CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE
 
Beginner's Guide to Netscape Composer 4 for Windows Users:

How to Publish Your Web Page

This section provides instructions for publishing Web pages to the university's central Web server. 
 
Note: If your department has it's own Web server, contact the department webmaster for information on how to publish your pages.
 

Overview

In order for other people to be able to see your Web page, the page must be located in a specific subdirectory (or folder) in your campus network account and appropriate permissions must be set on both your account and the Web page file.

Therefore, before your publish any Web pages you must configure your campus network account. This is a one-time only process that consists of creating a subdirectory called public_html and setting permissions on your home directory and the public_html subdirectory that allow people access to your Web pages. [See "How to Configure Your Campus Network Account", below.]

Before publishing a page for the first time, you will also need to find out the path to your home directory and set the default publishing location in Netscape. [See "How to Find Out the Path to Your Home Directory" and "Designating a Default Publishing Location", below.]

From then on, whenever you want to publish a new Web page all you have to do is transfer the document to the public_html subdirectory in your account. [See "How to Transfer (Upload) Your Web Page Files", below.]
 

How to Configure Your Campus Network Account

Once you have configured your account, you won't ever have to do it again.
  1. In the "Location:" text box in your Netscape Navigator window, type:
    2.  

    telnet://telnet.csun.edu

    and tap the ENTER key.

  1. When the "login:" prompt appears, log in to your campus network account (e.g., xyz12345 or hcxyz123).
 
Note: If this method doesn't work, it probably means you don't have telnet software installed on your computer. In that case, you can use HyperTerminal (or some other terminal emulation program) to make the connection.
  1. At the command prompt (e.g., "csun>") type the following three UNIX commands (tapping the ENTER key after each one). You will get no confirmation that you've entered a UNIX command correctly; if you get no message, it means the command was accepted.
mkdir public_html 
chmod 711 $HOME 
chmod 755 public_html

The first command creates (makes) the directory where your Web documents will be located (public_html). The second allows other people access to your home directory (but NOT to read any files). The third allows access to the public_html directory and any files you transfer to that directory from your desktop computer (this does not include files you create directly in your account). 
 

How to Find Out the Path to Your Home Directory

You will need this information in order to configure Netscape Composer for publishing. 
  1. At the command prompt in your campus network account, type the following command and then press the ENTER key: 
    pwd 
  1. Write down the information that is printed on the screen. It will look like this: 
home/usersx/grp/account 
where: 
    • usersx is the disk drive where your files are stored (users1, users2, etc.) 
    • grp is an abbreviation for your campus department or unit (such as mis or oao, for example) 
    • account is your account number (e.g., xyz12345 or hcxyz123) 
  1. Log out and disconnect.

 

Designating a Default Publishing Location

If you set a default publishing location in Composer, you won't have to type the FTP location every time you publish (i.e., transfer) a Web page document.

To set the default, choose (click):

Edit - Preferences - Composer - Publishing

Then, in the "Default publishing location" section of the Preferences dialog box, enter the FTP site address as follows:

ftp://ftp.csun.edu/home/usersx/grp/account/public_html

replacing the "/home/usersx/grp/account/" portion of the address with the path information for your account. (See "How to Find Out the Path to Your Home Directory", above)

Figure 1 (below) shows the Composer Publishing Preferences dialog box with a sample FTP site address entered. 
 
FIGURE 1. Composer Publishing Preferences Dialog BoxComposer Publishing Preferences Dialog Box
 
Publish button

How to Transfer (Upload) Your Web Page Files

Once you've configured your account and set the default location in Netscape Composer Publishing preferences, this is all you have to do from then on to publish a Web page.
 
  1. If the Web page file you want to publish isn't already open, open it in Netscape Composer.
  2. Click the Publish icon on the Composition Toolbar to display the "Publish" dialog box (as shown in Figure 2, below). There should already be information entered in three of the text boxes:
    • Page Title: The title you entered when you saved your document the first time.
    • HTML Filename: The name of the file to be transferred.
    • HTTP or FTP Location to publish to: The default publishing location.
  3. In box labeled "User name:" enter your account number (e.g., xyz12345  or hcxyz123). 
  4. In the box labeled "Password:" enter the password for your account. The password will be displayed as a series of asterisks. (You can check the box for "Save password" so that you don't have to type it in each time you publish a page; however, for security reasons, this is not recommended.) 
  5. Click OK to transfer the file. A message box will tell you if the transfer was successful (and you will have to click the OK button to clear the box from the screen). 
 
FIGURE 2. Publish Dialog BoxPublish Dialog Box
 
 

Your Web Page Location (or URL — Uniform Resource Locator)

After you've finished the publishing procedure, you'll probably want to look at your Web site — and tell others where to find it.

If your main Web page file is called index.html your Web page address is:

http://www.csun.edu/~account
where account is your account number (e.g., xyz12345 or hcxyz123). 

The Web page address for any page other than index.html is of the format:

http://www.csun.edu/~account/filename
where account is your account number (e.g., xyz12345 or hcxyz123) and filename is the name of your Web page file (homepage.html, for example).
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Prepared by Gail Said Johnson, User Support Services
September 9, 2003