Instructions for Creating
a Faculty Webpage

Contents:

Quick Instructions for the Impatient

  1. Talk to the Unix administrator and have an account created on the turing/hopper system. This account will have a public_html link in it.
  2. Place content in the public_html directory. The main page should be named index.html.
  3. The content should be immediately visible at 
    https://students.cs.niu.edu/~unix_acct_name
  4. Talk to the web server administrator about setting up an appropriate faculty alias.
  5. Content should be visible at 
    https://faculty.cs.niu.edu/~last_name

Detailed Instructions for the More Patient

  1. Talk to the Unix administrator and have an account created on the turing/hopper system. This account will have a public_html link in it.
  2. Place content in the public_html directory. The main page should be named index.html.
  3. The content should be immediately visible at 
    https://students.cs.niu.edu/~unix_acct_name
  4. Talk to the web server administrator about setting up an appropriate faculty alias.
  5. Content should be visible at 
    https://faculty.cs.niu.edu/~last_name

Example

Faculty member Steven Jones wants faculty web pages. After talking to the Unix admin, he has an account created with the login name t90sbj1. When his account is created, there is a public_html directory in his home directory. Content placed in his public_html directory is immediately visible at 
https://students.cs.niu.edu/~t90sbj1/

After talking with the web administrator, an alias is created. Now the contents of his public_html directory can also be seen at 

https://faculty.cs.niu.edu/~jones/

File Transfer

It is not necessary (or desirable) to connect to babbage (or faculty or students or courses) in order to transfer html files. However, secure ftp (sftp) must be used to transfer the files. In a program like Filezilla, this is as easy as putting sftp:// in front of the machine name to connect to. Those who use command line ftp should use command line sftp instead. A connection should be established to the appropriate account on turing or hopper. Content is placed in the public_html subtree.

System Architecture of the Department's
Web Server Cluster

As of May 2010, there are two machines that act as web servers in the department: lovelace and babbage. Lovelace serves departmental web pages. To further this purpose, it is also has the alias of www.

Babbage serves up web pages for individuals and small groups. It is intended to serve up web pages of faculty, students, and small course related groups. To further this purpose, it has several aliases: faculty, students, and courses. It is important to remember that the four machine names, faculty, students, courses, and babbage all refer to the same machine, babbage.

The use of the the alias names allows different virtual web servers to be created for each name that provide different capabilities specific to that name.

The disk storage for babbage is exported and mounted on the machines turing and hopper, where the Unix login accounts are located. When a Unix account is created, a public_html link is created to the appropriate storage space location on the web server. Unix users should place content in this directory and associated subdirectories. It should not be necessary to login directly to babbage.

https://students.www.cs.niu.edu/

This web server is for pages that are not protected in any way, shape, or form. Pages are public. The URL for these pages is of the form 
https://students.www.cs.niu.edu/~unix_acct_name
where the unix account name is typically the students login z ID number (with a lower case z).

https://faculty.www.cs.niu.edu/

This web server is for pages that are not protected in any way, shape or form. Pages are public. The sole reason for this web server is to provide a URL for faculty web pages that is more professional looking than the default URL that automatically comes with the Unix account. The URL for these pages is of the form 
https://faculty.www.cs.niu.edu/~faculty_last_name

The URL https://www.www.cs.niu.edu/~faculty_last_name is redirected to the appropriate URL at faculty.www.cs.niu.edu

https://courses.www.cs.niu.edu/

This web server is for pages that are password protected. This server allows students to provide web solutions for course homework assignments that can not be seen by other students. An internal mechanism allows instructors to look at the web pages of the students in their courses.

This feature must be set up specifically for each course. Faculty who wish to use this feature for their courses should contact the web server administrator.

The URL for these pages is of the form 
https://courses.cs.niu.edu/~unix_acct_name/csci_nnn

https://babbage.cs.niu.edu/

This web server is for pages that are encrypted. These pages may or may not be password protected. This server currently hosts the departmental wiki for department committees and some research groups.