Personalizing your Automatic Homepage

As of Spring Break 2003, all employees can now use the MyMCC portal to automatically create a homepage for themselves. Once it is created, employees can also personalize it by adding links, office hours information, and a photo. What follows is a brief overview of how to personalize your homepage.

Employee Photo

An employee’s photo will automatically appear if the employee names his/her picture file “instructor.jpg” (the photo must be named “instructor.jpg” -- not the actual instructor’s name) and places it inside the “images” subfolder, which is located in the “homepage_resources” folder of the www directory. (see figure 1)

The “instructor.jpg” file must be 118 x 118 pixels to prevent distortion of the image.

For help with creating your photo, please make an appointment with Ken Costello or Bob Farwell in the Center for Teaching and Learning. (461-7666)

Professional Information Link

A “Professional Information” link will automatically appear for employees who have a “personal” subfolder in their “www” folder. The “personal” subfolder must have an “index.html” file in it. (see figure 1)

Course Information Link

All course titles that appear in the automatic course listing appear as live links under the following circumstances:

* The instructor must have a subfolder for the course listed in the www folder. This subfolder must include the course prefix and number—using all lowercase letters and no spaces. For the example listed in Figure 1, the subfolder looks like this: his105 (see figure 1)

* The course subfolder must have an “index.html” file in it.

Figure 1: Subfolders located within a WWW folder

Office Hours

The default text for office hours is: “By Appointment.”

Employees who wish to specify particular days and times for office hours can do so via the “Office Hours” tool located in the “Tools” section of the MyMCC portal. Ten different date/time combinations are available. Once employees click the submit button the schedule will appear on the homepage.

Miscellaneous Links

Employees can create up to five miscellaneous links on their homepage via the “Manage User Links” tool located in the “Tools” section of the MyMCC portal. To create a link, click on “Add a Personal Link for Your Homepage.” Enter the actual url (up to 250 characters) and a brief description (up to 20 characters). Once employees click the submit button, the brief description text will appear on the left border of the homepage and be linked to the url that was indicated.