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Build the Web!

Frequently Asked Questions About Creating Web Sites @ Florida State

Getting Started

  • Can I create a personal home page on the World Wide Web?
  • Can my organization set up a web site on an UCS server?
  • What do I need to know before I'm ready to set up a web site?
  • How much disk space do I have for my web pages?
  • Can I use Microsoft's FrontPage to create my site?

Working with the Server

Where am I? (URLs & Links)

  • What's the address of my personal home page?
  • What's the address of a departmental home page I set up?
  • How do I connect to other files?
  • Why do my URLs have tiddles in them?
  • How do I create links to other files on my web site?

Graphics

Advanced Applications and Interactivity

  • What are Imagemaps, and can I use them?
  • Can I create on line forms?
  • I'm having output from a form emailed to me, but it's all binary data. What's wrong?
  • Can I run CGI programs?
  • Can I create a connection counter on my home page?
  • How can I prohibit access to my webpages?
Getting Started
Go Up Can I create a personal home page on the World Wide Web?
Yes. UCS runs World Wide Web server software on Garnet (garnet.acns.fsu.edu) and Mailer (mailer.fsu.edu). Any person with an account on one of those systems can create his or her own World Wide Web site (aka "home page"). Any FSU student, faculty, or staff member can obtain a free account from UCS by using FSUID.

Go Up Can my organization set up a web site on an UCS server?
UCS provides special accounts on www.fsu.edu for organizational world wide web sites. Only official FSU organizations such as academic departments or other units that report to deans, vice presidents, and so forth, qualify for those accounts.

Departmental accounts are assigned names that reflect the departments' names, e.g., biology (Biological Science) and career (Career Center). To request an account for a departmental web site on www.fsu.edu , send email to problems(at)UCS.fsu.edu . Include the name of the organization, the desired name of the account (which will appear after the '~' in the URL - must be 8 characters or less ), and the names of all individuals who should have administrative access to the departmental WWW files. All of the account managers must have personal accounts on mailer.fsu.edu .

UCS does not create such accounts for student organizations such as clubs and fraternities. Student groups must set up web sites on personal accounts on UCS systems or use other departments' web servers. Generally, student organization web sites go in the ~staffair area. Registered Student Organizations can obtain free assistance with website development and design through the SGA Publications Office (Contact: 644-0037; www.fsu.edu/~sga). The website can be posted for free on the FSU Union server by Organizational and Leadership Services (Contact: 644-3840; www.fsu.edu/~union/leadership).

Go Up What do I need to know before I'm ready to set up a web site?
First, experience using a browser such as Netscape won't help much. Netscape is a WWW client, and you need to be able to develop material for a WWW server. Before you start, it will be very helpful if you learn about HTML (HyperText Markup Language). There is lots of good information about HTML available on the Web. It is also a good idea to know some basic Unix.

OFF CAMPUS USERS: You will need to go to the FSU Libraries website to set up EZProxy to get access to campus webservers. EZProxy will need to be running when you access garnet and mailer. You will need to download and install SSH software from ssh.com or from User Services for SFTPing. If you need to WebDAV, see these instructions.

Go Up How much disk space do I get for my web site?
Disk space for personal accounts on UCS systems (garnet and mailer) are:

Mailer: 100MB

Garnet: 100MB for undergraduates
            250MB for graduates, faculty and staff

How much of this space you devote to holding your website is up to you. "Official" departmental sites housed on www.fsu.edu have no storage limit and may expand as needed.

Go Up Can I use Microsoft FrontPage to make webpages?
Yes you can. However, for security reasons, FrontPage extensions are NOT supported on UCS systems.

Working with the Server

Go Up Where do I put my files so they appear on the WWW?
The web server software on Garnet and Mailer will only serve files that are stored in a special subdirectory, which must be called public_html. If this directory does not exist, issue the mkdir command from your home directory:
mkdir public_html
Departmental WWW accounts are created with the public_html set up in advance, so this command is unnecessary.

If your account is set up to use the menu, you must choose the "Unix prompt" option before you can issue commands.

Go Up How do I make my WWW files readable by the web server?
The web server software can only read files if the files and directories have the proper permissions. From your home directory, issue the following chmod commands:

chmod o+x ~
chmod o+x public_html
(translates into adding permisssions --> Other: Execute for everything (including your home directory) and Other: Execute for public_html directory)

Departmental WWW accounts are created with these permissions in place, so the commands are unnecessary.

