Using your P Drive to host a website

Reviewed: 22/07/2022

You can use your P Drive at the University to host pages that can be seen on the web:

1. Go into your P drive and add the files you wish to share into the folder called “public_html” (this should be there automatically; if not, contact IT Services).
2. Check to see if the folder has a file in it called “default.htm”. If not, then open Notepad, create a new Notepad file and save it as “default.htm” (note you must specify that you are saving as “all file types”. Put this file into your “public_html” folder.
3. Go to the website http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/ and type in your surname and “Submit” (NOTE: Student names won’t automatically appear when you click “Submit”; you have to wait until the next page, choose your “status” and then search again).
4. Click your name.
5. You should see a link under “Homepage”. Copy this link.
6. At the end of the link add “/” followed by the exact file name and file type. For example, when linking to a file called “Instructions.pdf”; http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/student/Joe.Bloggs would become http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/student/Joe.Bloggs/Instructions.pdf
   (Note: when using folders in your public_html folder, you will need to specify the folder names in a similar fashion, i.e. http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/student/Joe.Bloggs/foldername/Instructions.pdf)
7. This is the link to your document on the web. By pasting it into a web browser, you should be able to connect to your document.