Faculty/Staff Profiles

• What is a faculty/staff profile?
• How do you establish a profile?
• How can you access the profile tool?
• Help

Related information

• What is professional Web/FTP space?
• How can you upload files to your professional Web/FTP space using FTP software?
• Connecting from off-campus

What is a faculty/staff profile?

A faculty or staff profile is a repository for all your professional activities and accomplishments. The information in your profile may be viewed by colleagues, students and the general public via UMass Dartmouth's Faculty/Staff pages.

• Faculty Pages
• Staff Pages

There are two options for using a profile:

Easier option

Use the profile tool enter your biography, projects, interests, course information and much more. The course information section allows you to link to, upload or create information related to your courses.

More in-depth option

You can use the profile tool in conjunction with professional web/FTP space that you have or will develop. You can upload files to your web space using an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program. The profile tool will allow you to link to additional web pages that you've placed on your professional web space. More about option 2

Note: A third option is to use the Web/FTP space and not use the profile tool. However, this option is not recommended; your files will not be listed on the Faculty/Staff pages, and they won't be searchable or maintained. More about this option

How do you establish a faculty or staff profile?

You start by establishing an alias in the self-service system. That alias becomes the folder name for your profile within the faculty/staff profile site.

For example: Mary Smith could establish an alias called mary.smith. Her profile would be found at: www.faculty.umassd.edu/mary.smith/

If you have already established an alias for email use, you can return to the self-service system to select to use that alias for the profile tool. This establishes your profile.

• Read more about the alias
• Go to the self-service system to establish an alias or to use your alias for the profile tool

How can you access the profile tool?

The tools on the Faculty/Staff profile pages allow you to build your profile. Go to the Faculty/Staff web pages at:

• Faculty Pages
• Staff Pages

Find your name in the alphabetical listing and click on it. Then click on the "Login" link on the top of the page and use your UMassD Logon (username and password) to log in. You can then begin to build your profile.

Note: If you have recently used the self-service tool to make changes to your account, please allow at least 5 minutes for the changes to take effect before you visit your profile.

Help

• If you have questions about to establish or revise your faculty/staff profile, please contact Instructional Development at x8501.
• For help in establishing an alias, please contact the IT Service Center, x8790.
• If you have questions about using a specific alias, please contact Access Services at x8528.

Related information

What is professional Web/FTP space?

Each faculty and staff member at UMass Dartmouth may upload files of a professional nature to the faculty/staff web server. Each individual has 10MB of space on the server.

"FTP" stands for File Transfer Protocol, the method of transferring files from one's own computer to the web server. There are a variety of FTP programs you can use, such as Fetch and WS_FTP.

Typically, you will create files using HTML (hypertext markup language, the basic language of the Internet) or an HTML visual editor such as Macromedia Dreamweaver. JPGs (photo files), PDFs and Word documents are also appropriate. (Word is not universally viewable, however: you must have Word installed on your machine to be able to view a Word document.)

How can you upload files to your professional Web/FTP space using FTP software?

(Specific directions for the most common FTP programs are noted below.)

1. First, you must disable "Passive Mode" transfers:

   • Fetch: Go to Preferences. Look for "Use passive mode transfers (PASV)"; it is under "Firewall" in the latest version, but may be under another tab in earlier versions. Make sure it is unchecked, then click "OK".
     
   • WS_FTP: click the "Options" button in the bottom row of buttons (you may need to close the "Session Properties" box first). Select the "Session" tab, and look for "Use Passive Transfer Mode". Make sure it is unchecked. Then click the "Apply" button, then the "OK" button.
     
   • Dreamweaver: In the Site Definition dialog box (see Dreamweaver Help to learn how to get there), click the "Remote Info" section. (In Dreamweaver MX, you may need to click the "Advanced" tab at top.) Look for "Use Passive FTP" in the "Remote Info" section, usually underneath the "Password:" field. Make sure it is unchecked, then click "OK."
     
   • SmartFTP: Go to "Tools -> Settings". Select "Connection" in the left-pane. In the right-pane, in the Data connection section select the mode as "Active Mode(PORT)" from the drop-down list.
   • For other FTP or web development programs, consult that program's help files.

   Not doing this will cause the server to lock you out and will require a member of Web Design and Development to manually set your access again. You should only need to do this once, unless you use another program or another machine.

2. Use your UMass Dartmouth email account username and password to log in:

   Professional Web/FTP space
   FTP hostname:	www.faculty.umassd.edu or www.staff.umassd.edu or www.students.umassd.edu (as appropriate)
   FTP file system:	auto detect (or UNIX)
   FTP space:	Faculty/Staff have a maximum of 10 MB Web space available.
   Web URL:	http://www.(faculty or staff or students).umassd.edu/(your chosen alias)/

   
   
   • Fetch: type FTP hostname into the "Host:" field, your email account username in the "User ID:" field, and your email password in the "Password:" field.
     
   • WS_FTP: type FTP hostname into the "Host Name/Address:" field, your email account username in the "User ID:" field, and your email account password in the "Password:" field. Make sure the "Host Type:" drop menu is set to "Automatic detect" or "UNIX (standard)."
     
   • Dreamweaver: In the Site Definition dialog box (see Dreamweaver Help to learn how to get there), click the "Remote Info" section. (In Dreamweaver MX, you may need to click the "Advanced" tab at top.) Select "FTP" from the "Access:" field, then type FTP hostname in the "FTP Host:" field, your email account username in the "Login:" field, and your email account password in the "Password:" field.
     
   • SmartFTP: type FTP hostname in the "Address" field
   • For other FTP or web development programs, consult that program's help files.

   Note: As this username and password gives you access to a variety of electronic services and online resources, we strongly encourage you not to share your username and/or password with colleagues or students and not to store your password in your FTP client software or your Web browser.

3. The server automatically converts all file and folder names to lower case, and removes all characters other than letters, numbers, "-", "_", and "." (without the quotes) from the file and folder names. Only the "Application.cfm" file is saved with an upper case "A" at the beginning, as mandated by the ColdFusion server. Use only lower case file and folder names to ensure that all links and references within your Web page and to your Web page from other sites work correctly.

4. (a) If you're using option 2 described above (faculty/staff profile plus Web/FTP space), the default homepage file "welcome.cfm" has already been (or will be) created via the profile tool. Please do not create one using the FTP process.
   
   If for some reason you do inadvertently create a "welcome.cfm" via FTP, your profile welcome page will be overwritten. Re-create it by returning to the self-service system, activating your profile, and continuing through to the end of the validation process.
   
   (b) If you're not using the faculty/staff profile option, but only the Web/FTP space (not recommended), your homepage on your web space should be called "welcome.cfm." If in the future you opt to use the profile tool, this "welcome.cfm" file will be saved as "welcome_bak.cfm," and the profile page will become "welcome.cfm".

5. Please make sure that all links within your page work after uploading the files to the server, and that all images show up correctly.

6. Keep file and folder names short, but meaningful.

7. Keep the file size of images small: no larger than 100K. It's the size of the image file that matters during download over slow modem connections (not the dimensions: height and width).

8. Use the UMassD Web servers only for professional purposes. Do not use the server as a file repository.

Connecting from off-campus

You can connect to the UMassD Web servers from off-campus via FTP if your computer is registered with the UMass Dartmouth campus computer network and has a campus IP address. If you wish to use your FTP account from off-campus, you must first establish your UMass Dartmouth Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection. You can find more information on how to set up your VPN connection at http://www.umassd.edu/cits/wireless/ . Also refer to Accessing email and FTP via VPN from off campus: a brief guide.