These are step-by-step instructions to publishing a Web home page on Eden. These instruction are also found at http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/.
This page is a guide to setting up your own World Wide Web home page on Eden. Please read this before you send email asking how to get started. If you still have questions, send mail to dhjones@rci.rutgers.edu or browse http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~dhjones. This guide is specific to setting up WWW pages at eden.rutgers.edu, but others may find it useful and are free to use the information. When you finish, your web address will be http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~your-username.
You can't just stick any old text in your index.html file; you need to format it in a special language called HTML. HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It allows you to do fancy things like center text, underline things, put things in italics, and even include pictures, sound, and video. If you want to learn HTML, check out the HTML style guides at the WWW Consortium's site. HTML is a fairly small, but sometimes confusing language. Please read the guides and look at other peoples' pages if you need to learn it. We can only help with the technical aspects here; you'll have to learn HTML on your own. The easiest route to publishing on Eden is to follow Eden Web Page Template. Come back here when you have created your index.html file.
The best way to customize your web home page is to use a word processor such as MS Word on your PC, or even a web publishing application such as HotDog or Netscape Gold. If you use a word processor make sure you save your file as a TEXT ONLY file. You will need to transport your index.html file from your Eden directory to your PC, edit the file, then transport it back again. The ftp client on the PC is the best way to transport files between computers. Fire up ftp on the PC Windows screen and get cooking! Make sure the index.html file has the html extension after you have transported it back to Eden. Use the ftp client's "rename" button to change the extension.
The information here should be enough to get you started. If you have any further questions on HTML, please check http://www-ns.rutgers.edu/services/WWW/RU-Web-Guide.html, or post a message to the local newsgroups ru.ici.nb.general or the UseNet newsgroup comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html. There are more instructions at http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/.
Please read all sections of this guide before starting. These instructions are specifically for machines that have the UNIX operating system. Although you do not have to have prior knowledge of UNIX, you do have to be familiar with the UNIX command prompt, which is the place for you to type and issue UNIX commands to the mainframe computer. All commands are sent to the computer by pressing the "return key" a.k.a. the "enter key," but in geek talk it is often called the "carriage return" and is denoted by <CR>, (an anachronism from the good ol' typewriter days). For example after you log on, you can find out who else is actively using the computer with following command:
eden> finger <CR>
For Eden, the command prompt is "eden>". <CR> means for you to press the carriage return, don't try to type "<CR>"! One last caution: UNIX is case sensitive, which means that FINGER would not work, nor would Finger. So when your are instructed to issue commands, be sure to type them precisely the way they are presented.
Before your home page can be accessed by the rest of the world, you must set up a public HTML directory, and make sure it is accessible to everyone. You must also make sure your home directory is searchable, so that the HTML directory can be found. The following commands will create the HTML directory and set the permissions correctly:
chmod a+x ~ <CR>
mkdir ~/public_html <CR>
chmod a+x ~/public_html <CR>
In the commands above, `~' refers to your home directory. You may use a literal `~'; the shell command interpreter will replace it with the proper path to your home directory (note that this works for almost any shell command as well). The chmod command says "add search permission (x) for all users (a)". For more information, you can enter "man chmod"; but the values listed above will work--you don't have to understand the whole chmod command if you use them (although it's a good idea to learn chmod).
The first page that users will see when they access your WWW page will be the contents of the file ~/public_html/index.html. You should always have an index.html file (it's not technically necessary, it's just proper style). To create one, enter something like:
cd ~/public_html <CR>
emacs index.html <CR>
This will enter the public HTML directory and invoke the emacs editor to create the index.html file. You can use any editor you want here. You can also upload an index.html file if you create one on your home machine. You may ftp your file from a PC on the Rutgers-WAN (RUNET) or from home if you are using a Winsock client to dial into RUNET. Otherwise, to upload an index.html file from home using Zmodem, first cd into the HTML directory (as shown above), and then enter:
rz <CR>
Invoke the Zmodem send function on your end, and then enter "ls" to look at the directory contents to make sure your file was transmitted. If you had to use a different filename (for example, index.htm, due to MSDOS filename restrictions), you will want to rename the file:
mv index.htm index.html <CR>
Once your index.html file is in place, regardless of the method used to create it, you will have to make sure it is publicly readable. To do this, enter:
chmod a+r index.html <CR>
This is the automatic index.html file, that "webinit"
creates. It is useful to study for creating your own index.html
file even if you do not have an account on Eden. It will look
like this before you customize it.
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Home Page Template</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<H1 align=center>My Home Page</H1>
<IMG SRC="yourgraphic.gif" ALT="Text to
be typed if picture can't be shown">
<P>You can put a short, descriptive paragraph or two here by
replacing this paragraph with your own. Your text will be reformatted
automatically to fit the width of the screen of the person who's
viewing your home page.
<P>Here is another short descriptive paragraph. You can create as many
of these as you want by using this tag. Just put a new one at the
beginning of each paragraph
<P>like
<P>this.
<H2>Interests</H2>
<OL>
<LI>description
<LI>description
<LI>description
</OL>
<H2>Personal Hot List</H2>
<UL>
<LI><A
HREF="http://www.webcrawler.com/WebCrawler/WebQuery.html">Webcrawler
Intenet search</A>
<LI><A HREF="http://info.rutgers.edu">The
Rutgers info system</A>
<LI><A HREF="http://www.nbcs.rutgers.edu/nbcs/students/">Computing
Services for Rutgers Students in New Brunswick
<LI><A HREF="Put the URL Here">Put the link description here</a>
</UL>
<ADDRESS>YourName <A
HREF="MAILTO:username@eden.rutgers.edu">username@eden.rutgers.edu</A>
</ADDRESS>
</BODY>
</HTML>
To customize index.html, edit the file and replace items such
as YourName, personal URL, and description with appropriate info.
For example,
YourName
Your full name
YourPicture.gif
A graphic image saved in GIF format.
description
Whatever information you'd like to provide on the topic.
Put the URL Here
The Web address of a site to which you'd like people reading
your Web page to be able to go.
Put the link description here
A brief description of that Web site.
username@eden.rutgers.edu
Your e-mail address
You can change anything in the file, but be careful about changing any of the HTML tags (Hint-the HTML tags are surrounded by <>). You may change any text within a tag that is surrounded by quotes. If you want to delete something with one of the HTML tags, such as <H2> , be sure to delete everything up to and including the appropriate closing tag, such as </H2> . The lines beginning with <LI> have no closing tags and may be deleted as necessary.
You can include personal information, such as as your phone number,
mailing address, etc., anywhere you wish. Separate paragraphs
with the <P> and </P> tags. See below for more information
on HTML tags.
Now, assuming your index.html file contains valid HTML code, you're
all set! Your URL (Uniform Resource Locator; geek talk for a WWW
address, among other things) will be http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~username,
where "username" is your login ID (for example, the
URL to Professor Jones' home page is http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~dhjones).