Creating a directory in your unix account for making home page.

This unix account can be an account created in as.ysu.edu (college of arts and sciences) or cc.ysu.edu (Unix1) or cis.ysu.edu (CIS) at YSU.  First, you need to perform the following basic steps to setup the unix account for creating a home page.

Step 1:  You need to telnet to your unix account.

      To do this:

1. In Windows 95, click Start/Run... and enter "telnet cc.ysu.edu" to connect to unix1 account, or enter "telnet as.ysu.edu" for connecting to as.ysu.edu account.
2. Enter your account ID and password to logon to your account.

            >  cd $HOME
     >  chmod a+x $HOME
     >  mkdir public_html
     >  chmod 755 public_html

Anything you put into this $HOME/public_html directory will be readable by anybody if the file permissions are correctly set.

Step 3:  To set up file access permission.  In your public_html directory, run

            >  chmod a+r *

It may not be fully working until you relogon to your account.
 
 

Creating a homepage file

First, you need to create a file called "index.html" or “index.htm” which is your homepage file.  This index.html file needs to be stored in the public_html directory.  You can do this by using Netscape Gold or Communicator (or some of the word processors that allow you to save file in HTML format) on your PC to create this file and then FTP it to the public_html directory of your unix account.  You can also make html files by using your favorite text editor on UNIX such as "pico" or with using "pine", or "ee" or "vi" if you know how to use those editors and also know the html language.

To make the index.htm file (or any other html files)

1. from your PC, run the Netscape browser, click on  File => New => Blank Page  (a blank page will appear on screen)
2. start typing whatever you wish to see in your home page (Netscape browser is now a html file editor)
3. after finishing your editing, click on  File => Save as  and save this file with a name index.htm ( try to save in on C:\ ) on your PC.
4. FTP the index.htm file to your unix1 account.  (In Windows 95, click on Start/Run... and then enter ftp  cc.ysu.edu)

To make your web page accessible from YSU Math Department Home page, you need to ask Dr. Bruce Mattingly to modify the link to your page in the Department Home page file by providing him your web page address.

To ftp index.htm file to unix1

It is highly recommended that you use a windows ftp software to up or down load files.  You can up or down load files by just simply clicking mouse in few places.  WS-FTP (for Windows 95 and 3.1) is a free ftp software (for academic) to down load.   There are CUTEFTP, and other free software or shareware that you can down load from websites such as tucows.com or thefreesite.com.

If you don't have a windows ftp software then you can use ftp command (for Windows 95, the procedure is the same as telnet procedure mentioned earlier except that you enter "ftp" instead of "telnet").   After you executed the ftp command, under ftp>, you need to execute the following commands.

ftp>  cd  public_html  (for making   public_html   the current directory on unix)
ftp>  lcd  c:\          (for making   c:\   the current directory where you stored html files on PC )
ftp>  send  index.htm  (for sending index.htm file from PC to unix)

 To ftp a graphic file, you have to execute binary mode command before sending the file, that is,

ftp>  binary

 To get back to sending ascii file mode, execute

ftp>  ascii
 

Create a link

To add a link, first click   Link   on the tool bar of the Netscape Page Composer, and the Character Properties dialog box will appear.   In this dialog box, enter the text for displaying a link on your web page and then enter the path to the file or address of a web site (e.g. http://www.ysu.edu/ ) to be linked .
 

If the file you wish to link to is in the same directory as the webpage that your are working on, you can just enter the name of this file with its extension in the "Link to a page location or local file" box without the whole path name and click on OK.  (The picture below is an example of linking to a homework file that you created in your unix web page directory.  It can be a research paper that you wish to put on the web to share with your colleague in any kind of file format, such as latex files, postscript files, ascii files, etc.)

There are at least two ways to insert a picture or image to you page.

To insert an existing image file to your page,

• Method 1:  from the menu bar, click on Insert and Image ... and then enter the "path" to your image file or click on choose file to find the image file.   OR
• Method 2:  use an image viewer to copy and paste the image from the image viewer to your webpage composer.

To add a background to your web page, in the Netscape browser, click Format/Page colors and properties... (or just click on the right button of the mouse and select the Page properties) and select a color or select an image file for background.  Your can search on the internet to find web pages that provide free background images, icons or animated images.

At  this point, you have created a public_html directory in your unix account.  This is the directory that you store all the files related to your web page.  Your can create subdirectories to organize your files and create links to access files in these subdirectories.  Your main home page file is index.html (or index.htm).  I prefer using .htm, three letters for file type, because it is the way our PC Windows operating system naming its files.
 

To copy a link location (instead of retype the link address):

• Move the mouse pointer to the link you wish to copy in the page that your are currently browsing, and click and hold the right mouse button and a list of option will appear in a little option window.   Move the pointer to the Copy link location option and release the button.  The link location will be store in the clipboard.
• At your Netscape composer, point the mouse pointer to the place that you wish to add this link in your document and click and hold the right mouse button and select the Paste link option and release the button.

To set target in a long document:

• {Create target} Place the cursor at the location that you wish to set your target.  Click on Target button on the tool bar and the enter the target name.  You should see a target symbol appear at the location of the target.
• {Set link} Highlight (by dragging the mouse) the text that you wish to use for establishing link and then click on Link on the tool bar and select the target name from the box in the lower part of the Link window.

• One can copy and paste paragraphs from MS-WORD or other word processors to the Netscape Composer.
• Click on Reload in the Netscape Browser to see whether the web page file is updated or not.
• WORD in MS Office 97 can be used to create web page document and saved in HTML format.
• There are a lot of "webpage making instructions" pages on the internet that you can use to learn more about webpage.  Try search engine to find them and have fun.