College web server

The Wolfson College web site (http://www.wolfson.cam.ac.uk/) is an information service aimed at applicants, current College members, visitors and alumni. The site is currently hosted on an Apache 2.2 web server running under openSUSE Linux 12.1 on a XenServer in a server room near the Computer Office.

Webmasters

The main page content is edited and updated by Sheila Betts (college-secretary @wolfson.cam.ac.uk) with contributions from other members of staff. The web server hardware and software are maintained by Dr Markus Kuhn (34676) and Mirza Baig (35966). The members of the Wolfson website team can be reached under webmaster @wolfson.cam.ac.uk.

The news blog is edited by Sheila Betts (college-secretary @wolfson.cam.ac.uk).

The www.wolfson.cam.ac.uk server also hosts web pages/sites of some College societies, most of which are edited by their respective webmasters.

Contributors

The original graphical layout of the current site was designed by Edward Sanderson of University Printing Services, Cambridge University Press and implemented in March 2003 by Markus Kuhn. It has been revised several times since then. Photographs have been provided many Wolfon members.

How to provide content

Anyone interested in contributing to the web site will need to acquire basic proficiency in HTML, the language in which web pages are written. The Computing Service Introduction to HTML courses (4 × half a day), provide a good starting point, and have been highly recommended by the College members who have attended to date. A very brief (5-minute) introduction is Dave Ragget's Getting started with HTML.

There are several ways to contribute to the content of the web site:

  • The most flexible form of access to the main pages (in College web house style) is via the Subversion/Ucampas route, which is explained on a separate page. This is the preferred route for College staff who look after some part of the main website, but requires a little bit of installation help and training by either Markus Kuhn, who developed the system, or some experienced existing user (e.g., Anna Jones, Sheila Betts, Mirza Baig, Barry Haylock).
  • The main pages also feature a very simple web-based content-management system that allows College staff to edit existing pages in HTML. To use it, click on the letters “mod” in the phrase “Page last modified” at the botton of the page you want to edit. You will then have to log in first using your Raven password. After that, you will see a large online form that shows the text of the web page, which you can change. Press the “preview” button, to see how your modifications will look like. Press “save” when you are happy with the result, or continue making changes. When you save your modifications, the webmaster will be notified, who will review your changes in due course and copy them over to the visible web page. You can continue to make further changes at the same time.
  • People who want to manage a separate web site (e.g., society pages) under a different graphical style from the main pages, and possibly also using a different content management system (or none), will have to obtain a Linux login on www.wolfson.cam.ac.uk. Basic Linux/Unix and HTML experience as well as a having an ...@cam.ac.uk email address is a prerequisite.

    Login and file upload are only possible using some secure shell software (SSH/SFTP). Popular examples for such tools are:

    < >PuTTY (for Windows)

    OpenSSH (for Linux/Unix)Unix Support SSH CD that is freely available in Computing Service Reception.

     

    A very good graphical SFTP file-copy tool for Microsoft Windows is WinSCP.

  • Users of Dreamweaver (MX 2004 or newer) can use the “Secure FTP (SFTP)” facility to upload files to the web server. When defining a site under Dreamweaver, specify:< >Access: FTP

    FTP host: www.wolfson.cam.ac.uk

    Host directory: /home/www/html/ (or below that)

    Login and password: the same as you use for SSH logins

    Select the option “Use Secure FTP (SFTP)”via TortoiseSVN, in which case the details above do not apply.)

     

  • We also host an installation of the WordPress content-management system, which is at the moment only used as a blogging system to prepare the Wolfson College News that appear on the front page. However, we can add additional WordPress sites very easily, e.g. for use by societies. Although WordPress was originally aimed at blogs, it can now also serve generic websites rather well, and comes with a rich collection of plugins and widgets. Our WordPress installation uses Raven authentication, so contributors won't have to remember additional passwords.
  • Finally, you can also contact the college secretary or webmaster, preferably via email, to make corrections or provide new files. Please provide the text that you want to have changed, along with the URL of the web page onto which it should go.

Society pages

Some WCSA societies webmasters host their web pages on www.wolfson.cam.ac.uk and have a Linux login for this purpose, as described above. Their pages are located on the server in a subdirectory named after the society to which a symbolic link (shortcut) has been created in their home directory, i.e. in the folder they see after logging in.

Individual arrangements:

  • The Boatclub webmasters share a common login “boatclub”, and the password to that is handed over from one boatclub webmaster to the next (or provided/reset by the Computer Officer if the password was lost at the bottom of the Cam again).

Some societies also use other webservers.

Dynamic HTML

The web server feeds any *.php file through a PHP5 interpreter and runs a MySQL database server (at localhost:5850). These are the most commonly used tools for setting up dynamic web pages, although CGI scripting is available and used as well. Contact webmaster if you need an SQL account and password set up. A phpMyAdmin interface is available for managing databases.

Images

Our preferred image file formats are JPEG (suffix .jpg) for photographs and PNG (suffix .png) for non-photographic images (drawings, logos, text, etc.). If you want to make a high-resolution version of a photo available, just turn the low-resolution version on the web page into a link to the full-resolution version. Never use the “height” and “width” attributes of the “img” element to modify the size of an image, because most browsers use a very ugly method to resize images. Instead, prepare the image at the pixel size that you want using a proper image editor (Gimp, Photoshop, etc.).

PDF

Online versions of printed notes that were prepared with word processing software and are mainly intended for printout (e.g., paper forms) should be placed on the site as PDF files. To generate PDF files, either install Adobe Acrobat or pdfcreator, or install under Windows a Postscript printer driver and using it, print into a file to produce a Postscript file. The webmaster can then easily convert PostScript files into PDF using ghostscript.

Traffic statistics

In the first half of 2008, our webserver served about 12 GB of data or 120,000 pages each month to about 10,000 sites during about 30,000 visits. More than half of the number of bytes transmitted are due to accesses to the Magazine and Newsletter PDFs.

For more detailed statistics, see the Webalizer pages.

Related documentation

Setting up a web site elsewhere in the University

The College web server is primarily intended for material directly related to the activities of the College. For personal web pages or the web pages of special-interest groups, other web servers may be more suitable. There are many possibilities to get access to web space within the University. Some examples:

  • PWF – the PCs in the Lee Library give all users a personal web site
  • SRCF – a student-run Linux-based web server
  • CamTools – CARET’s all-in-one kitchen-sink solution
  • Departmental web servers – many departmental computers are connected to a web server; ask your departmental system-administrator for details.