Creating your own WWW documents at UMBC

Here is a brief index to this document.
  • Making your personal home page at UMBC available
  • A primer on HTML
  • The URL, hypertext links to internet resources
  • Basic HTML commands
  • HTML References
  • Filters and Conversion Tools
  • Creating Image Maps

    • Other Guides to creating a homepage

  • HTML Cheat Sheet
  • The W3 Consortium has the reference specifications for HTML
  • NCSA Beginners Guide tot HTML is very good.
  • Future21 has a WWW script you can use to create your homepage.
  • Ian Graham's Introduction to HTML

    • What is HTML

    The WWW servers and clients use a document format named the HyperText Markup Language (HTML). HTML is a subset of the Standard Generalized Markup Language and is now developed by the W3 Consortium. HTML provides embedded command constructs for formating a document as well as for specifying hypertext links to other documents.

    Specifying where to get information, the URL

    The WWW servers provide a mechanism via what is called a URL to access internet based information. A URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. The basic format of URL is:

    service://hostname/other-information

    A URL can specify many types of network resources, all WWW clients at UMBC support these basic network services:

    Usenet news.
    To read a specific newsgroup via the WWW software enter the URL
    news:newsgroup-name
    Where newsgroup-name is the newsgroup name you want to read.
    File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
    FTP servers can be accessed via the URL
    ftp://hostname.domain as in ftp://ftp.umbc.edu/pub
    telnet
    To telnet to a host on the internet enter the URL
    telnet://hostname.domain
    WWW server.
    WWW servers use the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to communicate between clients and servers. To specify a WWW server use the following URL
    http://hostname.domain
    For example, to connect to the Music TV (MTV) WWW server you would use the following URL, http://www.mtv.com
    Sending Email
    To send a message to particular address use
    mailto:username@domain.edu

    How do I make information available

    At UMBC, any individual with a UMBC OIT issued Unix account can create a personal web page. To do this you must verify you have a subdirectory named www that you place your files into. The location of the www directory is dependent on where the files associated with your account are stored. The easiest way to find this is out is to telnet to the machine serving your account and issue the Unix command pwd. Students will usually see the output of this start with something similar too this: /afs/umbc.edu/users/...... If so, you should do the following commands:
    cd ../pub
    ls -ld www
    If nothing appears you must create your www directory with the following commands below. If it does appear, you can go to the next part.
    mkdir www

    Now there is one last set of commands to perform that will make it easier to upload your files from a personal computer through something called ftp.

    cd
    ln -s ../pub/www www

    You are all done. Your account is now setup and ready to have you develop a web page. Some additional notes:

    Your web page area is found with the URL http://userpages.umbc.edu/~username/. By default, the WWW server will look for a file named index.html However, any alternate file may be specified. For example, to access the file personal.html on the GL Unix machines (umbc8/umbc9) you would specify a URL of:

    http://peoplepages.umbc.edu/~username/personal.html

    Where the ~username is replaced with the username of the person you are accessing.
    NOTE: On GL accounts you MUST use the hostname www.gl.umbc.edu or peoplepages.umbc.edu, do NOT use umbc8, umbc9, or umbc10.

    If you are using UMBC7 to hold your pages then you would specify a URL of:

    http://research.umbc.edu/~username/filename.html

    Where the ~username is replaced with your username

    I recommend that the document index.html should be used as reference point for the other documents you want to make available.

    Below are the steps to follow to make sure things will work:

    1. Go to your default directory. Issue the command
      ls -ld www
      Make sure your permission string is drwx__x__x. If it isn't then use the command
      chmod 711 www
    2. Move up one level above your default directory with the command
      cd ..
      Use the command
      ls -ld Username (where Username is your login name).
      Verify the permission is drwx__x__x. If it isn't, use the command
      chmod 711 Username
      to make it so.
    3. Move to your www sub-directory with the command
      cd ~/www
      Verify all files have world read access with the command
      ls -l
      If not, set them via the command
      chmod 755 *

    If your document will be the document describing a department or organization on campus send mail to www@umbc.edu requesting your document be added to the campus "home page".

    To get your homepage added to the user pages under student or faculty resources consult the document Ph Homepages. That will explain what to do.

    Basic commands in HTML

    The following menu items show links to actual HTML code and can be used as examples:
  • Specifying a title.
  • Specifying a Heading
  • Specifying fonts
  • Structuring a document
  • Adding images
  • adding hypertext links

    • For Further Information on HTML, Consult these Network Resources

    A good general introduction on writing HTML is the document A Beginners Guide to HTML from the NCSA Supercomputer Center.

    For a detailed description of the HTML specification and related materials visit the W3 Consortium.

    Filters and Conversion Tools

    Users have a wealth of tools available. Corel 7.0 and 8.0 have native support for converting documents built directly into the application. All Microsoft Office applications have support for HTML built in as well. Microsoft Frontpage is available as part of the campus site license. Frontpage provides a very nice WWW page development environment that also can convert WP and Word files into HTML.

    Unix users will find two ways to do this. One is through emacs and the other is through an application named asWedit. The application asWedit is a GUI based WWW page creator. Emacs has a mode for html document creation that will put in the embedded tags for you. To enable that mode enter the emacs command M-x html-mode.

    In addition to those tools, there is a large number of other tools available for use. CERN maintains a list of Filters and Conversions Tools if you want to look more deeply.

    Jack Suess// jack@umbc.edu