Customizing

Customizing user login web pages

The web-based authentication process displays a series of web pages and status messages to the user during login. The web pages that are displayed can be:

Generic — default pages generated directly by the switch software
Customized — pages hosted on a local web server.

By creating customized login web pages, you can improve the "look and feel" of the web authentication process to correspond more closely with your network and business needs. For example, you can:

Identify the network that a client is trying to log into.
Provide contact information if a client has difficulty connecting to the network.
Incorporate CSS styles consistent with the appearance of your network.

Implementing customized web-based authentication pages

To implement enhanced web-based authentication pages, you need to:

Configure and start a web server on your local network.
Customize the HTML template files and make them accessible to the web server.
Configure the switch to display the customized files by using the aaa port-access web-based ewa-server command to specify the server's IP address or host name and the path to the customized HTML files on the server.

Customizing HTML templates

Follow these guidelines when you are customizing an HTML template:

Do not change the name of any of the HTML files (index.html, accept.html, and so on).
Some template pages use Embedded Switch Includes (ESIs) or Active Server Pages. These should not be modified when customizing HTML files. ESIs behave as follows:
1. A client's web browser sends a request for an HTML file. The switch passes the request to a configured web server.
2. The web server responds by sending a customized HTML page to the switch. Each ESI call in the HTML page is replaced with the value (in plain text) retrieved by the call.
3. The switch sends the final version of the HTML page to the client's web browser.
Store all customized login web pages (including any graphics) that you create for client login on each web server at the path you configure with the aaa port-access web-based ewa-server command.

See Customizable HTML templates for details on page templates available.

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