Creating Your Homepage

Any WPI student, staff member, faculty member, or campus organization can create and maintain a personal homepage and have its existence published in the homepage listings. All personal homepages created at WPI must follow the Acceptable Use Policy of the WPI computer network, specifically those policies regarding web usage. Tips and requirements for creating homepages at WPI are also available in our WPI Web Policies and Elements of Style.

Note: These instructions only apply to personal Web sites. Departments and offices looking to create a site or make modifications to an existing one should contact the Marketing department's Web Operations.

Every Unix account created at WPI already has an area set up to house your homepage. Your account should contain the following:

a directory called public_html
a file in that directory named index.html

The file index.html is actually your homepage - you simply need to customize it to your liking. To do this, follow these instructions:

Log into your Unix account.
Type cd public_html to enter the directory containing your homepage.
Type pico index.html to begin editing your homepage.
Customize your page, making sure to use proper HTML conventions. See the Marketing department's Web Operations for more information and resources.
To save your file, type Ctrl-o (if you're saving and exiting, use Ctrl-x instead). Be sure to keep the file named index.html.
Once you a have customized this file, you need to make sure this file, and all other files you want the world to be able to access over the web, is world readable. Use the command:
```
        chmod o+r index.html
```
If images and other files aren't showing up properly once you test them (see next step), check out the chmod command page.
Test your page by opening your web browser (Firefox or Internet Explorer) and typing the following in the Location: or Address: box at the top:
```
    http://www.wpi.edu/~username
```
where username gets replaced by your Unix username. If, at this point, your page is not working, you might have more file permissions problems. See the chmod command page or e-mail helpdesk@wpi.edu for assistance.

A note about web authoring tools:
The CCC and Web Development Office do not officially support any web authoring tools, including Microsoft FrontPage. Members of the community who choose to use such tools do so at their own risk, and with full knowledge that the WPI staff are unprepared to assist them in this regard.

Maintained by itweb.
Last modified: Aug 18, 2009, 20:28 UTC