Ok, last night you set up Dreamweaver to communicate with the server where you'll store your Web pages. Let's go over once again what you did.
A very typical procedure for writing and maintaining a Web site is to write your HTML files on your own machine then copy these files and all connected material (images, audio, video, etc.) to a Web server. This server could be a free server, similar to the one you'll be using for your course web pages, or it could be a commercial server provided by a web hosting service where you're paying for the web space by the megabyte or gigabyte.
In both cases, you copy your files to the Web server by using the Internet's File Transfer Protocol, i.e. you connect an FTP client on your computer to an FTP server residing on the Web server, then upload your files. (You'll hear the words client and server a lot when dealing with the Internet and the Web. Also, protocol.)
So basically, last night in class, we setup a "site" in Dreamweaver's FTP client -- i.e. we told Dreamweaver where you're going to store your web site on your own computer, and most importantly, how to connect to the FTP server where these files will be stored and available via the World Wide Web. The Web, by the way, uses the HTTP protocol, HyperText Transfer Protocol. (Already you've learned about two Internet protocols -- HTTP and FTP!)
By the way, not all HTML editors have built-in FTP clients. Many times one uses a dedicated FTP client application -- WS_FTP is a popular one on Windows, Fetch on a MAC. (Application is just another word for computer program.)
So, now that you're very close to publishing what is probably your first Web site, you may want to know what the address of your Web site will be? Well, here's the address for a page I uploaded to the eev3 server: eev3.liu.edu/herricks/JM. Just substitute your initials for the "JM" at the end of that address and you'll have it -- the address of your Web site on the eev3 server. (From what I can tell, Adam is one of the first to already upload files to the server. His site is at eev3.liu.edu/herricks/AD)
(BTW, if you use index.html or index.htm as the file name for your home page, you won't have to include the file name in the address! If you don't use one of those two default names, the address of your home page will have to include the file name - something like eev3.liu.edu/herricks/JM/home.html, or whatever you've named your file. (These default filenames can vary from Web server to Web server, but almost always index.html is the one default name you can count on.)
Now... the next item on the agenda -- writing your first Web page. More on this soon!
Some terms to remember: client, server, FTP and HTTP. (Also remember, that server can refer to both software (a server program) and hardware (a computer running server software.)
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Saturday, November 10, 2007
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