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Office of Web and New Media 

Minutes for January 22, 2004

The Web Developers Users' Group met on January 22, 2004, at 2:00 PM in the Parliamentary Room, PSU 313.

Web server migration

Sara Clark, Missouri State Web Coordinator, announced that the web site migration to a new web server is complete. The migration consisted of transferring the remaining web sites web sites hosted on Quicksilver to a more powerful server, Tholian.

During the migration there were several support issues that arose, such as incomplete file transfers and web server settings problems. All of the problems noted at that time have been fixed. However, Sara recommended that all developers of migrated sites double check their web sites to ensure a successful migration and to report any problems to webmaster@missouristate.edu

The migration to Tholian has brought the following additional security measures in place:

  1. When you try to edit your web site, you will see a two-box login screen. To log in, enter copper\userID  into the User Name field and your normal Missouri State Windows password into the Password field. Please be sure to use the back slash (\) with your user ID as in the example--the forward slash (/) may not work during the login process.
     
  2. If you're using FrontPage to edit your site, always open the site with its web address (such as https://webpress.missouristate.edu/web). Please do NOT use the UNC path (such as file://tholian/www/web) to open your web site in FrontPage--doing so disables FrontPage features and causes problems.
     
  3. For security reasons, the new server does not allow the use of parent paths (".." references) when including files. See the examples below:
     
        DOESN'T WORK: <!--#INCLUDE FILE="../Utilities.inc"-->
        WORKS: <!--#INCLUDE VIRTUAL="/web/wdug/Utilities.inc"-->
     
    Most of the time, you should update your files to use the new reference style; however, this restriction may also affect certain FrontPage functions, which you cannot modify. As such, Computer Services will turn off the parent paths restriction as needed to correct problems with FrontPage functions. If you are working with a FrontPage feature and receive a "Disallowed Parent Path" error, please email webmaster@missouristate.edu the address of the web page along with a request that parent paths be enabled.
     
  1. FTP access to your web site may have changed. If you're using FrontPage to update your web site, this change will not impact you. If you're using FTP to publish a web site (such as through DreamWeaver) to a location on http://www.missouristate.edu/, you should use the following parameters:
    Remote Host: www.missouristate.edu
    User ID: copper\userID
    Password: Your Missouri State Windows password
    Host Directory (or Initial Remote Site Folder): www/YourSiteFolder
 
If you are trying to publish to another server, enter that site's address (such as organizations.missouristate.edu) as the Remote Host and change the Host Directory appropriately (such as organizations/YourSiteFolder).

FrontPage 2003 Presentation

Joe Kuster, Web Access Compliance Team, gave a presentation on several new features implemented in FrontPage 2003. See his FrontPage 2003 Feature Change Overview presentation notes for more details.

Next meeting

The next WDUG meeting will be held in the Parliamentary Room, PSU 313, on February 27, 2004, at 3:00 PM.