Apache HTTPD – How To’s

How to Upload Files to the Web Server

Please Note: Web Services does not support the applications listed below. These instructions are provided for your convenience. If you are having issues with these applications beyond connecting to our servers or would like them to be installed on your workstation, please contact your desktop support.

SecureFX set up:

  1. On the menu bar click “File”
  2. Click “Connect”
  3. In the Connect dialog box click on the button that looks like a new sheet of paper (“New Session”)
  4. Choose the SFTP protocol
  5. Host/server address: ldvwebapa02.www.purdue.edu
  6. Port: 22
  7. Username: <your career account id>
  8. Password: <your career account password>
  9. Click Finish

Note: Purdue University has a limited site license for an SFTP client called SecureFX.
It can be found at the following location:
https://communityhub.purdue.edu/storefront/overview/

Dreamweaver set up:

  1. Select Site > Manage Sites
  2. Click New to set up a new site, or select an existing Dreamweaver site and click Edit.
  3. In the Site Setup dialog box, select the Servers category and do one of the following:
    • Click the Add New Server button to add a new server
    • Select an existing server and click the Edit Existing Server button
  4. In the Server Name text box, specify a name for the new server. The name can be anything of your choosing.
  5. Select SFTP from the “Connect Using” or “Access” pop-up menu.
  6. Specify the other options in the dialog box:
    • SFTP Address: ldvwebapa02.www.purdue.edu
      • Port: 22 (default)
    • Authentication*: Username and Password
    • Username: {your Career Account}
    • Password: {your Career Account password}
      • Save: check your department’s policies on saving passwords
    • Root Directory: /var/www/html/root/{production-host-name}/{site-path}
      • For example, if your Production site URL is www.purdue.edu/example/site, this would be /var/www/html/root/www.purdue.edu/example/site
      • If your site is at the top level of a host name, like example-site.org, then there is no {site-path}, giving you something like /var/www/html/root/example-site.org/
    • Web URL: {Your Development site’s URL}
      • This is usually https://dev.{production-host-name}/{site-path}
      • For example: https://dev.www.purdue.edu/example/site
  7. Click Test if you want to verify your connection** (a good idea if it’s available in your version of Dreamweaver).
  8. Click Save to save your settings.

*If you have a public/private key pair already set up, you can use Private Key File instead

**If you are connecting from off-campus, don’t forget that you’ll need to connect to a Purdue campus VPN first. You can read more about this in our remote development guide.

Based on https://helpx.adobe.com/dreamweaver/using/connect-remote-server.html

Contribute set up:

  1. Create a new site connection
  2. On the first screen that asks for your site URL, enter your Development URL, rather than your Production URL, and click Next. For example, if your Production URL is https://www.purdue.edu/sitename, enter http://dev.www.purdue.edu/sitename.
  3. On the second screen that sets up your server connection, select SFTP from the list of options. Enter the following at the prompts and then click Next:
    • Server: ldvwebapa02.www.purdue.edu
    • Username: {your Career Account}
    • Password: {your Career Account password}
  4. This should connect successfully and move on to the third screen, which asks for the remote path to your site. You can either type this in or use the browse button to the right of the text box to find it. Site paths start at /var/www/html/root/. If your site URL is www.purdue.edu/sitename, you’d enter /var/www/html/root/www.purdue.edu/sitename. Click Next once you’ve found your site directory.
    • If you use the file browser, you have to actually go into your site directory in order to select it, rather than just highlighting the site folder.
  5. You will be asked if you want to use Subversion. If your department provides a Subversion server, enter that information here. Otherwise click Next with nothing checked or entered to continue.
    • Subversion is a type of version control that is not commonly used on campus. CVS and Git are more common. Version control lets you easily undo changes even after you saved and uploaded your site, and can let you see past versions of your website and recall content from them.
  6. Contribute will now verify it can see your site. If all goes well you’ll get a summary page, which you can click through. Contribute will then synchronize your site so that you may work on it.
    • If you get an error that Contribute cannot verify your connection, make sure that you used your Development URL on the first screen, are connecting to the Development server on the second screen, and you provided the correct path to your site on the third screen.
    • If you get a mixed content warning when Contribute first loads your site, that means some part or parts of your site are coming from a non-secure (http) source, instead of from https. You can safely tell Contribute to view all content, including non-secure content, but you will want to fix these issues as your visitors will otherwise see that warning too.

How to View Logs

The logs are viewable at using the Unified Log Viewer application.

How to Use Symlinks

In the Shared Apache HTTPD environment, you will now see a symlink to an HTML and DATA folders. In order to find your website, double click on the HTML or DATA folder, depending on what type of content you are uploading, and then find the website to upload the content.

Within your web site, you may create symlinks in the development server using the “ln” Linux command. Please see “man ln” for details. Please note that some security requirements may prevent your symlink from working. Contact Web Services if you are having difficulties.