UMBC Departmental Web Page Creation

I.                   Getting started with your department’s web site

The first step in getting the web site is to call the Office of Information Technology’s Help Desk at x3838 with the following information;

1.      The name and account name of the individual(s) who will write and maintain the web pages. This person should ideally have some experience in making web pages. Many departments enlist staff, or hire students who have this experience.

2.      Each person must have a UMBC Unix account. Faculty, staff, and students can get a free account at http://accounts.umbc.edu if they don’t have one.

3.      The web address that you want for your new site. It should be in the form http://www.umbc.edu/dept , where dept is your department’s abbreviation.

4.      The Remedy system will inform you when the space is ready. Then you may begin creating and uploading your new web pages.

 

The OIT department can consult with you in any phase of your new web site. Contact John Fritz, the UMBC Web Coordinator, at x6595 for assistance.

 

II. Publishing web pages on the OIT Web server

 

This help sheet, and the accompanying video screenshows, will explain what the AFS web space is and how to access it to build your departmental web site. We suggest you print this document for future reference.

 

Many UMBC departments now have their web pages located on the OIT web server, in the AFS directory. AFS stands for Andrew File System, which is a distributed network file system on our Unix servers. AFS allows you to easily access your web files from any computer on the campus network. It is important to note that this is NOT the same procedure as making your personal web pages. The advantage of using AFS is that a department’s web pages can be written and updated by multiple designated persons in your department if you wish. OIT creates your department’s AFS space, and you create your web site there.

 

Once your department has decided to create your new web site, you will need to know a few things to get started. Your departmental web site will consist of the following components;

 

 

You may choose the address of your web site, and the Office of Information Technology will associate the address to your department’s web site, such as the following;

 

            http://www.umbc.edu/somedepartment

For example, the Office of Information Technology (OIT) web pages are on the server in the following directory;

 

          /afs/umbc.edu/public/www/oit

 

 

and their actual World Wide Web address, or alias, is the following;

 

 http://www.umbc.edu/oit 

 

This web ‘alias’ is a convenient shortcut name, which links to your web pages. The actual web pages will be stored on the OIT web server, under the UMBC AFS directory. This directory is on the web server under the following Unix AFS directory;

 

/afs/umbc.edu/public/www/

 

For security reasons, you will not be able to sign in and use this directory directly.

 

II. AFS Directory ‘ownership’: Administering the web space

 

You must provide OIT with the name and user account of the person or persons who will be responsible for maintaining your web site. OIT will assign the proper Unix access rights for the AFS directory to the users UMBC account. Your department must delegate one individual and provide OIT with their UMBC username. If you want other people in your department to help manage the site, you can also tell us to include them in the permissions for the web directory, by providing their name and user account. Only the people you designate will be able to make any modifications to the web pages in the directory, thus keeping it safe from unauthorized persons.

 

The owner of the AFS directory will have the ability to add other people to the access rights of the web space. This will allow those people to edit the web pages, which can be helpful in maintaining your web site. We suggest the owner of the directory should be a staff member who knows enough about Unix to follow this documentation and serve as a coordinator for the web site. Students can be assigned the ownership, but this can make it harder to update the pages when the student leaves the university.

 

Each person who will be working on the web pages must create a Unix ‘soft link’ or a shortcut folder in their gl or research account, which makes a ‘link’ directly to the departmental web site folder. To do this, each person must use the Unix make_shortcut command to make a Unix soft link. The command follows, and it must be made at the Unix command prompt exactly as in the following example.

 

Log into your UMBC UNIX account, using your telnet program, such as QVT or Tera Term Pro. After you are logged on to umbc7, issue the following commands, which only need to be used once. (These commands will work the same way on umbc8, so if your account is on umbc8 you can follow the procedures as described below).

