Creating Your UCO Homepage

So, you've taken a look around our webserver.  And now you've decided you'd like to set up your own individual homepage.  Here's how. The following examples are UNIX commands. Non-UNIX users can contact NICS if you need help.

Let's assume your UNIX login name is "jdoe"  (that means replace "jdoe" with your login name).

  1. Make sure your web directory (/usr/local/www/jdoe) exists:

    You should be able to access it via a symlink in your "public" home directory)

    /u/jdoe% cd /home/public/jdoe/my_html

    OR - you can access it directly

    /u/jdoe% cd /usr/local/www/jdoe

  2. Make sure you can write on it.

    /usr/local/www/jdoe% ls -la

    total 9

    drwxr-xr-x 2 jdoe lickstaf 512 Jul 4 13:52 ./ <--=== This line says things are OK

    drwxr-xr-x 348 root wheel 6144 Jan 1 1492 ../

  3. If one or both of these tests fails, send email to nics@ucolick.org. Otherwise:

  4. Create an HTML file named index.html in that directory.

    This will be your homepage document. From there, you can add other files and such.

  5. Make sure your new index.html is readable by everyone.

    6. /usr/local/www/jdoe% ls -l index.html

    -rw-r--r-- 1 jdoe lickstaf 123 Dec 12 13:53 index.html <--== should look like this

    If not, change the permissions to make it accessible:

    /usr/local/www/jdoe% chmod 644 index.html
  6. Your page should be accessible via:

    http at http://www.ucolick.org/~jdoe/
    a short while later. If it's not, contact nics@ucolick.org for help.

  7. Have Fun. HTML work is fun. If it wasn't, there wouldn't be a World Wide Web.

To Publicize Your Homepage

Think your homepage is ready to go public? Want a link on the UCO/Lick Observatory Individual Homepages online directory?

Just send email to webeditor@ucolick.org with your new homepage address.

NOTE: Please also email webeditor@ucolick.org if you move or delete your page.

To Privatize Your Homepage

To "turn off" http access to your WWW directory:

  • Delete or rename the index.html file in your web directory.   - and/or -

  • Delete or rename the rest of the stuff in that directory, too.   - and/or -

  • Change the permissions to make it/them inaccessible from the outside:

    • /usr/local/www/jdoe% chmod 600 *.html
  • Send email to the Webeditor, asking that your link be removed from the Individual Homepages Directory.

HTML Help

If you don’t know much about HTML, you can read Getting Started with HTML by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) or the Beginner’s Guide from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).

You may also email webeditor@ucolick.org to make an appointment for personal assistance in creating your webpage, and linking to your publications and other webpages.

More documentation on HTML docs and WWW may be found on the W3C webserver, among other places.