WebSpace

UMIACS provides web space hosting for research/lab pages and user pages.

Hosting websites in UMIACS Object Store (preferred method)

Please refer to section on the UMIACS Object Store Help Page or OBJ on "Hosting a Website in your Bucket." This is currently our most updated and reliable method for hosting websites.

Main Website and Lab Pages

http://www.umiacs.umd.edu

Users can access the main website and lab sites for editing in two ways:

• From Unix as /fs/www - and can be remotely accessed by SFTP to a supported Unix host (eg. OpenLAB).
• From Windows as \\fluidfs.ad.umiacs.umd.edu\www-umiacs - and remotely accessed by the same file share over the VPN
  

Faculty members and authorized users can modify their own public profiles on the main UMIACS homepage. For instructions, see ContentManagement.

Note': We are currently in the process of migrating our users from the file space to web-based OBJ. The methods described above will eventually be phased out.

Personal Web Space

Your personal website URL at UMIACS is

http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~username

where username is your UMIACS username. Users can set this page to redirect to any page of their choice by setting the Home Page attribute in their UMIACS directory entry.

In general, large datasets related to a lab's research should go into the specific lab's web tree, not the individual users. Remember that a user's webpage is not permanently maintained once the user leaves UMIACS.

UMIACS currently supports two ways of hosting a personal website within our network, the Object Store and the OPENLab file space.

UMIACS Object Store

This is the preferred method of hosting a personal website at UMIACS. Please see the UMIACS Object Store (OBJ) Help Page for more information on creating a website within OBJ. Once you create your website in OBJ, you will need to set your directory Home Page to the bucket's URL (the URL that ends in umiacs.io).

OPENLab File Space

This is primarily a legacy method for users who already have their websites configured this way. If you believe that your circumstances require your personal website to be hosted on this file space, please contact the Help Desk. (This does not affect existing users who already have websites hosted on the OPENLab file space.)

You will need set your directory Home Page attribute to http://users.umiacs.umd.edu/~username, where username is your UMIACS username (similar to your personal URL above). You can access your website for editing in two ways:

• From Unix as /fs/www-users/username - and can be remotely accessed via SFTP to a supported UNIX host (eg. OpenLAB).
• From Windows as \\fluidfs.ad.umiacs.umd.edu\www-users\username - and remotely accessed by the same file share over the VPN.

Note: This service is currently being phased out.

Adding A Password Protected Folder To Your Web Space

1) Create the directory you want to password protect or cd into the directory you want to password protect

2) Create a file called .htaccess ( vi .htaccess) in the directory you wish to password protect.

3) In the file you just created type the following lines

AuthUserFile "/your/directory/here/".htpasswd
AuthName "Secure Document"
AuthType Basic
require user username

For example, if you were going to protect the /fs/www-users/username/private directory and you want the required name to be class239, then your file would look like this:

AuthUserFile /fs/www-users/username/private/.htpasswd
AuthName "Secure Document"
AuthType Basic
require user class239

4) Create a file called .htpasswd in the same directory as .htaccess. You create this file by typing in htpasswd -c .htpasswd username in the directory area to be protected.

In the example above, the username is class239 so you would type htpasswd -c .htpasswd class239

You will be prompted to enter the password you want. The .htpasswd file will be created in the current directory and will contain an encrypted version of the password.

To later change the username, edit the .htaccess file and change the username. If you want to later change the password, just retype the above line in step 4 and enter the new password at the prompt.

Restricting Content based on IP address

It is possible to have pages on your webspace only accessible to clients connecting from certain IP addresses. In order to accomplish this, cd in to the directory you wish to restrict, and edit your .htaccess or httpd.conf file. The example below shows how to make content only viewable to clients connecting from the UMD wifi in Apache 2.2.

SetEnvIF X-Forwarded-For "^128\.8\.\d+\.\d+$" UMD_NETWORK
SetEnvIF X-Forwarded-For "^129\.2\.\d+\.\d+$" UMD_NETWORK
SetEnvIF X-Forwarded-For "^192\.168\.\d+\.\d+$" UMD_NETWORK
SetEnvIF X-Forwarded-For "^206\.196\.(?:1[6-9][0-9]|2[0-5][0-9])\.\d+$" UMD_NETWORK
SetEnvIF X-Forwarded-For "^10\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+$" UMD_NETWORK
Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from env=UMD_NETWORK

The SetEnvIF directive will modify one's environment if the specified attribute matches the provided regular expression. In this example, IP addresses that are forwarded from an IP within UMD's IP space are tagged with UMD_NETWORK. Then, all traffic to the example directory is blocked unless it has the UMD_NETWORK tag. See the following pages for a more in depth explanation of the commands used.

.htaccess, SetEnvIf, Order, Deny, Allow