 

 

Tera term telnet window, showing the UMBC ‘make_shortcut’ command

 

1. Using Tera Term on your PC, or Telnet on your Macintosh, Log in to your Unix account (on umbc7 or umbc8)

2. type cd   (type this command and then press the enter key)

3. type the UMBC Unix command make_shortcut

  (type this command and then press the enter key)

4. When you see the Name:  prompt, type in the name of your departmental AFS directory. For example, if the directory is called /afs/umbc.edu/public/www/music, you will just type in the word music at the Name: prompt

 

This command will create a new shortcut in your account, which is a shortcut for the web site. Then you can easily use the Unix cd (change directory) command to get to the web site, as in the following example;

 

  cd music  (replace music with the name of your department’s directory, don’t use the oit directory)

 

Now you can verify that you are actually ‘in’ or using, your AFS directory. You must use the Unix pwd command, as follows, which will show you which directory you are in; this command means ‘print working directory’;

 

    pwd

    /afs/umbc.edu/public/www/music

(this is the ‘response’ from Unix, showing the current working directory you are in)

 

Once you have access to your department’s web directory, you may begin using any web page creation software you prefer, such as html, Macromedia Dreamweaver, or other software packages. Netscape Composer is NOT recommended, since it cannot handle the UMBC navigation bar. You may also use your word processing package such as WordPerfect or MS Word, and save your documents as html, into the web directory. Also make sure your main home page is called index.html

You may use any ftp program, such as ws_ftp on Windows, or Fetch on a Macintosh, or ftp in Dreamweaver and upload all your web pages and related files, into your web directory.

 

III. Saving your web pages using an ftp program

 

Once you create the pages for your web site, you must upload all your html files and all associated graphics to the web directory. You can use an ftp program such as Windows ws_ftp, or Macintosh Fetch. To do this, you must run your ftp program and

 

 

Using ws_ftp for windows to upload files to the AFS directory

 

  1. Run the ws_ftp program and connect to umbc7 or umbc8…

 

 

Click on the Startup tab in the Session Properties window and enter your web directory in the Initial Remote Site Folder: box. Then click OK.

 

 

 

 

Enter your UMBC email password when the Password box appears…

 

 

Then you can begin uploading or downloading your web files. Notice on the window below, that the Remote Site will be your web directory on /afs/umbc.edu/public/www

 

 

IV. Saving your web pages using Macromedia Dream Weaver

 

1. First, click on the Site  menu button and click the New Site… item as below…

 

 

 

2. Begin creating the new Site Definition by entering the Site Name: and entering the HTTP: Address: which is the web address of your site, as below…

 

 

3. Next, define your Local Root Folder: which will be a new folder on your hard drive, or on your zip drive if you prefer, and click on the Select button…

 

 

 

4. Next, click the Remote Info to tell Dreamweaver where to put the files on the server. On the Access: button, you will choose FTP to use the ftp method for uploading your web files. In the dialog box, you can enter the exact AFS directory where your files will go, as in the example below…

 

 

After you click the OK button, Dreamweaver will create the new site, and bring up the Site window as below, which shows the OIT Site I just created.

 

 

4. Then click on the Connect button to connect to your new site…

 

 

 

 

5. Click the download button to get the files from your site. You will be asked to put in your password, enter your UMBC password as below…

 

 

6. Click on the upload button to upload your files to your web site…

 

 

V. Adding and deleting other users to the directory: AFS access rights

 

The department web page administrator has the ability to allow other people to access the web directory. This is handy if other people in your department assist in maintaining the web pages in your web directory. 

 

To grant the AFS access rights, you, the owner, can issue the following Unix commands, in the order described below.

 

1. Sign into your Unix account

2. Change directory to your departmental web pages directory, using the cd command as above.

3. Issue the following Unix AFS command

 

    pts adduser username user:group

 

For example, if my group is called charles:oit, and I want to add smith to my AFS group access, here is how I type the command in Unix;

 

    pts adduser smith charles:oit

 

Now you can view the group to make certain that you added someone, using the following Unix command; this example shows that smith is now in the charles:oit group. Then user smith can change the files in the directory.

 

    pts membership charles:oit

          members of charles:oit (id: -771) are:

                          smith

 

By default, the name of the AFS group is always named after the directory owner’s username and the directory name, in the format username:directoryname such as the following;

 

    charles:oit

 

If someone in your AFS group leaves your department or the university, then you can delete that person’s account from the AFS access. The directory owner can easily remove an account, using the following AFS command at the Unix prompt;

 

    pts removeuser smith charles:oit

 

The above example would delete the username smith from the charles:oit AFS group.

 

How do I know who the directory owner is?

 

There is a simple Unix command to use to view the ownership of the group in the directory. Issue the following command;

 

     pts membership username:group

 

Once you know who is in the group, you can delete or add other users’ accounts to the group.