Personal Web Sites

All University faculty, staff and students have a directory where they can create their own personal web sites. Any files put into these directories are web-served to the Internet and are available to anyone with a web browser, anywhere in the world. However, if a web site is not listed in an index somewhere, it is very unlikely that anyone would find it. As there would be no link to it anywhere, web search engines such as google and yahoo would not be able to index it. Only by entering the exact URL would anyone be able to access it.

People create web sites for a variety of reasons: it may be a course requirement, it may be to sell a product, or it may be just for fun. We maintain the Personal Web Sites page as a place where web sites can be advertised, but we realize the existence of a site does not necessarily mean the owner wants it indexed. So, we provide a means whereby the owner can maintain control over this.

Only employee and student web sites are considered for indexing. Other community user sites will not be listed, although they will still be web served.

In order to be considered for listing on the Personal Web Sites page, a web site must have an 'index.xxx' file in the top level directory, where 'xxx' is any of the following: htm, html, shtml, cgi, pl, py, php, sh. The file name must be all lower case. The file normally contains the base, or "Front Page" of the web site.

If these requirements are met, a site will be listed or not according to the defaults described below. If a preference is entered through the Web Site Index Preference page, it will be used instead of the default when updating the Personal Web Sites page. The page is normally updated every night.

By default, valid employee pages ARE listed on the Personal Web Sites page. For the purposes of this system, an employee is anyone who gets a pay cheque from the University. For an employee who is also a student, the employee default will be used. An employee who wishes to unlist their web site can indicate that on the Web Site Index Preference page.

By default, student web sites ARE NOT listed on the Personal Web Sites page. If the web site is a course assignment or is still under construction, or the owner prefers to maintain their privacy, they can just leave it unlisted. If they want it included in the index, they can indicate that on the Web Site Index Preference page.