Any subdirectories of public_html will also need 'x' permission, and any files to be displayed via the WWW will need 'r' permission. The permissions can be added with

chmod o+r filenames
chmod o+x directories

(translates to adding permisssions --> Other: Read for filename specified and Other: Execute for directory specified)

Failure to set the correct permissions will result in "permission denied" when you try to connect to them.

In SFTP, you can right click on the file and set the permissions to 755.

Go Up How can I create files to put on my World Wide Web site?
Most of the documents displayed on the World Wide Web are HyperText Markup Language (HTML) files. There are various ways you can create them, e.g.,

  • Use a Unix editor, such as pico or vi, on Garnet or Mailer. In this case, you should create the files directly in the public_html directory.

  • Use an ordinary word processing program (such as Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect) on a microcomputer, and save the HTML files as plain text.

  • Use an HTML authoring program on a microcomputer. There are now a large number of tools available to help you develop HTML files, including stand-alone HTML editors, file translators, and add-on programs for popular word processors such as Microsoft Word and Corel WordPerfect.

If you created the HTML files on a microcomputer, you must use sFTP, Fetch, or some other secured file transfer program to copy the files to the public_html directory on the web server. You may need to change the file access permissions (as described above) after uploading the files.

Go Up What should I name my files?
Name your primary file (or "home page") index.html, since that is the default file the server will look for in any directory unless it is told to find something else. Also, all of your HTML files should have names that end in .html (.htm will also be OK in most cases, but not for the default file); otherwise, the server won't recognize them as HTML. (Note that on the server, file names are case-sensitive; thus, INDEX.HTML won't work.)

Go Up How do I upload files to my web site?
You need to use a program that can do sFTP, (Secured File Transfer protocol). User Services provides Secure Shell software at no charge to FSU owned machines and/or with FSU assigned IP addresses.

If you do not know your full path on Garnet (the path will vary depending on whether you are faculty, staff, undergraduate or graduate student and when your account was created) you can login on Garnet using Secured Telnet software and, at the shell prompt, type pwd. This UNIX command stands for "print working directory" and will show you your full path from root.

* * Learn about 'tunneling' when using FTP client software - non SSH software (WS-FTP, DreamWeaver, ColdFusion, etc.)  If you plan to use WS_FTP (which is non secured), please see tunneling instructions.

Where am I? -- URLs & Links

Go Up What's the address of my personal home page?
If you put your home page in index.html, then, depending on which machine your account is on, you should be able to connect to it at the URL (URL stands for Uniform Resourse Locator -- just remember that it's your page's "address")
http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~username
or
http://mailer.fsu.edu/~username
for example:
http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~abc1234
username is your login or account name on the system). Note that the ~ symbol really should be inserted as shown, and public_html should not appear in the URLs.

Go Up What's the address of a departmental home page I set up?
The URLs should point to www.fsu.edu , even though the files are managed from Mailer. If you put your home page in index.html , it can be found at

http://www.fsu.edu/~deptacct
where deptacct is the name of the account. Note that the ~ symbol really should be inserted as shown, and public_html should not appear in the URLs.

Individual users' home pages on Mailer cannot be accessed through www.fsu.edu.

Go Up How do I connect to other files?
In general, you can connect to a file on your web site using URLs of the form:

http://server-name/~username/filename
where server-name is one of mailer.fsu.edu, garnet.acns.fsu.edu, or www.fsu.edu (depending on where the account was created.

Files in subdirectories of public_html are at

http://server-name/~username/subdir/filename

Go Up Why do my URLs have tiddles in them?
They're "tildes". If a file path in a URL starts with a tilde ( ~ ), the URL references a file on a user-owned account instead of a file under the main web document directory tree. If there is no tilde in the path, the file is under the main web directory.

On UCS web servers, only the directory public_html under each user's home directory is accessible to the web server, and the URL http://server-name/~username actually refers to the subdirectory referenced by Unix as ~username/public_html , i.e., the subdirectory public_html under the user's home directory.

Go Up How do I create links to other files on my web site?
You can set hypertext references to other files in your public_html directory using HTML "anchor" tags. It is a very good idea to use relative URLs in the hypertext anchors whenever possible, e.g.,

<a href="other-file.html">
or, for a file in a subdirectory of public_html,
<a href="subdir/other-file.html">

Using relative URLs will make your files more portable, and will facilitate developing them on another computer (such as a PC or Mac).

