If you want to use the more advanced web features, you will need to set up your web site (also known as your "homepage") so that people viewing it always wind up using this web server for the entire web site, or at least the pieces of it that need to be run on this web server instead of the main departmental web server. To help with this, we have configured this web server to look for DirectoryIndex files in this case-sensitive order:

1. Index.shtml - HTML plus SSI extensionsi
2. Index.html - plain HTML
3. Index.php - PHP
4. index.shtml - HTML plus SSI extensions
5. index.html - plain HTML
6. index.php - PHP

The https://www.cse.buffalo.edu web server ignores uppercased index filenames Index.shtml, Index.html, and Index.php, so you can call your https://www-student.cse.buffalo.edu index file by one of those (uppercased) filenames, and call your distinct https://www.cse.buffalo.edu index file by a lowercase filename.

If you would like to host your entire web site on the student web server, you have several options:

1. Publicize your homepage URL as https://www-student.cse.buffalo.edu/~username/
2. Set up your index.html file so that it simply contains a link to the student web server.
3. Set up your index.html file to automatically redirect people to the student web server.

In your public_html directory, make sure you provide a top-level web site page called Index.html, Index.php, or Index.shtml. If you don't do that and you use either the second or third option above, then you will form a loop that visitors to your homepage will not be able to break out of because this server will be using the same index.html file as our main departmental web server (so this server will be forwarding to itself).

Instead of setting it up so your entire web site gets handled by the student web server, you can set it up so that the student web server only handles the pieces of your web site that the main departmental web server cannot handle. In this case, set up your web site up assuming that it is all being viewed by our main departmental web server, but when it comes to specifying things like the ACTION for a FORM, specify it as a URL that points to the student web server instead.