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Resources
The WAS team does not endorse or directly support many
of the resources and information found at these link destinations.
If you are a member of the Cal State San Marcos community
(students, faculty, staff, alumni, or subscribing guest)
and you need specific help with a web or application process,
please contact the Faculty/Staff
Help Desk.
If you would like to contract the services of the WAS team
for new web development or maintenance of an existing website,
please reference the WAS Services
and Pricing pages.
CSUSM Web Publishing
General Web Publishing
??? Do you know of a great web publishing resource we could
add ??? -- Email the link: was@csusm.edu
Application Resources
Open Questions and Newsgroups
Google Groups (used to be Deja) -- http://groups.google.com/
Search through all newsgroups -- the answer is out there!
Information
for Web Contributors
Background information on the web
There are four basic components to the World Wide Web: servers, client
programs, protocols through which the clients and servers communicate, and an
addressing scheme by which documents can be uniquely identified within the Web.
The server programs run on machines with access to local files that are to be
served up over the Web. The client programs, or Web browsers request documents
from the servers by specifying a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), a formalized
naming scheme which allows any Web document to be uniquely identified. The
server transfers the requested document to the client for viewing, using
specialized protocols.
The native protocol of the Web is known as the Hypertext Transfer Protocol,
often abbreviated HTTP. This is the protocol that Web servers typically speak.
Web browsers, however, speak several additional protocols. This allows them to
request documents not just from Web servers, but also from network news servers,
from FTP servers, from gopher servers, and from other servers as well. Hence,
Web browsers can be your single interface to a large number of network
information sources.
Another really great thing about web browsers that makes them so
useful on our campus is the fact that they are platform independent. In other
words, it doesn't really matter if you are on a Mac, a PC or a Unix machine -
there is a web browser for your platform.
Security
By default, unless specific additional security measures are taken, all WWW
documents in the CWIS or public can be accessed by the entire world. By modifying or
creating a special file (named htaccess or nsconfig) in a directory you wish to be
controlled, you can restrict access to the campus, i.e. keep anyone off campus
from reading your web pages, or restrict access to a group of persons to whom
you issue a password. If you intend to supply data from administrative computing
applications such as Banner, you should work with us individually to make sure
all security issues are addressed.
Only you will be allowed to modify or update your documents. Readers of the
information you put in the CWIS or public can only access your files from a Web Browser
(such as Netscape or Internet Explorer). There is no capability at the current time for a user to put
a document back after making local changes. Hence, the version of the document
on the server is secure. Only you or members of your group (if you work on
the web pages as a team) can alter your documents. Well, I guess we (in
IITS) could alter them also, but we won't.
You should understand that anyone who can view the Web document in
a Web browser can also download their own local copy of it, with which they
could do whatever they want. But they can't add it back to your
directory unless you've given them permission to do so.
Getting a directory in the
CWIS
Submit an email or call to the Help desk in IITS (helpdesk@csusm.edu
or x4790). Ask for a directory in
the CWIS. We'll create the directory and supply you with the path information
you need.
Getting a directory in
/public
Use this handy on-line form to create a directory for your
personal home page.
Getting Started
If you would like to use the campus template for an official page, or you
just need to make sure your page meets the campus web publishing minimum
standards, visit the CSUSM Redesign
website. Once your pages are ready for public viewing, contact
webmaster@csusm.edu in order to get
your area added to the standard campus menus.
You may benefit from using an image from the
campus images
repository (only available on-campus). You must first
read and agree to the terms-of-use policy.
It is important to note that any hypertext file meant to be
displayed by a browser must end in the suffix ".htm" or ".html". Further, Unix/Linux
is case sensitive. So the file "instructions.htm" is not the same as
"Instructions.htm". Finally, Unix/Linux doesn't like spaces or special characters in a
file name. Make sure you follow these guidelines when initialing creating files
in order to avoid problems later.
Using your desktop applications you can transfer both individual documents
and entire directories to public. Using an SFTP client (usually "Filezilla" for Windows and "Fetch" for Macs) provide the following server information:
The following instructions work for a standard web
directory in the public area:
http://www.csusm.edu/<your directory>
Remote server: empress.csusm.edu
Remote directory: /public/<your directory>
Username: <first part of your email address> (ex: jdoe
from jdoe@csusm.edu)
Password: <always your current password>
Your setup may look like this for an SFTP connection:
sftp://empress.csusm.edu/public/<your directory>
If you get "Forbidden" errors when viewing your
published pages, you may need to use an SSH client to
connect to the same remote server. After logging in, you
will then:
cd /public/<your directory>
chmod 755 *
exit
If you have sub directories, you will need to change
to those directories and run the same command:
cd /public/<your directory>/<subdirectory>
chmod 755 *
exit
Naming Your Homepage (Special Filenames)
As was previously stated, how you present your data on the Web is completely
at your own discretion. You can keep it simple and let the server control what
the client sees, or you can get fancy and write your own HTML files to control
the information layout. By default, the server uses index.html (index.htm will
also work) to define the user's view.
In the absence of an index file, the server will generate it's own directory
listing complete with hyperlinks for downloading files and traversing
subdirectories. It is important to note that this "index rule" applies to every
single subdirectory in your information tree. So if you take great pains to
cloak your information in a maze of complex HTML files, yet fail to use
index.htm as the default HTML file, knowledgeable users will still be able to
access your underlying directory structure.
Hint: Unless using on-the-fly indexes, always be sure to have an index.htm
file in every subdirectory in your hierarchy. This prevents unwanted "browsing"
by removing access to the directory.
The next level up in terms of structuring your Webspace is to have
a rudimentary index file -- a simple item-by-item listing with descriptions for
each item. The advantage to this over the on-the-fly index is that you can
describe the entries, rather than just listing them.
Need Help?
For design issues and generic HTML coding assistance, contact
was@csusm.edu. If you don't want to do your own web page development, you can use one
of our student assistants on a charge-through basis.
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