How to customize your class site

Login to your account on pascal, using the account name shown in the classlist. If you have not done this before there are details at MSCS Student Account - FAQ.

The machine Pascal is running the Unix operating system, and the MSCS site has some details on Unix commands and also on vi commands showing how to use the vi editor, which you should probably learn to use for creating your files.

Once you are logged in make yourself a directory to hold your assignments by


cd public_html
mkdir CLASSNAME # (.e.g mkdir USA2010 or mkdir Net2010I)
chmod 755 CLASSNAME # which will make sure our webserver can read your files.

Please be sure to do the following steps

(after you have created your assignment directory as above).

Access your site http://spectral.mscs.edu/COURSE-LOGNAME .

As you do your work you will post an HTML file in your course directory
$HOME/public_html/CLASSNAME/AssignmentXX.html
showing what you have been doing. So make it nice, but DO NOT fill it up with blurry buttons and images and rotating things. Your instructor is old, his eyes and brain are slow, and he does not need stimulation. My suggestion is that you NOT use Microsoft Word with HTML output to do this, since it does not actually output HTML at all times and may include strange characters that will confuse many browsers.

More detail

What he does need is to see how the learning is going for you. That is what your pages should show. You can point to other pages, and after you get familiar with the editor you can add things to pages from elsewhere by cut and paste, or add existing pages in various ways.

The instructor diary pages (that is, pages in


http://mscs.mu.edu/~doug/CLASSNAME/AssignmentXX.html

might serve as minimal models for you - hopefully the page for Week N will be posted before or during Week N, to give you an idea of what you should be posting after you have absorbed Week N, and to give you an idea in advance what that week will be about.

Other folks can browse your pages but not edit them.