Publishing Your Website
Note: ONID provides personal web sites for all ONID users. If you need a professional web site for your class, organization, or group, go to http://oregonstate.edu/cws/access/request.php.
Setting up your personal Website on the ONID server can be broken down into 6 main steps:
- Connect to your home directory
- Configure your home directory
- Create your .html pages
- Move .html files to the server
- Setting file permissions
- Access your website
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Connecting to your home directory:
In order to access your ONID directory, you must be able to connect to it from a remote location.
Read the Connecting to your Home Directory instructions.
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Configuring your home directory:
Your home directory should already have a directory named public_html. If it doesn't already have one, you will have to create one using shell access.
Commands for creating your public_html if you don't already have one:
cd mkdir public_html chmod 755 public_html
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Creating .html pages:
You must write your HTML pages using an HTML/text editor.
There are a number of HTML editors out there. Some are WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), some are code-based, and some are a hybrid of both. For all practical purposes, if you are trying to make a webpage it would be a good idea to make sure you understand HTML. Unfortunately, we do not have the resources to teach you how to use HTML. There are, however, a lot of resources on the web that you could take advantage of. Here are a few links you should check out if you are not familiar with HTML:
You may contact the OSU Computer Helpdesk using the "Contact Support" link to the left for more HTML help, but use that resource only for specific questions. Don't send us an email saying, "How do I write html?" until you have taken a look at the resource links provided above. You can ask us questions like, "What tag do you use to insert a carriage return?" for example.
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Moving the .html files to the ONID server:
The files you create must be placed in your public_html directory.
Moving your .html files to your public_html directory can be done from any machine with an internet connection. Please read the Connecting to your Home Directory instructions.
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Setting file permissions:
Once your files are on the server, they must be configured so that people can read them.
Typically, your files should already have the right permissions on them. However, there are some instances where your transferred files won't be seen when you try to access them through the web. If this happens to you, then you can fix it in a few easy steps using shell access.
Commands for changing permissions on your .html files in your public_html directory:
cd ~/public_html
find ./ -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find ./ -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
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Accessing your website:
Once everything is completed, you should be able to view your web page by visiting http://oregonstate.edu/~username/ in any basic web browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer) -- just replace "username" with your username.
Before you give out your web address to all your friends, make sure to go check it yourself to see if you made any errors.
If you've reached this point and you're stuck, please send us an email by clicking the link below and we will help you out in whatever way we can.