This document describes how to setup a web site inside of your home directory which can be accessed at this URL: http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~username

Set your home directory to allow for at least execute permissions on group and other. This will enable the web server to execute the html files inside your home directory.

user@host:~$ ls -ld $HOME
drwx------ 60 user group 4096 Dec 17 15:56 /home/user

user@host:~$ chmod 711 $HOME

user@host:~$ ls -ld $HOME
drwx--x--x 60 user group 4096 Dec 17 15:56 /home/user

Our web server looks for a folder with the name of 'html' inside your home directory from which it will attempt to serve. If you do not already have this directory create it.

user@host:~$ mkdir -p $HOME/html

We want to make sure the web server has enough permissions to this directory.

user@host:~$ chmod 755 $HOME/html

Verify the change.

user@host:~$ ls -ld $HOME/html
drwxr-xr-x 2 user group 53 Dec 17 15:57 /home/user/html

We can create a simple page by doing the following:

user@host:~$ echo 'hello world' > $HOME/html/index.html
user@host:~$ chmod 644 $HOME/html/index.html
user@host:~$ ls -l $HOME/html/index.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 user group 28 Dec 17 15:57 /home/user/html/index.html

You can access your home page by using the following URL: https://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~username Please replace 'username' with your CNETID.

PHP is supported on personal home pages.

Please be aware that this not provide any real security and only keeps honest people honest. People viewing your page with a web browser will be required to provide a password. However, since files in your ~/html directory must be world readable to be seen by the server, anyone can view your html files directly.

Create new password file (with a user):

htpasswd -c .http_passwd new_user

1. The password file should not be in your html directory, but it must be world readable.
2. To add more users remove -c from the above command.

htpasswd .http_passwd user2

Put a file .htaccess in each html directory to be restricted. Start with this template:

AuthUserFile /home/mokwa/html/.http_passwd
AuthName Projec
AuthType Basic
require valid-user

Now set the permissions on the .htaccess and .http_passwd file.

chmod 644 .htaccess .http_passwd