The Stone Age Meets the Information Age:
an introduction to archaeology
IFS 1998
Professor Jeanne Sept
Anthropology Department
Student Building 038 (office)
855-5395; sept@indiana.edu
Lisa Maiorino (intern)
Teter Hall room xxx
Digging the Web
Today we will meet in the computer lab to introduce you to the process of creating a web page. Hopefully, by the end of class, everyone will have created a simple home page, and be well on the way to finishing the "Web Assignment 1" due Monday afternoon.
Note: I have tried to create a set of simple instructions that detail all the information you need below. However, you can also consult the UITS instructions online: http://kb.indiana.edu/data/addx.html?cust=9016
If you really get into this, and feel ambitious... here's a link to the IU WebMaster's HomePage, with all sorts of tips....
Web Workshop:
You will:
1. Create a simple HTML page from a template and save it on the local hard drive (scratch disk)
- learn about the concept of HTML (go to introduction)
- get a copy of the HTML code of a sample WWW document (go to Step 1)
- replace the text on the HTML file with your own information and save it on your hard drive with your own name (go to Step 2) and then copy the file into your Student Locker.
2. Set up an EZInfo account (go to Step 3)
3. Move web pages and images from your locker into your EZInfo directory (using Fetch on the Mac or CuteFTP on the NT) (go to Step 4) and find your page on the WWW (go to Step 5)
Introduction:
(taken from TLTL page: http://www.indiana.edu/~ecopts/overview.html)
Creating a World Wide Web (WWW) course homepage means creating a computer file that contains special "codes" or "tags" that allow it to be viewed with WWW browser software such as Netscape. Your computer file can contain links to other files you create and links to other sites or files on the Internet. The system of "codes" or "tags" used to format and link WWW files is known as HyperText Markup Language (HTML).
Generally, you will create the HTML
files on your personal computer and then transfer them to another computer
(the EZInfo server) so they can be read by anyone who has a WWW browser
and who knows the address, or Uniform/Universal Resource Locator (URL),
of your files.
STEP 1: Look at a Web Page and View its HTML code
One simple way to create a WWW page is to find a simple one you like and then "adopt" the basic HTML formatting from it, replacing the text with your own. With Netscape, you simply visit a page you like, go to the View menu, and select View Page Source. A file will open containing the source (HTML tags and text) for the page. You can save this file to your hard drive (or copy and paste it into a word processing document) and edit it to your liking.
- Click here to view a good example of a simple web page that you can copy!
- Under the View menu, choose Page Source, and the HTML file for that page will open on your screen
- Compare the HTML file side by side with the web page... can you spot
the HTML tags listed below?
Here are some quick explanations of some <tags> that you will see on this page, and what they do:
| <html> and </html> | begin and end every HTML document (required) |
| <head> and </head> | begin and end the header information, which must include a title for the page window in the browser (e.g. QOOO), and can also include specific colors for the background and the links (If you don't include specific colors, it uses default colors, like a grey background.) |
| <body> and </body> | begins and ends the body of the text and images you want on your web page (required) |
| <p> | begins a new paragraph |
| <center> and </center> | begin and end a section of text that you want centered on the page. Without the <center> command, your text will default to the left margin. |
| <font size =5> and </font> | begins and ends an optional command for font size. If you don't use this command, your font will be the default set for your browser. |
| <a href= "http://www.indiana.edu/~bot.html">Indiana University</a> | The <a href= .....</a> command includes a URL location (in quotes) you want to link to, and the text on the page you want underlined for the user to click on to follow the link (in this case Indiana University). Note that it is important to include the HTML < > symbols in pairs! |
| <img src="http:// www.indiana.edu/~tltl/ images/owl_sm.jpg"> | The <img src= ... > command includes a URL location (in quotes) for an image you want to display on your page in this location. You should either include the complete URL of an image already on the WWW on another server, or include the complete URL of an image you have created and put in your own EZInfo WWW directory. |
These are really all you need to start... if you want to learn more HTML commands, here are some links you can use for reference:
- Take 10 Minutes to Learn HTML
- Crash course on writing documents for the Web
- The Bare Bones Guide to HTML
- A
Beginner's Guide to HTML
In addition, an easy way to create your HTML files is to use your word processing package to type in the tags or codes needed to format an exisiting document. There are programs that make it easier to "mark up" a text file with the appropriate HTML tags. If you use recent versions of WordPerfect or Word 6.1, you can save your files as HTML documents without having to do much extra typing at all. Other programs such as Netscape Composer make it easy to create HTML files.
There are a number of commercial HTML programs that make it easy to create web pages... I use Adobe PageMill, for example :-) (which is the only way I can crank out these web pages for our class with the speed I do.)
