NSC: Personal Web Pages

North State provides 25 megabytes of personal web space to our Internet subscribers. Some subscribers use this space to store files. Others create their own personal web pages and post them to this space. Click here to register for your own personal web space.

There are several steps involved in creating your own personal web pages. If you do not have software expressly for web site publishing, your word processing program may have the ability to create web pages. Microsoft Word has a "Web Page Wizard" which is easy to use and fairly flexible. If your word processing software will not create web pages, you need to purchase a new program for this purpose. There are several that are inexpensive and easy to use. You can visit the web site www.2cows.com to purchase and download the software.

The first step is in creating your personal web pages and saving them on your hard drive. We recommend creating a separate directory called "Personal Web Pages" in which to store all information relevant to your web pages. Create your home page and save it as "index.html." in this new directory.

Once you have successfully created your index.html file, you can test it to see what it will look like before publishing on the World Wide Web.Open your browser (Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer) and proceed to:

The next step is moving the file from your computer to the web hosting server. This is done through a process called FTP.

You want to build a website, so you start creating web pages on your computer.

Next, you need to publish them: you need to put those pages on a web server so that everyone would be able to view them.

To transfer the files from your computer to that web server, a special protocol (transfer method) is used: FTP - the File Transfer Protocol. This protocol was designed to be able to handle big files; it can for example resume a transfer if it was interrupted in the middle.

North State uses a program called net2ftp as our web ftp client. The normal way to connect to your FTP server is to use an FTP client and to communicate via the FTP protocol. This is however not always possible:

When you use net2ftp these problems are solved: you connect to net2ftp using a regular web browser, and net2ftp translates your requests and takes care of the FTP communication.

net2ftp also provides additional features, on top of the regular FTP features: the possibility to edit code using your web browser, to view the code with syntax highlighting, to upload-and-unzip archives, and to search for words on the FTP server.

Icons used

Their meaning should be pretty straight-forward, but just in case, here are the conventions used:

Cancel and go back
Execute the action
Save the file
Bookmark the page
Refresh the page
Logout

All icons will also display a tooltip with additional information if you keep your mouse pointer on the button for a second, without clicking on it.
Try with this icon:

The first time you log in, you will see the contents of the root directory "/". To go to a subdirectory, simply click on the subdirectory's name. To go up to the parent directory, click on the top row with the label Up.

If you know the name of the subdirectory you want to go to, you can also enter that name directly in the textbox on top of the page, and press ENTER.
If you don't know the name exactly, click on . A window will pop up, which allows you to browse the FTP server and choose a directory. Double-click on a subdirectory to go to that subdirectory. To go up, double-click on "..". Once you are in the subdirectory you wanted to find, click on Choose. The subdirectory name will be copied from the popup to the main window.

It can happen that the FTP server returns the list of directories and files in an uncommon format. In that case net2ftp shows you the lines bottom of the screen, under the heading "FTP server's output which is not recognized is shown below".

If you want this fixed please contact the net2ftp developers. They will analyze the output of your FTP server and improve the way net2ftp scans it.

On the Browse Screen, click on the Upload button to go to the Upload Screen.

There is one column on the left to upload files, and there can also be a right column to upload-and-unzip archives.

Click on the Browse button to specify which file on your computer you want to upload or upload-and-unzip to the FTP server.

Once you are ready to start the upload, click on .

The result screen will tell you if the upload was successful or not.
To upload a file, you need write permissions on that directory of the FTP server.
The file should also not be too big, as on most web servers the execution time of a script may be limited to 30 seconds.

Downloading and zipping

To download a file, simply click on its filename.

To zip-and-download files and directories, select them on the Browse Screen and click on Download.
The directories and their contents will be retrieved and zipped.
A popup window will ask you where you would like to save the Zip file on your computer.

Note that if the files inside are too big, the script will timeout and you won't be able to download anything.
If this happens, try again with less directories and omit those which contain big files.

You can also zip files and email them in attachment, or save them on the FTP server.
On the Browse Screen, select the directories and files and click on Zip.

On the Browse Screen, click on the Edit link on the same line as the filename.
Edit the text and press to save the changes (you'll need write permissions for that).

Depending on the type of file you're editing, alternative text areas can be used:

Select some files or directories and click on the Copy, Move or Delete button.

If you copy or move, then choose the target directory. This can be different for each directory or file that you selected. To set all target directories to the same value, enter the target directory in the top textbox and click on the button "Set all targetdirectories".

If you don't know the exact name of the target directory, click on . A window will pop up, which allows you to browse the FTP server and choose a directory. Double-click on a subdirectory to go to that subdirectory. To go up, double-click on "..". Once you are in the subdirectory you wanted to find, click on Choose. The subdirectory name will be copied from the popup to the main window.
To copy or move files to a second FTP server, enter the FTP server name, username and password on top.
You need write permissions to be able to copy or move files to a directory.

Once you are ready, click on .

The result screen will tell you if the action was successful or not. If the files were too big, the script will run until the timeout is reached. On most web servers the execution time of a script is limited to 30 seconds.

Select directories or files and click on Rename on the Browse Screen.
The next screen will ask for the new names.
Fill these in and click on .

Next, you want to test and make sure your newly created file is present under your directory. Go to your browser and type in the address, http://web.northstate.net/~username/index.html. Your personal web page is now accessible to anyone who has access to the Internet.

Follow the same steps presented above to upload other files and pictures to your personal web space. Remember, if you want these files available to the general public, be sure to upload them to the “public_html” directory. To view files that you have uploaded other than the index page, visit the address http://web.northstate.net/~username/filename.