Public portal page for anonymous access
BSCW folders allowing public access may be equipped with an additional portal page for anonymous access. Note that public portal pages must have been enabled by the BSCW system administrator by setting
INDEX-PAGE-EXT='index*.html'
in the BSCW configuration file.
The public portal page must be named
index.html. The mechanism of index.html in a
public BSCW folder is similar to the presence of a file
index.html in a website directory: Whereas the members of the
folder may use the ‘normal’ BSCW user interface to work on the folder, the
anonymous user is presented with a different interface, i.e. the portal page
index.html. This way, the actual folder and its contents are hidden
from anonymous access. Anonymous users may not even be aware that they access a
BSCW server.
Here is how you create portal pages in BSCW:
• Edit
index.html to your needs. Relative links inside
index.html may refer to objects in your folder.
•
Upload the file index.html to your folder.
• Open
the folder to public access via 
.
• Anonymous users may now access your folder using the public addressing scheme in BSCW:
http://your-bscw-server/pub/bscw.cgi/folder-id
• As an
optional extension, you may open the portal page index.html for
anonymous upload by including BSCW actions (e.g., ‘Add Document’) so that
an anonymous user may directly invoke these actions within the portal (see
‘Anonymous upload’ below).
Using the URL
http://your-bscw-server/bscw/bscw.cgi/folder-id
will present the BSCW folder for non-anonymous users in its full functionality.
Anonymous upload
We will use the organization of a conference as an application example for public portal pages with anonymous upload. The prospective participants of the conference are to anonymously upload their contributions into a BSCW workspace.
The file index.html will consist of the
conference home page, including links to graphics, documents, other HTML pages,
etc., all stored and managed in your BSCW folder by the workspace members, who
are to be thought of as the organizing committee.
To let the prospective contributors submit their papers and
store them – invisible for the other authors – in the conference folder, you
include the ‘Add Document’ action into the portal page index.html
(or into another HTML page in the respective folder) by adding a link like the
following:
http://your-bscw-server/bscw/bscw.cgi/folder-id?op=addoc
You may also modify the BSCW upload form to better suit your needs. Copy the BSCW upload form (you may need to ask your BSCW system administrator for its precise location in your particular BSCW installation)
bscw-directory/BSCW44/messages/en/upload.html
from your BSCW server and modify it to your liking; please
make sure that you do not remove or change the relevant HTML FORM
variables. The following example (xyz_upload.html) shows how the
HTML code could look like:
<x!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC
"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<TITLE>Upload
contribution</TITLE></HEAD>
<BODY><H1>Upload
your contribution to XYZ workshop</H1>
<FORM
ENCTYPE="multipart/form-data"
ACTION=".?op=_addoc"
METHOD=POST>
<INPUT TYPE="hidden"
NAME="op" VALUE="addoc">
Select your local
document:
<BR><INPUT NAME="files"
TYPE="file" SIZE=60 ACCEPT="*/*">
<BR><INPUT
TYPE="submit" VALUE="Upload your document">
</FORM></BODY></HTML>
Put xyz_upload.html into your BSCW conference
folder so that you can refer to xyz_upload.html via a relative link
in index.html:
<A HREF="./xyz_upload.html"> Upload document here </A>
Note that anonymous upload requires that anonymous access to this folder must include the right to add documents (see 4.5.6.1 Publishing a folder).
Other languages
All available languages other than English may also be used
for public portal pages. E.g., if you provide an additional file
index-de.html in the portal folder with a German translation of the
file index.html, anonymous users who have selected the German
language interface for their browser will be shown the German version of the
portal page.