NOTE: shell.uoregon.edu is now sftp.uoregon.edu

Ever wanted to have your own webpage at http://uoregon.edu/~YourDuckID? Ever wanted to setup a clean-looking, easy-to-maintain website for a student group your are associated with? Well now the whole process is a snap! Every University of Oregon student is given space to set up their own website.

It’s a fairly complex process to set up all the necessary tools (PHP and MySQL) manually, so I wrote a program to do it for you (mostly) automatically! All you need to do is login to your uoregon.edu account and follow a couple simple instructions.

Why WordPress?

WordPress is tool that lets you create, design and maintain a website without knowing anything about computers or the internet. Anyone can do it! It is meant to be a tool for bloggers, but it functions perfectly for those who just want a normal website.

WordPress can be as simple or as powerful as you need it to be. In my opinion, it is the perfect tool for student groups because of how often management changes. With WordPress, anyone can pick it up and make any changes without any knowledge on how to create websites. The real power of WordPress is that you can create/edit pages from a web interface using an WYSIWYG (visual) editor. You can see a demo of this web interface here (username: admin // password: demo).

Other features:

• Customizable themes so you can easily style your website and give it it’s own distinct look.
• Amazing plugins to let you add any kind of functionality to your website (e.g. adding a contact form to your site).
• Multi-user enivronment so you can add other bloggers/editors to help you edit the website. This is especially useful for student groups with a lot of contributors.

Getting Started

Before you can complete these instructions you will need a program that let’s you access the files on your sftp.uoregon.edu account. Accessing this account is called “SSHing” into it. This is fairly simple for Mac OS X users, but is a bit more complicated if you are using Windows.

You can enable shell access by going to:
http://duckid.uoregon.edu
Select “Manage Optional Account Access”
Then hit “Enable Shell Access”

Windows Users

Note: If you own a Mac, skip to the next section called “Mac Users”.

First, you need to download and install a program called PuTTY (or just download v0.60 directly).

Once it is installed, run it and follow these steps.

Enter sftp.uoregon.edu under the host field. It should look the image to the right.

Press OK. You should get a message saying there is a “Security Alert”. Just press Yes.

Now you’re almost ready to go. Just enter your Duck ID (the same one you use to login to your email and blackboard) and your password. If you’re doing this for a student account, the process is exactly the same, but with the username/password that you would use to login your groups email address. It should look like this:

You’re ready to move on! Go on down to the “Running the Script” section below.

Mac Users

Mac OS X users have it much easier because the program you need is already installed.

You just need to run the Terminal application. The quickest way to get it it is by using the searching for it using the search box (Spotlight) in the top right corner of the screen.

Once that program is up and running you just need to use your Duck ID (the same one you use to login to your email and blackboard) and your password. If you’re doing this for a student account, the process is exactly the same, but with the username/password that you would use to login your groups email address. Here’s what it looks like when I use my Duck ID (jblancha) and password:

Running the Script

Now that you have SSH’ed into you account, you’re ready to run the script!

Type each of the following commands in and press enter after each line. The first command will take a couple moments to run, so don’t type the next one until it is done.

wget http://auzigog.com/perm/wordpress_shell.sh
chmod 0755 wordpress_shell.sh
./wordpress_shell.sh

The last command will run the script I wrote to do all the work for you.

The first thing you need to do is type n and press enter to indicate that you are not an advanced user. Now you should see a bunch of lines being output to the screen.

*** Do you want to install MySQL using the 'mysql_install_db' command? You should do this ONE TIME ONLY
Are you an advanced user who needs the MySQL passwords later? [y/n]: n
// Creating .htaccess in your public_html directory (/home6/spanst/public_html) so all files ending in .php will execute
// Creating php.cgi in your home directory (/home6/spanst) so all files ending in .php will execute
// Generating a port number (between 5000 and 6000) to run MySQL from
// For reference, the port number that MySQL is running on is: 5430
// Making a MySQL configuration file for your account
// Installing the MySQL database. This may take a few moments...
// Setting a root password for wordpress
// Creating a username and password for wordpress
// Configuring a cron job to ensure the MySQL Daemon doesn't go down
// Downloading and placing wordpress files. This may take a moment....
// Creating public_html/wp-content/uploads for uploaded images/files
// Configuring wordpress

// Here is some stuff you can ignore if you don't know what it is:
   PORT: 5430
   MySQL 'root' account password: ########
   MySQL 'wordpressuser' account password: ########
   MySQL database for wordpress: wordpressdb
   MySQL host for connections: sftp.uoregon.edu:5430

SUCCESSS! Visit http://uoregon.edu/~spanst to finish the installation of your blog!
Note: Please remove index.html from your ~/public_html folder so that WordPress can actually work

Note: Please write down the four lines that start with MySQL in case you or someone else ever needs those passwords to fix things down the road.

