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Reusable conference website template for all IACR events

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Conference Website Template

Be warned, this installation file is out of date. If you have questions about the use of this template, contact Kay McKelly.

This is intended for all IACR conference websites (Crypto, Eurocrypt, Asiacrypt, CHES, FSE, PKC, RWC, and TCC). If you are doing some other conference, then see below.

This is a complete rewrite of the IACR conference template. The previous version of this template was written in javascript and Bootstrap 3, but this one is written mostly in php and Bootstrap 4. You should not mix the old version with the new version, because they are incompatible. The old template has been deprecated and you should not copy the pages from an old conference. That version has been abandoned and there will be no further updates.

You do not need to know bootstrap, because most pages already contain the bootstrap DOM structure that is needed, and you can cut and paste from other pages if you see something you like (e.g., a card). The most basic things are handled for you, and you simply need to edit the content in the <main> element of a page. If you find that you can't understand something, the documentation for bootstrap is quite good. The most basic thing is to understand the bootstrap grid system for columns that work on both mobile and desktop. You shouldn't need to download anything provided you are online, because the template is built to load bootstrap straight from iacr.org.


INSTALLATION

You will need to have php installed on the machine you work on (you do not need a web server like apache, because php provides a basic one). php is already installed on the iacr.org machine, but it's best to work on your local machine, and only push files to the live server once you are satisfied with them.

In order to get started with the template, simply open a shell, change to your working directory, and type:

git clone https://github.com/IACR/conference-template.git .

(NOTE THE DOT AT THE END OF THE PREVIOUS LINE)

If you do not have git installed, then you can download a zip file with the template. This creates a copy of the files for the site on your machine, but it will make it harder to pull in subsequent changes made to the template. Next make sure you are in the directory containing acceptedpapers.php and run the command

php -S localhost:8000

Then point your browser at http://localhost:8000 to see the website. Once you’ve verified it’s serving correctly, you can begin to edit the relevant files.

REQUIRED: THE BASICS

There are a number of places in the pages that require you to edit them, but you are free to edit anything you like. Some things are supplied by downloading a json file for basic metadata, the program committee, and the program. Other things require you to edit the text in a specific page, and we have marked them with class="editMe" to make them stand out in red. When you edit these things, you should remove the "editMe" class.

Changing the conference names/dates/location

Assuming that your conference is listed in the IACR calendar of events, you should be able to download the json/metadata.json file from https://iacr.org/cryptodb/pc. This file contains year, conference names, latitude, longitude, etc, and the settings there show up on all pages of the site. The year field should match the path of the directory that you host your pages from on iacr.org.

Different conferences will have different kinds of dates:

  • some conferences have a deadline to propose affiliated events
  • some conferences have a rebuttal phase
  • some conferences have papers submitted to a journal first (ToSC or TCHES)
  • some conferences have only nominations for speakers (RWC)

You should change includes/important_dates.php to reflect the dates that are relevant to your conference. These will show up in several different pages, but there is a single file where your important dates need to be updated.

Changing the names of the program committee

The program committee is stored in json/comm.json. You should go to https://iacr.org/cryptodb/pc to download your program committee file. The IDs in the file are used to enter the program committee into Cryptodb so be careful if you edit this file by hand. The program committee will show up in the callforpapers.php page.

Changing the contact information

The program chairs and general chair appear on both callforpapers.php and contact.php. You will want to edit these.

Updating the code of conduct page

Section 8.10 of the General Chair Guidelines requires an up to date code of conduct for each conference. You should edit the conduct.php accordingly. Sections that need editing will show up in red on the page because they contain a span with class editMe.

Adding your page content to individual pages (*.php)

All pages have included boilerplate content, some of which is commented out. You will need to go through each individual page and edit content that does not pertain to your conference, as well as add your own information. As mentioned before, some content has a class="editMe" to indicate that you should edit it.

We strongly recommend proofreading the HTML to make sure all content relates to your specific conference. Some content may not be ready at the time that you first put your site up, so you can comment things out in the pages with standard HTML comments: <!-- this is a comment -->

To delete a page

You may not need every page (e.g., you may not have a rump session). You can omit a page by deleting the php file and removing the link to it in includes/nav.php (or anywhere else in the php files).

To add a new page

Let's say you want a separate page for an affiliated event called event1.php. You would create the page by copying empty.php to event1.php, and then edit event1.php to add your content. Then you can create a link to it from the affiliated.php file, or create a menu item in includes/nav.php to link to it.

