Setting up a World Wide Web Home Page at NWNPRC /H2>

• Creating a Home Page
• Directory and File Permissions
• What Files You Can Serve

Any WNPRC staff member with a UNIX account can use that account to set up a World Wide Web home page in the WNPRC Web space. This document describes how to create a simple home page and get it connected to the WNPRC Web.

This document doesn't describe how to write documents in HTML (hypertext markup language), which you'll need to know in order to write Web pages effectively. For more information on HTML authoring, point your Web browser at one or both of the following documents:

http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/demoweb/html-primer.html
http://kufacts.cc.ukans.edu/lynx_help/HTML_quick.html

Also, it's often easiest to learn by imitation. Use the View Source function of your Web browser to see how other people write HTML documents. This way you can figure out how to do something by finding another document that does something similar, then copying it.

Creating a Home Page

In the example below, user stands for your username (login name) and Your Name stands for your real name. Make the appropriate substitutions as you follow the instructions.

(1) Create a directory to use as a location for your home page and other Web documents you wish to serve (``serve'' means ``make available''). I advise creating a separate directory (e.g., WWWstuff) under your home directory:

% mkdir ~/WWWstuff

(2) Move into your Web directory:

% cd ~/WWWstuff

(3) Now you're ready to create a simple home page. Use an editor to create a file named index.html that looks like this:

<TITLE>Home Page for Your Name</TITLE>
<H1>Home Page for Your Name</H1>
<P>
This is my home page.
It is still under construction.
<P>

Don't worry about what the stuff in the angle brackets means, just create it as shown above, subsituting your real name appropriately.

You can create the file using one of the UNIX editors like vi or ex. Alternatively, you can create the file on your Macintosh using SimpleText or BBEdit (don't use Word), then transfer the file to your WWWstuff directory using Fetch.

(4) No one will be able to see any of your documents until your Web directory is connected to the WNPRC Web. So tell me what that directory is. When I tell you that you've been connected, use your Web browser to verify that your home page can be accessed. The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) that specifies your home page is as follows, where user is replaced by your own login name:

http://www.primate.wisc.edu/people/user

Fire up your Web browser and select Open File (in Netscape) or Open URL (in Mosaic), type in your home page URL, and click OK. You should see a document that looks like this:

Home Page for Your Name

This is my home page. It is still under construction.

After you've verified that you can access your home page, you can modify it to say what you really want it to say. But that's beyond the scope of this document.

Directory and File Permissions

Your Web directory must be publicly readable. If you've restricted access on your account, the Web server won't be able to see anything in it - and nobody trying to see your home page using a Web client will see anything, either. You have a couple of options:

(1) Make your Web directory accessible for reading. You can do this by executing the following commands (ignore any ``not owner'' messages):

% cd	Change into your home directory
% chmod o-rwx * .*	Make everything inaccessible
% chmod o+rx WWWstuff	Make WWWstuff directory accessible
% chmod o+x .	Make home directory searchable

These commands leave the permissions for yourself and other people in your login group unaffected, but lock everybody else out of everything execpt your WWWstuff directory.

(2) If you really want your account completely private, you need to locate your Web directory somewhere in the file system that's not under your home directory. If that's what you want, contact me so that we can coordinate this.

What Files You Can Serve

You can only serve files that you own. This is simple politeness, and it's also a mild security precaution. It's only a ``mild'' precaution, because you can get around this restriction for any file that you can read by putting a copy of the file in your home page directory. Then you'll own the copy. But use common sense and don't do this for stuff that shouldn't be world-readable.

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Document written by: Paul DuBois Questions to: Tom Lynch, tlynch@primate.wisc.edu
Last updated: October 5, 2005