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Q: How do I add an event to the campus-wide calendar?
A: You read the Calendar FAQ - it has all the answers!
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Q: How do I add my event to the front page?
A: It is easy! Visit Bannerideas and add a banner idea. Make sure under type you select Event or Announcement and you provide a start and end date. Failure to do so will not enable your event to go to the front page.
While we'd like to make publishing these announcements an automatic process, some review is necessary for length (it is a small space!), clarity, spelling, and appropriateness. This review process is done daily.
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Q: My event was on the front page an hour ago - what happened? It hasn't happened yet!
A: The front page events are designed to rotate through a list of many (when many are available). The idea is to provide exposure to many different events - this is a happening campus, after all.
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Q: How do I work on a website for my Brandeis program or department?
A: Adobe's GoLive software is a visual editor that makes it easy to edit departmental pages. This is the supported tool for the University. You may also hand-code your site using a text editor, or choose another WYSIWYG editor - you'll just have to answer your own support questions.
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Q: how do I login to edit my pages on the server?
A: You cannot login to the server and edit the files directly; you need to FTP the files to the server and overwrite the old ones to make changes. To login, open an FTP software package (Fetch, WSFTP, GoLive, etc) and enter the following info:
server: www.brandeis.edu
directory: /
userid: [UNET ID]
password: [UNET password]
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Q: I administer more than one web site. How do I select which one to update when I login?
A: The server allows you to directly FTP to different web spaces by following your login name with a tilde (~) or plus sign (+) and the group name desired. For example, user joecool@brandeis.edu, who has access to snoopy and the peanuts web directories would choose between:
- joecool+peanuts
- joecool+snoopy
When entering the peanuts or snoopy directories, respectively.
So, following the example in the question above, this means that joecool would enter the following information to get into the peanuts directory:
server: www.brandeis.edu
directory: /
userid: joecool+peanuts
password: [UNET password]
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Q: I'm the owner / editor of more than one group, but I forgot what they were called. How do I find out the group names?
A: Point a browser to:
https://unet.brandeis.edu/accounts/web/index.php3
and login. You will see a list of the groups you own or belong to.
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Q: How do I work on my personal website?
A: If you have a personal website, the access procedure is similar to that for departmental sites, but the server is different. Also, you cannot use FTP - you need to use SFTP (for secure FTP). Open an SFTP client and enter the following:
server: sam.unet.brandeis.edu (or diane.unet.brandeis.edu)
userid: [your UNET id]
password: [your UNET id]
directory: WWW
You may also access the WWW directory from your UNET home space; ITS has information on how to mount your UNET home folder on your computer desktop.
UNetHomeDirectory documentation at ITS
Any files that you place in your UNET web folder will be viewable from the web! Be sure to create an index.html document, as it will serve as your homepage.
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Q: How do I get statistics for my site?
A: Send an email to webservices@brandeis.edu with the following information:
Name
Email Address
Department or Directory Name
And we will set it up for you!
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Q: Thanks for the stats report, but what does it mean?
A: We use Analog, a standard stats package used by nearly 1/3 of all web servers. You can learn how to interpret these reports at the Analog info page.
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Q: Do number of requests = number of visitors?
A: NO!. Read the documentation on how the web works at Analog's site.
That page states: "it's important not to slip from "this page has received 30,000 requests" to "30,000 people have read this page." In some sense these problems are not really new to the web -- they are present just as much in print media too. For example, you only know how many magazines you've sold, not how many people have read them. In print media we have learnt to live with these issues, using the data which are available, and it would be better if we did on the web too, rather than making up spurious numbers. "
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Q: Why can't I use frames?
A: Brandeis does not recommend frames for many reasons (the least of them is that frames are really evil). Seriously, frames break every convention of web navigation established - bookmarks are difficult, browser history doesn't accurately reflect paths, they break easily, and printing is very difficult.
Don't want to take our word for it? Web usability experts agree - frames were a Bad Idea that should be avoided. Check out Nielsen's Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design,
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Q: How do I make a PDF from my computer?
A: On a Mac with OS X, you have save as PDF built into the operating system. Simply go to Print the document as if you were sending it to a printer (File -> Print), and in the pop-up dialog box choose "Output options" under the "copies and pages" menu. Then check the box "save as PDF".
On any PC or a Mac with OS 9 or before, you need to get the seperate application Acrobat installed on your machine (not the Acrobat Reader, the full version). This is available on campus from ITS for a nominal fee ($20). This allows you to generate PDF files from any application (Word, Netscape, Eudora, etc). You can request the software here, and the friendly and helpful folks from ITS will arrange an installation for you.
