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Academic Web Page Creation Guide


Introduction > Overview of Publishing on web.mit.edu

Overview of Publishing on web.mit.edu

How Web Pages are Delivered

A Web site whose URL begins with http://web.mit.edu/ is a collection of files stored on Athena, and delivered to browsers by the main MIT Web server (web.mit.edu). The diagram below illustrates how the contents of a typical course Web site get from the author to the audience. When someone enters the URL for your course pages in a Web browser, the browser connects to web.mit.edu, which then retrieves the Web pages (HTML files) from your course locker on Athena. These files can be created either directly on Athena or on your own computer and then transferred to Athena.

connections between browser,
webserver, Athena/AFS, and local machine

Note: Athena User Accounts provides course lockers for individual MIT courses. Web Communications Services (WCS, formerly known as CWIS) provides "org" lockers for Web publishing by MIT organizations (administrative offices, academic departments, programs, and laboratory or research groups).

Basic Steps to Publishing on web.mit.edu

The basic steps to Web publishing on web.mit.edu are:

  1. Create an HTML page on your computer or on Athena.
  2. Transfer the file to Athena (unless you created it there directly).
  3. Test how the page looks from a browser

If the results are satisfactory, you can repeat this process to create additional files. If you are unhappy with the result, you can make changes and then transfer the new file to replace the original. The Building section of this guide details how to create web pages; the Publishing section of this guide elaborates on the process of putting the pages onto your site. The diagram below provides a very basic picture of Web publishing in the MIT environment.

basic process: create HTML file, transfer to Athena, test; repeat if satisfied, else modify file and transfer again