Graphics for the Web
Go Up Where can I get graphics for my webpage?
There are many excellent sites on the net that offer free graphics for others to download and use. Be careful to adhere to the guidelines provided for their use, however. Some sites will require a link to your page acknowledging their site, some just the creator's name as acknowledgment, others nothing at all. Each archive is different. Remember that on the internet, access doesn't equal permission-- use your judgement and be considerate.

NOTE: DON'T use a link to another person's site as an inline graphic without their express permission (exceptions to this rule include some access counters and a few search engine front-ends). This places an unreasonable load on their server and is considered a serious breach of webiquette.

Go Up How do I make my own graphics?
Use whatever graphics software you have on your system - the application itself doesn't matter as long as your work can be output in either GIF or JPEG format. There are sites on the net that offer shareware or freeware graphics applications for download.

If your graphics application cannot output either GIFs or JPEGs you will have to convert your images to one of these formats so they can be seen on the web. There are plenty of sources for shareware graphics converters on the net.

Go Up What is a GIF? What is a JPEG?
GIFs (Graphics Interchange Format) and JPEGs (Joint Photographic Experts Group) are the most commonly used image formats for the web. In general, simple line art and smallish images are best saved as GIFs. JPEGs are better for large images and photographs.

Go Up How many graphics should I put on my page?
Be aware that graphics have "cost." Each inline image that you add to your page increases the amount of time your page takes to download. Also, keep in mind that many people browse the web with automatic image-loading turned off. Still others only have access to the web via a text-only browser (called Lynx) and included in this last group are disabled folk using text-to-voice software.

In the end the amount of graphics you use on your page will be a compromise based on what looks good and what makes the best sense for your target audience. Presentation is important, of course, but information is really what people are after when they visit your site.

In general, it's recommended that you not exceed 600 x 600 pixels of total graphics area on a given page, or a total of 30K of images.

Go Up Can I copyright my graphics?
If you have created an original graphic, you already have. No notice is required to retain copyright. Including a copyright notice on your graphics, however, is a good idea - it costs nothing and it's easy to do.

The basic format of a copyright notice follows:

"A proper copyright notice consists of three things:
1) the letter "C" in a circle (called, logically enough, the "copyright symbol"), or the word "Copyright," or the abbreviation "Copr.";
2) the year of first publication;
3) the name of the copyright owner.
--17 U.S.C. 401(b)."

--From the Copyright FAQ

Advanced Applications
Go Up What are Imagemaps, and can I use them?
Imagemap is a program that allows a user to click on a region within an image. It is possible for user-created pages to access imagemap on Garnet, Mailer, and WWW. See information about using imagemaps.

Go Up Can I create online forms?
Yes, it's easy. It just requires some specialized HTML tags, so see the HTML references. However, a form must be processed by a special type of computer program (called a "CGI program"). It won't do you any good to create forms unless you have, can write, or know where to find, the needed CGI programs.

Since many departmental sites now need to set up on-line forms for obtaining information from users, UCS will provide access to a program that extracts form input data and sends it to the department via electronic mail. Each department can request creation of a single email alias that points to one or more email addresses to receive the data (contact problems(at)ucs.fsu.edu).

Go Up I'm having output from a form emailed to me, but it's all binary data. What's wrong?
It's probably not binary -- just ordinary form output, which is all text, ampersand-delimited, URL-encoded, variable-value pairs. Your form is probably being processed by a "mailto" URL instead of a real CGI program, and that's not a satisfactory alternative.

Go Up Can I create and run CGI programs?
Yes, but there is a special procedure. World Wide Web page developers on mailer.fsu.edu and garnet.acns.fsu.edu are not permitted to place programs in the main Web CGI directory, nor will the HTTP server recognize programs in user-owned cgi-bin directories.

However, UCS has installed a CGI wrapper program on its Web servers that provides extra security and allows CGI applications to be started up indirectly. The wrapper ensures that the executing program runs under the ownership of the program owner, rather than the Web owner. See information about using CGI-wrap.

Go Up Can I create a connection counter on my home page?
Yes. See information about Count. It is available on www, mailer, and garnet.

Go Up How can I prohibit access to my webpages?
You can protect your webpages in 2 ways: by restricting access based on the network address of users, or by username and password. Details, including a link to tutorials on how it all works, are here.

 

***** If you need additional help, please see our list of help resources. Please NOTE: The User Services Help Desk will NOT help students with websites related to coursework.

Got a question you'd like to see answered here? Send eMail to webmaster(a)ucs.fsu.edu

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