Web Publishing at UIC: Overview

Want to know more about the Web and Web Surfing? See Intro to Web Surfing and Searching. It has links to introductory and survey sites on Web and Web surfing topics, including a number of FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions).

Everyone at UIC is welcome to publish on the Web, either personal pages or pages for official departmental or classroom use. Commercial use is not allowed.

The ACCC runs Web servers (known as www.uic.edu and www2.uic.edu) on its central UNIX machines (tigger and icarus, respectively). Web publishing on an ACCC Web server requires an account on the machine that it runs on.

(There are other Web servers on campus, in Math and EECS, for example. Except for the general how-to information, including many of the links on the Help and Related Links page, the instructions in these pages are specific to the ACCC Web service on tigger and icarus.)

All you need is an account on tigger or icarus and a little knowledge of the mechanics: how HTML works, and where to put your files.

• Create an account online or visit the consultants.
• Beginner's Guide will get you started with the basics of Web publishing.

• Request for Departmental Web Space
• Request for Student Organization Web Space (or change in access)
• Request for Class Page Web Space
• Send miscellaneous requests or questions to www@uic.edu

After you submit your request, you will receive an email message saying where your organization, department, or class Web pages should go and what its URL will be.

• The Instructional Technology Lab specializes in helping teachers with Web publishing (as well as other aspects like class conferencing systems.)
• Consider ACCC Seminars on various aspects of web publishing.
• There are many other campus units that provide technology resources.

• Accessibility and Usability Making Web pages accessible to people with disabilities has two advantages:
  • It's in accordance with federal law.
  • Designing for accessibility almost always improves the usability for people without disabilities.
  Many techniques for accessibility are technically easy. See:
  • UIC Web Design FAQ Plus Answers - a short list of quick Web access techniques.
  • Designing Accessible Web Pages - includes summaries of the W3C Web access tips and guidelines, information on how to test your pages (including software tools), and links to other information.
  • W3C Accessibility Guidelines The gold standard of Web accessibility; don't let the length of this document fool you, it's quite useful.
• Useit - Jakob Nielson's site on usability. Many succinct, thought-provoking essays on how to make usable by humans. How people read on the Web, 10 top mistakes, microcontent, why frames are bad, etc. Highly recommended.
• See also: Related Links