As the script indicates, you’re done! You can now visit http://uoregon.edu/~YourDuckID/ to give your blog a name. When it asks you for an email address, be sure to use a real one because it that is where your username and password will be sent.

To login to the control panel (where you edit pages and blog posts), go to http://uoregon.edu/~YourDuckID/wp-admin/.

There’s some more information below that you might find helpful, but you’re basically done! If you’ve successfully used this script, please leave a comment below so I know that people are finding it useful. Spread the word to other individuals and groups so everyone can create a useful website!

Extending WordPress

You’re done with the important part. If you want to customize WordPress, here are some suggestions.

• Install a theme to give your site its own look. Check out my favorite themes. (Instructions)
• In the control panel, go to Settings → Permalinks → Select “Day and Name” → Save Changes
• Add a contact form to your site
• Add other authors/editors to your site by going to the control panel and Users → Add New
• Setup Akismet to block spam comments on your blog posts

If you need any other help in working with WordPress, check out their support site.

Good luck! Please leave a comment below if you have any comments or questions!

What the heck did the script do?

If you’re not a big nerd, just scroll down to the comments section. If you’re a more technical user and are curious what happened, here’s an overview. You can find very detailed instructions for all of this on my wiki.

1. Use a .htaccess file to redirect all .php requests to a CGI script
2. Use the CGI script to make sure all .php files are run under PHP5 (instead of being served as text files
3. Install a copy of MySQL for your account on a specific port number.
4. Create a MySQL database for WordPress
5. Set up a cron job to make sure MySQL comes back up if the server ever restarts
6. Download and unzip the latest version of WordPress
7. Automatically edit your WordPress config file with all the information it has just generated

Credits

The only reason I was able to figure out this process in the first place was because of the following people

• Micro’s guide to MySQL on shell – Not the best instructions in the world, but absolutely necessary.
• Easy PHP on shell – Tristan at the EMU marketing department made most of this possible with his instructions for getting PHP files to run properly (instead of being served as text files). Tristan actually wrote a WordPress installation guide similar to this one last month.
• Justin McCraw – Helped me remember the simplest set of steps to get this done
• Bruce and Spencer at the UO for helping with specific issues I had along the way

These days, It seems like I meet a new college freshman every couple of weeks. I always wish I could pass along all the lessons I accumulated during my first year of college. And thanks to the wonders of the interwebs, I can! My experiences were at the University of Oregon, but I think they are applicable anywhere. I suspect that some of these lessons need to be experienced first hand to have any effect on you, but I still think they are worth sharing. Here’s my advice (in order of importance):

#1 The first week defines the rest of the year

I feel like this is the most important piece of advice I could offer, but I also know it’s the hardest thing to control. During the first week, be more outgoing that you normally would. Over the first couple days, meet and talk to every person in the dorm for at least a couple minutes. The best way to develop a community is to do everything as a group for the first week.

Let me give you a breakdown of how things went in my dorm for the first week and how I heard things went in every other dorms:

My dorm:

• Every time we had to go to some mandatory orientation thing, we went as a group and invited every single person on every floor to join us. Whenever someone wanted to go out to get food or go to 7/11, they gathered a bunch of people to go with them.
• The second or third night we were there, we all found ourselves in the lounge just sitting around sharing cool stories for that summer and from our varying pasts. We all told something about our town or our lives.
• Everyone always had their door open (when they were there) and didn’t mind if anyone walked in and started a conversation.

Other dorms:

• Almost no one left their door open when they were there.
• Those who did leave their door open would get offended if you walked into their room without permission.
• Most people would be lucky to know the names of half the people on their floor.

Every time I heard another story like that about other dorms, I was shocked. It just made me more and more thankful that we had developed a great community during the first week we were there. People from other dorms loved our dorm because we were such a tight group. As time went on, people separated into cliques as you would expect, but the friendliness that everything started out on was always present.

#2 Organize Study Groups!

