Getting Started

We are going to go through everything you need to know to get started with a website on the Mason server. Try to follow through. We will do this one step at a time.

Let's Get Technical, Technical

The first thing that you need to do is open a web browser (i.e. Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer) and download a File Transfer Protocol and a HTML writing application.

WinSCP(Secure file transfer application for Windows)
FileZilla(Secure file transfer/ssh application for Windows, Mac or Linux)
Cyberduck(Secure file transfer/ssh application for Mac)

Notepad++ (Windows)
Text Wrangler (like notepad++ but for macs -- better than using TextEdit for HTML coding)

Next you need to set up your website address through Mason, unless you have one already. If not follow these simple steps and you are good to go.

Connect to the mason.gmu.edu server.

Open the Secure Shell Client (Not the File Transfer Client).
Click on Quick Connect and enter mason.gmu.edu as the Host Name and enter your username.
The username is the prefix of your email before your email address.
If this is your first time connecting, most likely you will get a few warning messages. That's fine, just click OK.
Enter your mason.gmu.edu password
Now you should have a mason> prompt.

Open up Terminal located in Applications/Utilities
Enter ssh username@mason.gmu.edu replacing username with yours.
Enter your mason.gmu.edu password
Now you should have a mason> prompt.

Once you have a mason> prompt, enter the following commands:

chmod 711 . NOTE: chmod 711 period
mkdir public_html
chmod 755 public_html

Open up your file transfer and HTML writing application.
In your HTML writing application, open a new file and save it as index.html. Notice, all lowercase.

Type in the following:

		
	<!DOCTYPE html> 
	<head>
	<title>simple document</title>
	</head>
	<body>
	<p>a simple paragraph</p>
	</body>
	</html>

Open your Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) software
You are going to be asked to enter the server, user name and password to connect to the server. Use the following:
- Server: mason.gmu.edu
- Username: Your mason username
- Password: Your GMU password
Create a new folder called "375". Drag index.html into the new folder. All files from now on should be placed into public_html/375.
Finally launch your web browser; the URL of your page will be:
http://mason.gmu.edu/~yourmasonid/375/index.html
(e.g., http://mason.gmu.edu/~hsilvers/375/index.html)

References

Getting Started

Let's Get Technical, Technical