Once you have the software, you want to still 'Print' (believe it or not), but this time you print to a file. In your destination dialog box, you select "file".
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Q: What software/hardware does webservices use to design/program websites?
A: We use a combination of the following:
Apple Macintosh G3 and G4 Computers
BSD LInux on Mac OS X
Adobe GoLive
Adobe Photoshop
BBEdit 6.5
Apache
AOLServer
PHP
MySQL
ORACLE
TCL
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Q: How can I restrict access to a directory in my website?
A: First, you need to realize that posting anything private to the web is in general a bad idea (www stands for world-wide, after all). The web is usually like a postcard (anyone can read what you say) and the "protection" that sites offer simply put a lightweight "envelope" around the postcard (it's hidden, but someone could easily get in if they wanted to).
That being said, a simple method of privacy is called htaccess. This will restrict by location, by (simple) password, or both.
A full description and directions on creating htaccess files can be found here.
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Q: how do I add a last modified date to a webpage without doing it manually?
A: You can, of course, use server-side includes to automatically add a file modified date. Your file must end it .shtml, and you'd include the code:
<!--#echo var="LAST_MODIFIED"-->
However, if you don't want to be that technical, GoLive does allow you to use internal capabilties to place in a bit of a date.
- In the object's window, select the second tab over ("Smart")
- In the pane, select the 4th object ("Date modified")
- Change the settings in the Inspector to have the display format desired
- If you want date and time, add two such modified objects
Note: you can place text before and after the object to describe it better.
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Q: how do I add a search to my site so it searches just my own directory?
A: Add this code to your search box, and the search will work for only your directory:
<input type=hidden name=hq value="inurl:www.brandeis.edu/directory_name">
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Q: Why is it a bad idea to link names to emails (using the mailto code)?
A: Savvy programmers develop spiders that crawl through a website and look for mailto [<A HREF="mailto:>] links in your web pages. They collect these links and use them to generate junk email lists (spam lists). Several people have noticed increased volumes of spam once their email addresses have been posted as mailto links.
Web Services and ITS recommend that your department page *not* use the mailto command, and instead simply list your email username (UNET ID). You should receive less junk mail this way.
If you feel that you really need to post email contact information, do
something like what is done on the public Faculty Guide (see this example).
Look at the HTML source code:
person<!-- at --><em>@<!-- there --></em>brandeis.edu
This is (currently) sufficient to deter automated spamming programs and viruses that snag email addresses from web pages (our servers have averaged three copies ***per second*** at peak virus attack periods), and yet if you look at the rendered version or copy-paste the email address from the page it works just fine.
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Q: What do you think of CSS - i.e., should we use Cascading Stylesheets in our site?
A: We love CSS. You might want to check out these resources online to learn some things about CSS:
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Q: How do I use Soupermail? (i.e., how do I get a form on the Brandeis web so I can collect email responses)
A: Web Services has prepared documentation for SouperMail here:
http://www.brandeis.edu/webservices/howto/soupermail/
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Q: I've received an email asking for me to link my site to another site (supposedly of similar topic). Should I do it?
A: No. The way that search engines have evolved to do rankings (at least by 2004) is that pages with more links to them are ranked higher (they must be authoritative if everyone links to them, right?). Another factor is the legitimacy of the source: if a site can get a .edu site to link to it, its rankings go even higher. So, it's no wonder that everyone at Brandeis is getting site linkup requests - these sites want to boost their own rankings. Our rankings won't increase by much at all, as being an educational institution they already are quite high. You'll reap near zero rewards, and will provide large benefits for someone of dubious quality. Don't perpetuate the lie; just say no.
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Q: what are the space limits for departmental websites?
A: None. Within reason. Standard web reasonability rules apply: all images should be compressed (not raw JPEGs of quality 12 and sized 800K, but sized for the web and at 40-70 % quality. If you don't know what this means, you should talk to us). Video should be quicktime, compressed with Sorenson. Other standard reasonability rules apply.
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Q: I blew away / corrupted / lost / broke my GoLive site file. Can you help me get a new one?
A: We can do better than that - we can help you make one yourself (this is better because you don't have to wait for us). Instructions for a new site file are part of our goLive setup instruction sheet.
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Q: GoLive tells me I cannot connect. What should I do?
A: Check to make sure your password is not being saved. Instructions on removing saved passwords are on the ITS site.
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