Iowa State University

Iowa State University
Public Homepage Web Server


 

Setting Up and Registering a Home Page on www.public.iastate.edu

 
 
General | Registration | Verify Registration | Delete Registration | URL Format | Help

General Information

The goals of this project are to provide a mechanism which provides an easy and convenient way for users and groups in the ISU community to publish documents on the World Wide Web.

Registration

Overview

PLEASE NOTE: By registering a user or locker, you are implicitly granting permission to use your REAL NAME and electronic mail address in the directory of homepages. If you do not wish to have this information available, do not register for this service.
For example, a user entry will look similar to this:
sqpub -- Susan Q. Public
A locker entry will look similar to this:
public -- The "public" software locker (sqpub@iastate.edu, Susan Q. Public)

There are three methods that can be used to setup the directories and register your locker or account with the www.public.iastate.edu server. The first method automates the entire procedure by using ASW. The second method is automated through the use of a command-line program that creates the directories, assigns the proper permissions to them, and registers your account or locker with the server. The third method allows you to perform the individual steps by hand.

ASW Setup

Simply go to ASW and click on the buttons.

Automated Setup

The setup_www command in the www locker on Project Vincent will create a directory, WWW in your home directory or locker (if it doesn't already exist) to store your web pages in, copy in a sample homepage.html (if you don't already have a homepage.html file in your WWW directory), sets the permissions to make the documents in the WWW directory accessible to the server, and registers your account or locker with the web server.

General Syntax of setup_www

vincent% setup_www [-l lockername]

Examples

To register your account, give the following commands:

vincent% add www
vincent% setup_www

To register a locker, you must have write access to /home/lockername. Give the following commands (note that the "-l" in the second command is the lowercase letter "ell", and not the numeral "one"):

vincent% add www
vincent% setup_www -l lockername

Setting Things Up Manually

Directories & Access Rights

The documents you publish on the web will need to be placed in a directory named WWW (all capital letters) under your or your locker's home directory on AFS (/home/username/WWW or /home/lockername/WWW). This directory and all files below it must be readable by the www AFS instance in order for www.public.iastate.edu to serve your documents correctly. All subdirectories under the WWW directory must also be assigned the same access rights as the WWW directory in order to be accessible.
AFS Instructions
vincent% cd /home/joeuser
vincent% fs sa . www l
vincent% mkdir WWW
vincent% fs sa WWW www rl

Registration With www.public.iastate.edu

Now that you have the directories and permissions set up correctly, you must register your account or locker with www.public.iastate.edu. To do this, you use the pubwww_reg command in the www locker on Project Vincent.

General Syntax of pubwww_reg

vincent% pubwww_reg -h
Usage: 
 pubwww_reg [-h]
 pubwww_reg [-l lockername | -u username] [-i | -r | -d]
    -l lockername       locker name to register
    -u username         username to register
    -i                  get information
    -r                  register
    -d                  delete entry
    -h                  help

Examples

To register your account, give the following commands:

vincent% add www
vincent% pubwww_reg -r

To register a locker, /home/lockername/WWW must exist, and you must have write access to this directory. Give the following commands (note that the "-l" in the second command is the lowercase letter "ell" and not the numeral "one"):

vincent% add www
vincent% pubwww_reg -l lockername -r

Note: This manual registration process does not actually create your homepage.html file for you. The program is only telling you that homepage.html is the file that is searched for by default when you go to your newly registered URL. You must create homepage.html with an editor and insert the HTML you desire to use in order to see anything useful when you go to your URL.

Verifying Registration Information

To verify the registration information for your account, use the following commands:

vincent% add www
vincent% pubwww_reg -i

Anyone can verify the registration for anyone else (since this information will be on the automatically generated directory of homepages). For example:

vincent% add www
vincent% pubwww_reg -u username -i

To verify the registration of a locker, give the following commands:

vincent% add www
vincent% pubwww_reg -l lockername -i

Deleting Registration Information

To remove your account from the registration database, give the following commands:

vincent% add www
vincent% pubwww_reg -d

To remove a locker from the registration database, you must have write access to /home/lockername/WWW. Give the following commands (note that the "-l" in the second command is the lowercase letter "ell" and not the numeral "one"):

vincent% add www
vincent% pubwww_reg -l lockername -d

Forming URL's on www.public.iastate.edu

After your account or locker has been registered with www.public.iastate.edu, there is a file-system to URL mapping that works as follows:

Example 1

/home/username/WWW/homepage.html -> http://www.public.iastate.edu/~username

/home/lockername/WWW/homepage.html -> http://www.public.iastate.edu/~lockername

Example 2

/home/username/WWW/homepage.html -> http://www.public.iastate.edu/~username/homepage.html

/home/lockername/WWW/homepage.html -> http://www.public.iastate.edu/~lockername/homepage.html

Example 3

/home/username/WWW/dir1/file1.html -> http://www.public.iastate.edu/~username/dir1/file1.html

/home/lockername/WWW/dir1/file1.html -> http://www.public.iastate.edu/~lockername/dir1/file1.html

Note that the URL "http://www.public.iastate.edu/~username" will automatically pick up the file "homepage.html". The file "homepage.html" will be the "homepage" for the User- and Locker-Served directories.

Where To Go For Help

  • For assistance on general WWW issues, including how to create a page, there are a few links below that may be helpful:
  • Remember, every document you look at is an HTML example. You can always select "Document Source" from the "View" menu in Netscape, or "View Source..." from the "File" menu in Mosaic.

User- and Locker-Served HTML Document Service (www.public.iastate.edu) Information

  • Run the User/Locker Registration program. If you represent a group, it is strongly suggested that you use a locker, because usernames can and do change and/or expire.
  • Triple check directory permissions. (This is the most common problem people experience)
  • Contact the Solution Center, 195 Durham, 294-4000 for assistance.