When you’re first getting started with a new space on a new web host, you might think of yourself as owning a small “territory” of the web. Everything you place in your public folder on the server becomes available for anyone on the web to see (assuming they know the address of your site and the files you’ve placed there).

If you’re just putting up a handful of static HTML pages which you want to make available to colleagues, friends, or family by sending them links, then working with this large, unorganized space may work. But as soon as you get to the point where you want to organize your site, you’re going to need a new strategy.

Consider this scenario: you want to have a blog on your new web space, where you are engaging in public scholarship. In addition, you are working on a large research project that requires you to build a web-based repository of digital images related to your discipline. You intend to use one application (say, WordPress) to manage the blog. For your research project, you’ve settled on another open-source application (Say, Omeka). Both of these are applications that need to be installed on your web host, but you can’t just put them both at your main domain name – if you did, both sites would quickly experience conflicts and errors. You need to cordon off separate spaces for your different Web “properties.”

There are two primary strategies for parceling up your web space. You can create subdomains or subdirectories. But before you can understand the difference, you need to first understand what we mean when we talk about your root domain.

Let’s say you’ve registered a new domain for digitalscholarship.brown.edu called myresearch.digitalscholarship.brown.edu. Anything that is stored at this core URL is considered to be at the root of your domain. You may decide that you simply want to have a single site on your Web host (say a blog running WordPress), and you can then install WordPress at your domain’s root. To get to your site in this scenario, users would simply go to myresearch.digitalscholarship.brown.edu.

If you want to have more than just a single website at the root of your domain, you will have to decide now to organize your space. One way to do so is by setting up subdomains.

As you work on your site, you’re welcome to create as many subdomains as you like, and in each subdomain you can actually create a distinct, individual Web site.

The alternative to subdomains for organizing your space is to use subdirectories. These function much like file folders on your computer. Instead of installing a WordPress site at myresearch.digitalscholarship.brown.edu you would place it in a subdirectory called “research” making the address digitalscholarship.brown.edu/research. Setting up a subdirectory is easy. You can create folders on the fly when installing applications (like WordPress), and you can also manually create them in your file browser.

There is one particular issue you need to be aware of: Let’s say you have installed WordPress as your primary blog at myresearch.digitalscholarship.brown.edu. Later, you decide you want to install WordPress again for an image gallery site, and you want to place it at myreearch.digitalscholarship.brown.edu/gallery. If for any reason you already have a page on your WordPress site called “Gallery,” then the url myresearch.digitalscholarship.brown.edu.com/gallery is already be taken.  If you try to create a subdirectory of the same name, you’ll get a conflict and errors.

• Subdomains are generally a cleaner, more elegant solution to organizing your site. You’re less likely to get conflicts or errors. However, when using subdomains the process is slightly more complicated: You must create subdomains first before you can install anything in them. Subdomains also have much longer URLs, as you will prepend the subdomain name to [yourname].digitalscholarship.brown.edu.
• Subdirectories don’t come with the neat URLs that subdomains have, but they are easier to set up, and may be easier to remember, as the application is a folder within the domain. They have the potential to for conflicts with existing web pages.
• As soon as you create subdomains or subdirectories to organize your site, youhave to consider how people are going to find them. If you have created a new primary blog at blog.myresearch.digitalscholarship.brown.edu, and someone goes to myresearch.digitalscholarship.brown.edu, they won’t see the new site. One solution is to set up redirects so as to avoid this issue. You can also create links from pages on one subdomain of your site to another.
• If you just need one site, installing at the root of your domain is the easiest thing to do, at least as you’re getting started. You can always add more pieces to your territory later with either subdomains or subdirectories.

• Setting Up Subdomains

One aspect of this web hosting world that users may find complicated are the different accounts (and associated passwords) that you can manage as part of your participation. This section outlines the types of accounts that you are likely to have, what they are for, and how you go about resetting passwords on each of them.

When you first sign up for your domain and hosting, a cPanel account will be generated that provides you with access to your slice of the web server. Your cPanel account is automatically associated with your Brown username and password. Therefore, your Brown username and password will grant you access to your cPanel account.

Every time you install a new application in cPanel, an Administrator Account for that application will be created. You will likely use these accounts very often – every time you need to log in to your application to manage the associated website, you will use this account.

For example, if you install WordPress to manage your website, every time you need to add content to WordPress, change your theme, approve comments, etc., you will use this account to log in.

Usually, you will be given the opportunity to choose the username and password for that account. We recommend choosing something that you are likely to remember but that is strong and secure. Do not use your Brown username and password for these applications.

Upon installation, you will likely receive an email confirming the username/password combination you chose. It will also have information about how to access the login page for that application. It’s a good idea to keep this message.

Depending on the application you’re working with, managing and resetting the password for this account will vary. If you’ve used Installatron (in cPanel) to install the application, however, you can always review the account credentials:

• Log in to cPanel
• Find the application you installed under My Applications.
• Click the Edit button (this looks like a blue wrench).
• Scroll down to find the Administrator Username and Password.

In addition, most applications should have some kind of password reset link on the login page. For more information on resetting your application password through Installatron, click here.

