Creating your own WWW pages here at Gallaudet

(Brief note: If at all possible, view this document through a web browser capable of displaying fonts, colors, etc (Netscape, Firefox, Mosaic, Chrome or some other graphic browser). Lynx and other text-only browsers will make a mess of the boldfacing and italics. However, if you don't have anything better to read it with, be aware that any words which appear as _word_ -- preceded and follwed with an underscore, are probably boldfaced, and represent something you should be typing exactly as shown MINUS the underscores.)

So, you want your words read, 'round the world... It's easy. Easier than you might expect. This is a brief intro explaining what you need to do, to get started. I strongly suggest you look at the other documents in the tutorial in order to learn how to fancy-up your documents, but in order to create the most simple, basic document, just follow the directions given here:

1. First, download an editor that will not mangle your file. Word processors such as Microsoft Word are NOT good choices, since they often add formatting that you did not explicitly ask for. Some good choices include:
   • KompoZer http://www.kompozer.net/ (get the win32 version)
   • Tidy http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/ (The actual program should be downloaded from http://www.paehl.com/open_source/?download=tidy.zip but you should look at the main page first.)
   • Notepad++ http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm (you will need to click on "Download" at the top of the page, then "Download Notepad++ executable files". That will take you to the SourceForge web site, and you should choose the file named npp.5.0.3.Installer.exe.
   • Notepad2 http://sourceforge.net/projects/notepad2/
2. Get a unix account on GALLUX. At the moment, Gallaudet only sends pages out from GALLUX, not GALLUA or GALLUK (our VMS machines).
3. Connect to GALLUX and login.
4. At the prompt, type mkdir web. Type it all in lower case. This creates the subdirectory where all of your documents go.
5. Change directory to the web directory -- cd web.
6. Create a file with a name that ends .html. The command is: pico filename.html.
7. You are now in the editor. At the very start of the file, put in a line that reads <pre>.
8. Type whatever you would like in the next several lines.
9. Finish with a line which reads </pre>. Note: The last line contains a slash that the first did not.
10. Type Control-X to exit, and "y" to save the file. Type ENTER (a.k.a. RETURN) when asked if you want to call the file filename.html.
11. Pat yourself on the back. You've just published world-wide, via the Internet.
12. Repeat steps 5 thru 9 for each document you wish to create.
13. Type exit or logoff to get off GALLUX.

A quick summary of what it should look like:

	login: kjcole
	Password: whatever
	gallux> mkdir web
	gallux> cd web
	gallux> pico stuff.html
	<pre>
	Bla bla bla
	More bla bla
	Still more bla bla
	...
	And let me say in conclusion, bla.
	</pre>
	CTRL-X
	y
	(just a return here)
	gallux> exit

To let others know about the files you've created, tell them to reference the document with the Uniform Resource Locator (URL):

http://www.gallaudet.edu/~username/filename.html.

substituting your username for username above and whatever filename you chose for filename.

There are a few additional notes:

• Unix is Case-Sensative!!! In general, stay in lower case. This includes filenames, and commands. Your text can be mixed. But a file named index.html is NOT the same as one named Index.HTML.

• The documents create with the above technique are simple and quick, but they look like hell in Mosaic or any other graphics-based browser. In Lynx, they look pretty good, so you won't have a sense of how crappy they look until you see them from a real browser.

• You can fancy them up quickly, by learning about titles, headings, italics, boldfacing, incorporating other documents, pictures, etc. It takes time to learn that, but not as much time as you might expect.

• Some filenames are special. In particular, the file named index.html is a "master document". Using the Uniform Resource Locator (URL)

  http://www.gallaudet.edu/~username/

  will automatically reference index.html. So that should be your master document.

If you have Netscape 1.1 or later, and want a bit more info on HTML click here. (If you don't have Netscape or a browser that is capable of viewing tables, you may still get something from the tutorial, but the tables will look like crap.

Click here (or type "c" if using Lynx) to send me a comment about this document.