3. Going public - Allowing others to browse and search your
pages
3.1. Publishing your pages onto the web
3.1.1. Publishing your pages onto the web
The final step is to place your page onto a web server , so
that it can be browsed from anywhere on the internet, and so that the pages can
be searched by search
engines.
3.1.2. Your web server, user name and password
For this tutorial, you will be able to publish your project
pages onto a web server located at AustLII. Its address is
'student.austlii.edu.au', and it is also called
‘sandpit’.
Your username is surname
Your password is [as instructed
in
class]
3.1.3. Setting the publishing defaults
If you are publishing your pages from a computer that is used
only be you, then you should set up publishing defaults so that your files will
always be published to your correct directory on sandpit.
In Netscape Composer the selection [Edit | Preferences |
Composer | Publishing] "Publish to (FTP or HTML)' box should be set to read
ftp://student.austlii.edu.au/home/tute99/public_html/
You should also complete the 'User Name' and 'Password'
boxes below with your details, then OK to complete. Do not include these details
on a computer which is used by others - just enter them every time you intend to
publish new pages.
3.1.4. Publishing your pages to the web server
To publish the page you have created to your directory on
sandpit, select the publish icon
to
open the 'Publish Files' window. Click on 'Use Default Location'. All of your
details should appear. If they do not, complete or correct the boxes under
'Publishing location' manually. You must include your username and password. OK
to complete. A message will appear to inform you whether or not you have
successfully published your page to the sandpit
server.
3.1.5. Testing your web page
Now use the browser to check that you have successfully
published your page on the web. Save the location as a bookmark.
If you published a pages as:
ftp://student.austlii.edu.au/home/tute99/public_html/FILENAME.HTM
then you browse the page as:
http://student.austlii.edu.au/~tute99/FILENAME.HTM
How to prevent pages being browsed (the index.html page) - for information
only
It is possible to see what files are contained in someone's
/public_html/ directory, or any sub-directories contained therein, even if there
are no links to those pages from other pages.
For example, if you browse to my /public_html/ directory on
sandpit,
http://student.austlii.edu.au/~greenlea/
you would see the following automatically generated index,
which allows access to all pages currently in my /public_html/
directory:
The proper way to stop this happening is to place a page
called 'index.html' (or 'index.htm') in each directory or sub-directory. Each
'index.html' page should only contain links to those pages which you wish to
allow to be browsed. The 'index.html' page stops an automatic index being
generated.
