Getting Started

Build Your Own Page on Your Unix Account
There are many new software tools available for making web pages. These instructions however, should work for all George Mason students, providing you can access your mason Unix account. To get credit for class assignments, your page must be in your mason account. Before building your own page, you may want to use Netscape to look at other web pages to get ideas. To launch Netscape In ST 1, 124, choose the Start menu, and then choose Internet Applications and finally, Netscape from the sub-menu.

Once you have launched a web browser, you can enter a URL (uniform resource locator) and press return to view a page. Try these:

	http://www.cs.gmu.edu/~amarchan
	http://www.yahoo.com

Often you can find out how pages work by choosing Page Source from the
View menu.
You can click on any text in blue to "link" to more information. (Choose "Back" from the Go menu (or Navigate menu) to go back.)

Plan Before You Begin!

During your career as a student here, you may well need to create a number of web based projects. It will save you time later if you plan ahead now. You may want to use the file "index.html" (this is the "default" web page that will come up if a user tries to view a page from your account, but does not specify a file) as an index into your directory. Example:

For details on setting this up, see this web site: http://www.irc.gmu.edu/jobaids/multifolders/jobaid.asp

Setting File and Directory Permissions

To make your own page, log in to your osf1 (mason) account. (If your machine has telnet, you can launch it from the browser by entering the URL: telnet://osf1.gmu.edu)

You'll need to change the default protections that are set on your account so that others can "execute" files your directory. For information on how the chmod command works, click here. Type: (in all lower case, exactly, with a space after chmod and a space after a+x Then type the period.)
chmod a+x .

(Don't forget the little dot. If you get another Unix prompt, all went well. If you get an error, try again.)

Then you'll need to make a directory in your account. (Type carefully. Be sure there are no spaces in public_html and use an underscore, not a hyphen.)
mkdir public_html

And set the protections for this new directory:
chmod a+rx public_html

Then, open this directory:
cd public_html

To see what directory you are in, type: (print working directory)
pwd

Next, you need to use one of the Unix editors to create a file. You can use pico, vi, or emacs. Pico is the easiest and is very similar to the pine program used for email. If you are in CS 103 and creating a home page, type:
pico index.html

If you are in Eng 107, type:
pico eng107.html

Now you are in the pico program. We are going to create a file in html format (hypertext markup language). HTML is not WYSIWYG. That is, we are going to insert commands into the document to format your text. For the assignment today, type: 

	<!--Assignment for (insert class name) -->
	<HTML>
	<TITLE> Homepage for Your Name </TITLE>
	<BODY bgcolor="0088FF">
	<H2><CENTER>Your Name </CENTER></H2>
	<HR>
	<B> Insert several lines of text of your own choosing here.
	<BR>Remember to add a break for each new line.
	</B>
	<A href="http://url for link goes here">label for link</A>
	<P>&#169; 2000 Your Name
	</BODY>
	</HTML>
To exit pico, type control-o (press control key and then the letter o) to save, press enter, then control-x to quit.

Next we need to set the protections for this file so others can view it:
chmod a+r index.html (use this command for CS 103)
chmod a+r eng107.html (use this command for Eng 107)

Test your new page! In Windows, use Newscape or Explorer to view it. If the page will not appear, the most likely problem is that the file protections have not been set correctly. You will need to log in again and repeat the chmod commands above. Be sure to ask if you need help. If the file is saved in index.html, your URL will be
http://mason.gmu.edu/~yourlogin

If the file is saved in eng107.html, your URL will be
http://mason.gmu.edu/~yourlogin/eng107.html

Eng 107 bring a printout of your page (choose Print from the File menu in the browser) to class next Monday.
CS 103: There is nothing to turn in. Your grader will check your page on line.

Explanation of HTML "tags": 

	<!-- This inserts a "comment" into the page which is ignored
		by the browser and does not appear on the screen-->
	<BODY> text here is distinguished from the document title. 
		The title is how the browser will refer to the page.
	</BODY>
HTML will run lines together.  Use:
	<BR>	Line break 
	<P>	Paragraph break (blank line)

	<H1>	Indicates a header.  The number following
		the H (1-6), indicates the size of the header.
	<B>	Text between is in bold </B>
	<CENTER>Text between is centered </CENTER>
	<I>	Text between is in italics </I>
	<HR>	horizontal rule-draws a line across the page
	&#169; 	© symbol
To create a link:
	<A href="http:// url goes here "> put link label here</A>

Notice that some tags require an ending tag, designated by a forward
slash. Example: <B> turn bold face on </B> turn bold face off.

Editing your Web Page
To make changes to your web page, you will need to be sure you are logged in to your mason account. Then use the cd command (as above) to move into the public_html directory. Then type pico filename.html (index.html or eng107.html) and use pico as before. You do not need to repeat the chmod commands. Note: When you view your web page again, you may need to click the "Reload" button in the browser before you will see the changes. Pages are often "cached" (saved) on disk to speed loading them.

Explore! Cannibalize! You can get ideas for formatting by viewing a page you like in Netscape and then choose View (Page) Source.
For more on html see: Making it Look Cool!

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