Study groups are amazingly helpful! Find two, three, or four other people who you have class with and get together before assignments are due. You assist one another, make suggestions and help motivate one another. I can only begin the name the numerous benefits! Here are a few:

• You can’t procrastinate your assignments or skip them entirely. If you have a set meeting time to do you homework or paper with the rest of your group, then you have no way to put it off.
• For math/science classes, it’s easy to get stuck on a problem and want to give up, but when there are others there to help you, you have no reason to stop.
• For writing intensive classes, brainstorming works wonders. Come to the study group with a few possible thesis statements ready and bounce them off your partners.
• Helping others on their homework helps you solidify your knowledge.

Here’s what you need to do: During the first week of classes, introduce yourself to the people around you in your lab or discussion classes. When you receive your first assignment, talk to anyone you’ve met (or just random people who look friendly!) and arrange a date a few days before it’s due to get together and do it as a group. After that, it’s easy! Now you know them and can continue organizing study groups!

#3 Study for tests!

Photo by Æ’reg

This may seem like an obvious one, but it’s also one of the most important. It’s easy to procrastinate anything when you’re in the dorms. There’s always someone to hang out with or somewhere to go. I don’t know about you, but I never studied in high school. That bad habit followed me into college. As I walked into my midterms and finals, I became really anxious and I realized what a bad idea it had been to only study for 15 minutes.

It wasn’t until finals of Spring term that I realized how extremely helpful it was to put a sincere effort into studying. I got an A on all my tests that term. Midterms and finals are worth a majority of your grade in most classes, so that’s where your efforts should be focused. I studied a few hours for each test (with my study groups *nudge nudge*). When I walked into each test, I was no longer anxious because I was confident that I knew most of the answers. Part of the reason I was so confident is because I knew what kind of tests the professors were going to give, so I knew how to study. Some of my finals were just a combination of the questions from the midterms.

#4 Get involved

I spent most of my freshman year giving free hugs and it was fantastic, but I sometimes wish I had done more. Obviously the opportunity to join clubs and attend events will always be there, but freshman year is the ideal time to start. There are always tons of events on the bulletin board in your dorm. Some are specific to your dorm/complex, some are specific to a certain club and some are for everybody. Find some that interest you, grab some friends, and go to them!

#6 If you don’t like your roommate, switch

You may come across as rude, but I watched people suffer for nine months with a roommate they despised, and it’s not a pretty sight. Don’t be too hasty to switch roommates though. College is about new experiences, so if you think you could learn something new from staying with your roommate, then tough it out. If you know you’ll never be able to stand them, then switch right away.

#7 Go to sporting events

I’m not into sports and I didn’t go any of the games last year. In hindsight, I really wish I had. I definitely plan on going to some this year. Most colleges will give you tickets for free if you are student (U of O does!). The only catch is that you usually have to wake up early to stand in line to get tickets for the good games, but that’s half the fun!

#8 Figure out housing for the next year

Decide if you want to have a house or apartment for the next year. Start looking for people you think you’ll want to live with. After you get back from winter break, ask people if they want to room with you and start looking for the place you’ll want. That’ll give you plenty of time to make arrangements with your future landlord. Don’t wait until the last minute.

If you’re looking for an apartment, check out this nifty tool that searches craigslist and displays the results on a map for you.

#9 Don’t buy books until you need them

Photo by Vaedri1

Every term, you will usually need to buy $50-$250 worth of books. At the end of each term, I realized that there were some books that I hadn’t even opened once. During my last term, I decided not to buy any books until I needed them (I already had the math book that I needed). I waited until the professor required (not suggested) a reading out of the book. I ended up only buying one book that term and I split the cost with one of my dorm mates who was in the class with me.

Take this advice with a grain of salt. Obviously you need to buy math books to do your assignments. Some books sell out and are hard to get a hold of, so you might not want to wait on all your books. Also, I don’t do as much of the reading for classes as I should, so my definition of needing the book is probably different than someone more studious.

When you do have to buy a book, split the cost with someone in your dorm and share the book when you have to use it. This will save you a bundle of money. Always buy used books when you have the option.

That’s all I have! If you find this useful, leave a comment and let me know. If you have some of your own tips for dorm life or for college life, please share them!

Be on the look out next year for a Sophomore version of this blog about how to live in a house or apartment and deal with bills/rent, parties and neighbors.

Update: I’m as perplexed as the rest of you about where #5 disappeared to. Perhaps it’s absence is just another lesson: Don’t write papers at 4 in the morning the day before they’re due (because that’s about what time I wrote this blog).