Your own Website
The ODU CS Department provides faculty and students the ability to host web pages from their CS Unix Account.
Important Knowledge
Your home directory that contains ~/secure_html can be access on our Linux Servers .
The ~/secure_html directory and all of its content must have a specific set of linux permissions for it to be properly accessible to the Webserver that is serving it.
- Directories must have
other read and execute - Files must have
other readand if this file is supposed to be executed such as php it must also haveother execute
How it works
User websites are hosted at https://www.cs.odu.edu/~<username>/ where the document root is /home/<username>/secure_html/.
Example:
| Path | URL |
|---|---|
/home/<username>/secure_html/index.html |
https://www.cs.odu.edu/~<username>/index.html |
Each user gets a unique webserver that is automatically created and does not serve content until created.
Common Questions or Issues
Redirecting to external site
Problem
Some users would like cs.odu.edu/~<username> to redirect to an external page.
Solution
Create a file called .htaccess in the path you want to redirect. Ensure the .htaccess file has 755 permissions.
In the file, put the contents:
Redirect 301 / http://www.newdomain.com/
Example:
~/secure_html/.htaccess > "Redirect 301 / https://www.google.com/"
Indexing (Error 403)
Problem
Going to cs.odu.edu/~<username> gives a 403 error but all folders and directories have the correct permissions
Solution
As indexing is off by default, one solution would be to make index.html
Another solution is to make a .htaccess file and add the line Options +indexes to the directory you want to do indexing.