Transferring Files and Publishing Web Pages   Tags: knc, knowledge_navigation_center, technology_guide  

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In order to view your web page on the Internet, you must place it on a server that is connected to the web. Just as the Information and Technology Services’ (ITS) email service lets you access your email from different computers at different locations, the Institutional File System (IFS) lets you access your documents and files in your IFS space from different computers at different locations. IFS is a central file storage, sharing, and retrieval system that you can access from Macintosh, Windows, and Unix computers. At the University of Michigan, students, faculty, and regular staff automatically receive a certain allocation of IFS space. You can use this space to house your web pages, but you can also just use it for storing files that you want to access from multiple places. ITS has documentation that includes how to check your quota as well as more information about what your IFS is.

In the Handouts box at the left, there are links to handouts that show you the main way people transfer files here at UM.  MFile is a web-based file management service offered by the ITS. Its layout is similar to the web-based email also offered by ITCS. 

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) programs open a connection between your computer and the web server computer. Fugu is the Mac program, and SSH is the Windows program. Both are included on the Blue Disc. Dreamweaver has a built-in FTP program - for more information about that, see our Dreamweaver Site Management handout.

At the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, the pages you create (and any other associated files) must reside in an html folder in the Public directory of your IFS to be seen via the Internet. By navigating to http://www-personal.umich.edu/~youruniqname/filename.html in a web browser, you can see the website you’ve created. A file called “index.html” is the default main page for your space, or your “homepage”.

Before you can transfer any files to your IFS, you need to verify that there is an html folder. If you have joined the University in the past few years, one may have been created for you. To find out for sure,

1. In any web browser, go to http://mfile.umich.edu and login.
2. Click on the Public folder, and see if you have another folder inside called html.If you do have that html folder, you are ready to transfer files; if not, you need to follow these additional steps:
3. Click on the web sites button towards the top of the screen.
4. Check the box next to the Public site for your uniqname (it should say “uniqname Public” right next to the box).
5. Click the prepare selected webspaces button at the bottom of the list.

You are now ready to transfer your files.