September 1998
Volume 2, Issue 1

Inside this Issue... 

New Teaching Rooms Opened 

VAX Wind-down Schedule 

Statistical Software Examples on the Web 

Data Resources Library - Update 

Announcements 

Windows 98 Support 

Web Publishing Services 

Year 2000 and the SSC Network 
 
 

Social Science Computing Laboratory 
Faculty of Social Science 
Room 1228, Social Science Centre 
The University of Western Ontario 
London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 5C2 

E-mail: ssts@uwo.ca 
Web: www.ssc.uwo.ca 
Phone: 519 661-2152  
Managing Editor: Les Flodrowski

 

SSC Network Update

Web Publishing Services

Les Flodrowski 

When Web-based publishing started to become popular, departments took advantage of this new technology by providing program and course information over the Internet. Now, instructors are becoming increasingly active in using the Internet for instructional and professional use. This article summarizes the Web publishing services available to Social Science departments, staff and faculty and offers information and tips concerning the usage of these services. 

Departmental Web Pages 
The Social Science departmental Web service runs on a Unix-based system called Yoda. Over the next few months, however, SSCL will be replacing Yoda with a powerful new Windows NT server. The new server will feature close compatibility with user’s Windows desktops and make it easier to maintain departmental pages by different users. Also, the networking features of Windows NT, along with larger disk capacity, will facilitate deployment of new Intranet services such as password controlled Web pages, departmental bibliographic databases, online forms and documents. SSCL will contact departments individually in order to help them migrate to the new Web server.

Note that some faculty members have acquired accounts on Yoda for creating personal Web pages. These users are urged to migrate to the UWO personal Web server described below. 

Personal Web Pages 
Everyone with a Julian account can create and manage a personal Web site on the Internet via publish.uwo.ca.  The procedures for doing so are described in ITS How Do I… documents located at  www.uwo.ca/its/doc/hdi/web. To make the job of maintaining Web pages easier, authors should keep in mind the following tips: 

  1. You can map a Windows drive letter to your home page location on publish.uwo.ca. This allows you to edit and save your work directly instead of having to transfer files using FTP as described in the How Do I…’s. Use Start Þ SSC Network Þ Accessories Þ Connect Julian Home Directory in Windows to map to Julian. To map a drive, however, you must have the same username on Julian as on the SSC Network. If you need your SSC Network username changed to match your Julian one, please contact the SSCL Main Office
  2. Netscape Composer is a good, easy-to-use program for creating and maintaining Web pages. Although word processors can export to HTML, the results are not always predictable since a translation between the native word processor format and HTML must be performed. Microsoft Front Page is also a very good product but requires a bit more skill and training than Netscape. 
  3. You are limited to a total of 5MB of disk space on Julian for storing your E-mail and personal Web pages. 
Instructional Web Pages 
UWO course instructors can publish their own course related Web pages on the instructional Web server. For information about this service, see instruct.uwo.ca. A list of current instructional pages is found at instruct.uwo.ca/uwo. Unlike personal Web pages, you cannot access instructional pages directly using a mapped Windows drive. Instead, FTP must be used to transfer files to the instructional Web server. SSCL will continue to support instructional Web pages on the new Social Science Web server in conjunction with departmental Webs for ease of maintenance. If you plan to maintain instructional Web pages locally, make sure that a link to them is created from instruct.uwo.ca/uwo