Technology

Personal Web Publishing

Simmons provides personal web space for all faculty, staff and students. For related pages please see:

» Personal Web Publishing: Restrictions on Personal Web Accounts
» Updating Official Web Pages (for updating my.simmons and www.simmons pages)

The Basic Information Necessary to Publish Your Own Web Pages

  • Server "host" name: web.simmons.edu (please connect securely via SFTP or scp in order to protect your username and password)
  • Username and password for your sFTP/UNIX/web account: your Simmons username and common password
  • Directory in which to store your web pages in order to publish them: public_html
  • URL for your personal web pages: http://web.simmons.edu/~username where username is your Simmons username
  • Space allotted to faculty, staff, and students: 10 megabytes

Tools & General Information

On your web site, you may mount HTML pages (see below for resources about HTML), PDF files, or any other documents. 
  • You may use DreamWeaver  to create HTML files; if Dreamweaver is not already installed on your Simmons computer, you may request that it be installed by contacting the Help Desk (617-521-2222). 
  • You may create a document in Word and use the Save As Web Page feature to convert it to HTML.  From the perspective of HTML purists, the resulting HTML "encoding" is awful, but it will work. 
  • You may upload documents in any format, and send the URL directly to your colleagues.  To read the file, your colleage will need the same application you used to create the file.
  • On your Simmons computer, you may save any file as a PDF, by printing it to a printer called "Adobe PDF."  If you do not see this printer installed on your Simmons computer, or do not see other tools associated with Adobe Standard, you may request that Adobe Standard be installed by contacting the Help Desk (617-521-2222).  Once the file is in PDF format, upload it to your personal web space, and send the URL to your colleagues.  Anyone with a web browser can read that file, and it will retain all of its original formatting.
  • The URL of any file you have uploaded will be web.simmons.edu/~username/filename(where username is your Simmons username, and filename is the name you gave the file when you uploaded it).
  • PHP 4.1.2 is installed on web.simmons.edu. 

Resources

There are a number of resources on campus and on the web for learning about how to create HTML pages.