Web Administration: Web Resources

Web Templates: Installation

The University of Florida templates use server-side includes to incorporate repetitive content, which can be used on most Web servers.

Follow these instructions to start using the templates:

  1. Download the zip file (e.g. 01a.zip) containing the template you like.
  2. Unpack the zip file.
  3. Using your FTP or SFTP client, upload the directory (e.g. 01a) to your server.
  4. Check the permissions of the newly uploaded files and directories.
  5. In your Web browser, go to e.g. http://your.server.ufl.edu/01a/.
  6. Check that the page includes the following:
    1. A header, similar to the one at the top of this page
    2. A footer, similar to the one at the bottom of this page
    3. In the footer, a last modified date (for AUP compliance)

If everything checks out, start adding your content to the templates! Otherwise, you probably have an issue with server-side includes. Please contact your system administrator or read below for Apache- and IIS-specific instructions.

Apache

If your server runs Linux, Mac OS X, BSD, or some other UNIX-like operating system, there's a good chance your Web server is Apache. Most Apache installations are configured to allow server-side includes, but you might want to check with your system administrator before getting started.

Our templates have the following server requirements:

  1. mod_include must be installed and enabled.
  2. Options +Includes must be specified in your site's configuration - either in your server's httpd.conf or in a .htaccess file.
  3. At least one handler for server-parsed content must be specified. For example:
    AddType text/html .html
    AddHandler server-parsed .html

If you wish to differentiate between pages with and without server-side includes, you can modify the last requirement and rename the templates to use the .shtml extension.

For more information, please see the Apache tutorial on server-side includes.

IIS

If your server runs Windows, it probably runs Microsoft's IIS. Due to differences in how IIS interprets server-side include directives, you will need to modify the templates slightly. (The following instructions were tested on Windows XP running IIS 5.1.)

  1. In your IIS configuration, open the properties for your Web site. Under Documents, make sure Enable Default Document is on. Then add index.stm as a default document.
  2. Open the zip file containing your template.
  3. Rename all .html files to use .stm extension instead. For example, rename index.html to index.stm. Repeat for all .html files in the includes directory.
  4. Open index.stm and change all instances of include virtual to include file.
  5. Open footer.stm in the includes directory and change all instances of include virtual to include file.
  6. In the same directory, open lastModified.stm and change:
    config timefmt="%b %e, %Y" to config timefmt="%b %d, %Y"
    flastmod virtual="${DOCUMENT_URI}" to flastmod file="../index.stm"

Unfortunately Web Administration cannot support the templates on IIS. For further assistance, please talk to your system administrator or ask on the UF Web Managers list.

For more information, please see the Microsoft support article on server-side includes with IIS.

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