If you create your new page in a subdirectory, then you will need to change all of the include paths in empty.php when you copy it, e.g., use

require "../includes/head.php";

Deployment to the IACR server

In order to host your website on the iacr.org server, you will need login credentials from the IACR webmaster. You will then be assigned a directory like /var/www/asiacrypt/html/2021) for your conference. If you place all the files from the template in that directory, you will immediately be able to reference it via https://asiacrypt.iacr.org/2021. Obviously you should substitute asiacrypt with the name of your conference (e.g., crypto, eurocrypt, rwc, tcc, etc).

The URLs on iacr.org start with <conference_name>.iacr.org/<year>/ and for this reason the root URL for the site is not at the root of the server. The file includes/nav.php has a function that computes the base URL from the server name, and should work on both your local machine and the iacr.org server.


Additional steps

When you first put up your site, you will probably only have basic information about the call for papers, the program committee, the dates, etc. Later on you will want to add more information in the individual pages:

  • travel information
  • visa information
  • the link to the paper submission server.
  • applications for affiliated events
  • announcements of affiliated events.
  • the list of accepted papers
  • abstracts and biographies for invitedtalks.php
  • the program
  • the link to the registration server on secure.iacr.org.
  • information about the rump session (if you have one)
  • information about corporate sponsors (if any)

Accepted papers

The list of accepted papers is stored in json/papers.json, and can be exported from websubrev. Once that file exists, it should show up in the acceptedpapers.php page. The format of the file is shown in json/sample_papers.json.

Program

The program is more complicated, but there is a tool at https://www.iacr.org/tools/program to help you create the program from the list of accepted papers. This tool provides you with an exported JSON file json/program.json that will display your program on the program.php page. The program will probably need updating several times when you add session chairs, links to papers, links to slides, etc. The tool is designed to make this process very easy.

Travel information

Travel information resides in travel.php but there is an additional page for visas if you need one. The travel.php page incorporates a map that is centered at the latitude, longitude contained in json/metadata.json. It was assumed that your latitude, longitude is the location of the venue, so please check that. There is a piece of javascript in travel.php that places pins on the map at the appropriate places, and you should update that to provide information about airport, train station, hotels, or locations of outings in order to help people plan their trip. There is a tool at https://iacr.org/tools/geocode/ that will assist you in locating the latitude, longitude of points on a map.

Invited talks

Invited talks are in invitedtalks.php. There is boilerplate content commented out there that will serve as a good starting point.

Rump session

If you choose to have a rump session, it's good to put the schedule online on the rumpsession.php page. There is no official way to organize submissions for a rump session, or what the program should look like. You may wish to use the program editor to organize the program, and then build something like program.php for your rump session page.


Optional Customization

Changing the default colors

You can choose from several different "themes" that provide different color combinations and layout of the menus. These are controlled in the file includes/head.php, which by default includes styles/orange_theme.css. You can change that to any file of the styles/*_theme.css files (or make your own). If you choose a different file, it will change the color scheme for the entire site. We recommend that you try a few to see what you prefer. There is a page to view the different themes located at this page. Some of the themes have a photograph or banner image at the top, and the next section has instructions to change that.

If you are trying out different themes, you may need to disable the browser cache to see the change, because browsers ordinarily cache css and javascript files. You might also try (chrome) or (firefox) instructions.


Changing the header image

Once you choose a theme, you can also choose a header image for themes that have a banner across the top. The header image is specified in the themes file mentioned in the previous section, as .headerImg. There are several default images located in the images/banners/ directory. Each theme currently uses a different banner, but you can freely mix them by changing the background-image in .headerImg of the theme file.

If you want to remove the background image in the header, delete or comment out .headerImg{background-size}, .headerImg{background-image}, and .headerImg{background-position} in your css file from styles/.

If you want to use a custom image, it must be 1200x480px or larger (note that larger may affect page load time). Acceptable file formats are .jpg, .png, .svg, or .gif. You should not use an animated gif, as this has the potential to be supremely annoying and/or negatively affect page load times.

Some of the themes have a gradient effect overlaying the header image. If you would like to remove the gradient effect independent of the header image, delete or comment out the background on .headerGradient in the relevant theme file. Be careful to make sure the conference name is still readable on top of the photo.


Adding an update to the "Website Updates" panel on index.php

As you make changes to the website, you should update the "Website Updates" card in index.php. Look for the NOTE in index.php that says "Update this to add a row" and copy the div that has the form

<div class="customCardRow row">

Then edit the new row as desired.