research.uvu.edu Instructions

Click HERE for security information.

The Research Server is a solution to provide faculty access to web space on campus, and is currently being hosted on a server belonging to the School of Science and Health.

A Faculty Web Presence: Currently there are four ways to establish a web presence on campus: UVSCNet, WebCT, your professional page, and departmental directories on the main campus web server. UVSCNet is the commercial arm of campus IT. All faculty may request 10MB of web space free for personal use. WebCT is primarily for student access to class material. Since content is uploaded through web forms, the WebCT process is good for the beginner, but an annoyance for the experienced web designer. The professional pages are also generated from a web form, which limits them to certain content. The www.uvu.edu site is for official College information only, material which traditionally appears in the school Catalog. All perform their tasks very well, but they are none are really suitable nor adequate for certain faculty needs, especially for the simple task of showing off your professional work (to some faculty this is research, to other, art). The research server exists to meet these needs. Your school web technician or the Web Development staff can assist you in writing and uploading pages under your department areas on the main www.uvu.edu server, but since the www.uvu.edu server is an 'official publication' of the College, content must be restricted to 'official' content.

Hardware: The server hardware was provided by UVU Information Technology. It is administered by Dr. Bruce Wilson (bruce.wilson@uvu.edu, -7138, Dept. of Chemistry) and Brett McKeachnie (IT) under the direction of Bruce Parker, Assistant Vice President of Academics. It is a Windows 2003 Server, dual 2.8 GHz Xeon, 1 GB RAM, four RAID 5 drives (with automatic failover to a spare), with redundant power supplies and network connections. A very nice box for which we are very grateful to Ray Walker and the IT staff.

Software: Uploads to the server are made via FTP only. Please use a secure FTP client, like FileZilla, and use the explicit SSL or some other secure mode. This way your account passwords, which do not expire over time, will traverse our unguarded internal network in an encrypted form. The server address is research.uvu.edu. FTP is on port 21. Web pages can be created in any number of applications, but many faculty have Microsoft’s FrontPage, a web page editing program, installed on their desktop computers already. FrontPage users please note: FrontPage Extensions that allow you to use things like page counters and discussion forums, are not installed on the research server. There are too many interactions between other FrontPage websites. Instead, we will provide the tools you need to perform all FrontPage Extension functions via more dependable means. Contact Bruce Wilson if you find yourself needing some of these functions.

Below is a brief review of how to set up Smart FTP for secure transfers:

1. Use the following settings: Address = research.uvu.edu; (IP = 161.28.224.227)
    Login = your username, Password = your password, Port = 21 (or 22 or 990 for secure modes), Anonymous should be unchecked.

2. There is a little lock by the Address box: click on it and select "FTP over SSL (Explicit)" to force FTP encryption to hide your username and password from any network snoops.

3. Under Tools/Settings/Connection Tree/SSL: Data Connection Mode can be either Private or Clear. Private means all files are sent encrypted, and Clear means only your login is encrypted. Clear is faster, and the security is sufficient.

4. Once you have connected, check that the 'PASV' box (below the favorites menu at the top) is highlighted (with a blue border).  This is needed especially if you have a firewall installed in your computer (and you should). If the PASV box is not highlighted you may not be able to see your directory or transfer files.

 Default filenames, which load automatically when the directory is accessed, are default.htm and index.htm. For example, if Dr. Green has a file named index.htm in his research directory, a visitor who enters the address http://research.uvu.edu/green/ will automatically retrieve the index.htm web page. All other filenames need to be explicitly linked.

Advanced Server-side Support: The server supports Active Server Pages and ASP.NET scripting (via VBScript , JavaScript, Visual Basic and Visual C#), and uses the Microsoft default ODBC database connectors to Access databases. If you need other scripting or database functionality (MSSQL, perl, php, or MySQL) talk to Bruce Parker or Bruce Wilson. The Research Server Committee will review your request, but be advised that we are not web scripting consultants. You will be responsibly to get your scripts running on the server without endangering the operation of other websites. If you manage to crash the server, it is likely that your scripting privileges will be revoked. No multimedia servers are installed; multimedia files should be served as raw files.

Privacy is best handled by WebCT. If you post grades or other personal information, please use the same format for identification you would use in posting something on the classroom wall (i.e. no full SSN).

Copyrights should be protected. Because you can copy material for distribution in your classroom (under the Fair Use clause of the Copyright Act) does not mean it can be posted on the internet. Our campus  Electronic Reserve is likely the best place to post copyrighted material, as they will obtain the needed permissions for you. If you have questions, please consult the industry-slanted literature at the NACS website.

Linking to your Content You can draw visitors to your research server website in a number of ways:

1. links on your professional page

2. links on the www.uvu.edu departmental page

3. links to additional classroom content from your class WebCT homepage

4. in your email signature

5. write a concise and interesting summary of your research, and allow it to be used in the research server menu system (the options are found on your Administration page).