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Would you like to have a homepage on the World Wide Web? You say you don't know where or how to start? Well, read on! This document is for you. In this document you will find some introductory guides and tutorials to creating your own Web pages, tools for creating Web documents on different computer platforms, plus much more.

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Writing Web documents in HTML

Web pages are basically text documents which contain special codes, called tags, which are interpreted by the software used to browse the Web (called browsers or clients). The tags specify the hypertext links in the document as well as how the document will be formatted. The language used to write Web documents is called HTML (HyperText Markup Language).

HTML is not difficult to learn. The best introduction to HTML is probably NCSA's A Beginner's Guide to HTML. There are also many commercial books on writing HTML. One of the easiest ways to create your own Web documents, though, is to explore the Web until you find a page that you like, save the Source of the document, and then modify it with your own personal information.

CIS has a Quick Guide to HTML, which is available at the CIS main office or here.

While it does not matter which word processing package or editor you use to write your Web documents, they must be saved as plain-text files. You should also be careful when naming your files: filenames should not contain any blank spaces or special characters such as ampersands. HTML files are typically given the extension ".html" (".htm" when creating the file on a PC).

There are many editors with special features for making writing HTML easier. Netscape Communicator, for example, has a program called Page Composer which allows you to create your web pages mostly visually. It creates all of the tags for you as you place pictures, text, tables, etc. where you want them. Dreamweaver is another program available from the file server, Charlie, that allows you to easily make web pages. Try experimenting with these programs to see what you can do.

Many tools for making your own web page are available through CIS's file server, Charlie. Netscape, Dreamweaver, and many graphics programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Flash and Fireworks are available to use to create web pages or multimedia content for your pages.

Here are two useful links, one to a useful guide to HTML and the other to a source for HTML editors.

One important thing to remember when creating Web documents is that not all browsers will interpret the HTML tags in the same way so documents will look different depending on which browser a person is using. Graphical browsers (such as Netscape and Internet Explorer) and text-only browsers (such as Lynx) will also display Web documents differently since the text-only browsers cannot display graphics. You also want to keep in mind that the size of the monitor can make a big difference in how a document looks.

You can view your document in your favorite browser so that you can see how it looks before incorporating it into the HMC Web. You may even want to try viewing it in several different browsers so that you can make sure there are no problems caused by the different ways different browsers interpret the HTML.

  • In Netscape select File/Open File... from the menu bar. Then locate the file and select OK to view it.
  • In Internet Explorer select File/Open... from the menu bar. A dialogue will pop up. Click "Browse..." in the lower-right corner of the box. Then locate the file and select OK to view it.
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The Next Step: Making Your Document Part of the Web

The next step is incorporating your document into the Web. Departments that are maintaining their own Web servers may already have mechanisms in place for incorporating documents into their server. If your department doesn't have a Web server then you can use the system that CIS has developed for this purpose. In this system your Web documents are kept in a special subdirectory called "www-home" in your home directory on the VMS cluster or Odin. A script has been written that will automatically create the directory and set the correct file protections so that the Web server can read the files in it (see below). Once you have run the script you can move your Web documents into the subdirectory. If you only have one file it should be named "index.html"; if you have more than one then the file you want people to see first should be called "index.html". If a URL refers to a directory, then the web server will automatically look for a file named "index.html" in that directory. If that file does not exist, some web servers will give a list of the files in that directory.

If you have created the files on your desktop PC then you will need to rename the file "index.html" so that it has the correct extension (i.e. .html instead of .htm). The server will not automatically load a file with the .htm extension. The other files may use the .htm extension. If you have created the files on your desktop PC or Macintosh you will need to use a file transfer program such as Fetch on the Macintosh or FTP on the PC to move your files into your home directory on the VMS cluster or Odin. Make sure that you transfer text files as Text and image files as Raw Data on a Mac or binary on a PC when you ftp them.

After you have moved your pages to the VMS cluster or Odin web server you can create a link to it from the HMC web server by adding it to the directory of personal home pages by sending e-mail to webmaster@hmc.edu with your name and the URL of your page.

Detailed Instructions for Maintaining Your Web Documents on the VMS Cluster (www2)

  1. Login to the VMS cluster from your terminal or by using telnet from your desktop compuer or by opening an Xterm session.
  2. At the prompt type the command: @AC_COM:MAKE_WWW
  3. Once the subdirectory has been created, move your Web documents into the new subdirectory. If the files are located on your desktop computer you can use Fetch on the Macintosh or FTP on the PC to upload the files to your directory. Be sure to use Text mode for text files and Raw Data mode on a Mac or Binary on a PC for image files. You can also create and maintain your Web documents directly on the VMS cluster if you are comfortable using the VMS editor.
  4. To see your Web pages, launch your favorite Web browser and open the following URL:
    http://www2.hmc.edu/~your_login_name/
    Be sure to include the final slash after your login name or it will not work.

Detailed Instructions for Maintaining Your Web Documents on Odin (www3)

  1. Login to Odin.
  2. At the prompt type the command: make_www
  3. Once the www-home subdirectory has been created, move your Web documents into the new subdirectory. If the files are located on your desktop computer you can use Fetch on the Macintosh or FTP on the PC to upload the files to your directory. Be sure to use Text mode for text files and Raw Data mode for image files rather than Binary or anything else. You can also create and maintain your Web documents directly on Odin if you are comfortable using the editors on Odin.
  4. Important: The default behavior of FTP on Odin is such that files FTP'd to Odin are set with read/write access for the file owner only. This means that after FTP'ing your Web files you will need to login to Odin again and change the file permission on each file. To do this type the command: chmod o+r<filename> for each file in the directory www-home.
  5. To see your Web pages launch your favorite Web browser and open the following URL:
    http://www3.hmc.edu/~your_login_name/

WWW4 (Faculty Courseware Server)

CIS also maintains another server called www4.hmc.edu for use by faculty for course development. For more information on using this server please go to the WWW4 Home Page.

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