Indiana University Computer ScienceHyplans
Indiana University Computer Science"Hyplans" are personal web pages for users of the IU Computer
Science systems. The name is a shortening of hypertext
.plan, because they were originally seen as serving a similar
functionality as .plan files with finger. IUCS users were
some of the first on the Internet to have home pages available to them
on the Web, and the name "hyplan" dates from then.
In order to set up a hyplan, simply create a publicly readable
and accessible directory in your $HOME directory on
a CS machine called .hyplan, and a file in that new
directory called index.html which contains legal HTML.
Then run the command makehyplan to make symbolic links to
the file from /l/www/hyplan/yourname.html and
/l/www/hyplan/yourname/index.html, so it's part
of the department web server document
tree in /l/www. You can put auxiliary and additional web
files in your .hyplan directory, too, to build a personal
web site.
The IUCS Personnel Directory also serves as an index to all the hyplans available. Your new hyplan will be listed in this directory starting the day after you first create it.
Since your hyplan index.html file has two different
locations in the web server document tree, it's important
that it works when accessed via either path. To ensure this, either
(a) use only absolute references in the page (ie, those beginning with
/l/www/ or a web protocol tag [eg, http:])
or (b) include a <base> definition tag in the
<head>...</head> section of the page to define
a complete URL that all relative references should be relative to.
For example,
<base
href="http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/yourname/index.html">
Watch those file permissions! The server runs as nobody (for security) and won't be able to serve your files unless the files are readable and the entire directory path to them is searchable. Also, be aware that symbolic links in the department web server document tree are restricted so that they're only effective for the server if the creator/owner of the link is the same as the owner of the file or directory they link to. So you should only create links to things you own. Symbolic links here with improper owners may be deleted. And, make sure the links will resolve properly on any CS machine.
The global address for your hyplan
which you can publish for others is
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~yourname/.
If you have a web page on some other non-CS machine you wish to be
included as your listed hyplan in the personnel directory here, put its URL in
a file named .hyplan.forward in your $HOME
directory and run makehyplan. Run
makehyplan anytime you want to update your
/l/www/hyplan symbolic links or forwarding URL, according
to your current $HOME/.hyplan/* files. Make sure to run it
from the same account where your $HOME/.hyplan/* files
reside.
CGI's are allowed for those with Sharkestra accounts. Read
/l/cgi/README for instructions on how to implement them.
Also, if you create a file named .hyplan/resume.html or
.hyplan/resume.txt in your $HOME directory, it
will be linked in specially in the personnel
directory alongside your hyplan. You can also create a file
named .hyplan/resume.forward, instead, to refer your
résumé listing to some another URL.
Help for authoring HTML document is available from very many places online and off. Netscape's How To Create Web Services page is one place to start.
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