Personal Web Pages
There are several ways to establish a personal web presence at Duke.
- Scholars@Duke - an organizational tool for documenting your academic presence within the Sociology webpage
Sociology web space - for developing a custom website with a tool of your choice in Sociology network space
Duke web space - for developing a custom website with a tool of your choice in OIT network space
Self and collaborative tools - a growing number including WordPress blogging, wiki development, Sakai course materials, SharePoint collaborations, etc.
1. Scholars@Duke
Scholars@Duke (aka Scholars) is a web-based content management system (CMS) designed to receive information on research, publication, teaching, award recognition and service activities. Scholars is also a web application platform that reports this information in a variety of formats such as annual reports, biographical sketches, curriculum vitae and boilerplate web pages. Scholars interacts with other university systems, allowing it pull in course listings, teaching schedules and sponsored research activity.
Scholars is used by the Sociology faculty to web publish professional biographical sketches of their research interests and recent publications. Graduate students and staff are also included in Scholars and may use its capabilities for similar purposes.
A common use is to post a link to one's current CV, which can be sourced from any conveniently maintained location. One recommended method is to post a CV to your Duke Box account and link it to your Scholars page. Explanation of the procedure for doing this is found at Faculty Profiles for the Web under the Post CV for Profile tab.
Consultation on use of Scholars is provided by Jesse Riggan.
2. Sociology Web Space
For those wishing a more personalized web presence, your departmental Linux account may be used for this purpose. Personal web pages developed under this account are linked at the URL:
http://www.soc.duke.edu/~SocID
where ~SocID is a shorthand for denoting your personal web page. [The leading ~ (tilde) is a convention for specifying the webpage associated with following userid.]
The contents of a personal web page are stored in the subdirectory public_html, which is found under the home directory of each Linux account. It is customary to place a file named index.html or index.htm to index the contents of your page.
Any web development tool of your choice may be used. The Adobe Creative Cloud suite, for example, provides Dreamweaver.
Departmental web space is for professional use to inform others of your interests and work. Content should be in accordance with the department's Acceptable Use Policy.
3. Duke Web Space
Your Duke NetID provides another Linux option for a personal web page. A web page developed under this account is linked at the URL:
http://people.duke.edu/~NetID
where ~NetID references your NetID account.
The contents of a NetID-based web page are stored under the subdirectory public_html. Use an index.html or index.htm file to index the contents of the page.
4. Duke Self and Collaborative Publication Tools
OIT provides other tools for self publishing websites with WordPress, Duke Wiki, Sakai, SharePoint and assorted other methods. These tools provide quick access to publication quality results without requiring a heavy investment in programming know how. They allow greater content focus.
5. How Do I Password Protect All or Part of My Personal Web Site?
You may limit access to all or part of your web site by setting up password access. This requires creation of two files named .htaccess and .htpasswd. These files, named with leading dots that cause them to be hidden, are a means for you to provide server access directives for your content. They must be world-readable (i.e.; have Linux permissions of 644) and be located in the directory you are restricting. To protect your entire site, place them in the public_html directory. To protect a subset of material, create a subdirectory containing the private content and place the .htaccess and .htpasswd files in this subdirectory. The subdirectory and all subdirectories beneath it are protected.
Here is a Sociology web space example to clarify the specifics.
Create a subdirectory called restricted under public_html for the user bart. Into that directory place the following .htaccess file:
AuthUserFile /home/utopia/bart/public_html/restricted/.htpasswd AuthGroupFile /dev/null AuthName "Private files for Bart Simpson" AuthType Basic <Limit GET POST> require user private </Limit>
You would replace bart with your Linux id and restricted with the name of the directory you created. The AuthName string is arbitrary and for display purposes, so can be anything you want it to be. The private specification, associated with require user, is an ID of your choosing that must be entered at the password prompt.
Generate content for the .htpasswd file. There are numerous web sites available for generating this information. The 4WebHelp site has a good tool. For example, go to this site and enter private in the Name field and then the desired password in the Password and Password Again fields. The password used for this example produces the following string, where the portion to right of the colon is the encrypted password:
private:59CrMXUVVjQ66
Open the file .htpasswd for editing in the directory being restricted, paste the above string into the file and save it. This file must also be world readable.
First access of the URL http://www.soc.duke.edu/~bart/restricted with a browser now prompts for the ID and password in a popup window.
Give the access information to those with whom you wish to share material. Omit links to this material in index.html, if you want to further obsure availability. Distribute the links by other means, such as email. Password protection is a good method of narrowing your audience, but is not a robust way of protecting anything that is highly confidential or sensitive. It does not encrypt network traffic or the files themselves and you do not have control over whom the access information might be given.