File & Web Services Navigation
Getting a Web Site
ITECS provides hosted services for the web sites of College of Engineering faculty, staff and students. ITECS hosts college sites free of charge, but only under the hosted domains (virtual hosts, or vhosts) it supports. ITECS does not create university-level domains, i.e., www.yoursite.ncsu.edu, except for primary departments and centers. To build and deliver a web site, you must first get an allocation of file space, called a web locker, to house the site.
Who can request a Web site?
Only full-time staff and faculty can own web lockers. However, the request must come through the department webmaster or administrator. The reason for this is important. All web sites must be organized under a hosted domain, or vhost. This is done by the webmaster, who plans and manages site naming and resources across the vhost.
Note: Course web space is handled through Wolfware and other Learning Management Systems. Faculty, staff and students also get web space in their personal lockers, which they can request without going through the webmaster.
How do I request a Web site?
- REQUEST A LOCKER (Note: Only COE webmasters can request web lockers, so contact them to make a request for you.)
- Select Web.
- Select the locker type, vhost or site (vhosts are for department and center-level sites only).
- Select the COE Department making the request.
- Provide Unity ID of the Locker Owner (must be faculty or staff). This person can add/remove people to/from the locker's access groups.
- Specify Initial Quota needed, usually 50-200MB, but up to 2000MB (or 2GB).
- Select Database Access to have a database created.
- If requesting a site locker, identify the Vhost Name under which the site will be created, e.g., www.engr.ncsu.edu.
- Provide a Site Name to be mounted under the Vhost, e.g., research, and URL Path to the site, e.g.,www.engr.ncsu.edu/research (lowercase, no spaces).
- Under Locker Permissions, enter the Unity IDs of other people who need access:
- Admin Group (faculty, staff, and students who can administer the site).
- Editors Group (faculty, staff, and students who have write permission to edit the site).
- Read-only Group (faculty, staff, and students who have read permission to copy files from the site, not often used).
- Select Continue to get a summary of what you entered.
- Select Commit if correct or Edit to go back and correct.
You will be notified by email when the space is set up. To request more quota, change access, get a database, or otherwise manage an existing locker, please use the LOCKER PORTAL.
Web Paths and Short URLs
On the locker-request form, the webmaster provides a name for your web locker, an AFS volume that appears as a directory or folder in the file system. This locker name becomes part of the site URL, so it is important to choose this name carefully.
The web address, or URL, is constructed from the name of the locker and the vhost it is under, e.g., www.engr.ncsu.edu/research/. In most cases, the locker (site) name is mounted directly under the vhost to give it a short URL, e.g., http://www.domain.ncsu.edu/site/. However, the webmaster might choose to mount the site under another directory, e.g, http://www.domain.ncsu.edu/directory/site/.
Only one address per site is supported. The file system is case sensitive and not hospitable to spaces and some special characters. For example, http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/research and http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/RESEARCH are two different addresses. ITECS recommends lowercase file names and URLs with no spaces. Underscores can also be a problem since links are generally underlined on web pages, and an underscore in a file name could be read as a space.
The locker is in the AFS file system. The first part of the path, /afs/eos/engrwww/sites/, is the same for all college and department web sites, except for those delivered from Personal lockers.Web site lockers are accessed by their owners, editors and readers via the path:
/afs/eos/engrwww/sites/[vhost]/[locker]
BE SURE THAT /sites/ IS IN YOUR PATHNAME!
Examples of paths and URLs:
- Department, Administration, and Research Web Sites
Path to locker:
/afs/eos/engrwww/sites/vhost/locker/
e.g.,
/afs/eos/engrwww/sites/engr/research/URL:
http://www.vhost.ncsu.edu/locker/
e.g.,
http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/research/
Web Permissions
The webmaster who requests the locker for you will need the Unity IDs of any other people (students, faculty or staff) who need permission to work on files in the locker. However, once the web locker is set up, the owner of the space can use a web tool to update and change access to the locker without going through the webmaster.
LOCKER PORTAL at http://www.eos.ncsu.edu/lockers/portal/
This web tool overlays fs and pts commands, so you do not have to go through the command line. Protection (pts) groups are created and placed on the access control list (ACL) of your locker. People who have access to the locker must be a member of one of the pts groups. Each group has a defined membership that users are added to or removed from. A typical web-locker access control list (ACL) looks like:
/afs/eos/engrwww/sites/engr/research/ % fs la
Access list for . is
Normal rights:
engr-research-www:wwwread rl
engr-research-www:wwwedit rlidwk
engr-research-www rlidwk
engr-www rl
itecs-admin:lockeraudit rl
engr:www-servers rlidwk
itecs-admin:webadmins rl
system:administrators rlidwka
jsstren rlidwk
In engineering web lockers, only the owner is listed by UnityID on the ACL (must be faculty or staff). All others with access reside in pts groups. vhosts and sites are organized the same way. For example, in the locker above at /afs/eos/engrwww/sites/engr/research/:
- Owner: jsstren is the faculty/staff owner with write (rlidwk) access. The owner can request quota and add/remove people to/from any of the following groups through the LOCKER PORTAL.
- Admin Group: engr-research-www is the administrators group with write (rlidwk) access. Administrators can request quota and add/remove people to/from any of the following groups through the LOCKER PORTAL.
- Edit Group: engr-research-www:wwwedit is the editors group with write access (rlidwk).
- Read Group: engr-research-www:wwwread is a rarely used, read-only group of people with read-look (rl) permission to use/copy files from the site, such as templates, images, etc.
All lockers are set up with these same groups. No "a" rights (rlidwka) are granted or needed with this configuration. The other pts groups listed are for system administrators and access to the site by web servers. For questions not answered here, please contact and work through ITECS.
We also host web sites for:
- student organizations
- individuals (engineering students, faculty and staff)
- .org domains
Do you edit with Contribute?
- Read about Using Contribute
More about your web site
- Web locker volumes are limited to 2GB, but additional volumes can be added.
- PHP5 is enabled in all web lockers, and MySQL databases can be requested. Be sure to read Implementing PHP/MySQL.
- Use our Webtest server to stage your site and check your PHP.
- Employ our tools for search, stats and security.
- Eos labs have web software applications and connect directly to AFS web lockers.
Need more help?
Contact engr-webmaster@ncsu.edu for engineering web support.
You can also build a web site in your Unity account.
See where file and web lockers (PDF) live in Eos file space.