Logging in and the administrator's menu

Point your web browser to:

https://YOURSERVER.edu/manhat2-sbin/super_doorstep

Again, replace YOURSERVER.edu with the name of your server, and if you are not yet using SSL, replace https with http. Enter your super-user username and password, and you should soon be to the administrative menu shown below.

The above URL is your entry point into Manhattan's administrative system. You probably should NOT post it to a web page, since there's no need to advertise the URL to the world.

The administrative system allows you to pretty much manage the entire Manhattan server from a web browser. Commands are loosely grouped into four categories: Courses, Students & Teachers, Server, and Administrators.

Most of this manual is devoted to explaining the use of the commands available from this menu. There's a few things to note about the administrator's menu before we move on.

When you login, the top of the page shows both the current time on the server, and the time of your last login. Pay attention to what you see here. The server time IS important, since the messages students and teachers post to their classrooms are marked with the time sent, time read, etc. If your server's clock is off by more than a few minutes, you should correct the problem. Secondly, the time of your last login, along with the information regarding your current and last host addresses, can help you determine if someone else has stolen your super-user username and password.

The Change Your Password button of course, is used to change the super-user's password, and the Log Out button is used to log out of the administrative system.

Notice the fine print at the bottom of the page. The line in the above screenshot that reads "DEVELOPMENT VERSION" is picked up from the custom.h file. At the time this particular installation was compiled, the INSTALLATION_TITLE setting in custom.h was changed from its default "The Manhattan Virtual Classroom". Changing this custom.h value can become important to you when you manage more than one installation of Manhattan, since it can remind you of which version you are administering at the moment.

Immediately below the installation title is the version of Manhattan you are running, which happens to be "Version 2.1 beta - September 10, 2003" in the above screenshot.