Notes on How to set up and maintain Web pages

Where to put your Web pages

On your Linux/UNIX account on something like:

student.computing.dcu.ie

in a directory called public_html:

cd
mkdir public_html
edit public_html/index.html
edit public_html/file.html

to make the files:

http://host/~user/
http://host/~user/file.html

The URL will be something like:

http://student.computing.dcu.ie/~username/

Web hosting in DCU:

ISS
- Web Publishing
redbrick (the DCU student Net Soc)

Protections

The hierarchy of directories above the files needs to be executable by "others". See Notes on directory protections

cd
chmod o+x .
chmod o+x public_html

All files need to be readable by "others". See Notes on file protections

cd
chmod o+r public_html/index.html
chmod o+r public_html/file.html
chmod o+r public_html/image.jpg

How to write your Web pages

Raw HTML in a text editor
- HTML Reference
Raw HTML in an assisted text editor
- HTML editors
- NoteTab
  - Clipbook libraries - see also Latex, C++, etc.
WYSIWYG Web editors
- Browser editors
- Word Save As
- May generate very complex, spaghetti, machine-generated HTML code that breaks oddly in different browsers, or mobile browsers.
  - Word 2 html
  - Script to fix the junk HTML generated by Microsoft WYSIWYG tools
- It might be OK for writing 1 or 2 pages, but can it scale up to hundreds of pages organised in directories and subdirectories and massively interlinked? My experience with these editors, and the complexity of simply trying to implement relative links instead of absolute links, suggests often no. As you scale up, you need to be able to understand HTML, so that you can make adjustments by hand and in scripts and programs, as well as whatever assisted tools you use.
- Note WYSIWYG editors are misleading on the Web because the Web is not WYSIWYG. Your users are looking at your pages on mobiles, PDAs, netbooks, old systems, tiny screens, wide screens, with custom colours, fonts not installed, ad blockers on and windows resized. WYSIWYG editors delude you into thinking that what you are looking at is how the page will look to the user.
Web content management system

Minimalist web page

<html>
<head>
<title> My web page </title>
</head>
<body>

<h1> My web page </h1>

<p> I am a very interesting person
and here are my poems. </p>

<p> Here is a link to my favourite artist,
<a href="http://www.daniel-site.com/"> Daniel O'Donnell</a>.
I hope to marry him some day. </p>

</body>
</html>

Browsers are forgiving:
- Case of tags doesn't matter. Blank space and new lines are all compressed.
- You can probably leave out the <html> tags, and also the closing </body> and </html> - all browsers can display partial downloads.
- Also <p> starts a new paragraph no matter what, so you can leave out the </p> tags.
However see XHTML

Read HTML Reference.

"View .. Source" on other people's pages round the Web to scavenge them for ideas (be careful not to scavenge actual content (text or image) though!)

Some HTML tags.

Using other formats

Plain text
- Just link to it, and browser should display it automatically.
- If problems, maybe change extension to .txt, or just scrap extension.
Word docs, PDF, rtf
- Unfriendly to your UNIX users?
PostScript
- Unfriendly to your Windows users?
Latex
- latex2html - Math as inline images
How to read other formats

HTML plus images (browse-and-move-on)

HTML plus images is the most portable format, readable everywhere and on anything. Think of your users not just on PCs but on netbooks, tablets, smartphones, and on old machines and old software and slow phone lines. Why make them unable to read your work for no good reason. Use the lowest common denominator.

pdf, doc, ppt, xls, ps, rtf (and in general anything that requires plug-ins and separate applications) often break the clean Web model of browse-and-move-on.

HTML creates a seamless Web - Other file types can break this

Searching for and searching in:
If it is in HTML, the content can be picked up in search engines (whereas content of ps, doc, pdf, etc. may be hidden) and content on a page can be easily searched.
- Google now does a reasonable job of searching pdf and other formats.
- Google indexes PDF [pdf], PostScript [ps], Word [doc], PowerPoint [ppt], Excel [xls] and Rich Text Format [rtf].
- See also the specialised Citation search engines, which search and index ps and pdf.
Linking in and out:
If it is in HTML, people can link to it, can link to sub-sections within it, can link to labels within those sub-sections, and those sections in turn can link back out to everything else on the Web.
- See hyperTex - embedding links within PS documents to other PS documents and ordinary html sites.
- PDF can embed hyperlinks now.
- Q. Can anyone find an example online of a link to a section within a PS or a PDF document?
  A. Here is an example of links to sections of a PDF:

How to browse your Web pages

Don't need them online to browse them:
- http://computing.dcu.ie/~USER/
Can browse offline work direct from disk:
- file:///users/USER/public_html/index.html
(this is also useful when server is down)
Under Windows, use various tools to make UNIX look like a drive, and browse:
- file:///X:/public_html/index.html
Or even edit them completely elsewhere, e.g. on laptop, and upload later:
- file:///C:/My Documents/My Web pages/index.html

Relative links

For this to work we need relative links:
- <a href="subdir/file.html">
- <img src="../picture.gif">
rather than absolute links:
- <a href="/~USER/subdir/file.html">
- <a href="http://computing.dcu.ie/~USER/subdir/file.html">
- <img src="/picture.gif">
- <img src="http://computing.dcu.ie/picture.gif">
so that the link will work whether we are browsing in "http mode" or "file mode"

How to upload your Web pages

Edit them directly off disk in UNIX, or:
Edit them in Windows. Make UNIX account look like a drive:
- In CA lab, use SAMBA. Then drag and drop (or edit direct off disk).
- From home/remote, use WebDrive (uses read-write ftp to make remote UNIX computer look like just another drive). Then drag and drop (or edit direct off disk).

See Accessing UNIX remotely and from Windows.