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Personal Web Pages

Personal web pages live inside a special folder that belongs only to you. They're great for students and faculty who want to share their own work. However, because they're closely tied to the user, they are not good for pages that should "outlast" the user (for example, the English Department pages should not depend on a certain user's folder).

Addtionally, personal pages are only editable by the user who they belong to, so they are not good for pages that will be edited by several people.

Personal pages go in the "Sites" folder in your fileserver account. Our web server automatically shares files placed in that folder at the following address:

http://web.suffieldacademy.org/~username/

Where "username" is your username. The tilde (~) tells the web server to load the personal page associated with that user.

A sample configuration page for a personal page appears at the right. You should replace all instances of "jbogus" with your own username. We cover all of the fields in more detail below.

Departmental Web Pages

Departmental web pages refer to pages that are maintained by more than one person, or that should not be tied to a specific person. Examples include pages for departments, clubs, organizations, or general information (such as this help page).

A special folder must be set up on the server before you can create a departmental web page. Please contact the Network Administrator to request space for a departmental page.

A sample configuration page for a departmental page appears at the right. You should replace all instances of "department" with the actual folder on the server (you will be told what this is when the administrator sets it up for you). Additionally, you should replace the name "jbogus" with your own username. We cover all of the fields in more detail below.

Dreamweaver Configuration

Note: These instructions assume the use of Dreamweaver MX 2004. Please make sure you have the correct version.

We can set up Dreamweaver so that we can edit our web pages on our own computers and then publish our finished pages to the web. In order to do this, we must tell Dreamweaver several things about our web site: where the files are, what its called, and what server we should publish them to.

To get started, open Dreamweaver. Once it's started, pull down the Site menu and choose Manage Sites....

At this point, Dreamweaver will bring up a new window with all of the sites you currently edit (it will be empty if this is your first time setting up a site).

To create a new site, click on the New... button. A menu will pop up; you should select the FTP & RDS Server choice.

You should now see a configuration screen asking you to configure the server. The following steps explain what you should put in each field on this screen. Note that some fields have different values depending on whether you want to make a "personal" web page, or a "departmental" web page.

Name

We suggest that you give your site a name that helps you remember who's site it is, and the server that it's located on. Thus My Suffield Site might be a good name for a personal page. Departmental pages should probably have the department name in them.

Access type

Use FTP

FTP host

Use files.suffieldacademy.org

Host directory

This tells Dreamweaver where to store your files on the server. Be sure to capitalize all items correctly, and to use forward slashes (/) where shown. There are two basic possibilities: one for personal web pages, and another for departmental pages.

For personal pages, you should use Sites/, making sure to use a capital "S".

For departmental pages, you should use /raid/share/www/web/department/, replacing "department" with the actual name of your departmental folder (this should be given to you when the folder is created by the administrator).

Login

Use your network username. For faculty and staff, this is your first initial followed by your last name (we've used "jbogus" in our sample screenshots). For students, use your two-number year of graduation followed by your initials. Your username must be all lower-case.

Password

Your password is your network account password. If you're using your own personal computer, you may want to click the Save checkbox so you don't have to re-enter your password every time you update your site.

Use Secure FTP (SFTP)

This box must be checked in order to connect to the server.

URL prefix

This tells Dreamweaver the address your site is published to. It needs to know this so it can correctly create links between pages. There are two basic possibilities: one for personal web pages, and another for departmental pages.

For personal pages, you should use http://web.suffieldacademy.org/~username/, replacing "username" with your username.

For departmental pages, you should use http://web.suffieldacademy.org/department/, replacing "department" with the actual name of your departmental folder (this should be given to you when the folder is created by the administrator).

When you've filled out all the boxes, you should click the Test button. This will confirm that your username and password are correct, and that you can connect to the server.

Once you've tested your settings, click the OK button. Your site is now set up, and you're ready to begin editing pages!

You'll return to the sites window. Click Done to return to the main Dreamweaver interface.

There should now be a window on your screen called "Sites", showing all the files in your folder. Any changes made here are uploaded to the server and published to the web.

At the moment, you probably only have one file, called "index.html". You can double-click this file to edit it. You can also control-click (or right-click) on the folder to create a new page or a new folder.

At this point, you're done setting up your site, and you're ready to start making pages!