These instructions are meant
for a novice, however, please read them completely to get all the information
about where to upload your web pages, and where to get more information
on available options for your web site.
How do I get my HTML pages to my Web site?
Before transmitting anything to the remote web server, check your web pages for errors by opening them in a browser off
your hard drive.
Once your sure everything is working locally, you transmit the file electronically, commonly referred to as "uploading", using File Transfer Protocol (FTP). To do this, you will need an FTP program. We recommend the following:
Using your FTP program is very simple;
1.Open up the FTP program of your choice.
2.Click on New connection (or something similar).
3.Type in your Web's URL (www.your_domain.com)
4.Type in your web login and password.
5.Leave Directory blank. (Fetch defaults to "pub" directory, delete
that!)
6.Click on connect.
This will plop you right in the directory where you need to be (your
home directory)! For a screen shot of the basic setup for WS_FTP, Click
Here.
Most FTP programs have two windows on them; one is labeled as local,
which is your hard drive, and the other is labaled remote, which is your
webspace. To get them from your hard drive over to your web, each program
varies just a bit. With most, you simply double-click on the files in the
hard drive or local window and they will be uploaded to your web. On some
others, you click on the arrow pointing from the local side towards the
remote side. (Note you can do the opposite - download from the remote
side - to get the files from the web to your hard drive, usually with an
arrow that points the opposite direction as the first.)
You should see a short list in your remote window:
www.[yourdomain].com
where of course [yourdomain] is replaced with whatever your domain happens
to be. The ".com" is used only as a generalization in this case.
Domains with .net, .org or other endings will have those endings reflected
in this directory. Do not delete this directory. Doing
so will wipe out any and all files you have on that domain's web space
already.
This is your starting folder. If you have more than one domain
with its independent web space, you will see those other domains listed
as well. To get into the files associated with the particular domain,
double click on it in the remote window.
You will see a new listing. If it is your first time in your ftp
site, you will find the directories cgi, log, pw and
www.
Do not delete these directories. (You have the power to do
so, but if you do, grave things will happen, like losing important functionality
to your website.) For descriptions of what these are used for, <click
here>. For now, the starting user will be most interested in the
www directory, which is where you will put any files (be they html, htm,
jpeg, jpg, gif or whatever) that you want the rest of the world to be able
to see. (The other directories have permission protection on them
to keep visiting browers out.)
Double click the www directory to enter it. There should be only
one file within, entitled "index-default.shtml." This is the file
that displays the default "brick wall" page that you'll find at your domain
until you post your own index.html or index.htm file. There may be
other directories, but you will almost never need to bother with them.
You guessed it - any directories that are already in there should not
be deleted. The folders in there are probably associated with
your Front Page extensions, if you have that feature with your webspace.
Front Page can get very uncooperative should any of those folders get tampered
with.
Important NOTE: The first page that the server looks for must be named
index.html (your homepage, case sensitive). Re-name your homepage to index.html
and it will be the default page that will come up if someone goes to your
site. The order of preference that the server looks for a home page is
index.html first, then index.htm, and lastly it looks for the index-default.shtml.
If none of these are present, then the access denied error appears when
a visitor goes to your domain. If more than one is present, it will
display index.html rather than index.htm, etc.
At this point, to upload you just use the methods discussed briefly
before. Select a file to upload and trigger the upload (by double
clicking it or clicking the proper arrow button). Depending on the
file's size and your connection speed, the upload can take little time
or quite a while. You should get a progress bar reporting how far
along in the upload your are. Skilled users will know how to upload
more than one file at a time. To gain more savvy with your FTP program
of choice, read through the help files that come with it.
Note: Uploading the page itself, or the html file, will not automatically
include the pictures that appear in that site. Those must be uploaded,
too. It's because the html file merely contains references
to the pictures, not the pictures themselves. That's why the html
files are so relatively small (2k compared to a typical 50k picture file)
- they are only the framework that give the page structure.
Once your entire site is uploaded to the server, go to the web address
and re-check everything. Sometimes you will have to rename some of the
files to get them to work properly. It is also common that graphic files
get corrupt as they are uploaded. If this is the case, re-upload them.
Note: As you are making corrections and uploading new, updated material,
be sure to hit Reload in your browser; otherwise the page is loading from
its cache (the browser's memory). Additionaly, you may want to clear your
cache to ensure you are loading the new file(s).
For more information on HTML programming, check out the following resources:
HTML Goodies - a great guide to get started with designing Web pages, resources for doing more advanced tasks, and a whole variety of other Web development items
C|NET's Builder.com - an all around reference for Web site creators and designers that makes it easy to take advantage of what amazing things you can do on the Web. Whether you're a beginner or an expert, you can learn something here.
Web Developer Magazine - lots of resources on various technologies here ranging from HTML to Java
Webreference.com - another big site with lots of juicy information that focuses on everything from beginner to expert site design
For more information on CGI programming, click here.
For a source of ready-made CGI scripts, click here.
