Turning on PHP, SSI

[rcrisler1]

As you might imagine, we've been requesting PHP/MySQL as centralized UNL server functions for a very long time now.

The lack of these features is obviously very limiting to us all.

Feel free to send a request to IS to enable PHP/MySQL. Gary Aerts (472-7690) is the contact.

While we in University Communications are major content providers and are the people behind the templates, the main campus server is not ours. In fact, like everyone else, we've had to purchase and administrate our own servers due to the lack of these features in IS's hosting offerings.

[saltybeagle]

SSI
I can do simple SSI directives on index.shtml, but when i append the shtml extension on all the other files, they are no longer displayed as HTML files (the code just loads as raw text), and the SSI directives are not processed. Because of this, I wasn't able to use includes for the header and footer, so everything is static.

SSI's processed by mod_include should work fine. If you have a specific page that isn't working and can provide a URL we can try and see what's up with your includes.

I tried to telnet to frontier to see if i had to modify the httpd config file to enable php parsing, but it doesn't look like that it's set up for telnet or SSH

SSH isn't enabled by default on all accounts... you might be able to request it, but I'm not sure if they'll do that.

At any rate, there's not much hope for enabling php without root access - which as it seems will require an act of God.

[saltybeagle]

Well, for example, http://www.unl.edu/yd/news.shtml doesn't render at all in my browser. it just displays the HTML code

It looks like Apache is doing some unwanted content negotiation for you.
Add a carriage return after the line

Code: Select all

<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css">

and that should hint Apache to send the text/html mime type instead of text/plain.

I might also note, this is a side effect of not using the templates as noted in the source.

How do I go about requesting a unl.edu domain name?

The DNS servers are controlled by Information Services, and a connection can be requested through their Network Connection Request form: http://www.unl.edu/is/networking/ipform.html
Under 'Machine Name' that is where your requested subdomain.unl.edu name would go. Although I'm not sure adding entries for machines in the residence halls is something they're accustomed to or eager to do.
An alternative might be using an external registrar (godaddy, register.com) and registering a name for yourself which points to the IP you have in your dorm room.
Or, find a faculty member or department that will let you to stick a machine on their network and register it.

I'd first give them a jab for php, and see where that goes...

Good luck.