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 the School of Communication's Web production and "digital imaging" 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 2012-13 MyRU portal had a built-in FTP page for making simple website uploads, which will not be part of the new MyRU. It also had a "My accounts" tab with an "Update Web Permissions" link to make new or revised Web pages public, as described below. That approach was much simpler than using the Unix operating system's change mode (chmod) approach, but it's always a good idea to know more than one way to accomplish a technical task. Watch the Technology Assistance Center pages for updated information.
File-transfer programs like FileZilla and Web-editing programs like Dreamweaver have their own approaches to setting public permissions for viewing of your site contents. Search the help files for whichever program you are using looking for the terms "chmod," "file permissions" or "file attributes." Or just search the Web for your program name and one or more of those keywords.
You may find tutorials intended for sites other than Radford's pages, but the basic concepts should transer. For example, here is a FileZilla FTP/CHMOD tutorial from ComputerHope, another from CubeCartForums and another from PHPJunkyard. And here are general FileZilla and Dreamweaver/FTP/CHMOD pages at the University of Kentucky.
... last update Feb. 13, 2014