Webpages for students

[LuckyTaxi]

Running FreeBSD 4.8 and Apache 1.3.7

Added a DNS entry for students.domain.com

So now we would like to have the students make their personal webpages.

1 - If they want to view their website, what's the correct syntax? I've seen
various syntax.

i.e. http://students.domain.com/~example1
http://students.domain.com/example1

2 - More importantly, what changes need to be done in the httpd.conf file in order
to reflect the above method?

 

[Soybomb]

I believe the out of the box apache configuration is setup for user pages already. Read though your /usr/local/etc/apache/httpd.conf

# UserDir: The name of the directory which is appended onto a user's home
# directory if a ~user request is received.
#
<IfModule mod_userdir.c>
UserDir public_html
</IfModule>

So you'll probably want to add that directive to the virtual config section in apache and have the students put their files in /home/student1/public_html/

 

[LuckyTaxi]

tried it on a development box and it didnt work. No virtualhosting involved. The directive you showed me is already included in
my httpd.conf file. i created the public_html folder inside my home directory and created a test file. it didnt show up.

 

[LuckyTaxi]

it works. I had to add

DirectoryIndex index.html
thanks

 

[Buddha Bart]

as far as your first question,

http://host.domain.tld/~username/

is "traditional". It comes from the fact that "~" is short hand for "users home directory" in most unix shells. For instance, "cd ~" will always bring you to your home directory.

Because of its unix heratige a lot of NT/IIS admin's won't bother to set things up to emulate it, they'll just make a directory (your second example).

[edit]note: in http://host.domain.tld/~username/ you should specify the ending "/" especially in links. This is because if you don't, the webserver looks in its filesystem, says "I can't find that filename, but there's a directory named that" and sends back a re-direct that includes the "/". So there's no reason to make the webserver/browser go through that extra set of connections, especially if its a link and you can just code it once. (when i'm typing them in by hand, i'm lazy and let the webserver redirect me) [/edit]

bart