Lab Nine

HTML Made Easy

Preliminaries

In this lab you will:

create your own home page using Netscape Composer.
learn to insert picture/clip art
learn to create a Windows Subdirectory.
learn about how the operating system protects your data from others and how you can tell the operating system to let others view your data.
use ftp to upload files

You will need your Wilkes1 user name and password

In this lab, you are going to create your own home page using Netscape Composer. It is very similar to Microsoft Word. It is much easier than adding html tags!!!!

Lab Resource Links

HTML

To Do

1. Create a subdirectory on your diskette.

Until now, when we have been saving data on diskette, we have simply been saving the data in the root directory. Since your home page is going to consist of multiple files, it is appropriate to create a subdirectory on your diskette and put all of the files associated with this assignment in that subdirectory. It makes the uploading of the files much easier when all of the data associated with this assignment is contained in a single unit.

Insert your diskette.

Double Click on My Computer

Double Click on 3.5 Floppy (A:)

In the window for the diskette, click file, new, directory

Notice the folder that is created called New Folder

Give the new folder a meaningful name: Select it, Click file, rename then type in an appropriate name.

2. Launch Netscape 7.1

You are going to create your home page: WYSIWYG: "What you See is What You Get".

Since entering information is so easy, this web page is expected to be elaborate. To begin entering your home page,
Click on Window and Select Composer.Create your web page using the editing tools presented. It is similar to Microsoft Word.

Your home page must contain the following:

Your name, hometown, and major.
You must have at least 5 links with a few stentences about each. Click onInsert, and select Link.

In the past, many students have had problems with correct link addresses. The best approach is to copy and paste the links directly from their source. Be sure they start with http://.

You must have at least one image file. To avoid any problems with the way that netscape composer references the image, it is highly recommended that before inserting the image into your page you first copy it into the subdirectory where you will save your image. Insert the image from your subdirectory. It is very important that the file name does not contain any blanks or other characters. The file will be uploaded to your unix account. Unix cannot handle blanks in the file name.

To insert the image, click on Insert, Image, Choose file, etc.

You may include anything else you wish. You may include multiple image files. This is your web page, it should be fun.
You may use your diskette or your Wilkes server space to save your web page. You must save your file in the directory you created. This is very important. When you save it in the directory, it will put all of your image files in the directory for easy upload to your wilkes1 account. To save your work: click file, save as Click on the save in down arrow and select A: and click open. Select your subdirectory and click open. Then type in the file name and click save. It is very important that the file name that you choose does not contain any blank spaces. Remember, you are going to be transferring the file to wilkes1. Even though Windows supports blanks in file names, the unix file system cannot handle blank spaces in file names. Therefore, your filename must be consistent with what unix supports.
Exit Netscape.

3. Setting Up Your Own Home Page on wilkes1 for the world to see.

Since wilkes1 is "on the internet", by properly placing your html file in your wilkes1 account and giving the operating system the appropriate instructions that allow others access to your data, anyone on the internet will be able to view your home page.

In order to display your home page, the wilkes1 server will look for it in a directory called webdocs.

Remember early in the semester we talked about directories? Unix has a hierarchial file system. When you log in, you are in your home directory. webdocs, will be a subdirectory of your home directory.

So, the first thing we must do is create the webdocs directory in your wilkes1 account.

Using CRT (telnet) Log on to our wilkes1 account First type in your userid and press enter.
Type in your password and press enter. It will not be displayed as you type:
On the command line, type the following command:

mkdir webdocs

It is very important that you type the command in exactly. mkdir is the unix command to create a directory. webdocs is the name of the directory to be created.

You may get a message stating that the directory exists. That is ok. It means that it was set up for you. If you do
not get any message, no news is new good news, the command worked.

You will be instructed how to use ftp to upload the html file as well as all of the image files of the home page you just created. They must be placed in your webdocs directory of your wilkes1 account.

The easiest way to do this is to use ftp through Netscape. To do this, your web page must be open in Netscape Composer (as instructed above, you did not exit.). Click on the Publish.

First select the Settings tab. Fill in a site name, this can be anything. The publishing address is
ftp://wilkes.edu

The address of your homepage is
http://wilkes.edu/~youruserid

Fill in your user name and password

Then select the publish tab:

The page title will be filled in from your web page. Fill in the file name of your file. It consists of two parts: the name you selected
.html

The subdirectory for the page is webdocs.

You want to include images and other files and use the same location as this page.

Then click on the publish button.

You can also upload your programs by Launching the ftp program and type in your userid and password. Remember, the screen is divided in two halfs: left PC side and right wilkes1 side. On the PC side, change to a:. Then change again to the name of the subdirectory you created (select, then click on change directory). On the wilkes1 side, change the directory to webdocs. Then on the PC side, select the files in the directory and click on the right arrow (xfer to wilkes1). To do them all at once, simultaneously hold the control key down while left clicking with the mouse. That lets you mark multiple files. Then click once on the right arrow.

