WebSpace

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

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 \\umiacs-webftp.umiacs.umd.edu\www-umiacs - and remotely accessed by the same file share over the VPN

Personal Web Space

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

Users can access their website for editing 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 \\umiacs-webftp.umiacs.umd.edu\www-users - and remotely accessed by the same file share over the VPN

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

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.