Bypass a "restricted website" sign.

I know, it's my first post. I'm a newbie. Laugh at me. Here's my question:

I'm working at a high-school for journalism class, and the provider for our website is permanantly out of service so we've decided to move the site to our local server. Most of our website team doesn't know HTML to well, and instead of me teaching it to them in its entirety, they've decided that geocities or a similar page-builder is the best solution. The problem is,however, that the school has geocities and most homepage websites blocked for student access. I know there are ways to bypass this, I've seen them before. Do you think you could offer me your expertise?

Thank You.

Andy "disposablehero" Posterick

Why not speak to the admin of the network about allowing the website address and block the rest rather than trying to circumvent the rules and get into trouble?

Freeserve offer a very easy to use Sitebuilder.

I used it to throw together a few site.

The url is http://mysite.freeserve.com

An example of a page using the templates.

Http://mysite.freeserve.com/jokebook

You are right there ways, but possible methods will allow you to view anything on the internet. And there are meny things that should be blocked on a school internet. So I would follow mSMittens advice

SittingDuck

also to add- your local (school's) admin won't be able to help you at all...
most school proxies (like bess) are run from downtown, by and admin who actually know's what he/she is doing... and rest-assure he won't grant you any special privileges (this was my case , in school... i ended up having to write a script to get around it, although that script wouldn't help you) anyway- try looking into other free-hosting servers, check out wich one's are being denied/passed etc...

I checked out the freeserve site and it may suit your needs better than geocities as it offers 30meg of space and virtually no personal info-


yeah- don't bypass school policy as i just went through a big hassle because they thought I may have (I didn't or at least not for what i was investgated for)

Quote:

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Originally posted here by MsMittens
Why not speak to the admin of the network about allowing the website address and block the rest rather than trying to circumvent the rules and get into trouble?

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Have to echo those sentiments -- nothing but trouble here.

Find another s/w package (as suggested earlier) that will work without causing an incident for you and your team. Better to work within the rules than find yourself out of work altogether.

Plus I know if you have something like "BESS" (stupid dog) as your web filter, usually there is a link on the BESS page that comes up when a site is blocked. If you happen to stay with Geocities, or it blocks whoever you use for a web site provider, then maybe you should try sending a message to the web filter service used by your school and requesting them to unblock that site because it is actually for educational purposes.

Unless those restrictions are set by some particularly smart way you should be able to bypass them by using a proxy... A list of free proxies can be found here: http://directory.google.com/Top/Comp.../Proxies/Free/
But as the others already stated it would be much easier to discuss about the situation with the admin. He should understand to either loosen the restrictions or set up some other system for your site.

Yes but that is not exactly the point here, getting around a filtering system or security system is breaking rules which equals bad news. Especially with this being a school activity, going about using proxies to get around secuirty or anything would probably end up in a student or students being kicked out of the program and could also cause other negative affects. If these kids have worked hard on their sites, then why loose all that by doing something when there are more logical and rash ways of going about dealing with the simple issue at hand?

right on AciDriveHB, that would be way to easy... we have to follow the rules while in school ;)
the best i can offer is try to find a FreeHosting service that is not banned, etc... And create a mirror... um, until we can think of a more intelligent way to do this, that's all I got?

Why not just *use* your local server, and dig up an easy-to-use pagebuilder, definitely not a "WYSIWYG", but one that at least shows students the html code while building. That way, the students can develop their own skills in a few days and feel good about it. HTML code-junkies can run circles around WYSIWYG addicts when it comes to fixing a serious page problem. Give them a chance, don't sell them short, the ones who really want to build web pages will excell, while the students who really aren't interested might go into other things, like code or something. Anyway, that's the way i see it. i just got back from helping one of my G-Sons (11 yrs old) set up his new 'puter, (third one so far) and he builds simple pages with notepad. If he can do it, your HS chums can also. Give them the challenge. I'll bet my coffee change they'll rise to the contest! ;)

Thanks for all the help/ideas/suggestions guys!

I don't have to worry about "breaking" any rules, we have permission from 3 out of the 5 school board members to bypass the security. I live in Arkansas, so our network admin is relatively.... how should I put this.... dumb. Thanks for the help, I'll try and see if that website is available for our students' viewing when the weekend is over - and if not I'll connect to a proxy.

Thanks!!!

I'm working to set up a student-site for my school also. Unlike you, the admins and everyone else is taking care of everything else. Also, I'm only 1 of the 3 people working on it.

The way I see it, even if YOU bypass the security, how will the STUDENTS bypass it? Our server needs to be accessed from School & Home. I know that most School Computer Use Policies in my area say that you can't tell others how to circumvent security measures. In my view, for your server to be useful, you will need to access it from home and school.

You may be better off either locating a host that isn't blocked, or you can set your own server up if you know enough. I'd strongly recommend that you research other alternatives before maintaining your own web server, as they can quickly become trouble if you don't pay attention for a week or so.


I'm sorry that I don't have a solution, am pretty much echoing what others have said, and showing that there are other bigger problems to worry about with the current recommended solution. But one thing you may need to do is pay attention to how your solution can be abused. Most people may not be smart enough to reconfigure their Internet Explorer to use a proxy at school, or some other solution, but the moment they find out that they can visit hotmail or geocities, they do. Pretty soon, you could have a problem on your hands...

Good luck!


-Tim_axe

Definitely do not attempt to bypass your school's restrictions, I did, and I almost got booted. Such touchy admins. Oh well. And I have to say, this post sounds a little suspect, why wouldn't the teacher of the journalism class try to get geocities unblocked for you?

if the problem of internet access is that there is a nany program running restricting websites then try ctrl+alt+del and end tasking it.

Quote:

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Originally posted here by MsMittens
Why not speak to the admin of the network about allowing the website address and block the rest rather than trying to circumvent the rules and get into trouble?

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Listen to her.
She's a teacher. :D