Create and then Change your Web Site on Panther

In this assignment you will create and change a simple web site on panther, and you will discover and share your web address in a document.

Overview of creating the site: You need to first create your site by connecting to panther (via terminal or putty) and running a script called 'goweb' on panther. You will then create a simple web site that just says your name and the date of the site's creation (and whatever else you want) (using seamonkey and filezilla). Then, you will change your site to place the words "WEB SITE CHANGE" and the date of the change. Finally, you will check your web site on the internet to be sure the change took.

Help Reminder & Time Limit: If this takes you more than one hour, please post on the General Course Discussion for help instead of repeatedly trying as you could legitimately need help from Adelphi IT or your professor. Post to the General Course Discussion Questions Forum if you need help, and remember that you can call 877-3340 for help connecting via filezilla. When you post a question, you must include the operating system, whether you are on campus or off, and a picture of the error message you are receiving. If you are asking a question involving filezilla, include a screen picture of filezilla.

Overview of the document you will write to submit for this assignment: After creating your web site, copy your website address (home.adelphi.edu/~<your account number>) into a word document along with a description of any problems you are still having. If you could not get your website to show, describe exactly what worked and what did not work. If you could not connect to panther, include the connection messages from filezilla. Explain exactly which steps worked and which did not work. If you did not get your website to show but include good details of the steps and problems, you can still reach 100 when we work together to get it working later.

Learning goals: The web unit has a few purposes: (1) learn to create html code (either using a tool like SeaMonkey that hides the html it creates, or just directly editing html). (2) learn how a web server works. By publishing your site on panther without any online tools helping you publish, it will be clear to you how a web server works. You will understand that it is a separate machine that you can reach via different protocols - ftp to transfer files and http to browse the web page you published. You will also understand that it has very picky rules you must follow (3) learn to manage your files on multiple machines. (4) learn to report problems in a way they can be easily understood - some problems are expected along the way, so you will need to explain the problems clearly so that both your professor and Adelphi IT can help where needed.

Why are you learning how to publish your web page? Understanding how to work with panther will make it easier to understand how to work with other systems that your job may one day ask you to transfer files to or from or to edit web pages. You will also have a free web account you can use throughout your time at Adelphi and as an alumnae. More importantly, being able to report and work through technical problems, even with help from a help desk or professor or boss, is a good skill to have, as clear problem reports make problems much easier to solve.

Movie Steps:

First, Get the programs you will need from the earlier starter day: If you don't have SeaMonkey And FileZilla on your PC, please go back to the starter day to download it. If you have a windows system, you also need Putty. (SeaMonkey is used to change web pages. FileZilla lets you copy files back and forth from panther, the Adelphi web server. It will actually let you transfer files to any web site for which you have the ftp host name, user and password. Putty lets you connect as a terminal to panther.)

If you prefer a movie and are on a mac, follow these movies one after the other: (Issue: These videos will refer to www.adelphi when it should use home.adelphi)

If you prefer a movie and are on a windows machine, follow these movies one after the other: (These videos will refer to www.adelphi when it should use home.adelphi)

If you prefer written instructions, follow the instructions below. If you get stuck, please look at the movies above, going right to the place you want.

Written Steps:

  1. Set up your web site access on Panther by : Connect via Putty (windows) or Terminal (mac) to panther and run goweb:
  2. Create a place on your computer for you to work:

    3.  

  3. Create a simple web page: Open Seamonkey, choose window and then composer and type welcome to <your name> site. Then choose file / save as and navigate to your my_public_html folder. Ensure the filename is index.html and save it.
  4. Connect by SFTP to panther: Use FileZilla to connect to panther.adelphi.edu. (You can choose file / site manager, and then hit the new site button and then name it your name. The host is panther.adelphi.edu. The servertype is SFTP. Change the logontype to ask for password and then enter your ecampus username and press connect. OR You can refer to the FTP guide on this assignment page) When connected, you will see your panther account files in the remote window. These are the same files the system uses when you type home.adelphi.edu/~<your account> in your browser. One issue you may find: We used to be able to type www.adelphi.edu/~your account and it would translate to home.adelphi.edu/~your account. That translation is not longer happening so you may see some instructions that incorrectly tell you to use www.adelphi instead of home.adelphi.
  5. Point FileZilla to the correct folders: Change FileZilla's "local site" to c:\my_public_html (or wherever you saved your index.html) and change FileZilla's "remote site" to /home/<your account>/public_html. This is Very important. (You want to be sure both sides of your mirror are set. You want to see panther's index.html on the right side and you want to be looking at the files in your mirror folder on the left side.)
  6. Copy your web page to panther: First, verify that you have exactly the name index.html on the left side. If you do not, rename it. No capitals. Then drag it from bottom window to bottom window. . (Even though you are just dragging across your screen, bits and bytes are travelling through wires to pick up the file from panther's machine, just as if you had walked over the the business building and used a flash drive or floppy to copy index.html onto it, and then walked it over to your PC.)
  7. See your web site on the internet: Look at your web site using a web browser (i.e. internet explorer) to see home.adelphi.edu/~<your panther account>, and be sure to press refresh. See your changes. (You get your panther account name from looking at filezilla. It will be right above public_html, or after /home. It will have 2 characters and 5 numbers probably. For example, my address is home.adelphi.edu/~pe16132.)
  8. Close filezilla and seamonkey. You want to ensure you will have no trouble making changes later, so close your programs before continuing so you can start fresh.
  9. Only if you are now on a different computer, bring your page down from panther to your pc: Drag your web public_html files from panther to your new my_public_html directory. (You just want to see index.html inside my_public_html. You do not want a public_html folder inside your my_public_html.)
  10. Open your page so you can change it: Use SeaMonkey to open your index.html file. Be sure to first get into composer so you see a pen in the upper left corner. To do this, choose window / composer first, and then file / open file.
  11. Change your page in composer: In SeaMonkey, on your index.html page, add the words "WEB SITE CHANGE" and also type the location in which you made your change and the date. Then save it. Notice that it has not changed on your Adelphi web site. ( At this point, your web page is changed on your machine, but not on panther's. So, you can see the change on your machine, but noone else can see it. )
  12. Pass your changed file back to the internet: In Filezilla, check again that the local side shows mypublichtml and the remote site shows public_html. Drag the index.html file back up to panther by double clicking on index.html on the local (left) side. It should ask you to overwrite the existing file, and you will need to say yes. (This step copies the changed web page from your system to panthers. It is very important that you put that index.html file into public_html, because when you look at your website in the browser, it will pick up the file that is called index.html in public_html.)
  13. See your web site on the internet: Look at your web site using a web browser (i.e. internet explorer) to see home.adelphi.edu/~<your panther account>, and be sure to press refresh. See your changes. If you have problems, please post to the social cafe. (You get your panther account name from looking at filezilla. It will be right above public_html, or after /home. It will have 2 characters and 5 numbers probably. For example, my address is home.adelphi.edu/~pe16132.)
  14. Put your web site address inside a word document and upload it to Moodle if you did not already. If you had difficulty, please post a full description of the problems you faced in the word document. If you had problems, screen pictures would be very helpful in resolving the difficulties. This is the week to work through all connection problems.

Instructions on changing permissions, only if you run into problems, and I do not expect you to:

Fix permissions:: (movie)

 

Some very old movies:

Old: click here for a movie telling you how to fix the "forbidden web site" problem if you experience it

Extra: click here for a movies of some individual assignment steps