Welcome!

Welcome to Static Web Hosting. This page is designed to walk you through some of the features and areas of your Static Web Hosting space, explain how to add URLs to your site and link you to other resources.

Suggestions are always appreciated, so please let us know if there is material that is unclear, could be improved, or additions that we should make to this page. Thank you!

Initial Layout of Your Site

Every Static Web Hosting space starts out with a directory structure much like this:

Status Page

• https://static.hosting.cornell.edu:8009/status

Getting connected to upload content

The Static Web Hosting service uses a protocol called WebDAV to provide file transfer services. It is similar in idea to FTP, but slightly different in several key ways, most significantly in that it ties in with CU WebAuth - you are able to restrict file management access to directories within your instance on a per-NetID or per-permit basis.

The webdav url for Static looks like: https://static-webdav.kproxy.cornell.edu/<custname>

Webservices will give you the appropriate directory to enter once setup is complete.

Both Windows and Macintosh have built-in WebDAV support in the operating system. Windows makes WebDAV available via Network Folders. Macintosh has WebDAV support in the Finder.

WebDAV in Windows network places are available here.

General directions Macintosh, and other clients are available here.

If you prefer, there are also several excellent third-party applications available for WebDAV connections, particularly for Macintosh, including Cyberduck, Transmit, Coda, Goliath, and more. Windows support at the moment is primarily limited to the Network Places folders provided within the operating system.

Permits and Access Control

Instance Permits

By default, your Static Web Hosting account will come with a permit. The initial membership of this permit will be the primary contact, the secondary contact, and all additional authorized users listed on the signup form. Additionally, the primary and secondary contacts for the instance will also have the update privilege to update membership to the permit via the permit interface.

Opening and Restricting Access

This only applies if you site has CU WebAuth enabled.

Please see the guide available here.

Adding additional pages to your site

A note on layouts

Roughly speaking, a hostname like yoursite.cit.cornell.edu will point to a folder on the filesystem, so that visitors of http://yoursite.cit.cornell.edu will see the contents of that folder.

Organizing your site into folders like...

. . .
and so forth.

However, you are of course free to organize your site in the best way possible for you; this is just a suggested layout based on successful site development and organization in other hosted environments here at CIT.

Adding additional URLs

When you are ready to add or move additional URLs like yoursite.cornell.edu to point at your site, please submit a request to webservices, with at least a day or two of notice to ensure that we have time to coordinate DNS moves and configuration updates. If you are moving an existing URL, the more notice you can provide, the better.

When you request an additional URL be setup, we need to know a few things:

1. Name of the URL (e.g. yoursite.cornell.edu)
   Note: If this is a new 3-part domain (something.cornell.edu vs. something.cit.cornell.edu or something.ohr.cornell.edu, etc.), there is a special process associated with requesting and receiving the domain. More information is available here.
2. Folder on your Static Web Hosting space that it should point to
   If you are using folders to organize your sites, this would be something like htdocs/yoursite1 for yoursite1.cit.cornell.edu; if you are using your site root for your site, then it would just be the root htdocs folder
3. Any special settings you may need as part of the setup
   While you should have access to configure Kerberos/CUWA and redirects, etc. in your htaccess files for your site on a per-directory basis, if there are any settings that need to be in the main Apache configuration, please let us know.
4. Date/time of requested launch, if applicable
   DNS updates go out on every third hour; updates are usually visible on campus within an hour of updates. Therefore, if you wanted a site to launch the morning of 3/14, you might request the 6 AM DNS push, which would be visible on campus by 7 AM.

More Information

Apache configuration information for use within your htaccess files: httpd.apache.org. The default server configuration for ".htaccess" is set to:

    Options FollowSymlinks IncludesNOEXEC -MultiViews
    AllowOverride AuthConfig FileInfo Indexes Limit Options=Indexes,IncludesNOEXEC,MultiViews

Using CU Web Auth to open or restrict access to your application: Confluence