As you found out in Lesson 1, it's not too hard to start a Web page file or to view it at your machine in Netscape by choosing File, View File.
This lesson focuses on what you do to put a Web page where someone who is not sitting at your PC can see it. What's involved is to move a copy of your file to a Web server. For that you'll need some context and exposure to new terms.
Once a file exists on an operative Web server, anyone who can get to that server can view it as a Web page. Many Web servers, like TNRCC's public server (named www.tnrcc.state.tx.us), are accessible to anyone anywhere in the world with an Internet connection. Other Web servers, like TNRCC's internal server (named home.tnrcc.state.tx.us), are accessible only to people who have a direct physical connection to that server. In either case, your page now has a location, an URL address. URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, a unique identifier specifying protocol, server, and full path directory/file name.
Anyway, it's the home server you'll be interacting with here. The Web servers at TNRCC are on Unix machines, so you'll have to have a Unix account and know your Unix ID and password. If you're not sure whether you have a Unix account or what your Unix password is, you'll have to pause for some interaction with your LAN manager and/or the Help Desk.
If you enter a valid Unix ID and password at a Unix command line prompt, Unix will log you on and typically take you to your Unix home directory. This is your "personal space" in the shared Unix environment. Originally, it was possible to maintain and view on the Web content subordinate to the Unix home directory—called the "tilde zone" because the URL of such a Web page looks something like http://home.tnrcc.state.tx.us/~jjones/index.html.
But our current practice is to create a new directory somewhere subordinate to home/internal and make the new Web author owner of that directory as a workspace. You'll probably need to confer with your Lead Internet Developer and/or someone on the Unix team to get that set up and the Unix permissions properly tuned.
You can avoid much of the pain of starting to move files from PC to Web server by using a Windows-client software tool to do the job. The basic job is running a protocol called FTP (File Transfer Protocol). Getting Your Site on a Server provides information to demystify the FTP process.
The basic tool highlighted here is is a shareware (free for government use) program named ws_ftp.
With ws_ftp, after specifying home as the server to connect to and your Unix ID and password, you'll see a window to your c: drive on the left and a window to the Web server on the right—they are also descibed as local and remote. To move a copy of your file from your hard drive to the home server, you simply click select it and then click on the right arrow icon.
One further technical detail you need to know at this point is the difference between binary and ascii file transfer modes. Where ascii mode moves text files as text files, binary mode moves machine code as machine code. It's no big deal to transfer text files in binary mode, but if you transfer graphics files as if they were character files, the images will not display. HTML files are ASCII text files, so ascii mode is the right mode for them.
OK. Enough talk. Now try your hand at the steps outlined below.
Return to Hands-On Self-Training Web Authoring Exercise when you're ready to tackle another lesson. Or continue on to lesson 3.