Frequently asked questions
- How do I find out/change the password for my www account?
- How do I find out how many 'hits' my page has received?
- Who should I contact if I have problems--and who is 'arachnid' anyway?
- What is Moodle? (It's a package for putting information about your classes on the web.)
- Can someone create a website for my department/office?
- I need to create some public pages for Goshen College. What do I have to do to get access to the directory I'm supposed to publish in?
- Should I edit pages 'in-place' on my W: drive, or develop them off-line on my 'M:' drive?
- Can anyone in the world see things in my home directory?
- Do I have to get approval before publishing pages?
- Can I run CGI scripts?
How do I find out/change the password for my www account?
As long as you have an e-mail account at Goshen College, you can use your e-mail password to let you in to your webserver account as well! Whenever you change your e-mail password, your webserver password also changes automatically.
One caution to keep in mind is that when accessing the webserver, you should always type your (e-mail) userid in lower-case.
How do I find out how many 'hits' my page has received?
There are two ways. The recommended way is to consult the on-line webserver statistics pages for the GC webserver. See that page for details.
You can also put a counter on your pages. The downside of this is that it increases the downloading time of your pages.
Who should I contact if I have problems--and who is 'arachnid' anyway?
Questions, problems, suggestions should be e-mailed to arachnid@goshen.edu. Mail to 'arachnid' gets sent to the GCWeb development team, currently Paul Meyer Reimer (Web administrator) and Thushan Hemachandra (Web designer), and Theo Budiardja (system guru), who operate GC's webserver.
E-mailing to arachnid is better than e-mailing Paul or Thushan alone--they are then both aware of requests, and who knows, one might go on vacation (it happens!) but someone will always be reading arachnid e-mail.
For immediate problems you can also call the ITS help desk, or e-mail helpdesk@goshen.edu.
What is Moodle?
Moodle is open-source software that allows professors a (hopefully-simple) means of putting information about classes (syllabi, other course documents) on the web. You can also set up class discussions, and send e-mail to everyone in a particular course very easily.
Floyd Saner (fesaner@goshen.edu) is a good person from whom to find out more about Moodle.
See also:
Can someone create a website for my department/office?
Talk with Thushan, arachnid@goshen.edu, about your project.
What do I have to do to get access to the directory I'm supposed to publish in?
Everyone with an account on www should already be able to browse all the departmental content on the webserver by following the deptpages link in your home folder.
To be able to write (publish) departmental pages, however, you must be on the right access list. Send e-mail to arachnid to be added. Include a short description of the publishing project, to decide whether an existing folder, or a new one would be more appropriate, and names and userid's of any other folks involved in the project. Students needing access should have a GC faculty or staff member write arachnid requesting access.
Should I edit pages 'in-place' on my W: drive, or develop them off-line on my 'M:' drive?
Following the instructions in this manual, you can set things up such that you can edit web pages directly on the webserver. In general it's fine to develop web pages directly on the webserver.
There are significant advantages to developing pages right on the webserver--for example you can share 'drafts' of your site with others.
Keep these considerations in mind...
When making minor corrections to existing web pages
...there's no reason not to just edit web pages in place on the webserver.
If you're creating a substantially different page from an existing one
...create a page with a new name, and then change the name of the page to that of the existing page when you're done, thus replacing the old page with the new one.
If you're working on a site that is not yet complete
...make sure that no other pages (particularly top-level web pages at GC) are pointing to your site until you're finished. It's usually fine to have incomplete sites available, as long as they're not linked to from some other GC page. But to avoid embarassment, remember that such pages are obscure, but not in principal private. See the next question below.
Can anyone in the world see things in my home directory?
The answer to this question is a hearty it depends!.
Material in your personal mypages directory is live--that is anyone in the world who knows the URL to your pages would be able to see it. But...would it occur to someone out of the blue to try browsing to something like www.goshen.edu/~clementesf/favorite_mushrooms.html? This is called 'security through obscurity'.
There is not necessarily a path of links that someone can take from the GC home page to your personal pages. Search engines, which crawl from one web page to another, following trails of links, might or might not be aware of your pages.
You are free to e-mail a friend in, say, Macedonia with your URL, and she could then browse to your page. If your Macedonian friend makes a link to your page from her page, and her page is known to the rest of the internet, then the floodgates have opened, and you should assume the rest of the internet 'knows' about your pages.
You should assume that anything in the deptpages area is already known to the internet.
Do I have to get approval before publishing pages?
For personal pages, the answer is a flat "no". Though this doesn't mean you can publish anything you like. See the GCWeb publishing policy for details.
Profs publishing course materials for an on-campus audience don't need any approval.
For GC organizations wishing to publish pages, particularly ones that will be prominently available to an off-campus audience close to the GC home page, approval will likely be necessary. Contact arachnid early on in your publishing project, and read the GCWeb publishers' manual cover-to-cover!
Usually what happens is that you are allocated a new folder, or access to an existing one. You notify arachnid when your publishing project is nearly in final shape for a review before your material is 'linked' to the rest of the GC website.
Once an organization has passed this initial review, approval is not necessary before making further changes, updates, or even adding to the site. If you significantly change the content focus, or appearance, however, do contact arachnid once more to check if the changes should be reviewed.
If you're working on content for a GC department you should know that each department has a designated "web editor" with whom you should be/probably already are in contact with.
Can I run CGI scripts?
CGI scripts are a security concern. They are not allowed by default. However, the webserver does let anyone run php scripts. For details see the GC forms page.
As available, an account on a server other than www can occasionally be arranged.
