Apache Hosting Help

Getting Started with Apache

Fundamentally, a website is nothing more than a collection of HTML files. Those HTML files can then pull in links to other HTML files, images, videos, style sheets, and other files to be downloaded.

Note that using a UNIX/Linux system to work with your website is highly recommended, especially when editing .htaccess or script files.

To get started, you'll need to connect to your web site storage space. All of our UNIX/Linux machines have the web space mapped to the /web directory. Windows users can access the space \\tools.ecn.purdue.edu\web. User sites will be in the users folder. Other sites will be in either the entities or groups folder, depending on how the site was set up.

Once you've found the appropriate folder, create a plain text file (with Notepad, vim, emacs, etc.) called index.html or index.php with some text in it like:

<h1>Simple Website!</h1>

Congratulations, you have a simple website!

Page Wrappers

There are 2 ways to set up page wrappers, or adding content to the top & bottom of every page on your site, depending on how you've created your site. For static HTML, use the perl script. For PHP sites, use the PHP method.

For either method, you'll need to create a folder called private under the main website folder and put files called top.inc & bottom.inc in that folder. Put the HTML content you want at the top of your pages in top.inc, and the content you want at the bottom in bottom.inc. You will also need to create a .htaccess file to alter the Apache Web Server configuration of your page.

Perl Script

This will only apply to files saved with a .whtml or .wshtml extension.

Put this in the .htaccess file:

AddHandler add-wrap .whtml .wshtml
AddType text/x-server-wrapped-html .whtml
AddType text/x-server-wrapped-parsed-html .wshtml
Action add-wrap /private/wrapwhtml.pl
DirectoryIndex index.wshtml index.whtml index.html index.php

SetEnv HTTP_WrapTop /private/top.inc
SetEnv HTTP_WrapBottom /private/bottom.inc

And put this in a file called wrapwhtml.pl in that private folder:

AddHandler add-wrap .whtml .wshtml
AddType text/x-server-wrapped-html .whtml
AddType text/x-server-wrapped-parsed-html .wshtml
Action add-wrap //wrapwhtml.pl
DirectoryIndex index.wshtml index.whtml index.html index.php index.php3

SetEnv HTTP_WrapTop //top.inc
SetEnv HTTP_WrapBottom //bottom.inc

PHP Method

This will only apply to files saved with a .php extension. You will also need to substitute in the full path to your web directory.

Put this in the .htaccess file:

php_value auto_prepend_file "/web/XXX/YYY/private/head.inc"
php_value auto_append_file "/web/XXX/YYY/private/foot.inc"

Scripting

The Apache hosting service currently supports PHP & CGI scripting. Any file with a .php extension will be processed by PHP.

To use CGI scripts, add the following to your .htaccess file:

Options +ExecCGI
AddType application/x-httpd-cgi .cgi

That will allow any file with a .cgi extension to run. You can add other extensions by duplicating the last line & replacing .cgi with the extension of your choice. You can write your CGI scripts in bash, perl, python, ruby, or a multitude of other common languages. Also make sure your scripts are marked as executable, or they won't run.

Authentication

We support 2 methods of authenticating users: Purdue's I2A2 career account authentication, or Apache Basic HTTP authentication. Both of these methods are enabled by adding to your .htaccess file.

Purdue's I2A2 Authentication

To require any valid Purdue login, add this to the .htaccess:

require any-user

To require a specific Purdue login, add this to the .htaccess:

require i2a2-user thomps78 loganm blackm

Basic Authentication

For HTTP Basic Authentication, add this to the .htaccess:

AuthBasicProvider file
AuthUserFile /web/XXX/YYY/htpassword
AuthName "Basic Authentication Protected Site"
AuthType Basic
require user generic someone someoneelse

The Basic Authentication method requires a password file. To create one using the htpasswd command with a new user:

htpasswd -cs /webpath/private/.passwdfile user1

You will be prompted to enter a new password for user1. If you check the .passwdfile file, you will see all users created and their hashed/encrypted passwords.
The -c flag is to create a new password file and the -s flag is to use SHA encryption for passwords. Use the man htpasswd command to learn more about the usage and flags of htpasswd.

To update an existing user's password or create a new user:

htpasswd -s /webpath/private/.passwdfile user2

You will be prompted to enter a new password for user2.

See the Apache documentation for basic authentication for instructions on setting up your user(s).

Common Issues

I'm getting "Permission Denied" errors

The web server is a UNIX based system - especially when transferring files from PCs or Macs, the permissions can be set incorrectly. To correct the permissions, you'll need to use the chmod command. To be web accessible, a file must either be world-readable & executable or be set to the UNIX www group & group-readable & executable. Typically, you'll want your permissions set to 755 (you can read, write, and execute, everyone else can read and execute).

When I go to my site, all I get is a list of files

By default, when you just have a path in your URL without specifying a file (like https://engineering.purdue.edu/MECL/), Apache will look for a file called index.html to display. If it can't find one, it will display a list of the contents of the folder. You can specify which files you want Apache to use by adding this to your .htaccess file:

DirectoryIndex something.php index.html index.php

Apache will try each of the files you list, in the order you list them in, before giving up and displaying the list of files. If you want to disable the file list behavior completely, you can also add the following to your .htaccess:

IndexIgnore *

When I try to download a .docx, .pptx, .xlsx, or other recent MS office file, I get a zip file instead

You'll need to add the following to your .htaccess file:

AddType application/vnd.openxmlformats docx pptx xlsx