How to Setup Your Home Page (Personal Webpage)

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Note From ISO
• Authoring Content
• Uploading Content
  • Setup Webpage
  • Copy Webpage Content
  • Change File Permissions
• Example File Structure
• Advanced Topics & Troubleshooting

Overview

The University of Texas at Dallas provides personal webpage hosting for active faculty, staff, and currently enrolled students. The service enables UTD affiliates to showcase their research, projects, accolades, industry experience, and more.

Personal webpages may be viewed by visiting either the personal.utdallas.edu site, or the main utdallas.edu site, followed by your NetID or preferred email address username. When visiting via the main utdallas.edu site, users will be redirected to personal.utdallas.edu.

The following four URLs will link to the same site:

• https://personal.utdallas.edu/~NetID (Ex: ~utd123456)
• https://personal.utdallas.edu/~PEA (Ex: ~john.doe)
• https://utdallas.edu/~NetID (Ex: ~utd123456)
• https://utdallas.edu/~PEA (Ex: ~john.doe)

Note From ISO

Before posting content to your personal webpage, please review the following guidance from our partners in the Information Security Office (ISO):

1. All posted content should be reviewed for need and relevance, and any unnecessary files and information should be removed. Additionally, the service should not be used as an Archive even if older data is still needed.
   • We encourage leveraging storage solutions such as Box or OneDrive.
2. Ensure that you are not publishing sensitive information to your web directory, such as grades, class roster, student information, computer logs, emails to students or colleagues, other internal UTD data that should only be stored within approved campus platforms.
3. Miscellaneous class material should be posted to eLearning where possible.
   • This includes things like syllabi, instructional material, lecture and lab meeting notes, assignments, and sample materials.
4. While not forbidden, we highly recommend removing materials like family photos, resume, home address, and personal email.
5. Respond to notifications from the ISO when web application issues are identified for resolution to avoid web vulnerabilities putting your site and UT Dallas at risk.

Authoring Content

Personal webpage content is the sole responsibility of the webpage owner. OIT does not assist with writing or debugging webpage code. There are no restrictions on web frameworks or libraries as long as they support static site generation (SSG). OIT personal webpages do not support features such as server-side JavaScript or advanced server-side-rendering (SSR) features. Dynamic content is supported with PHP and CGI scripts. More information is available in the personal webpage CGI article.

Each site must have an index.html file at the root of the site. This is the page that will be rendered when users navigate to the site. Additional pages and directories can be created to create multi-page sites. An example file structure is provided below.

Uploading Content

Setup Webpage

1. SSH into giant.utdallas.edu
2. Run the UTD-provided makeweb command
3. Copy (or create) an file to the newly created directory
4. Run chmod 644 index.html to allow public read access to the file
   • This is required for the web server to serve the contents of your website
5. Additional pages, images, attachments may be added to the site by repeating the steps 3-4

Copy Webpage Content

There are multiple methods for copying content to your personal webpage. No single method is better than another, so use the option most familiar to you.

1. Use scp in a terminal (macOS, Linux, Windows PowerShell) to copy files to giant.utdallas.edu
2. Map your home directory as a drive on macOS or Windows and copy files
3. Use software such as MobaXterm to copy files to giant.utdallas.edu

Change File Permissions

The personal webpage web server requires all files to be publicly readable, and all directories to be publicly readable and executable. This can be done with the chmod command, or with the UTD-provided fixmywebsite command. The fixmywebsite command will automatically set the correct permissions on your personal webpage, ensuring content is publicly readable but not publicly writable.

~/public_html $ fixmywebsite
Share these files (read-only) with the world? [y/N]: y

Excellent!  Working on it now..
The permissions should be fixed now.  Have a great day!

Example File Structure

Additional subdirectories may be created within the public_html top level site directory. Each sub directory must have public read and execute permissions. An example file structure is listed below, along with the permissions required.

~/public_html $ tree
.
|-- assets
|   |-- index.css
|   `-- index.js
|-- icon.svg
|-- index.html
`-- pages
    |-- about.html
    `-- projects.html

~/public_html $ ls -l
drwx---r-x. 2 abc123456 ts   71 Feb  7 13:46 assets
drwx---r-x. 2 abc123456 ts   59 Feb  7 13:46 pages
-rw-r--r--. 1 abc123456 ts  493 Feb  7 13:47 index.html
-rw-r--r--. 1 abc123456 ts 1497 Feb  7 13:46 icon.svg

Advanced Topics & Troubleshooting

If you are having issues with your personal webpage or want to explore additional features, please review the knowledge articles below.

• Troubleshooting Permissions Issues
• CGI on Personal Webpages
• Password Protecting a Page/Folder