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PubPages on CISUNIX Systems.

Computing & Information Services Department.
author: jim.cerny@unh.edu

This file describes how to enable publicly-accessible personal Web pages ("home pages"), that are served from your individual computer account on our central Unix systems.

What is a home page?

On the World Wide Web the term "home page" refers to the first document you come to in a collection of logically-related documents on a Web site. Once you learn the basics of HyperText Markup Language (HTML), you can create a personal home page within your account on our central Unix systems. It is easy to do. See for example:

We also have a list of pointers to more advanced authoring resources on the Web.

Why create a personal home page?

There are several kinds of home pages, depending on their logical focus. This document deals primarily with personal home pages. Pubpages is intended as a basic service, not to rival all the things you could do on a system of your own or with a commercial Internet Service Provider.

Personal home pages.

Why would you want a personal home page? Because it is kind of cool and your friends will be impressed. And, more important, because it is a good way to learn about the way the Web works and how you can become an information contributor as well as an information consumer.

Instructional home pages.

Pubpages is a reasonable choice for an instructor who wants to make materials available to a class.

Departmental/office/organization home pages

If you have need for a department/office/organization Web page, what we call a UNHINFO Contributor Account is available for serving the information on the UNHINFO system. But Pubpages may be a useful location to design and test a prototype of a departmental Web page before relocating and advertising its existence on UNHINFO.

How to set up your directory.

1. Login to your Unix account and exit from the menu to the shell 
   prompt (%) by selecting menu item 4.  You can always return to the
   menu by typing "menu" at the shell prompt.  Confirm that 
   you have a  directory in your home directory called "public_html".  
   If not, create one by:
    	
   mkdir public_html
   
2. Put all your HTML files and any needed graphics or other
   files in the public_html directory.  Remember, however that
   this counts against your login quota (5 MB current default).

   showquota
   
3. Allow access to the public_html directory and its files:

   NOTE: All these commands must be given exactly as shown with
        respect to use of spaces and lower case. The most
        common problem people have is that they do not protect
        their home directory to make it world readable.  That
        command (below) uses a tilde (located in the upper left
        corner of most keyboards).  Because Unix does not 
	normally confirm whether a command worked correctly or
	not, the commands shown below are in sets, as the
	basic command and then one to confirm that it worked.
	Each line includes a comment beginning with "#" that you
	do not type.

   cd 				# move to your home directory
   pwd				# should end with your account name

   chmod go+x ~                 # make home directory world execute
   ls -ld ~                     # look for pattern "drwx--x--x"

   chmod go+rx public_html	# make public_html world read/execute
   ls -ld public_html		# look for pattern "drwxr-xr-x" 
  
   cd ~/public_html		# move to home page area 
   pwd				# should end with "/public_html"

   chmod go+r *			# make all files world readable 	
   ls -l			# look for pattern "-rw-r--r--"
   
   WARNING: if you have any confidential files in your home 
	directory, you should either separately protect them
   	against world access, or you should move them into
   	a single directory and protect that.  The normal
	default protections on mail and other directories
	protect them _if_ you haven't changed them.
   
4. From this point on the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) for
   your home page is:
   
   http://pubpages.unh.edu/~account

   where "account" is your account name.
   
5. The default is for you to name your home page "index.html".
   If you choose another name, then that other name must be
   explicitly included in the URL for your page, e.g.,

   http://pubpages.unh.edu/~account/somethingelse.html
   
6. To have your home page listed in our UNHINFO campus-wide
   information server, send e-mail to unhinfo.help@unh.edu.
   If you have a public_html directory, you 
   are automatically listed
   (unless you ask to be excluded).

What about content?

What should you put in your personal home page? Often people include a scanned color photograph of themselves and some information about their field of study or interests. Many home pages also act as a "jump station" with links to other Internet resources of interest to the owner. Browse and look at what others have done.

Are there any do-not's? Well, your prime directive should be to use common sense. We (technical support staff in Computing & Information Services) do not monitor the content. So don't be the cause of serious complaints that we will have to investigate and don't generate so much traffic that it will interfere with the normal operation of the system. We will follow the computing code of ethics and other University rules and our own common sense if complaints about content come in. We do keep traffic logs of the server activity on the "pubpages.unh.edu" system, to be able to trouble-shoot technical problems and to track usage volume. Summaries of these stats are linked on the list of UNH personal Web pages for anyone to view.

Occasionally asked usage questions.

1. Some of my files work and some don't. Why?

All files to be served must be world-readable. The commands above assume you have your files in place. If you add a file later and it doesn't pick up the world-read protection, you can set it by using this command when in your public_html folder:
chmod go+r *.html

2. My file protection is OK, but it still won't display. Why?

Assuming your file is not corrupted, consider that Web servers and browser use the MIME-types convention to identify what type of file it is. (a) That means you should name it in the expected way (e.g., HTML files should be named .html or .htm, not .exe). (b) If it is an unusual MIME type it may need to be added to the list that the Pubpages server uses, which means you need to contact the central Unix sysadmin. (c) If it is an unusual MIME type it may need to be made known to your browser, including making sure you have a plug-in or application that can play it.

3. I can't login to my pubpages account. Why?

There are various possibilities. Assuming that you had a working central Unix account, it could be disabled because of inactivity. Or maybe you don't remember your password correctly. Contact the Computing Help Desk in person to resolve this kind of account-related problem.

4. What is this W*** system that I saw a reference to?

Pubpages is an alias for the actual system on which the Web server for the central Unix systems resides (at various times Wilmot, Webster, etc). Always use the alias to buffer your URLs against change; we will keep the alias correctly pointed even when the underlying hardware changes.

5. I can't get my GIF or JPEG graphics files to display. Why?

If you've created or captured them on a desktop system and know that they work OK there, then the most likely thing is that you've corrupted the files in transferring them to your Unix account. Get some help from someone who knows about using the particular transfer software (e-mail attachment, FTP, or whatever) that you are using. In most situations graphics (and sounds) would be transported as binary. An exception is when uploading a GIF or JPEG file from a Macintosh using the Fetch program -- specify "raw data" then.

6. How do I use a CGI script?

Some basic CGI scripts are available on Pubpages and it is possible to develop or import your own. For security reasons these are under the control of the system administrator, placed in a special directory. Contact the central Unix sysadmin for more information.

7. Can I protect my files with a username and password?

Yes, with some qualifications. This is done with an ".htaccess" file as explained in this htaccess tutorial.

8. How do I get counts of hits on my Web page(s)?

You can either look at the summaries from the Pubpages server log or you can install your own page counter. Read on for details.
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