Publishing Web Pages: Introduction

1. Finding server space for your pages
   • Course web pages
   • Departmental, organization, and unit web pages
   • Personal web pages
   • Space options outside Cornell
2. Transferring your pages to the server
   • Connecting to the server
   • Uploading your pages
   • Testing your pages
3. Listing your pages

Finding Server Space for Your Pages

Publishing web pages requires you to have a way to create a web page, and somewhere to publish the page. Slightly different options and concerns exist depending on the page's purpose and who is publishing it.

Course web pages

Help creating course web pages is available from CIT's Faculty Support Services group. Information on their services, including server space, classes, and hands-on tutorials is available on their Creating course Web sites page.

Departmental, organization, and unit web pages

Many departments have personal web servers, as well as personal guidelines for web page creation. If your department or organization does not have a web server, server space can be obtained from the following sources:

1. Student Activities Office server: for student organizations.
   
2. Student Web Services Group: for offices that offer student services.

Personal web pages

Personal web pages can be hosted at Cornell through the CU People service, which offers 5 MB of space to all students, faculty, and staff at Cornell.

Space options outside Cornell

Server space can be purchased from local ISPs or other Internet providers. If you are creating a web site on behalf of a not-for-profit agency, many ISPs will donate space free of charge.

You can also run your own server if you have access to a permanent internet connection and a stable IP address (ResNet and campus networking provide stable IP addresses, but Road Runner and modem connections typically do not).

Transferring your pages to the server

Connecting to the Server

After you create a web page, you need to move the web page onto a server so people can access it. This is typically done through using FTP (File Transfer Protocol) software to transfer the files, although some web editors also have FTP capability. Bear Access provides FTP clients for both Windows (Filezilla) and Macintosh (Fetch). Complete documentation is available at their respective web sites. For these programs, you'll generally need to input the following information:

• Host Address: the address of the server you're connecting to, for instance www.people.cornell.edu.
• User ID: your login name on the server.
• Password: your password for the server.
• Directory: (optional) the part of the server to upload or download files to. You can usually navigate to this location after connecting, and many servers automatically place you in your personal directory.

Uploading Your Pages

You must transfer HTML files in text (ASCII) mode, and you must transfer image and sound files in binary mode (on a Macintosh be sure to send such files as "raw data"). Be careful not to give a new file a name used by one already on the system unless you want to overwrite it deliberately. There is no "undo" feature for transferring files and an overwritten file is gone for good.

Furthermore, we recommend that you avoid the use of blank spaces or special characters in a file's name because they can cause problems for systems different from the one on which they were created. Keep the filenames in lowercase too, so that they are easier for people to type and read over the phone.

Testing Your Pages

As soon as your web pages are on the server, you should test by viewing your web pages with various web browsers. Web pages will look different on Windows and Macintosh computers, and on different web browsers on the same computer. After you've tested your pages manually, you may wish to use a validator program to confirm that the HTML code works well on browsers besides the one(s) you have tested. These validators also catch problems with HTML code that may not be acceptable to all browsers and point out any missing HTML codes that you have accidentally omitted. Try this validator or find one that works well for you:

W3C HTML Validation Service: http://validator.w3.org/

You can also see Yahoo's WWW design and layout color information page for more information about making sure your images appear the same on all types of computers and browsers.

Listing your pages

If you want your pages listed amongst Cornell's web sites then you must register the page with the CUinfo staff.