Creating Web Pages on Barney

Student Web Pages on Barney

Introduction

The academic server (Barney) is available for hosting student created web pages. Web pages located on Barney can be accessed by anyone using a browser on the World-Wide Web. These pages might be used for personal information, student projects, entertainment, resumes, or any other information you may wish to provide that you would like others to see.

Restrictions

Anyone that has an account on Barney may have a web page including students, clubs, and employees of Gonzaga. The creation and display of web pages are governed by Gonzaga University's Network Access Policy. The disk space consumed by web pages counts against the total disk space allotment your account is allocated on Barney. The amount of disk space your account is using is displayed each time you telnet into your account.

Location of Web Files on Barney

The web server on Barney cannot access any of the files or directories in your account other than the directory "public_html" located in your root directory. The public_html directory can only be accessed by the web server if the access permissions are set correctly. The purpose of this is to prevent others from accessing files in your account without your permission.

To create the public_html directory, telnet into your Barney account and type

"mkdir public_html" at the $ prompt. To make the directory readable by everyone, type "chmod 755 public_html." Any files located in this directory will now be accessible as long as their permissions are set correctly.

The file "index.html" is the default web page within the public_html directory (or any sub-directory within public_html). This is the web document that will be opened if no specific file is specified in the URL. For example, http://barney.gonzaga.edu/~jdoe will display the index.html file in jdoe's public_html directory while http://barney.gonzaga.edu/~jdoe/resume.html will display the resume.html file in jdoe's public_html directory. It's always a good idea to have an index.html in your public_html directory so people have a starting web page for your account.

File and Directory Permissions

By default, Barney makes any file your create or transfer to your account readable and writable only by you. This is to protect your files from being accessed by others unless you specifically give them permission to read the files. In order for a web page to be readable by the web server, the file and the directory it is in must have public read permissions.

To make a file readable by everyone, type "chmod 644 filename" at the $ prompt, replacing filename with the actual name of the file to set. To make a directory readable by everyone, type "chmod 755 directoryname" at the $ prompt. You can change all of the files in a directory to public readable by typing "chmod o+r *" at the $ prompt. Use caution when using the "*" (all) option. Type "man chmod," for more information regarding the chmod command.

Transferring Files to Barney

HTML documents may be created directly on Barney or may be created on a different computer and then uploaded to Barney. Files can be uploaded to Barney using FTP if there is a direct connection (e.g., your computer is on ZagNet) or modem PPP connection (i.e., connecting via CompuTech or other ISP) between your computer and Barney. If you are connecting over a modem and are not using PPP, the file may be uploaded using a modem transfer protocol. For more information on transferring files to Barney, see the section titled Downloading Files from Barney using FTP or the handout Downloading Files from Barney using a Modem.

Accessing Student Web Pages from the World-Wide Web

Once you have placed your web pages on Barney and have set the access permissions correctly, others may access your pages. The URL (Universal Resource Locator) for your default web page is http://barney.gonzaga.edu/~youruserid. For example, if your userid was "jdoe," the URL for your default page would be http://barney.gonzaga.edu/~jdoe. Your default page is named "index.html" and is located in your "public_html" directory on Barney. Other pages can be accessed directly by entering the name of the web page after your user id. For example, http://barney.gonzaga.edu/~jdoe/resume.html would display the file "resume.html" in your public_html directory.

Creating HTML Documents

Web pages are commonly referred to as HTML documents because they use the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) to provide formatting information. There are many programs that can create HTML documents including Netscape Navigator 3.0 Gold, Adobe PageMill, Claris Home Page, Microsoft Office 97 (and earlier versions with free plug-ins from Microsoft), and dozens of other programs. Since HTML documents are simply text documents with special "tags" to provide formatting information, they can also be created using text editors and word processors. These include text editors on Barney such as pico, vi, and emacs. How you create the documents is arbitrary and depends on your preferences. The web server on Barney doesn't care which program created the web page as long as it is in the correct format.

There are dozens of books on creating web pages and many excellent tutorials and resources on the Internet. A number of classes at Gonzaga also teach web page development.