The easiest way to create your web page in one of the OIT labs is with Microsoft Frontpage or Netscape Composer. There you simply save web files to the W: drive. You can also use these or other web authoring software such as DreamWeaver, to create or change your UMBC personal homepage from home, but you'll need to use the Publish button or FTP instead of saving to the W: drive. There are numerous other tools you can use to get your website up and running from off campus, such by typing html code into a simple text editor like pico or Notepad. The difference is that in order to put the files onto the server, you will need to FTP them.

1. Before you start, you should know the path to your home directory on AFS.
2. Open a Web browser and browse to your personal home page. (In the location field, type its URL: userpages.umbc.edu/~user name where user name is your own myUMBC login name, and press Enter.)
3. From the File Menu, choose Edit Page. This brings up the HTML editor in a different window. (You can always see which windows are open on your Windows desktop by looking at the taskbar at the bottom of the screen. You can bring the one you want to the top by clicking on it.)
4. Make changes to the page using the editor. Experiment with different features, use the Help button, and if the page gets totally messed up, just Close the file without saving or publishing it and start over. Exercise your creativity!
5. When you have the page the way you want it, the next step is to place the file onto the server.

   To publish a web created with FrontPage and Netscape Composer:

   The Apache Web Servers do NOT have FrontPage extensions installed due to security issues. To publish the web pages you've created in FrontPage, you can save it locally on your drive and FTP it into your account.

   To publish web pages created with other tools

    

   • To put web page files created with Notepad or some other editor, into your www directory on AFS, you will need to FTP them. Remember to always use binary mode for GIF and JPG files and ASCII for  HTML files.

   Note:    On Macintosh computers, the files associated with a page may not Publish successfully. Use Fetch (FTP for Macintosh) instead.

    

6. Bring the browser window to the front and Reload the page to make sure the changes took effect.
7. Repeat making changes and publishing them until you're satisfied.

Home Directory

Individual file space on AFS resides in each person's home directory and its subdirectories. When you login, your home directory is the working directory. Any time you're logged in to AFS, you can return to the home directory by entering the command cd (change directory). Anyone logged onto a computer in the OIT Computing labs can also use the S: drive, which is actually their AFS home directory.

Path - A personal home directory can be referenced by its path, which is /afs/umbc.edu/users/1st letter of username/2nd letter of username/username (for students). For example, if your username is asmith1, your personal home directory path will be /afs/umbc.edu/users/a/s/asmith1. To find your home directory path, SSH telnet into your account, go to the home directory and enter the command pwd (present working directory). The home directory can also be referred to simply as ~user name. For example, to find someone else's home directory path, enter two commands: cd ~user name (using their actual user name) and then pwd. The path to your UMBC home page on AFS is /afs/umbc.edu/users/a/s/asmith1/pub/www/.