UNH IT: Pubpages Basics

This document covers the basic steps to set up your own website on UNH's "pubpages" server, and (if and when you desire) how to take it down.

Setup

As a CIS Unix user, you can create your own personal website for viewing by anyone in the world equipped with a web browser. The name of our server is pubpages.unh.edu. People use their “pubpages” website for nearly everything imaginable: resumes, pictures, opinions, etc. Some courses also require you to create a web page.

Some things to note before you get started:

The CIS Unix web server is meant for individuals. Campus organizations and departments should use the UNHINFO server. (Although the pubpages server is good for testing such pages before they go “live” on UNHINFO.)
Any files you put on your website will count against your total disk quota. To check your current disk usage against your quota:
```
% showquota
Used 2.5M; Quota 256.0M
```
You might want to review the parts of the CIS Unix Acceptable Use Policy) that concern websites.

We'll outline the steps involved in setting up a web page here. They assume you've set up a login session (see this document for information on that) and are using the shell interface (see this section) for giving commands.

The web server looks for files in a subdirectory of your Unix home directory called public_html. So first you need to create that directory if it doesn't already exist:

% mkdir $HOME/public_html


	It's normal for Unix commands to have no output unless there's some sort of error.

The web server software needs to be able to “look into” the directory you just created. You need to give a couple commands to allow that to happen. We recommend:
```
% chmod 711 $HOME
% chmod 755 $HOME/public_html
```
By default, the web server assumes the primary page on your website (your “home page”) is named index.html. An easy way to get started is to create a simple page with an editor, for example:
```
% pico $HOME/public_html/index.html
```
In case, you're not familiar with Pico: you can pretty much just start typing; keystroke menus at the bottom of the screen can help. Here's an example to get you started (but you can, of course, type whatever you want).

Once you're done typing, exit from Pico, being sure to save your file.
Finally, make the file you just created readable by the Whole Wide World:
```
% chmod 644 $HOME/public_html/index.html
```

That's it! Pointing your web browser to http://pubpages.unh.edu/~joe/ (substituting, of course, your own username for joe) should display the web page you just created.


	The squiggly `~` character in the above URL is a tilde. It's usually found in the northwest corner of your keyboard; typing something else will only lead to disappointment.

If you have an e-mail alias of the form first.last@unh.edu pointing to your CIS Unix account (or Exchange account, if you have one), then an alternate URL should also work: http://pubpages.unh.edu/first.last/ (for example http://pubpages.unh.edu/joseph.englebart/). The trailing slash is required. This should take effect the day after you set up your web page or obtain your alias, whichever comes later.

Takedown

For safety, we suggest that you not remove your pubpages web pages; if you don't want them to be viewable to the Whole Wide World any more, you can make them invisible without destroying them.

There are a number of ways to do this, but we'll describe two methods here:

If you're familiar with WebMail, you can use the following procedure:
1. If necessary, click the "My Account" item on the left-side menu to expose the "File Manager" subitem below.
2. Click the "File Manager" subitem; this should bring up a list of files and directories (folders) in your CIS Unix home directory.
3. Click the checkbox next to the public_html folder.
4. From the "Actions" pulldown menu at the top of the file list, choose "Change Permissions".
5. This will bring up an "Attributes" box with nine little boxes; check all three boxes in the "Owner" column, leaving the six other boxes unchecked as shown in Figure 2, “Attributes Box”. Then click "Save"
  
  Figure 2. Attributes Box
The second method:
1. Establish a login session as described in this document.
2. Give the shell command:
```
% chmod 700 $HOME
```

In either case, your web pages will no longer be accessible to the web server.


	The content of your web pages may still be viewable in search-engine caches even after you've made them inaccessible over the web.

Page Maintenance:

Paul A. Sand <pas@unh.edu>

Last modified: 2012-05-07 3:21 PM EDT
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