PNCE-Unix: Personal Web Pages

PNCE-Unix Environment: Personal World-Wide Web Pages

Personal web pages are served off the web server. You can setup a personal home page by placing web documents in your public directory (~/../pub or /users/USERNAME/pub). The URL for your home pages would then be 'http://www2.physics.umd.edu/~USERNAME'.

Note that content in your web pub directory is part of your homespace and counts against your homespace quota. By default, files placed in your pub directory are world readable via AFS. That means that standard .htaccess access restrictions will not fully protect data (you may prevent access via the web, but the file can be read by anyone via AFS) --- contact PCS if you need to password protect pages.

Physics Computing Services (PCS) does not actively monitor content of the personal page web server. However, this server is provided as a service to the Physics Department community insofar as it does not negatively impact on the department's and university's academic and research missions. Web pages may be disabled and/or content deleted if they adversely affect such missions. This includes, but is not limited to:

Complaints are received regarding offensive or objectionable content
The volume of network traffic associated with the page/content adversely affects performance of the building network and/or use of such by others in the department.

While PCS will make a reasonable effort to ensure the availability of the personal web server www2.physics.umd.edu, it is not considered critical to the mission of the department and as such is a lower priority than many other computing resources (including the main departmental web server www.physics.umd.edu. Although you can serve pages related to your research or courses on the personal web server (as stated before, PCS does not actively monitor content of this server), it is recommended that such be placed on the main departmental server where appropriate to benefit from the higher service priority.

CGI binaries and scripts are restricted to those in /dept/phys/htdocs/cgi-bin/www2 and /dept/phys/htdocs/cgi-script/www2, which is quite minimal. Although you are able to request new scripts/binaries be installed via physhelp, such requests will only be granted in rare circumstances because of the inherent security risks associated with CGI codes.