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Humanities Information Systems

Humanities Information Systems Home Page

Web Services

Staging Server

OR: Obtaining access and using the Staging Server

What is a Staging Server?

The Staging Server is, by definition, the location in which we develop or 'stage' our Web sites. We have set up the staging server for a variety of reasons.
  1. You have a development area, for creation of content, images, pages, etc that will keep your work together and not clutter up your hard drive.
  2. We keep all the development work in a location where the development is not viewed by the world outside until we are ready for them to view it.
  3. By putting the Web work in one, easily accessed network drive, the Web Manager can designate more than one person to work on the development, thus allowing for easier coordination of what is current and what is not.
  4. The network Staging Server is backed up nightly, insuring less loss of work.
  5. By maintaining almost duplicate Web sites on the Staging and Production Servers, we have a complete backup of our entire system of Web sites.
  6. Keeping the Web pages on the Staging Server allows the Humanities Information Systems Web Services department to better be able to aid, when called upon, in your Web site development.

How do I access the Staging Server?

You must first have a College of Humanities Network account. Once your Humanities Network account is active, you will see that you already have access to the Staging Server!

On a P C:

You will see that you have a drive called Users on 'HumData\Web\Users' or the P:\ drive. On this NP:\ drive, you will see a series of folders from the root directory as follows:
root://
lastname# (i.e. jones5341)
etc..
When setting up your folder in Dreamweaver or a similar H T M L editor, you will simply access this drive as P:\lastname#.

On a Mac:

Your Local Root Folder will be: HUMDATA:Web-UserStaging:lastname#.

Important: the Staging Server is a true Web server, therefore you can access and review your files as though they were on the internet. To see them use this URL: http://wwwtest.cohums.ohio-state.edu/people/lastname#. However, because they are on the Staging Server - they are behind a firewall and cannot be seen from outside the OSU campus community.

How do I get my files to the actual Internet?

Once you have your pages created looking like you want with images properly loading, containing all necessary information and all links working, then it is time to FTP them to the Production Server. There are a variey of ways to use FTP, as is given on our page about the Production Server