LIS901N: webmastering I: the static web site

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LIS901N webmastering I the static web site

• Thomas Krichel
• 2003-01-11

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Structure of talk

• First talk about me
• My concepts of webmastering
• Then talk about you
• Introduction to wotan
• basic manipulation of wotan
• files
• permissions
• basic command
• editing
• creating your first page

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About me

• Born 1965, in Völklingen (Germany)
• Studied economics and social sciences at the
  Universities of Toulouse, Paris, Exeter and
  Leiceister.
• PhD in theoretical macroeconomics
• Lecturer in Economics at the University of Surrey
  1993 and 2001
• Since 2001 assistant professor at the Palmer
  School

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Why?

• During research assistantship period, (1990 to
  1993) I was constantly frustrated with difficult
  access to scientific literature.
• At the same time, I discovered easy access to
  freely downloadable software over the Internet.
• I decided to work towards downloadable scientific
  documents. This lead to my library career
  (eventually).

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Steps taken I

• 1993 founded the NetEc project at
  http//netec.mcc.ac.uk, later available at
  http//netec.ier.hit-u.ac.jp as well as at
  http//netec.wustl.edu.
• These are networking projects targeted to the
  economics community. The bulk is
• Information about working papers
• Downloadable working papers
• Journal articles were added later

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Steps taken II

• Set up RePEc, a digital library for economics
  research. Catalogs
• Research documents
• Collections of research documents
• Researchers themselves
• Organizations that are important to the research
  process
• Decentralized collection, model for the open
  archives initiative

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Steps taken III

• Co-founder of Open Archives Initiative
• Work on the Academic Metadata Format
• Co-founded rclis, a RePEc clone for (Research in
  Computing, Library and Information Science)

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Webmaster

• There are two available definitions that come to
  mind
• A webmaster is a person who has write access to a
  set of files that are available for display on
  the World Wide Web.
• A webmaster is a person who has control over a
  software installation that can deliver web pages.
  
• The second is more stricter. We mostly use the
  first one.

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Webmastering

• Webmastering combines many aspects
• Work on the organization of data to fit onto
  pages
• Set display style of different pages
• Organize the contribution of data
• Maintain a technical web installation
• Some of them can be learned in a course, but
  others can not.
• Emphasis has to be on learnable elements.

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Teaching philosophy

• Point and click on a computer software is not
  enough.
• Explain underlying principles.
• Promote standards.
• Avoid proprietary software.

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Webmastering I

• Deals with the maintenance of a static web site.
  Such a web site remains the same whatever the
  user does with it.
• Topics include
• html
• http
• information architecture
• web server

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Webmastering II

• Deals with building dynamic web sites.
• Users fill in a form
• Users submit the form
• Web server return a page that is specific to the
  request of the user.
• Teaches a language called PHP, that is widely
  used to generate such web sites.
• Gets you introduced to computer programming
• Gets you to train analytical thinking.

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Webmastering III

• Deals with XML
• XML is a syntax to encode any kind of data.
• XML can be constrained to only allow certain
  types of data (XML Schema)
• XML can be transformed to render the data in
  various ways (XSLT)
• Achieve a separation of contents and presentation
  of a web page.
• advanced course, has both Schema and
  Transformation

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Free software

• I maintain the server but
• if
• you have Internet access
• you have an old PC
• you could build the server yourself. The server
  as well as putty and winscp are free software.
• I will not now elaborate more on the nature of
  free software.

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Communication with the server

• For file editing and manipulation, we use putty.
• For file transfer, we use winscp.
• Both are available on the web.
• Telnet and ftp servers are not available on
  wotan. Telnet and ftp do not encrypt the
  communication stream and therefore they are not
  secure.
• The protocol is ssh, the secure shell, based
  public-key cryptography.

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Installing putty and winscp

• Go to your favorite search engine to search for
  putty.
• Download and save putty.
• Leave your computer if it does not allow you to
  do it.
• Do the same thing with winscp

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Debian

• Is a distribution of free software that provides
  an operating system and application programs
• Named after Deborah and Ian Jackson
• Uses the Linux kernel, but could run with other
  kernels
• Uses mainly GNU software, based on work to write
  a free version of UNIX
• Therefore also called Debian GNU/Linux
• Wotan runs the testing version of Debian,
  codenamed sarge.
• Usually the software is updated once a week. Let
  us do it now.

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Registration Time

• As part of the course, you are being provided
  with web space on the server wotan.liu.edu, at
  the URL
• http//wotan.liu.edu/username
• where username is a user name that you can
  chose.
• It is my intention to maintain this web space for
  you into the foreseeable future.
• You should also choose a password, now.
• I will now register you.

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Login time

• Use putty, port 22 to wotan.liu.edu
• set other attributes of the session as you like,
  using the menu on the left, for example
• colors
• font shapes and sizes
• bell
• Save the session as wotan (in the first screen)
  to save all the customization.
• Do the same thing at home!

