Detailed Steps

Overview

Many people use their webpage to provide information for others to view, such as hobbies and resumes. You can build your own webpage using notepad (PC) or simple text (Mac). Which ever program you use, the files will need to be transfered over as FTP (File Tranfer Protocol) or through Fetch. This allows you to store your webpage on your UNIX account at Cal Poly. Cal Poly uses Fetch to transfer files over to UNIX, where webpages are stored and are available for viewing by internet enthusiasts.

Setting Up a Viewable Web Page

  1. At the Cal Poly prompt, type in your login site (ie: polylog1) and log in as usual.
  2. At the % prompt type:
    % mkdir public_html
    % chmod a+x public_html
    This creates a world-readable directory where your files are stored for web viewing. This directory is called public_html. You can make your directory searchable by typing in:

    % chmod a+x ~IDName

    Next we need to create the file which will contain the content of your webpage. Here are two ways to go about doing that:

    % cd public_html
  3. Now make your file readable by entering:
    % cdmod a+rx index.html
  4. Now your webpage is ready for anyone to locate on the world wide web using a web browser! Your address is:
    http://www.calpoly.edu/~IDName

    File Permissions

    File permissions need to be set so everything in your public_html directory will be readable by everyone. Each directory within the public_html directory needs to be world-readable, therefore you need to assign permissions to each individual directory within your public_html directory. You can do this all at once or file by file.

    To make all files and directories readable enter: TIPS

    % chmod a+rx *
    To assign read permissions individually to each directory enter:
    % chmod a+x NameofDirectory
    To assign read permissions to any files and graphics with the public_html directory enter:
    % chmod a+rx NameofFile

    What Did I Just Do?

    Congratulations, you just created a directory and assigned permissions to your web document.

    What Does All That HTML Code Mean?

    To create a webpage, you need to tell the web browser what you want it to do. There are simple commands that allow you to decide background colors, font sizes, text alignments, placement of images and much more. For example, to tell the web browser you want to use a size 3 font you enter a tag command to start and an end tag to stop the command. 
    
<FONT SIZE=+3>I type in what I want 
to be size 3 font in between the
start and end tags like this!</FONT>
    and it looks like this:
    I type in what I want to be size 3 font in between the start and end tags like this!
    The web browser now understands the text between the tags and what you want it to do. Some commands do not require an end tag, such as <BR> (new line) and <HR> (makes a separation line across the screen).

    To write a basic page you must start by telling the browser you want the document to be an HTML document, give the document a title, and a body. Also, you must end by telling the browser to end the body and HTML document. For example:

    <HTML>
    <HEAD><TTTLE>Add title of page here</TITLE></HEAD>
    <BODY>
    Enter all information in between the body tags. 
You can enter anything from text to images, 
links to frames and much more!
    </BODY>
    </HTML>
    What you put in between start body and stop body depends on how creative you want to be with your webpage!

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