Faculty.SMU

Please note:  All new faculty sites will be created on people.smu.edu using Wordpress. The instructions below are provided for archive purposes and pertain only to those sites hosted on the faculty.smu.edu server.

About Faculty.SMU

Faculty are eligible to receive server space on faculty.smu.edu to host academic related websites.

Getting Started

To edit and publish your website on faculty.smu.edu, you must first build your site using any web page authoring tool. Sharepoint Designer, Web Expressions, and Dreamweaver are the most popular applications at SMU for web publishing. Whichever application you choose, you will need to connect to the appropriate server to upload your content. See the guidelines below:

  • Connect to faculty.smu.edu (notice no www!)
  • When prompted, enter SMU\SMUID as your username and enter your SMU password
  • Depending on your application, changes may synchronize automatically upon saving the file or you may need to choose to upload the files when you are done.

Requirements:

In order to upload files to the server, you must have a FTPS client (An FTP client that transmits over an Explicit SSL/TLS protocol).  This client is included in Microsoft Web Expressions by default. All other applications will have to install a separate FTP client to upload/download files. We recommend installing CyberDuck as it is compatible with both the Mac and Windows Platform.

To download Cyberduck, go to http://cyberduck.ch

For Linux computers, we recommend using FileZilla.  Visit http://filezilla-project.org/download.php to download the software.

Connect to Faculty.SMU

Configuring Cyberduck to connect to your website

  1. Launch Cyberduck
  2. Click File
  3. Click Open Connection
  4. Enter the following:
    1. Set the drop down menu to FTP-SSL (Explicit Auth TLS) 
    2. Servername: people.smu.edu or faculty.smu.edu
    3. Username: your SMU ID number
    4. Password: Your SMU password
    5. Click the arrow to display "More Options"
    6. Enter your email alias in the Path field (i.e. cuser)
    7. Select Passive (PASV) as the connect mode
    8. Click Connect

    Configuring FileZilla to connect to your website

    1. Launch FileZilla
    2. Click the File Menu
    3. Select Site Manager
    4. Click the New Site button
    5. Set the Host to faculty.smu.edu or people.smu.edu
    6. The port number can be left blank
    7. Set the Protocol field to "FTP-file transfer protocol"
    8. Choose Exclicit FTP over TLS as the encryption type
    9. For Logon type, select "ask for password"
    10. Set User as SMUID number
    11. Click the Advanced tab
    12. In the Default remote directory field, enter /username (ex: /cuser)
    13. Then choose Connect
    14. Enter your password when prompted
    15. If you get an Unknown certificate error, click OK

    Editing Content on Faculty.SMU

    There are three basic steps to editing and publishing your website.

    1. Download a local copy of the file you wish to edit onto your computer using the FTPS utility. 
    2. Edit the webpage using your preferred web authoring tool (Dreamweaver, Sharepoint Designer etc). Save your changes to the file stored on your computer
    3. Upload the revised page to the server using an FTPS utility

    Step 1

    1. Launch Cyberduck or FileZilla.  
    2. Locate the file you wish to edit
    3. Double click on the file to download it to your computer.  If you wish to specify the download location, click the arrow next to the action icon and select Download To.

    Step 2

    1. Open the file from your computer using your preferred web authoring tool.
    2. Make all changes as needed and Save

    Step 3

    1. Launch Cyberduck or FileZilla and connect to your site
    2. Drag and Drop the file you wish to upload or
      1. Click the Upload icon
      2. Navigate to the page(s) you wish to publish
      3. Click Choose (**please note, if you use the Upload feature on the Windows client, the file extensions must be displayed)
      4. Verify that your content published successfully to the server