| Steps
by Stepno |
How to manage Web files at Radford using sFTP clients or myru.radford.edu |
Students and faculty at Radford University are issued network usernames that double as campus e-mail addresses ending in "@radford.edu." The single username and password also provides:
The server folder named "public_html" is created automatically for every student account on the Radford system. It contains an "index.html" home page that says, simply, that the person has not created a home page. To have a personal home page, all you need to do is edit that index.html page with any text editor or HTML page-design program, or replace it with a page of your own design called "index.html" -- and use MyRU.radford.edu to give the public permission to see it on the Web.
To build a Web site for a class or project, create a folder inside the public_html folder with an appropriate name ("coms226" or "coms326"). Do not use spaces or punctuation marks in folder names.
The Web address or URL for personal home pages at the university is http://www.radford.edu/username -- with "username" replaced by the person's I.D., such as http://www.radford.edu/rstepno
On some systems, personal folders are marked with a tilde symbol (~). Your Radford address will work with or without it: http://www.radford.edu/~rstepno
You can connect to your personal network space with SFTP (Secure File Transfer Programs) or SSH (Secure Shell) programs, connecting to the network server as either "username@ruacad.radford.edu" or "username@rucs.radford.edu"
Laboratory computers automatically "mount" the H:drive space when you login to the computer. It appears on Windows computers as drive "H:" and on Macintoshes as a network drive named with your user name.
Computers on the campus WiFi network or connected with a VPN (Virtual Private Network) client from off-campus can mount the H:drive space using SMB protocol with an address like smb://homedir.radford.edu/users/username (The word "homedir" is part of the address, but replace "username" with your I.D., such as "jjones99" or "jbrown55").
You may already use your Radford H drive to avoid computer disasters by keeping a backup copy of your work. Everyone who has an @radford e-mail address gets storage space on a file server that we call your "H" or "Home" drive. (Or think H for Highlander.)
In Web production classes, you will use part of that H drive space, the "public_html" folder, for your personal Web site.
When you are using a computer on the Radford network, finding the H drive is similar to using the computer's internal disk (C drive), a USB drive or a Flash memory stick, or a folder in the Macintosh Dock. But what if you are off-campus, even off studying in London?
One solution is to connect to Radford's network using a Virtual Private Network or VPN program, if you have permission to do so on the computer you are using. See the ITEC help desk for assistance.Another solution is to copy files to the H drive (your "file server share") with a secure File Transfer Protocol (sFTP) program, such as FileZilla, CyberDuck, Fugu or Fetch, or an sFTP system within HTML editor applications like Dreamweaver and TextWrangler.
Here is a basic file-transfer tutorial with the FileZilla sFTP client.
Radford students can access their server space with sFTP (or SSH) as "ruacad.radford.edu" or in some cases "rucs.radford.edu." You login with your usual Radford name ("rstepno" in my case) and your usual password.
The MyRU portal has a built-in FTP page that is handy for making simple website uploads. The portal also gives you an easy way to make new Web pages public, as described below, instead of the trickier Unix "change mode" (chmod) approach.
January 2013 update:
The Department of Homeland Security has advised Internet users to disable their Web browsers' ability to run programs written in the Java programming language, "unless absolutely necessary." The file-transfer tab in MyRU is a Java program, as are some office systems at Radford.
However, MyRU is not the only way to transfer files to your H drive, so you are free to disable Java on your home computer if you want. FileZilla is free for Windows and Macintosh computers, so I encourage you to give it a try as an alternative. It is now available on the Porterfield 173 iMacs.
The video illustrates copying documents and setting Web permissions as described below.
Here's the MyRU way to copy documents, pictures and other computer files to your "H drive" or "Home drive" space:
It
may
take a moment, if you have a slow
connection, but you should see
two windows on the screen, each
showing a directory list of
folders and
documents: Local
System
on the left and Remote
System on the right.
"Local System" is the computer you
are using at the moment -- at
home, at the library, wherever.
"Remote
System" is your H drive. The
H drive view will show some
automatically created files
whose names begin with dots; do
not attempt to delete or move
them. Some of those "dot files"
configure server settings that
you may need someday.
resume,
upload
(local to remote) or download
(remote to local), or
zip-compress a file for faster
uploading.... last update Feb. 4, 2013