Allowing web access only by the UA community
As a University of Akron Information Provider, you can restrict access to your documents to users with valid UAnet IDs. This method will permit access to your site to all students, faculty, and staff of the University, but deny access to everyone else. The browser will prompt for the required information when access to your restricted site is attempted. Web sites needing this type of restriction should be hosted on the secure server.
What is a "secure" server?
When restricting access with a method that requests a password, you need to publish your site on a secure server. (This concept also applies to publishing forms which request the input of any type of sensitive or personal information). A secure server will encrypt the transmission of information between the browser and the server. This encryption will thwart any unscrupulous evil-doers who may try to intercept the transmission.
We run both a secure server and a "regular" server on the www.uakron.edu host. Most departmental pages are published on the regular server. You can tell the difference by looking at the URL -- an address on the secure server starts with 'https', while one on the regular server starts with 'http'. There are often some visual cues in your browser frame as well.
How can I publish to the secure server?
Your published web documents exist as files in a directory on the web server host. You would usually publish them to what is called the "home directory" for your server account, or a subdirectory of your home directory. On the regular web server, your home directory would be a subdirectory of a top-level directory called /www (e.g. /www/police/).
To publish a site on the secure web server, you will need a directory which is located under a different top-level directory, called /wwws (such as /wwws/police/).
You can publish documents to any directory owned by your server account. Technical Services can provide you with ownership of a directory under /wwws, either in place of, or in addition to, your home directory under /www.
How do I apply the access restriction?
Access restriction by UAnet ID requires a change in the configuration of the web server software. You can contact Technical Services to have it turned on for your site. This request must be made by the account owner (the original requestor to whom the account was issued).
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Page maintained by: Technical Services
Last modified: Monday, 22-Mar-04 14:22:45
