When it comes to setting up simple web site at Columbia, one must first author HTML pages, properly manage and organize the files, and FTP them up to your "public-html" folder on your CUNIX account. There's documentation on how to do this, but it's daunting for some.

A simpler alternative is to use DropBox to generate a web site. We've written about DropBox before (see related entries) because we like the service as a simple way to manage files across many computers with seamless backup and synchronization.

DropBox's tips and tricks provides simple instruction on how to you can place the entire site within your Public folder and get a public URL for the home page within this folder. You can even configure your own domain name to point to that URL.

Additionally, a service like DropPages allows you to share a folder in your DropBox account that contains your site -- the service will synchronize and publish your files for you. Your files can be created using HTML or a simpler code called "markdown".

In either case all, of your web pages can be edited directly on your computer and the synchronization happens seamlessly in the background.