Making Your Own Web Page

This document describes how to create a simple web page of your own.  Several time throughout the course of a semester you will be building web pages to document your work.

Before Starting Your Web Page

Before you can begin your web page you need some disk space on a web server.  You all have accounts on the Engineering department's Linux-based web server.  I will give you your user name and password when you come to lab, or you can get it earlier if you send me an email.

Start by logging into one of the NT machines in room 213.  Run the program called "Secure SSH Client Shell" that you'll find on the desktop.  When prompted for a server, type "engin", then enter your user name and password.  When the Host Identification Dialog Box pops up, just click on "Yes".  Log in to the Linux server with your user name and password.  Change your password by entering the command: "yppasswd" at the prompt.  If you have any problems, please contact me.

Logoff the SSH server by typing "exit" at the prompt.

From the Windows desktop,

  1. open "Network Neighborhood"
  2. open "Engin" (enter your username and password for the Linux server),
  3. open "students_a"
  4. open the folder that has your username
  5. go to File->New->Folder (as shown)
  6. create a folder called "public_html".  This folder is where you will put all your web documents.

Create Your Web Page

Start "Homepage".  Claris Homepage is the program that you will probably be using to create your web pages.  If you have another program that you would rather use, please feel free to do so.  Microsoft Word can generate web documents (HTML - HyperText Markup Language), or you can actually write HTML if you want to.  You should get a screen that looks like the following:

Open your web site. 

Go to File->Open Folder as Site...

and choose your "public_html" directory, by going through "Network Neighborhood>Engin>students_a>YourUserName>public_html", as shown below, for my directory..

You should be left with a window that looks like this

The "Site Editor" window shows all the files on your web site (none yet -- except for a bookkeeping file used by Homepage).

Adding a file with text (and hyperlinks) to your web site

Enter some text onto the open  web page called "untitled1.htm". I will create a page with 2 links.  One to Adobe's web page, and one to send email to me.  The original text is below.

To set the link to Adobe's web page, I highlight the text that I want to serve as the link, and then I choose Insert->Link to URL

When the next dialog box comes up, I simply enter the link (don't forget the "http://")

If the link had been to another file in my web directory, I wouldn't need the "http://" part, and could simply do a local link to the file.

To add a link that will allow somebody to email me, I highlight my name and choose Insert->Link to URL, as before, and enter a Mail link

In addition to adding text, you can do all the standard things like cutting and pasting images...  You can even add links to audio files, or video clips.

Saving your page.

The last thing you need to do is to save your page where the rest of the world can enjoy it.  To do this, go to File->Save and a window will come up asking you for a title for your page (this is the title that will be at the top of the browser window when you open the file).

Hit "OK" and then save your file.  Make sure you name this file "index.htm" -- this is the page that will come up first when you open your web page (note: it doesn't matter if your file suffix is ".htm" or ".html".  If you add more files to your site, make sure that you give them different names.

Accessing your web page.

Your web page will be at the URL : http://www.engin.swarthmore.edu/~YourUserName.   For example, the web page I just created is at http://www.engin.swarthmore.edu/~echeever, and is shown below (in Netscape).

Going further

Try creating more files and links between them.  You can also skim through the Homepage tutorial (go to Help->Tutorial).

If you want to use a digital camera, one is available.