using just your word processor and placing markup tags where you want them, and saving them as text files. Or, use just a text editor of your choice, insert the tags and save the files with the "html" extension. Finally, newer versions of Micorsoft Word will attempt to convert Word documents directly to HTML.
You should always review your work by using the local open capabilities (an option under the File menu) provided by your Web browser.
Web document names are composed of two parts, a page name and an extension. For example, myhomepage.html. The extention part, in this case, ".html" is important. It tells the Web server that this is an HTML document, the most common document type used by most Web servers. The campus Web server considers documents that have ".html" or ".htm" as HTML documents. Other types of extensions, and therefore document types, can also be used. For a complete list of types supported on the campus Web server, please see: MIME Types. And, no, these have nothing to do with those speechless performing people!
Filenames on our server are "case sensitive". This means upper and lower case
letters matter in actually referring to a document. Using the above example, if you
established a link to MyHomepage.html when you really created a file called
myhomepage.html, your link would fail. It's probably easiest to just be
consistent with case use in your Web page names. Most developerss tend to use all
lowercase in filenames. This is also important to remember when giving out
URLs (Web site references) to colleagues or having them printed up anywhere.
Also, avoid using spaces in filenames. While these files will display fine
in mmsot browsers, they cause problems with automated processes we have running
on the system.
The filename index.html (or index.htm) has special significance to most
Web servers. This is the default file name for the starting document for
a given web directory. For example, if I give you a Web site address of:
www.csuchico.edu/listenup, the Web server assumes your starting document name
is index.htm or index.html and tries to load that.
If "index.html" does not exist (or "index.htm", "index.shtml", home.htm",
home.html"), our Web server will simply display the
list of files in www.csuchico.edu/listenup. The campus standard is to include
an "index.html" (or one of the other defaults) in the top-level of your Web
directory. Please adhere to this to avoid problems!
Private directory areas are located at:/m1/"userid"/public_html
where "userid" is your account idFaculty please note! If you intend to place syllabi in your own web area and have them automatically indexed, you will need to create an additional sub-directory under your public_html directory named "syllabi". See the instructions for creating sub-directories.
Departmental directory areas are located at:
/m3/webdocs/"dept_directory"
where "dept_directory" is the current web site name assigned
to your area, usually the official university department abbreviation
The location of your private web directory will vary on web.csuchico.edu.
Typically, if you just setup your ftp client to connect to web.csuchico.edu, you should automatically connect to your top-level home directory. You should see your "public_html" directory (folder) beneath this in which to deposit your information.
Most new GUI web development tools such as Dreamweaver contain setup options which allow you to configure quick file transfer options to a web server once your development is complete. They also typically allow for "download" updates of existing web sites in much the same way. Consult your user guide for whatever application you're using for how to configure these options. Once configured, the application will allow for a point-and-click upload of your pages to the campus web servers.
However, the tried and true "classic" utility to transfer files between Internet hosts is called ftp (file transfer protocol). This is a utility installed as part of your networking applications that should be available on all campus computers. If you have questions about your particular setup, please contact User Services, X 6000. FTP exists in various application forms on campus machines. The following section is a "generic" overview of its use if needed.
How to use FTP (Fetch, RapidFiler, WS_FTP) to upload documents to the Web server.
/m3/webdocs/"dept_directory" or your own web area
public_html
To move "over to" the departmental web area in this fashion, use a series of "up level" clicks until you get to the top file area of the system--/ then click on the them3folder (directory) to see a list of all web areas. From here, you should be able to click to navigate to your department's area.To move to your own web area, simply click on the public_html folder (directory) that should already be set up under your main user directory.
Once you have done these steps, you can view your document from the campus Web server by typing one of the following URL into your Web browser:
where "dept_directory" is your department's web site area name,
"userid" is your userid on the server in question, and
"docname" is the name of the html document(s) you uploaded.
Depending on the Web setup for your area, you may need to have changes made to one of your department's documents in order to link in your documents. If you are a web maintainer for the department or area, you can put in this link yourself where appropriate. If not, you will need to contact the area web maintainer to do this for you.
Alternatively, if the document(s) you've created are for a new area on the
web server, you should notify WEBREVIEW@CSUCHICO.EDU
to review your documents for compliance with guidelines and to determine
where your starting document (index.html) should be linked in to the existing
university Web hierarchy.
Graphic images used in Web documents are included with the use of the IMG markup tag. Images used in Web documents should be in GIF or JPEG format--.gif or .jpg file "extensions" for correct viewing by a Web browser. There are a variety of commercial software packages available for personal computers that can produce this image format-- among them CorelDraw, PhotoShop. Additionally, there are a variety of shareware products that can be used for basic graphic manipulation and conversion. These products include:
For more information about computer graphics in general, take a look at CMU's graphics tutorial
There are several sources for HTML forms creation and use. Creators should note that creating Web forms involves both the HTML code to design and display the form and a means (back-end process, cgi) of processing the information collected by the form. Unless the form is used to simply collect and e-mail information to some recipient, the back-end process will involve programming in some language the UNIX Web server understands such as system (shell) scripts, PERL, or C programs.