At any time, you can exit ftp. It is important to do so before leaving your computer as you leave your account open to intruders.

Finally, you need to make sure that others can read your files and that others can execute programs in the webdocs subdirectory. It is the operating system's responsibility to protect your data. Therefore, unless you explicitly tell the operating system that you want others to be able to look at your home page, the operating system will prevent others from accessing your data.

Please note, in the following instructions wilkes1 > is the command prompt. The operating system is telling you to type in a command. What follows it is what you are to type on the command line.

You are still logged into your wilkes1 account. You have created webdocs. Your current directory is your root directory.

You must make the current directory the webdocs directory. To do this, type:

wilkes1 >cd webdocs

You must make the web page file you created and image files are readable by everyone else;

It is easiest to make all files in the directory readable: wilkes1 > chmod a+r *.*

chmod is a unix command to tell the operating system that you want to change the mode of files/directories. a+r is a parameter to the chmod command that indicates to the operating system that the files/directory you are changing is to allow others to read that data. *.* is another parameter to the chmod command. The asterisks are what's called wild cards. Remember in lab1 we learned that files in unix have a name and a type separated by the dot. The wild cards tell the operating system to change the mode of all file names with all file types to the mode indicated by a+r which is readable by everyone.

You must make sure that the webdocs directory is readable/executable by everyone else and

wilkes1 > cd

That takes you back to the root directory. wilkes1 > chmod a+rx webdocs

You must make sure that your home directory is also executable by everyone else.

wilkes1 > chmod a+x ~

Executable means that others can "execute" your html code.

Completing these steps will have created a home page with its URL (address) as:

http://wilkes1.wilkes.edu/~youruserid/yourfilename.htm

Try out your new home page using Internet Explorer or Netscape.

Hand In

Email me a message containing a single line as follows

http://wilkes1.wilkes.edu/~youruserid/

If your home page has a name other than index.html, the file name must be included in the URL. index.html is the default. I will view each person's home page to give you a grade for the lab. Please note that if you have not followed instructions carefully, the protection provided by the operating system will prevent me from viewing your home page. If I cannot view it, you will not receive any credit for this lab, even though you have done it. I will ONLY ATTEMPT TO VIEW IT ONCE . To make sure that you can view it, attempt to view the file from one of the lab machines. To avoid a potential problem, send a friend the same URL you are sending to me and make sure the friend can view it. If your friend can view it, I should be able to.

After I have viewed your home page, I will reply to your message to me with your grade. If you do not receive a response from me, I did not receive a message containing your URL.

Remember This is meant to be a fun assignment. Please treat it as such!!! The most confusing part of this assignment is properly setting up the permissions that allow anyone on the internet to view your data. The important point that I want you to learn here is that the unix type operating system running on wilkes1 is responsible for protecting its users' data from intruders. In order for others to view your data, you must tell the operating system using commands that the operating system can understand that it is ok to allow the world to view your data. This is part of becoming literate in computer use and computer terminology.

The commands for properly setting the permissions for others to view your file are not very intuitive. If you do anything out of order, the commands as I have dictated will not work properly. Therefore, it is important that you get this done during class so that I can help you if something goes wrong. If you are doing this on your own, you may have difficulty.

Although the commands are not intuitive and you may feel frustrated, the concepts that we are learning through this exercise are very important. This is that the operating system is responsible for protecting your data and ensuring that your data can be viewed by others only if you authorize it. The steps that we went through are for you to tell the operating system that others can view your data. You are explicitly telling the operating system which files of yours are to be available. What if you were to do this wrong and make , for example, your saved email messages available. That could be very embarrassing if you have conducted personal conversations with others.

Changing your home page

To modify your page from home, you will need netscape. Simply go to Netscape.com and download netscape.

Your home page will be on the internet as long as you have an account here at Wilkes.

The easiest way to do this is to save your diskette. Make any changes to the home page file on your diskette using Netscape composer. You can then simply ftp the file to the webdocs directory as described above. If you did not add any image files or change the file name, then you do not have to set permissions again, they are already set.

If you changed the file name or added any image files, the new file as well as the image files must be ftp'd to the webdocs directory. You must then log in to your wilkes1 account and type in the following two commands at the command prompt:

cd webdocs

chmod a+r *.*

If you do not save the original file, you can still change your web page. You must first ftp the original file plus any image files down to your PC. The process is very similar to what is described above except you click on the left pointing arrow (you are going from wilkes1 to the PC).

You can always use pico to modify the file right on your wilkes1 account. If you do that, you must understand the html tags.

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Maintained by Barbara Bracken
Last Modified10/25/2003