www.washington.edu Developer Information

The development environment for www.washington.edu is different from a stock web server environment. These documents explain how to develop for the www.washington.edu cluster. If you have any questions, please send a message to www-mgmt.

• Beginning Developers
  • Goals of www.washington.edu
  • Server Environment
  • HTML tidy to check HTML pages
  • Conditional HTML (chtml)
  • wwwinst for installing files
  • Urchin for usage reports
• Advanced Developers
  • CGI development
  • Case Studies
  • Snippets
  • Debugging CGIs
  • Using .htaccess files
  • mailto for sending mail
  • Security concerns
  • CGI.pm for use with Perl
  • SSL for encryption
  • Error documents
  • Flyout Menus

Having trouble with wwwudev, wwwdev, or wwwtest SSL certificate? You may need to load the UW Certificate Authority Cert.

News and Announcements

• The www.washington.edu cluster from Windows on Computing (Spring 1996).
• Security and CGI programs from Windows on Computing (Spring 1998).
• Apache: the www.washington.edu HTTP server.
• Guidelines for Publishing for developers creating content for the UW Home Page.

Server Environment

• Behind the scenes of the www.washington.edu cluster (6-Feb-2004).
• Goals for the www.washington.edu environment (17-Mar-2004).
• From what hosts you may develop for www.washington.edu (28-Jan-2008).
• The server environment including URLs, ports, and directories (28-Jan-2008).

Development Environment

• Case Studies: Examples using www.washington.edu tools and environment (31-Dec-1969).
• Snippets: Code fragments for CSS and Javascript (31-Dec-1969).
• CGI development (31-Dec-1969).
• Conditional HTML (31-Dec-1969).
• PHP: Scripting language embedded in HTML. A tutorial is available, as well as the PHP manual.
• Security concerns for www.washington.edu (1-Dec-2003).
• SSL: encrypting transactions (1-Dec-2003).

• Error documents: Customizing output for server errors (19-Sep-2005).
• htaccess: Changing how the web server acts on a per-directory basis, including restricting access to certain users (1-Dec-2003).
• Weblogin (pubcookie) authentication (23-Mar-2004).
• Imagemaps: Using Apache-style imagemaps (25-Nov-2000).
• Gather directories: Collecting data from web servers (28-Jan-2008).

Tools

• cgitest.cgi: Check CGI variables and FORM input.
• htmldate: Manually add timestamps to files. You should use chtml for automatic dates (6-Nov-2000).
• htmltoc: Generate a table of contents (6-Nov-2000).
• keysize: How many bits of encryption is your browser using for SSL connections?
• HTML Tidy: Check HTML with this web front-end to the command line tool HTML Tidy (18-Jul-2007).
• wwwinst: Installing files (28-Jan-2008).
• Urchin: Web usage reports ().
• wwwscan: Scanning log files (14-Feb-2007).

Packages

• CGI.pm, a set of Perl 5 libraries which make scripting CGI easier.
• HTML editors (6-Nov-2000).
• Icons which you can use (25-Nov-2000).
• Mailto: Script to allow users to send mail via a form (17-Jul-2008).
• Perl libraries available for use in scripts (28-Jan-2008).
• search: Configuring Search for a site (24-Nov-2004).
• Flyout Menus (23-May-2005).