Source files and published files

We recommend that you keep the files that you are working on - your source files - on the main file server via a mounted drive. Having the files on the main file server means that these files will be automatically backed up at regular intervals and thereby kept safe.

If the pages you are creating are personal web pages, you can keep these on your personal mounted directory.

If the pages you are creating are for a Group or Department of the University, you should be publishing this using an Information Provider username (see Request for Web Information Provider username or web address for web sites hosted at the University of Reading) (unless you have your own server). The Information Provider usernames have a home directory in the filespace made available specifically for publishing on the Web. You should mount your Web directories as described in the next section

Our advice is that, within your Web username home directory, you create a directory called "source" and keep the files you are working on there. Besides the advantage of these files being backed up, these files will also be accessible to be modified by anyone else who is also a registered user of your Department or Group web publishing username.

When you are ready to publish, the web can be published to a directory that you create called "publish" within the home directory of the username. Further information about publishing is available in  Publishing on the World-Wide Web.

If you are using your personal username, you should keep your source files in a convenient directory and publish to the public_html directory.

In order to minimise difficulties, you should name all files and directories in lower case.