CGI (Common Gateway Interface) programs are used to make the Web perform some specific action on the part of the user like searching a site or accessing a database. These kinds of actions require the use of program modules ("CGI scripts") that can be written in a variety of languages the Web server understands (C, C++, Perl, UNIX shell scripts), and must always be stored in a specific place on the Web server for access by users. Most references refer to this place as the "cgi-bin directory" on the Web server. See also the local Perl Information page for details on local Perl setup.
The CSU, Chico Web server is set-up so that individual developers can create and store CGI scripts in their own directories. This means you do not have access to the central cgi-bin directory of the server, nor do you need it. Create a "cgi-bin" directory either under your departmental Web directory (using appropriate UNIX commands, covered in Organizing Your Web Area Using Sub-directories), and place your CGI scripts in there. CGI programs must be named with either a .cgi extension or .pl (typically reserved for Perl scripts). Make sure you set permissions correctly! CGI scripts must be set for world read/execute.
*** WARNING! *** *** WARNING! *** *** WARNING! ***
CGI scripting requires programming knowledge, and knowledge of UNIX files and permissions to correctly set up! DO NOT install scripts obtained from shareware sites unless you know how to do this. Computing Services will not assist you in getting your CGI scripts to work correctly. Additionally, if you're not experienced with how to do this, it is somewhat likely badly running CGI scripts will impact the server's performance!
A well-known method for providing access security for your Web pages, should you desire it, is through a mechanism commonly known as ".htaccess". This is also the name of the actual file (that's right --dot--htaccess is a Unix file name) that defines the permissions for a Web area. Access restrictions using the .htaccess method apply to directories or folders in your Web area. They can not be set up for individual files.
In a nutshell, to enforce access restrictions for a particular folder in your area, an .htaccess file needs to be created for it and stored in it--into the same directory for which access restrictions apply. Other types of files, such as an .htpasswd file that defines specific users and passwords for the area, can also be defined.
Our .htaccess info document will give you details on how to do this.
.shtml
extension as our server does not parse all pages for SSIs, only those
named with this extension.
A nice little tutorial on SSI tags can be found at
NCSA's
site. Please see the second section on SSI Format for how to
create these tags. Please also NOTE--the main campus Web server
DOES NOT support the <!--exec cgi=" ..."--> tag. Use
<!--exec cmd="..."--> instead.
Take a look at the User Guide as a first start. You don't need a specific userid or password to use Linkscan. Use anything you like. Access to specific areas is provided by the drop-down menu in the Main Menu screen. Please do not choose All in the Owner selection list as this will take a VERY long time to process.
User documents are stored on WWW in a departmental subdirectory under a higher level directory called /m3/webdocs. If you are a member of group agri for agriculture, all your departmental documents would be stored in directory /m3/webdocs/agri in UNIX parlance. If you need to look at the names or change any documents that anyone in your group has created, this is where they are stored.
To see a list of all documents belonging to your web area--do the following
ls /m3/webdocs/dept_url
where dept_url is the web site name assigned
to your group. If, at some point, you need to edit a Web document which was placed in the departmental directory by someone else, you reverse the process of putting documents on the Web server using your FTP application.
Since all members of a group have all rights to files in the deparment Web directory, if you FTP to WWW and then navigate over to your department Web directory, you can download any file there to your own computer, make changes to it, and re-upload the file. You do not have to reset permissions to the file since these need only be set once.
In addition to downloading files to your own personal computer to make changes, you may also directly edit files using one of the UNIX text editors, "vi" or pico. It is !! strongly !! suggested that you try using these editors on test files in your own WWW account (telnet to www and use your own userid and password) before making changes to department Web page documents. (Note: very limited support is available for using the UNIX text editors.)
Once you get into Web development, you may soon find that the number of Web documents you're storing on the server is becoming a bit unwieldy and you sure wish there was a way to organize the documents into folders or directories much the way you have information organized on your desktop computer. Well, there is! You can create sub-directories on the Web server to further organize your documents!
cd /m3/webdocs/dept_directory mkdir subdir chmod 775 subdir cd /m3/webdocs/mydir/subdir
before creating an additional directory below subdir
Documents in sub-directories must, of course, have correct permissions
set on them as with any other web document. To access, for example, a
document named mynew.html is a sub-directory subdir under
main web directory maindir, the following anchor link could be
specified:
http://www.csuchico.edu/maindir/subdir/mynew.html
Enough can not be said about assigning correct permissions to both web document files and web directories! And the two are not interchangable! The single biggest problem with not being able to access Web files is due to incorrect permission modes.
So, just remember--
Computing Services
California State University, Chico
Chico, CA 95929-0405
530-898-5338
cswebmaster@csuchico.edu