Course Web Pages

Guide to Web pages for Physics Courses

Guide to Web Pages for Physics Courses

There are currently several options for instructors wishing to make web pages for Physics courses:

Put them in the Physics department course directory hierarchy
Put them elsewhere on one of the supported departmental servers (e.g. home or group space).
Put them somewhere else.

Each option has pros and cons, and we will discuss them seperately along with some advice on what to choose. In all cases, be sure to inform PCS via physhelp where your pages are, so that the main departmental course list can link to them.

The Physics course directory hierarchy

The department will provide a reasonable amount of disk space to any faculty currently teaching a course for course related materials in the departmental course directory hierarchy. The course directory hierarchy handles quite a bit more than just web pages, and has features to enable electronic submission and return of course work, shared directories for faculty and TAs, and places to put materials which should be restricted to students in the course. You can pick and choose what you wish to avail yourself of, but if using any other features you should probably put the course web pages here as well.

Normally, all the faculty members and TAs for the course have write access to the course web area. Because there may be multiple faculty members teaching the course, we strongly recommend making a directory beneath the main web directory (/dept/phys/courses/PhysXXX/public_html) with the name of the instructor, and that you respect the contents of your fellow instructor's directory for the course. You will need to request access to this area when you start teaching it.

At this time (Jan 2002), the course directories do not get archived, which may cause problems if you wish to retain the contents over a period in which someone other than you is teaching the course. This policy is necessitated due to constraints on departmental disk space. However, as the disk space capacity of the departmental cluster is expected to grow significantly in early 2002, this policy will likely be reconsidered.

Access to the web directories is available via telnet, ftp, etc. FrontPage extensions are not supported. PCS will provide technical support.

Web pages for this option should be placed in the directory /dept/phys/courses/PhysXXX/public_html, where XXX is the course number. This is the path to use when copying or ftping files to the server. For example, to have your web design program upload pages for Phys499 via ftp, use the path ftp://ftp.physics.umd.edu/dept/phys/courses/Phys499/public_html.

To view the pages on the web, use the URL http://www.physics.umd.edu/courses/PhysXXX where XXX is the course number. Note that you will need to specify a file after the PhysXXX or put an index.html file there as the server does not support auto indexing by default.

Other supported Physics Web servers

You can at your option put your course web pages elsewhere on the PNCE-Unix web server, including group space or personal web page space. This is not generally recommended, as the space used counts against your research group or personal quotas. Also note that the personal web space server ( www2.physics.umd.edu) is not considered a critical service by PCS.

Access to these areas is basically the same as with the departmental course hierarchy. The only real advantage to these areas is that write access to the files is not shared with others teaching the same course, and you can keep the stuff around past when you stop teaching the course (although the departmental course hierarchy will likely add that at some point).

Other web servers

PCS does not restrict you from putting your course web pages elsewhere, however we cannot provide any support in such cases (other than linking the main departmental course listings page to your page).

For Content Questions contact the WebEditor.

For Technical Questions contact the WebTech.