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Web Site

Web Site

Owned by Ambrish Raghoonundun, Mr
Apr 23, 2024
1 min read

Creating a website

All AOS users have available to them the ability to publish webpages. In order to do so, please perform the following:

  1. If it does not already exist, create the directory public_html,
    mkdir ~/public_html

  2. Ensure the permissions on the directory are set correctly,
    chmod 755 ~/public_html

  3. Create your first webpage called index.html in the public_html directory. The following is a template you can use,

<html> <head> <title>Sample AOS Webpage</title> </head> <body> This is my very own sample AOS webpage. </body> </html>

  1. Visit https://web.meteo.mcgill.ca/~AOS_USERNAME to view your created page

Notes

  • Placing files in your ~/public_html directory is a good way to share things with others instead of by sending large email attachments.

  • We have directory indexing turned on by default so you can create a directory under ~/public_html and put files there. When you visit https://web.meteo.mcgill.ca/~AOS_USERNAME/directory you will receive an index of that directory.

Placing sensitive data in your ~/public_html directory is silly. Don't do it.

Password Protection

Restricting access to a certain directory and only giving access to it to users under our control, is possible through password protection. Following these steps will create a directory ~/public_html/secure which is a restricted directory under our personal webspace:

  1. Create the directory ~/public_html/secure and set permissions:
    mkdir ~/public_html/secure
    chmod 755 ~/public_html/secure

  2. Create a file called ~/public_html/secure/.htaccess with the following contents:

AuthType Basic AuthName "Restricted Access" AuthUserFile "/aos/home/AOS_USERNAME/.htpasswd" # Note: Use full path! require valid-user

This file instructs the webserver that we want the ~/public_html/secure directory to be password protected with basic authentication against the file ~/.htpasswd and any user in this file can access the page.