Office of Teaching & Learning Technologies

Web Folders - Publishing to the Academic Web

A new and easier method to publish, move, and delete files from the academic web server is now available. Web Folders allows users to perform all types of file management. To utilize Web Folders you must have a computer with Windows98 2nd edition or newer.

Part 1 - Opening your Web Folders connection

1. Open "My Computer"
2. Click on the icon called "Web Folders"
3. First time only - Click on the icon "Add Web Folder". In future sessions you will have another icon in the folder which will take you directly to your web folder.
4. First time only - Type in the directory for which you have publishing rights (example: https://academic.wsc.edu/faculty/joprof1). Make sure that you type "https" and not "http". The https connection is secure. Then click "ok".
5. Enter your login and password. Use the same login and password that you utilize for the campus network.
6. You will now see displayed before you a list of all folders and files on your directory of the academic web server. It will look very much like the "My Computer" view that many of you are familiar with. Within this window you will find that navigation, file copying, and file deleting is very similar to what you are accustomed to when using Windows "My Computer". Drag and drop methods of moving files work very well.
7. Open an additional "My Computer" window to your local workspace drive (J, G, or O drive). You can now transfer files and folders from this location to the web server window by dragging and dropping them in the appropriate location.

Part II. Local Workspace: case-sensitivity and the O drive

During Spring Break 2002 the academic web server was moved from a Windows server to a Unix server. This server change made this new, easier publishing process possible. This change is important to know for the following reason: Unix is case-sensitive. Windows is not. In this new Unix environment, you should always be conscious of the case of your letters. We strongly recommend using only lower-case letters on all files and folders to reduce potential confusion. When the server switch was made ALL existing files and folders were changed to lower-case letters on the server. Had we not done this, many of our web pages and links would have ceased working, as campus web publishers have historically not been consistent in their use of upper and lower case letters.

The server works fine. However, many of you will find that the current files on the server no longer match the files in your local work space (J, G, or O drive). Links on many of the pages have been changed (to lower case letters). File names may also have changed.

We have provided an updated workspace for all users on the "O" drive. Essentially, this involved moving the new, lower-case only versions of the web pages from the server to the O drive. If you look on the O drive under the folder "academic" you will find a variety of subfolders containing all current content on the server. We would encourage you to utilize the appropriate folder in the O drive as your new workspace. This will ensure that the file names and links will be in the correct lower-case format.

Part III. Changing your publishing location

With the process of academic restructuring now complete, it is time to move away from the old academic structure on the academic web server. Our web pages need to reflect our current 4-school structure. Many faculty currently publish pages under old academic division directories such as hpls, applied science, or humanities. Since academic divisions no longer exist, this should be changed.

To encourage consistency and make faculty pages easy for students to find, all faculty members will be given publishing space in a common location. This will allow us to easily construct a complete directory for all faculty web pages, and should alleviate the problems that students have when they are searching for faculty pages. It will also make it much easier for persons in charge of departmental pages to link to all relevant faculty pages. All faculty pages on the academic server will be located in a "faculty" folder off of the root directory, with their home directory utilizing their network login name. A few examples:

Eddie Elfers' new home page - http://academic.wsc.edu/faculty/edelfer1/
Mark Hammer's new home page - http://academic.wsc.edu/faculty/mahamme1/
Tim Garvin's new home page - http://academic.wsc.edu/faculty/tigarvi1/

If you look on the O drive at O://academic/faculty/ you should find a folder with your login name. This location will be your new workspace home for all of your class-related materials. You will receive rights to save to this location, and to create sub-folders as you wish.

We would encourage faculty members to move their pages to their new location as soon as is feasible for them. Existing faculty academic pages should be moved by next fall.

A few things to be aware of when you move your pages to their new location:

1. This is a good opportunity to completely redesign your home page and your directory structure. Network Services staff will be available to assist you with this if you desire any help.
2. Remember to use all lower-case file names. Rename files as needed.
3. Remember to check all of the links on your pages after you republish.
4. When you have moved your pages to the new location please notify Eddi
5. Elfers via email. Eddie will take care of notifying all parties that need to change their links TO your pages.