Hands on computers
Basics II
Refining Your Homepage

• To use a search engine to learn more about our theme, Environmental Justice, and to find other sites of interest to include in our home pages.
• To modify the home page we began creating in the first session, incorporating interesting links found using the search engine
• To "publish" our pages to the web
• To view the web's newest pages - ours!

Activities:

1. We'll start with a Web Scavenger Hunt. See how many of these items you can locate! Again, make a note of URL's and summarize the content of any pages of interest. (Click on this link now, then come back!)

2. Now use Notepad to create links to the scavenger hunt pages in your home page (index.html). You might use the HTML list commands to organize them, as the items might be in very different categories (e.g. environmental justice links versus Covington links).

   Refer to your lab book and the URL's and information that you included there. You can create a link to the URL in your web page, so that others can follow up on what you've found.

   You might make good use of the "cut and paste" commands in Windows. To copy a bit of text, simply highlight it with the mouse, then type (and hold) the "Ctrl" key followed by the "c" key (for copy). Then switch to the application in which you wish to paste the text (e.g. Notepad) and type (and hold) the "Ctrl" key followed by the "v" key (this will paste the text into the window). If you simply want to remove some text from Notepad, then you type (and hold) the "Ctrl" key followed by the "x" key.

3. Now we'll use "ftp" (file transfer protocol) to "publish" our page to the web. You each have an account on a machine called guru (this machine is located in the entryroom). You will use the Windows application WS_FTP to access this account, and put your pages into it. Guru serves pages to the web, as you will see (your local machine won't ordinarily be a web server - only certain machines run the necessary software). There should be a shortcut to WS_FTP on the desktop - if not, you know how to search for it using the Find command!

   When you run WS_FTP, you need to establish a connection to your account on guru. You should find a session named "guru" among those listed when you double click on the WS_FTP icon. If not, you can always create a New session (with profile name guru), with Host Name of guru.nku.edu, and User ID for your guru account. Then hit the OK button. WS_FTP will ask you for your password, which you will provide.

   You want to move your file (plus any associated files - e.g. images) from the "Local System" to the public_html folder of the "Remote System":

   

   Suppose, for example, that your user name is brad, and that your file is called "index.html" and has been saved in the C:/brad folder: you would first change folders to C:/brad on the Local System, then select the file index.html. You would change folders to /gis/home/brad/public_html on the Remote System, then click the arrow pointing from left to right,

   

   (we're transfering from local to remote), and the file should be copied to your remote directory.

   Now by default this file is not visible to the outside world. It's not every file that we want to allow just anyone to see! In this case, however, we'd like you to be able to see it (and your friends as well), so we'll make it visible: select (left click) and then right click on the file (index.html) in the Remote System: you should see a menu of options, one of which is "chmod (UNIX)". Select this, and then make sure that every one of owner, group, and other has "Read" permission.

   You may have to transfer other files (e.g. images) too. Do so, following the same process as we did for index.html. You'll need to make sure that the permissions are correct for those files as well, so don't forget to "chmod" the files!

   Danger: WS_FTP will overwrite any file of the same name in the directory you're transferring to. You need to be careful that you choose the right arrow when you do your transferring, so that you don't overwrite a new version of a file with an older version (that can make anyone unhappy!).

4. Your web page should now be available! Brad's home page URL would be http://guru.nku.edu/~brad/index.html, but you should use your own username of course. My username on this system is ael, so you can check my home page by clicking on http://guru.nku.edu/~ael/index.html, or just http://guru.nku.edu/~ael for short (on our system, the browser goes directly to the file index.html).