How do I get my personal WWW page at the MPII ?

A step by step approach for setting up your own page(s)

How to do it

Here are the steps that are needed to set up your own WWW page at the MPII:

1. Create ~/public_html
   Create a new directory in your $HOME directory named public_html by typing

    mkdir ~/public_html 
   

2. Make ~/public_html world readable
   Change the rights of this new directory to be world readable by typing

    chmod 755 ~/public_html
   

3. Create ~/public_html/index.html
   Create a new file called index.html in this directory containing perhaps all those interesting things like
   • your full name
   • a picture of yourself
   • the telephone, room number and email address
   • your research interests
   • your (selected) publications
   • short curriculum vitae
   or any other information you would like to give to outside worldwide (inter)net surfers.

   Let's do it right

   If you are new to HTML coding, you might want to read some documentation about HTML first. Here's a short list of useful documentation that you can have a look at:
   • Introduction to HTML.
   • Beginner's Guide to HTML.
   • How to Write HTML Files.
   • Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design.

   A little MPII World Wide Web Knigge

   • Put work related stuff first on your MPII web pages and then the private fun stuff.
   • Please do NOT put too many pictures or too much non-work related information onto your web page. For example: Most pages on the MPII Web server use only one picture - its the MPII logo which is used on every official page. Due to the fact that there is always the same reference to that one GIF - we have a very good load performance for most of our pages. This is part of the Web server concept for the MPII.

4. If you have already ...
   If you have already set up a page in the old directory hierarchy in

    /ftp/pub/guide/staff/your_login_name/*.html
   

   please
   • Move files from the old ftp hierarchy to ~/public_html
     move all your *.html files to your newly created public_html directory in your $HOME directory.

   • Create symbolic links pointing to ~/public_html
     You should additionally create symbolic links (using the unix ln -s command) in this old directory pointing to the new files in your ~/public_html directory. This is useful for people outside that might have your URL in their personal bookmark/hotlink list.

5. Test your new WWW/HTML page(s)
   Test your newly set up WWW/HTML page which is now reachable for the net surfing community outside of the MPII by pointing your favorite web browser to the following URL:

    http://www.mpi-sb.mpg.de/~your_login_name/
   

   You can create additional pages in this new public_html directory too. These additional pages can be then addressed by simply adding the filename to the above personal URL.
   Assume you have set up a page describing the best restaurants in SB. Saving this HTML page as restaurants.html makes it accessible by using the following URL

    http://www.mpi-sb.mpg.de/~your_login_name/restaurants.html
   

6. Please `html-check' and `weblint' your WWW/HTML document
   Additionally you may want to check for HTML structure errors by calling on a Solaris 2.x (type 'uname -a' to see what kind of machine/OS you are using) machine:

    /HG/opt/bin/html-check ~/public_html/index.html
   

   and

    /HG/opt/bin/weblint ~/public_html/index.html
   

7. Get yourself included in the list of people on the MPII web server
   If you belong to AG1 you should send email to the AG1 webmasters:
   

    web-ag1
   

   all other people in the institute should send email to:
   

    brahm@mpi-sb.mpg.de
   

   simply saying that you want to be included in the list of people on the MPII WWW server. As soon as possible the list on the corresponding staff page will be updated with a link pointing to your newly created Web home page.

If you have any comments on this guide, please feel free to send me an email.

Enjoy,
Uwe