Publishing web pages

Any academic member of the university may create and publish web pages, provided they comply with University regulations and guidelines. The method you use to create your web pages is entirely up to you, however you must follow our instructions to successfully publish your pages on the iSolutions supported web service.

Note: anyone wishing to publish pages on independent school/department servers will need to talk to the relevant system manager. Instructions referenced here apply only to the iSolutions service.

The URL for your pages once published will be:
http://www.personal.soton.ac.uk/your-user-name/file-name
or
http://www.soton.ac.uk/~your-user-name/file-name

Currently these URLs are equivalent... they point to the same place. This will change over the next few months; hence we strongly recommend that you use the former method to refer to your pages.

To access your location for publishing you will need to either browse to the network path specified below or map a network drive to this path.  PLEASE NOTE: you may need to connect to the VPN to access your web filestore, e.g. if you are in halls or off campus.

 

Operating System Path
Windows \\webfiles.soton.ac.uk\username
Apple Mac OS X smb://webfiles.soton.ac.uk/username
Linux smb://webfiles.soton.ac.uk/username

 

Apple Mac running OS X

To map your web file store:

* Select Connect to server... from the Go menu (or press cmd-K)
* In the Address box, type: smb://webfiles.soton.ac.uk/username, and then click on Connect
* When the dialog box appears, delete SOTON from the Workgroup/Domain box (it should be blank)
* Type your username and password into the appropriate boxes, and then click OK.

 

Windows

To map your file store in Windows:

* Open Windows explorer and select "Map Network Drive" from the Tools menu
* Select a drive letter and type "\\webfiles.soton.ac.uk\username" (without quotes) into the Folder box
* If you are mapping web filestore for a user account other than your own (i.e. for a society or department), click "connect using a different user name" and fill in the username and password
* A permanent mapping can be created by selecting "reconnect at logon"
* Click on Finish.

Some users have reported issues connecting to the web filestore from Windows as they are part of a different domain (e.g. Engineering Sciences, NOCS).  If the above steps do not work, you may be able to connect using the command line "net" tool:

* Click start -> Run, type "cmd" (without quotes) and click OK
* In the command prompt, type "net use z: \\webfiles.soton.ac.uk\username
   /user:SOTON\username /persistent:yes *" (without quotes) and press enter
* Enter the password when prompted

The above command sill map the drive letter Z to the web filestore - replace "z:" with the drive letter of your choice.  For a permanent mapping, add "/persistent:yes" after "/user:SOTON\username".

 

Further information

By default, the server will expect your home page (starting point) to be called index.html (or index.htm or index.shtml, etc.). You can use another name, but this will have consequences on how your page is accessed. If you have called it something else, for instance fred.html, you will have to specify the name as part of the URL e.g. http://www.personal.soton.ac.uk/username/fred.html

If you've done everything correctly, your page will be available for viewing through any WWW client, provided the viewer knows what the URL is (URL stands for Universal Resource Locator and is web-speak for the address of a page).

Once you have published your page(s), you should check that your HTML is correct. We recommend using an online web validation service such as the W3C Markup Validation Service.

Finally, a warning - all WWW activity on iSolutions machines may be monitored. If you haven't already done so, please read our regulations and guidelines before creating your pages. Failure to comply with these could result in your losing the facility to create pages and/or the suspension of your computing accounts.