Traditional Web Server
Description
IT maintains a traditional Apache Web server as a platform for some Web applications, services, and Web sites that were not migrated into the main College Web site (an easy-to-use Drupal environment). Note that using this server requires substantially greater technical skill.
Web sites on this server will be given a name such as user.people.amherst.edu or project.sites.amherst.edu.
Note: This is a replacement for the older www3.amherst.edu Web server.
Features and Benefits
All faculty, staff, and students may request a personal Web space on the traditional Web server where they can build web pages from scratch, with full access to all HTML, CSS, and JavaScript capabilities.
In addition, the PHP server-side preprocessor is available, currently version 5.4.
Access to a MySQL database through PHP functions is also available, providing a full AMP environment.
Applications that require direct access to Apache or that will be built using other technologies can request IT’s Web hosting service.
Requirements
Web pages on the traditional Web server are accessed by mounting a network volume on a local computer using the SMB protocol, by using an SFTP client or SFTP built-in to an application such as Dreamweaver, or by using an SSH client to the Unix servers Romulus or Remus and Unix commands.
Getting Started
Generally speaking, it’s advisable to edit your web pages on your local computer’s disk or on your U: / Userfiles network volume, test them with a web browser, and then publish the files to the web volume afterward (since they are then immediately visible to the world).
To directly mount the web volume, learn about your Unix Network Space.
To access your traditional webspace with SFTP, see the Dreamweaver Configuration page to learn how to set up an SFTP connection. The settings for other FTP programs will be analagous to those described here.