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Files, directories and links

• Files are continuous chunks data on disks that
  are required for software applications.
• A link is a file that contain the address of
  another file. Microsoft call it a shortcut.
• Directories are files that contain other files.
  Microsoft calls them folders.
• In UNIX, the directory separator is /
• The top directory is / on ist own.

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Home directory

• When you first log in to wotan you are placed in
  your home directory /home/username
• cd is the command that gets you back to the
  home directory.
• The home directory is also abbreviated as
• cd user gets you to the home of user user.
• cd does what?

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/public_html

• Is your web directory. You create it with mkdir
  public_html in your home directory.
• The web server on wotan will map requests to
  http//wotan.liu.edu/user to show the file
  user/public_html/index.html
• The web server will map requests to
  http//wotan.liu.edu/user/file to show the file
  user/public_html/file
• The server will do this by virtue of a
  configuration option.

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changing directory, listing files

• cd directory changes into the directory directory
• the current directory is .
• its parent directory is ..
• ls lists files
• As an exercise, move around the directory
  structure and discover the files that they hold
  with ls.
• IMPORTANT NOTE bash allows completion of file
  and directory names with the TAB character

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issuing commands

• While you are login, you talk to the computer by
  issuing commands.
• Your commands are read by command line
  interpreter.
• The command line interpreter is called a shell.
• You are using the Bourne Again Shell, bash.
• bash allows to browse the command history with
  the arrow keys
• bash allows to edit commands with the arrow keys
• exit is the command to leave the shell.

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Users and groups

• root is the user name of the superuser.
• The superuser has all privileges.
• There are other physical users, i.e. persons
  using the machine
• There are users that are virtual, usually created
  to run a daemon. For example, the web sever in
  run by a user www-data.
• Arbitrary users can be put together in groups.

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Permission model

• Permission of files are given
• to the owner of the file
• to the the group of the file
• and to the rest of the world
• A group is a grouping of users. Unix allows to
  define any number of groups and make users a
  member of it.
• The rest of the world are all other users who
  have access to the system. That includes
  www-data!

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Listing files

• ls lists files
• ls l make a long listing. It contains
• elementary type and permissions (see next slide)
• owner
• group
• size
• date
• name

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First element in ls -l

• Type indicator
• d means directory
• l means link
• - means ordinary file
• 3 letters for permission of owner
• 3 letters for permission of group
• 3 letters for permission of rest of the world
• r means read, w means write, x means execute
• Directories need to be executable to get in them

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Change permission chmod

• usage chmod permission file
• file is a file
• permisson is three numbers, for owner, group and
  rest of the world.
• Each number is sum of elementary numbers
• 4 is read
• 2 is write
• 1 is excute
• 0 means no permission.
• Example chmod 764 file

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General structure of commands

• commandname flag --option
• Where commandname is a name of a command
• flag can be a letter
• Several letters set several flags at the same
  time
• An option can also be expressed with - - and a
  word, this is more user-friendly than flags.
• Let us look at an example with the ls command.

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example

• ls lists files
• ls -l makes a long listing
• ls -a lists all files, not only regular files but
  some hidden files as well
• all files that start with a dot are hidden
• ls -la lists all files is long listing
• ls --all is the same as ls -a. --all is known as
  a long listing.

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Copying and removing

• cp file copyfile copies file file to file
  copyfile. If copyfile is a directory, it copies
  into the directory.
• mv file movedfile moves file file to file
  movedfile. If movedfile is a directory, it moves
  into the directory.
• rm file removes file, there is no recycling bin!!

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Directories and files

• mkdir directory makes a directory
• rmdir directory removes an empty directory
• rm -r directory removes a directory and all its
  files
• more file
• Pages contents of file, no way back
• less file
• Pages contents of file, u to go back, q to
  quit

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file transfer

• you can use winscp to upload and download files
  to wotan.
• If uploaded files in the web directory remain
  invisible, that is most likely a problem with
  permission. Refer back to permissions.
• chmod 644 will put it right for the files
• chmod 755 . (yes with a dot) will put it right
  for the current directory
• is a wildcard for all files.
• rm -r is a command to avoid.

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editing

• There are a plethora of editors available.
• For the neophyte, nano works best.
• nano file edits the file file.
• nano -w switches of line wrapping.
• nano shows the commands available at the bottom
  of the screen. Note that letter, where letter is
  a letter, means pressing CONTROL and the letter
  letter at the same time.

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your first page

• cd
• mkdir public_html
• cd public_html (do cd pultTABgt)
• nano index.html
• edit your file
• find your file on the web with a web browser.
• You have written your first web page!
• but your page is not likely to comply with rules
  of html!

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Copy and paste

• Putty allows to copy and paste text between
  windows and UNX.
• On the windows machine, it uses the windows
  approach to copy and paste
• On the UNX machine,
• you copy by highlighting with the mouse left
  button
• you paste using the middle button

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http//openlib.org/home/krichel

• Thank you for your attention!