Tutorial - Creating a Webpage

Georgia Southern allows faculty and staff to have a webpage that is housed on our campus computers. This document gives instructions on how to create a webpage as well as the policies about what the webpage can and cannot contain.

To see the directory page listing of all faculty/staff pages, go here-
http://personal.georgiasouthern.edu/facstaff/

Policies
The policies are listed at - http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/webmaster/policy.html

Review these policies before you publish your website. Please note as part of the policy you must post a page disclaimer with your name and email address on your site. Here is the page disclaimer that must be included:

The content of personal and other unofficial home pages is not sanctioned by Georgia Southern University and does not represent official information or opinions of the University. (Name and e-mail address) is solely responsible for the contents of this page.

Steps To Create Your Webpage

Step One - Get your account name and password
You must have an account on the Eagle4 server to create a personal webpage as this is the server that hosts the web pages. Please go to the following URL to fill out the Personal Web Page request form to request an web account on Eagle4 - http://services.georgiasouthern.edu/computercenter and click on the Personal Web Page link on the left sidebar.

Step Two- How to Change Your Eagle4 (Webpage) Password
After receiving your InterCampus Memo with your Eagle4 account/username and temporary password, please go to the following website to change your temporary password: https://secure.georgiasouthern.edu/accounts/web/chgwebpass.php. Please note: you will not be able to send or receive email to or from this account.

-Enter your account/username and password, and click on Login.
-Enter your current password, Tab
-Enter the new password, Tab
-Confirm New Password, Tab
-Click on submit.

Step Three - Finding Your Address

Your personal URL (Uniform Resource Locator) or web address will be based on your new account name on Eagle4.

For Example:
If you log in with 'newUser1' then your web address would be:
http://personal.georgiasouthern.edu/~newUser1

Step Four - Creating Your Webpage

There are two steps involved in creating a webpage-

  1. creating the files that will contain your webpage's information (text, images, links, etc.) and
  2. uploading those files

This section covers creating your webpage; the next section covers uploading the files.

You can create a webpage at home or in one of the campus computer labs. The software that we have on campus lab computers is Microsoft FrontPage. You can use any web editor software to create your site; there are many software packages sold for this purpose or you can just use NotePad or TextPad if you know HTML. There are many resources on the web that cover how to create websites.

Another option is to use text editors from our web servers; we have pico, vi and ce. To use pico, first create a secure session into eagle4.cc.georgiasouthern.edu. To edit the index.html file in your public_html directory, you would type:
pico index.html
at the dollar sign prompt. Note that using these web text editors both creates and uploads the files.

 

Step Five - Uploading Your Webpage

You will need to use SFTP software to upload your files to the server. Even if you have used Microsoft FrontPage to create your website, you will need to use a separate SFTP software package. (Microsoft FrontPage has built-in software to upload pages but this software does not work on Georgia Southern servers.) So to upload the files, first you must have some SFTP software the computer you are using. Most of the machines in the computer labs on campus have SFTP software. Second, you must also have a connection to the eagle4 machine. Again, the computer labs offer this connection. The SFTP software we have in labs on campus is WinSCP for Windows and Fugu or Cyberduck for Macintosh.

  • for Profile name, use whichever name you would like
  • for Host name/address, use eagle4.cc.georgiasouthern.edu
  • for User ID, use your account name, which was mailed to you when you applied for this account.
  • for Password, use the new password you have selected.

If you do not know your password, please call the HelpDesk at 681-5429 to have it changed.

Upload your files to the public_html folder. Note the following:
  • The server looks in your public_html directory for an index.html file so you must have a file named index.html in your public_html directory for your webpage to work properly and to be listed in the directory. You can edit the default index.html file that was automatically created along with your account or you can create a new index.html file and overwrite the default file. Your other files should link to the index.html file.
  • If your name is removed from the directory page listing (http://personal.georgiasouthern.edu/facstaff/ for faculty/staff), make sure that you have a file called index.html (not "index.htm"). Upload a new page named index.html, and your name will appear on the directory list the next day.
  • When you edit the index.html file, make sure that you keep the page disclaimer at the bottom of your new index.html page. You must have the page disclaimer or your webpage will be removed.
  • In referencing images or other documents, you must make sure that you retain case sensitivity. For example, if you reference a document in your public_html directory named "me.JPG" as "me.jpg", it will not work.