STEP 2: Edit the HTML file to put your own text in it
- Replace the Title of the page in the Header and in the Body of the text with your own name... "Joe's Home Page"
- Replace the text on the page with a sentence about yourself
- Delete most of the links... but keep one or two and change them to
link to
- our class homepage: http://www.indiana.edu/~origins/teach/ifs.html
- the IFS homepage: http://www.indiana.edu/~IFS/
- Click on the FILE menu and Choose the SAVE AS command to rename the file and save it (You can save it on the local scratch disk first, and move it to your locker later.... or save it directly to your locker if it is already open)
- Test your HTML file! Once you have created your HTML documents, test them from your personal computer before you make them available to the world. In Netscape, you can view HTML files on your hard drive. From the File menu, select Open File in Navigator. Then locate the file you created. If there are any problems, you can fix them before you move the files to the WWW server.
- Once you have created a homepage you like, name it home.html
or home.htm The IU server is set up to automatically recognize
your personal homepage in your own account if it has that name, and ONLY
that name.
STEP 3: Create your own WWW Directory on the EZInfo server
After your files have been created and tested, you will need to move them to the computer that acts as a WWW server so that other people can read them. Your files will go in the WWW directory on your EZInfo server account. You will need to login to the account and type spinweb to set up the WWW directory there.
- All students automatically get an EZInfo account when they get a username and password. The first time you try to log into EZInfo it will ask you to confirm your username and password, and a few other things.
- In the student computing sites, you can log into EZInfo directly from
the Apple or Start menus. If you are connecting to EZInfo from your own
computer, refer to the UITS brochure "EZInfo at IU" for instructions.
- Log Into EZInfo from the menu
- Enter your Username and password when prompted
- When prompted for a terminal type, press ENTER or RETURN.
- When you see the EZInfo main menu, choose option [7] to "exit to the UNIX shell"
- At the UNIX prompt, type "spinweb" This command will automatically set up a WWW directory for you in your own account.
- To see the contents of your EZInfo account, type "ls" (the UNIX command for "list")
- This will list out the different directories in your account... one of them should be called "WWW"
- Type the command "cd www" (the UNIX command for "change directory to www directory')
- Now you moved down into your WWW directory... to see what's there type the command "ls" again... there should only be one file in there now called "home-template.html" This is just a generic homepage that spinweb created automatically...
- Stay logged into your EZInfo account for the moment, but switch to the next step
STEP 4: Move your own web page into your EZInfo web directory using an FTP program
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, programs which help you move your files from one computer on the network to another. You now need to move a copy of your homepage HTML file out of your Locker account and into your EZInfo server account. FTP Software such as Fetch on the Macintosh and CuteFTP on the NT machines makes transferring the files to your EZInfo account relatively simple. For more information about Fetch, see the brochures available in the clusters, the appendix of the "PINE" handout we got earlier in the week, or the following online reference:
NCSA Telnet
and Fetch (FTP) for the Macintosh: A quick guide
- Open FETCH from the Communications menu on the Mac
- You can use the SHORTCUT MENU at the bottom of the login form to choose EZInfo as the machine you wish to connect to
- Enter your Username and password in the form
- put WWW in the Directory box
Fetch will now open a window that shows you the files that are in your WWW directory account on EZInfo... for the moment, just the home-template.html file. There are two buttons to the right:
- PUT is the choice if you want to put a new file into your EZInfo account
- GET is the choice if you want to get a copy of a file already on the server
Since you want to put your HTML homepage file into your EZInfo account:
- make sure you are viewing the contents of your WWW directory (should be visible at the top of the form)
- click on the PUT button
- Fetch will let you navigate into your local hardrive, or into your locker, to select your the HTML file you want to put into your EZInfo account
- Then click OK and it should move it instantly and list it in the window
STEP 5: Spin your Web!
- Return to the Telnet UNIX window with your EZInfo account.
- At the UNIX prompt, type "spinweb" again. This command will automatically set up global WWW access for all the new files you have moved into your directory... including home.html, and any others. Every time you add new files into your WWW directory, you must log into EZInfo and type spinweb to make them accessible on the WWW
- Now you can return to your Netscape window and type in your own homepage URL to see your new homepage:
http://php.indiana.edu/~yourusername/home.html
http://php.indiana.edu/~yourusername/filename.html (for other files in your directory)
Jeanne Sept does field research related to the archaeology of human origins in East Africa,
and teaches in the Anthropology Department at Indiana University, Bloomington.
visit her main web page Human Origins and Evolution in Africa or the following topical pages:
Africa | Primates | Human Evolution | Paleoecology | Archaeology
IU Anthropology | Sept teaching interests | Sept research | Sept Personal Home PageLast updated: 3 August, 1998
URL: http://www.indiana.edu/~origins/index.html
Comments: sept@indiana.edu
Copyright 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998 Jeanne Sept