Create or Edit Webpages
The following questions describe how to create and edit webpages:
-
How do I start?
- Where can I get more information about HTML?
- I wrote my page(s) on my home computer. How do I get them so other people can see them?
- My FTP directory doesn't exist. Why?
- Where can I get more help?
- Can we write scripts?
- What scripts are provided (i.e. forms, counters)?
- How do I use a counter?
- Why don't my BODY colors show in the preview?
- What web server are you using?
Q: How do
I start?
A: First, go to Create
Your Page. This should bring up a screen that says: "Enter
username for Personal-Web-Pages at www.mailbag.com." Enter your
username (the front half of your email address before the @)
and your password. This will take you to Personal Page Development.
From this page, you can create your pages, rename or delete them,
and transfer files from your FTP site to the server.
Q: Where can I get more
information about HTML?
A: There are several methods. You can look at the source of
a given page to find out how someone else did it. Most web browsers have this
function. Netscape and Microsoft Explorer have it under the View menu at the
top of the screen (it may be called Document Source or just Source). Mosaic
has it under the File menu. There are also plenty of online resources. The
following is a short list of recommended sites:
Q: I wrote my page(s) on
my home computer. How do I get them so other people can see them?
A: There are two options. You can copy the HTML code from
your computer and paste it into our web editor (described in Q: How do I start?),
or you can FTP the files (FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol). You
may do this using an FTP program such as WS_FTP which you can download from
download.com or by using a web browser such as Internet Explorer. The
following are instructions for connecting via both options.
Connecting via FTP:
1) Download WS_FTP LE from www.download.com and install the program.
2) For Session properties, fill in hostname (ftp.mailbag.com), username (first part of email address), and password under the General tab.
3) Under the Startup tab, type "/web/<username>" in the Initial Remote Site Folder window, then click OK.
When you are all done, click the Connect button. This will bring you to the webpage directory where you can upload and download your files.
Connecting via a web browser:
If you are using Internet Explorer, please type the following in the location bar of the browser (This is where you would normally type in a webpage address). ftp://ftp.mailbag.com/. A new window will pop up and ask for your username and password. Your username is the first part of your email address. For instance, if your email address was user@mailbag.com, you would type user for the username. Then type in your password for this account. (Please see the example below.) Once you have entered those, click ok and then you will connect to where your webpages are stored. You can drag and drop files to and from your web browser just like you normally do in Windows.
Q: My FTP directory doesn't exist. Why?
A: You need to have your web directory created. To create one,
go to Create Your Page.
This should bring up a screen that says: "Enter username for Personal-Web-Pages
at www.mailbag.com." Enter your username (the front half of your email address
before the @) and your password. This will take you to Personal Page Development.
Q: Where can I get more
help?
A: The best way is to send us an email. We are not charging
for this service at this time, but if our Technical Support is spending its
time answering "how do I do this in HTML" questions, we may have to start charging.
This document and features are still being added so you can also watch here
for more help.
Q: Can we write scripts?
A: No. You cannot run any scripts besides those which we have
provided for you (see Q: What scripts are provided?).
Q: What scripts are provided?
A: The script provided will take a form and email the information
to another email address. When you write your HTML, use these lines
for setting up the form:
<FORM ACTION="http://www.mailbag.com/formtomail.cgi" METHOD="POST">
<INPUT TYPE="HIDDEN" NAME="to"
VALUE="username@mailbag.com">
<INPUT TYPE="HIDDEN" NAME="from"
VALUE="username@mailbag.com">
<INPUT TYPE="HIDDEN" NAME="subject"
VALUE="YOUR CHOICE">
<INPUT TYPE="HIDDEN" NAME="nexturl"
VALUE="http://gateway.mailbag.com/users/
username/another_html_page.html">
Note: Replace the "bold" items with your own text.
Q: How do I use a counter?
A: First, here is an example of what the HTML looks like:
<P ALIGN="CENTER">
<IMG SRC="http://www.mailbag.com/
count.cgi?stahr.docs.counter">
</P>
"stahr.docs.counter" should be replaced with a unique file name. You could use the form "username".pagename. You MUST have your username starting after the question mark or else your counter will remain zero. This is now a requirement since there were a couple of requests for the ability to edit the counter file. The file is now saved in your user directory. Do not use spaces, forward slashes (/), or other punctuation besides a period in the file name. So, if you wanted a counter on your homepage, add this line to your page:
<P ALIGN="CENTER">
<IMG SRC="http://www.mailbag.com/
count.cgi?username.index.html">
</P>
Remember to replace "username" with your username. For any other page, change the index.html to that page's file name.
Q: Why don't my <BODY TEXT="#0000FF" VLINK="#000000"> colors
show in the preview?
A: They will not show up on the preview because only one <BODY> tag
is allowed on a page and should appear right after the <TITLE> tags
before any other HTML text. If you want to see the color, you will
have to look at your pages directly (i.e. /users/"username").
Q: What web server are you using?
A: We use WN. It has many nice features as a server, however, many
may not be usable via this system.