User Web Directories
Definition
The term "User Web Directory" refers to the disk directory that the ECR6 web
server accesses when given an URL of the form:
- http://www.ecr6.ohio-state.edu/~username/[...]
where username is a valid ECR6 account username.
Variations
If you are in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, you can substitute
"chbmeng" for "ecr6", above. Similarly, if you are in Materials Science and
Engineering, you can substitute "matsceng" for "ecr6", above. If you are
associated with CAPCE, CEOF or CISM, substitute "capce", "ceof" or "cism",
respectively, for "ecr6", above. For example...
http://www.chbmeng.ohio-state.edu/~smith/
- or -
http://www.matsceng.ohio-state.edu/~jones/
Accessing
The directory accessed will be the [.WWW] sub-directory of the named account's
SYS$LOGIN directory. The path /~smith/, for example, causes the web server to
access DISK:[SMITH.WWW].
Security
As a security precaution, none of your files outside the [.WWW...] directory
tree will be visible to the web server, and the [.WWW] directory itself has to
have been created with special attributes to allow the web server to access the
files within it. If you want to create a web directory or make sure the
directory has the correct protection settings, login to your ECR6 VMS account
and type the command:
- $ @SITE$COMMAND:BUILD_USERDIR
You will be prompted for a personal name, to which you should just enter your
name (e.g. John Smith).
User Web File
By default, the file that the web server opens when accessing a user's personal
[.WWW] directory is named INDEX.HTML (e.g. DISK:[SMITH.WWW]INDEX.HTML). If this
file includes server pre-processor
directives, you should name the file INDEX.HTMLX. You are free to create
other .HTML(X) files in your [.WWW] directory (or subdiretories thereof), and
to include graphics (.GIF, .JPG, etc.) files in your [.WWW] directory
(tree).
Transferring Files
If you develop these files on another computer, you will need to use FTP to
transfer them to the ECR6 VMS server (ftp.ecr6.ohio-state.edu). Be sure to
ALWAYS transfer .HTML(X) files in ASCII (text) mode; graphics files should be
transferrred in BINARY mode. By using ASCII mode to transfer your HTML files,
you can make small changes to the HTML files, as necessary, directly on the
VMS server (using an editor in a terminal [emulator]), rather than having to
make the changes on the file(s) on another computer and transferring the
file(s) to the server, again.
You must avoid the use of special characters in the file names you create for
use with the local Web server. These are the ONLY characters permitted:
- Upper-case and lower-case "A" thru "Z"
- "0" thru "9"
- The underline (a.k.a. underscore) character, "_"
- The hyphen (a.k.a. dash) character, "-"
- The dollar-sign character, "$" (supported but not recommended)
Characters which are common on other platforms will not work, including spaces
(or tabs), apostrophes ("'"), quotation marks, colons (":"), or any other
character which is not listed, above. A single period (or "dot") is permitted
(and really quite necessary) to separate a file name, proper, from it's file
extension, e.g. "my-picture.jpg". Note that the FTP server will actually allow
you to upload files with invalid characters, since the limitation is imposed
primarily by the Web server, and less with the FTP server. As such, you will
not get any warning regarding an inability to cope with any "restricted"
characters when you upload your files, but if their names have any invalid
characters, you will not be able to manage them via FTP (e.g. rename or delete
won't work), and they will not appear properly via the Web.