Making your own World Wide Web documents

Kevin Cole
Gallaudet Research Institute
kjcole@gri.gallaudet.edu
Copyright © October 9, 1995

[NOTE: Try to read thru this a few times to understand it. Print it out by choosing the "Print" button from Netscape or typing "P" in Lynx. Then go to the basement of EMG, to the big window, and ask for your printout.]

It is INCREDIBLY easy to set up your OWN pages here at Gallaudet. You do not need to wait for someone to set up a page off-campus. Many students at Gallaudet and MSSD and elementary schools around the US are typing in their own pages. It may seem hard when you first try it, but really, it is as easy as sending mail to someone off-campus. One time, you probably thought that was hard too.

Here's what you need to do. (Get a pen ready to write this down, or print it out somewhere.) Note: Pay attention to UPPER and lower case letters. Unix is case-sensitive.

  1. Go to Computer Services and ask for a form to get a Unix username. In a few days, you will get a form with your new username and password.

  2. When you get your new username and password, you will be connecting to a different kind of computer that does not use MAIL or NOTES the same way that you use it now. Don't type "C GALLUA". Instead, type "C GALLUX". Type in your username and password. Type them exactly as shown, with capital letters and lower case letters, if that is how it is on the form. (For example if your password is "Wendy" don't type "WENDY" or "wendy".)

  3. Type "mkdir web". You will only have to do this once. It makes a subdirectory where all of your world-wide web documents are kept.

  4. Type:
    	cd web
	pico index.html

	<html>
	  <head>
	    <title>My First Web Page</title>
	  </head>

	  <body>
	    <h1>My First Web Page</h1>
	
	    <p>This is my first web page, bla, bla, bla...
	    More stuff, bla, bla bla.</p>

	    <p>This is a new paragraph. Bla bla bla...</p>

	  </body>
	</html>

	Ctrl-X
	Y	(Answer Y when it asks if you want to save your work.)
	index.html

Now you are finished. You can look at your web page by going to some machine that has Netscape or Mosaic and point it to:

http://www.gallaudet.edu/~username/index.html

Use your username instead of the word "username". If you did everything right, you should get a page that looks like this (click here).

Here's a short explaination about what you just did, if you followed all the directions.

  1. pico is the name of the word-processor/editor on the GALLUX computer. When you use "pico", a small, simple menu appears on the bottom of the screen. The ^ means Ctrl. So "^X Exit" means "type Ctrl-X to Exit".

  2. All World Wide Web (WWW) documents should have a name that ends with ".html".

  3. When you are formatting a World Wide Web document, there are special words that appear between < and >. These are called "formatting tags" Many of the tags are in pairs. The tag that finishes a section looks the same as the tag that starts a section, except that it has a "/" added. Here is a list of the most used tags.

    START ... END Meaning
    <html> ... </html> These go at the beginning and end of your file.
    <head> ... </head> These go around your "heading information".
    <title> ... </title> These go around your title.
     
    <body> ... </body> These go around the text of your document.
    <h1> ... </h1> Text between these will print very large.
    <h2> ... </h2> Text between these will print large.
    <h3> ... </h3> Text between these will print average size.
    <h4> ... </h4> Text between these will print small.
    <h5> ... </h5> Text between these will print smaller.
    <h6> ... </h6> Text between these will print smallest.
    <p> ... </p> These mark the start and end of a paragraph.
    <b> ... </b> Text between these will be in boldface.
    <i> ... </i> Text between these will be in italics.
    <u> ... </u> Text between these will be underlined.

  4. Fancy stuff (these are a little harder to use):

    <img src="filename"> This lets you include a picture in your text.
    <a href="url"> ... </a> This lets you create a link to another place on the World Wide Web.
    <a name="label"> ... </a> This creates a "jump-point" within the current document.

Next: What's a URL?

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