Storing web pages

Web pages, images, audio clips and any other items you wish to make available on your home page are stored underneath your home directory, in a subdirectory called "public_html".

To create this directory from a shell prompt, you need to execute the following commands:

• You need to change to your home directory, if you are not already there:
  

  cd

• Then, use "mkdir" (Please note that this command under Unix cannot be shortened to "md" as in MS-DOS!) as follows:

  mkdir public_html

• Then follow the steps outlined below to set the security permissions to the relevant directories.

Alternatively, you can use your favourite FTP client to create the directory. This is not, however, covered in this document because there are simply too many FTP clients available.

Setting security permissions

You need to set the file permissions to your home directory, to allow the web server to read your pages. Without this, users will simply get "403 Permission Denied" error messages if they look up your home page.

Here is a short guide to the steps you need to take to ensure that the web server has the minimum access rights to your web pages:

• The first stage is to allow the web server to cd into your home directory (but not necessarily to be able to access a directory listing):
  
  • This sets the access permissions Other + eXecute:
    

    chmod o+x ~

• Now we have to repeat this for the public_html subdirectory. You do not have to let the web server (or other users be able to obtain a directory listing of your web site, if you do not want it to:
  
  • Set the access permissions:
    

    chmod o+x ~/public_html

    (If you would like the web server to be able to obtain a directory listing, for example if there is no index.html file, you should issue this command instead):

    chmod o+rx ~/public_html

• The last stage, after you have uploaded your web pages, is to ensure that all the files and directories inside your public_html directory are also readable by the web server:
  
  • We now recursively set the attributes of all your web pages to let the web server read them:
    

    chmod -R g+r ~/public_html/*

    
    

  • If there are any directories on your web site, you may want to ensure that the web server can change into them:
    

    chmod o+x ~/public_html/directory_name

Again, these permissions can be set using your favourite FTP client and the SITE CHMOD command, but this is not supported.

Other options available

If you do not want your web pages to show up in the publicly-available listing, all you need to do is create a file called .private_html inside your HTML directory. There are a number of ways of achieving this:

• From a shell prompt, enter the following command:
  

  touch ~/public_html/.private_html

• Via ftp, simply upload a file (contents not important) called .private_html in your HTML directory.

Experimental services...

• If you create a file called .mail_me_logs inside your HTML directory, you will get an email each morning, detailing all accesses to any of your pages on here. Beta-testers are wanted for this, as I'm by no means sure what information people want to know from this...!