In addition to the account types outlined above, there are a few other kinds of accounts you may have as part of this project:

• When you sign up for a subdomain/top-level domain, cPanel will automatically create an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) account for you by default. FTP is a fast and convenient was to transfer large files online. You’ll also have the option of manually creating your own FTP account.
• Application User Accounts: In addition to the Administrator Account that you set up when installing an application, most applications will also let you set up user profile accounts within each application.

A subdomain is one way of organizing and separating content on your site. To create a subdomain, use the following steps:

1. Log into digitalscholarship.brown.edu with your Brown University username and password to access your cPanel.
   
2. Once logged in, you’ll be at the homepage of your cPanel. The easiest way to navigate your cPanel is using the search feature in the top right panel. Click the Search box and type “subdomains” (without the quotes). When you press enter, you will automatically be taken to the Subdomains page. Or, you can scroll down and click the Subdomains icon under the Domains section of cPanel.
   
3. Choose a name for your subdomain and type it into the Subdomain box. Just like top-level domains, subdomains can only contain numbers, letters, and hyphens, and the best subdomains are simple, short, and descriptive.
   
4. Once you’ve typed in a name, cPanel will automatically populate the Document root field for you. This will create a folder to contain your subdomain’s files. You’ll usually want this folder to match the name of your subdomain, so it’s easy to identify where different files live in your account. You might want to change the document root if you already have a folder in your account that has the same name as the subdomain you are trying to create, although this should be rare. Once you’re done, click Create.
5. Once you’re done, click Create. If everything went well, you should see a message that your subdomain was created successfully.
   

Your subdomain will now be available as an option for automatic installation of various software (WordPress, MediaWiki, etc). If you prefer to install web applications manually, you can do so in the document root (folder) you created in step 5.

Confirm that you like the name you selected. If you do, click the Sign Up button. (If not, click the Start Over button, and repeat the above step.)

You should now see a screen confirming that your subdomain is ready. After a few seconds, you will see the regular cPanel options.

There may be times when you need to upload files to your website in the Digital Scholarship at Brown web hosting environment. There are a number of scenarios when this might be necessary:

• You’re working with an application that allows you to install plugins/extensions, but the files need to be manually added to your file manager in order to install them. (Note: This is not required for WordPress which allows you to install themes/plugins through the WordPress dashboard.)
• You’ve developed a custom site/pages using a web design program, and you need to upload the files you created to your file manager
• You’re installing an application that isn’t part of applications list in Installatron.

One way to upload files is by using the File Manager that is part of cPanel. However, sometimes you’ll find it easier/necessary to use File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to move files to your site. This can be particularly useful if you’re working with a web space where you’re not the owner (so you don’t have access to the File Manager in cPanel) or if you need to provide file access to someone else to your space on the web server. File Manager also only allows you to upload files one by one, so if you’re working with large amounts of data then FTP will be preferable.

File Transfer Protocol is a method that allows you to remotely move files to a web server from another location – usually your local/personal computer. Using a pre-defined FTP account (with a username and password), you can configure an FTP client (a program you run on your computer that allows you to transfer files via FTP.

There are lots of FTP clients that you can use; some are free and some are not. The following are available on http://software.brown.edu:

• FileZilla (Mac & PC)
• CyberDuck (Mac & PC)

For the purpose of this tutorial, we’ll show you how to set up FTP in FileZilla, (Cyberduck instructions can be found here) but you should be able to generalize these instructions to use in any FTP client.

If you’re connecting via FTP to your own space on Digital Scholarship at Brown, or if you’re setting up an FTP account for someone else to use, you’ll need to start by getting the proper FTP credentials from cPanel:

1. Log in to digitalscholarship.brown.edu.
   
2. In the Search Box at the top of the page, search for “FTP”, and click the FTP Accounts icon that appears.
3. Every cPanel has an FTP account by default, and you can find those credentials by scrolling down on the FTP Accounts page. You also have the option to create a new FTP account, which can be done by filling out the Add FTP Account form with a username and password. Unless you change it, the new FTP account will be limited to a directory with the same name as the account you’re creating. You can change this to a different directory, if you want to grant this account access to a different location.  NOTE: Make sure you know/remember the password you enter. When you’re done, click Create FTP Account.
   
4. Once you’ve created the new account, you’ll see it appear in the list at the bottom of the FTP Accounts page. In addition to any accounts you’ve created, in the Special FTP Accounts section, you’ll see the default FTP Account. You’ll know this account because the username corresponds to your cPanel username. This FTP account has full privileges to access all directories within your cPanel.
5. For whichever account you need credentials for, click the Configure FTP Client link.
6. Write down the username, server, and port information that appears. You will need to use this (or you will need to provide this to the person you are giving FTP access) along with the password you created in Step 3 in order to configure your FTP client.

PLEASE NOTE:

For cPanel’s default FTP account, use the following settings:

-Connect via SFTP (more secure than FTP)
-Port: 22

For an FTP account that you manually created (shown in Step 3 above), use the following settings:

-Connect via FTP (cPanel doesn’t allow an SFTP connection for manual accounts)
-Port: 21

Below are links to tutorials for setting up both FileZilla and CyberDuck to connect to your FTP account.

• FileZilla Configuration Instructions
• CyberDuck Configuration Instructions

For further assistance on FTP, read this guide.