Public entry page for anonymous access
BSCW folders allowing public access may be equipped with an additional entry page for anonymous access. While the members of the folder may use the ‘normal’ BSCW user interface to work on the folder, the anonymous user is presented with a specific entry page. This way, the actual folder and is hidden from anonymous access and only selected material from the folder is presented to anonymous users, who may not even be aware that they access a BSCW server.
The creation of public entry pages is intended for users who are familiar with the creation of HTML pages.
Note that public entry pages must have been enabled by the BSCW system administrator by setting
INDEX-PAGE-EXT='index*.html'
in the BSCW configuration file.
The public entry page is an HTML file named
index.html, which is to be contained in the published folder. The
mechanism of index.html in a public BSCW folder is similar to
the presence of a file index.html in a website directory: access
from the World-Wide Web presents the file index.html and not
the contents of the directory or folder.
Here is how you create public entry pages in BSCW:
•
Create a new file named index.html using
in the top menu of the folder you intend to publish with a welcome page.
• Edit
index.html to your needs. Relative links inside
index.html may refer to objects in your folder. You find a
schematic example below in this section.
• 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
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.
Example of a public entry page
The following schematic example shows how the HTML code of an entry page could look like. This entry page presents links to two documents of the published folder embedded in some text of your choice.
<x!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML
3.2//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<TITLE>Title</TITLE></HEAD>
<BODY><H1>Heading</H1>
<P>Some text</P>
<P><A HREF=”./document1”>Document
1</A>
<P>Some text</P>
<P><A HREF=”./subfolder/document2”>Document
2</A>
<P>Some text</P>
</BODY></HTML>
Other languages
All available languages other than English may also be used
for public entry pages. E.g., if you provide an additional file
index-de.html in the published 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 welcome page.