Personal Home Pages

Everyone with an RCS account is allocated personal file space for public and private file storage and serving Web pages. Student accounts receive 250MB.

The public_html directory

When your RCS account was generated, a directory named public_html was also created. The RPInfo web server will look for web pages only in this directory, and any files you place here will be accessible over the Web.

Your home page URL will be of the form http://www.rpi.edu/~your-rcs-id/, e.g., http://www.rpi.edu/~doej/, if you name your home page index.html. Otherwise, a server-generated index page will appear and list the contents of this directory.

Creating the HTML files

There are many ways to create HTML files. On your Windows machine, you can either use a text editor to code the HTML yourself or use a WYSIWYG HTML editor, such as Dreamweaver.

However, CGI scripting or PHP is not allowed in pages on the RPI server. Limitations

Placing files in the public_html directory

If you have been working on the files on your Windows machine, the files need to be moved to the public_html directory.

Open your RCS file space by either:

using OpenAFS
mapping your home directory as a drive via Sambasrv
clicking on the RCS Files icon on your Mobile Computing Program laptop

You can then easily drag files from one folder to the other. To do this:

Locate the html file on your PC.
In the window displaying your RCS home space, open your public_html folder.
Arrange the program windows so that both your source file (the file on your PC) and your destination (your public_html folder) are open and visible. You must be able to see the information you want to drag as well as the location where you want to drop it.
Select the PC file, and then use the right mouse button to drag it to its new location.

Testing

After you have placed files in your public_html directory, make sure they are available by opening a Web browser and pointing to the URL http://www.rpi.edu/~your-rcs-id.

Problems

If the public_html directory is missing or doesn't have the right permissions

Entering the following command at a UNIX prompt from your home directory will create the public_html directory:

mkdir ~/public_html

Entering the following command will permit the directory so that it is viewable over the Internet:

fs sa ~/public_html system:anyuser read

To have your web site appear in the campus directories, update your directory information.

Last modified: October 4, 2009