School of Computing (SoC) users can host web content such as HTML or PHP pages on the cse.unl.edu server. There are a few prerequisites such as required directories and permissions on these directories. This section will go over these.
Before we get started, a word on directory permissions. We'll need to grant others execute permissions on certain directories. Granting execute permission on a directory, allows others to access (traverse/come into) your directory, in this case the web server will need to access the HTML files you wish to publish. Note: This is not the same as granting read access on a directory. Read access allows someone to list the content of the directory. When execute but not read access is granted, the user can only access files they know the full path to, and in addition, they must have read access to the particular file in question.
- You will need to open a Unix command line session to cse.unl.edu. Since the steps are different for Windows and Mac users, this topic is covered in the respective FAQ sections.
- Make sure your home directory has execute permission for everyone(others). Note: the "~" symbol is a shortcut to "My Homedirectory". Enter "chmod o+x ~" in the command prompt as shown below.
> chmod o+x ~
- Create a public_html directory in your home directory by issuing the command below. The public_html directory is the root of your Web documents. A world readable file placed in this directory will be accessible on the web by using the URL http://cse.unl.edu/~login_id/file where you would replace ~login_id with "~"+ your login id.
> mkdir ~/public_html
- The public_html directory must also have execute permission for everyone(others). Enter the command shown below.
> chmod o+x ~/public_html
- You can now setup a index.html page (the default page serviced by the web server) to test your web site.