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During this semester you will create and maintain your own interactive Web site. In addition to course-related materials, your web site may contain anything else you may care to post, subject to a few restrictions listed below. In most cases you will want to keep course-related and other materials separate from one another.

Most web sites belong to one of the following types:

PERSONAL SITES may be about you, about your interests and favorite things, or about a hobby-- anything that you feel passionate about.

NON-PROFIT SITES: There are many worthwhile non-profit organizations out there that would love to be on the Web. Great Works Internet offers an Internet access and web-hosting package available exclusively for non-profit organizations.
A COLLECTION OF INFORMATION can be about any particular topic or hobby. It may include informative text about your topic, pictures, links to various other web sites, or all of these. Possible topics can include a type of antique or collectible objects, crafts, animal or plant species, natural objects (from rocks to galaxies), performers and their accomplishments (including discography of musical performers, sports records, etc.), history of any subject, a poorly understood disease, a type of human variation (like left-handedness), or where to find out about any other topic that interests you.

Setting up your web site: One of the requirements of this course is to set up and maintain your own web site. This is becoming easier to do all the time.

UNIVERSITY-HOSTED WEB SITES:
If you intend to continue taking U.M.A. courses for some time, we recommend setting up a University-hosted web site. To set one up, you first need to request a "mainframe" account, which will allow you to post your HTML files to the UMA web server. See instructions about computer access that came with your registration materials. The following sources of help are available for setting up a university-hosted account or for using your acount once it is set up: http://www.unet.maine.edu/user_serv
http://www.unet.maine.edu/tech_serv
(207)-581-3524 or 1-800-696-4357
(207)-621-3040 or 1-800-868-7000
COMMERCIALLY HOSTED WEB SITES:
If you would like a web site that you can keep after you finish taking courses, we recommend that you set up a commercially hosted web site. For example, fortunecity.com will host your web site free of charge (and give you plenty of storage space for your web files) as long as you let them insert an advertising banner at the top of your page. Their sites also offers many web-related resources for both novices and experts, including people to contact when you need extra help.
For help setting up an account with these companies, or for using your account once it is set up, go to: http://www.fortunecity.com
http://www.fortunecity.com/registered/faq.html
IF YOU ALREADY HAVE A WEB SITE:
You may continue building and improving your web site if one already exists. Please consider separating class-related pages from other web pages on your site.

RESTRICTIONS: Most hosts of web sites (including those suggested above) impose only a few minimal restrictions on what you may post:

You may not violate any copyright laws; you may be sued if you do.
You may not post (or provide a link to) anything that would be considered vulgar, racist, sexist, profane, pornographic, or otherwise offensive. The host maintaining the site will remove such materials and/or deny you web site privileges if they determine that you have violated these standards.

TO BEGIN BUILDING YOUR SITE:
First, obtain a copy of a file transfer program, such as WS-FTP (for Windows) or Fetch (for Macintosh).

I recommend using FTP or Fetch instead of the "File Manager" that some commercial sites offer. FTP is much better, much more flexible, and works anywhere once you learn it.

University computers should already WS-FTP loaded on them. If you don't find it on the desktop, click "start", then "find", then "file", and fill in the name "ftp".

To obtain WS-FTP for your own use, go to www.tucows.com/internet.html
Find the "NETWORK PROTOCOLS" category and click "FTP"; then click on whatever version you wish to download. The one we recommend is WS-FTP LE (near the end of the list). Like several others, it may be downloaded FREE of charge.
For help using WS-FTP, go to either www.ualberta.ca/HELP/filetran/filetran.html or www.ualberta.ca/HELP/filetran/winsock.html
FETCH (for Apple Macintosh users):
- Most Macintosh computers have this program pre-installed already.
- If you need a copy, you can download it FREE from http://www.tsc.udel.edu/macsoftdish/mac.html
- For help using Fetch, go to www.ualberta.ca/HELP/filetran/fetch.html
THE FIRST TIME you use these programs, you need to set up a "profile" of the remote (host) computer you will use, specifying its name, your user ID, and other details. Once you get into the directories you intend to use, I recommend going into "options" and clicking "save current directories" for future connections.
ON SUBSEQUENT OCCASIONS, just click on a file to highlight it, then click on the left-to-right arrow or the right-to-left arrow to transfer the file from one computer to another.
Try using FTP or a similar file transfer program to upload and download a file or two between your local computer and a remote host computer. Most versions of FTP will show you files and their dates on both computers, so you can see if the transfer was successful.
To begin setting up your first web page, you may download and copy the prototype file and follow the instructions there or the more detailed instructions below. If you would rather start from scratch, or if you already have a web page started by other means, just go ahead doing it your way instead.

MORE DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS:
Try doing things slowly, one step at a time. Doing so will allow others to provide better help more efficiently, and will probably allow you to find what's wrong yourself in many cases. Proceed as follows:

View the prototype file with a browser such as Internet Explorer or Netscape.
Download the prototype file by clicking "File" (in the upper left corner of your browser), then "Save As", then write down (or change) its directory location before you click "OK". For the fewest problems, save it as C:\prototyp.htm (or as C:\web\prototyp.htm if you save your web pages in a directory called C:\web ).
Check that you have downloaded the page properly by displaying it in your browser as file:///c:\prototyp.htm (or whatever other pathname is appropriate).
Open up the prototype file in Notepad, Wordpad, or MS-DOS EDIT, or a similar text editor program. (You could also use a word processor if you are very careful to avoid its fancy features and its automatic corrections.) Modify the file in some way, e.g., by putting in your name or by deleting something that you don't want or need. Go back to the previous step and see if you can still display the modified version. If you cannot, then try to figure out what change you made that messed things up. If all else fails, download it again and start over, working in smaller steps.
See if you can use FTP (or Fetch) to upload the modified prototype file that you created above.
When uploading a file, you need to specify BINARY transfer mode if you are transferring a graphics file, or ASCII transfer mode if you are transferring an ASCII (text or HTML) file.
Now see it you can display your file in a web browser.
Files uploaded to ftp.fortunecity.com are automatically part of your web site. On certain other systems, the files you transfer must be uploaded to a particular directory in order to display properly: VMWEBSERVER on maine.maine.edu, or public_html on many commercial web hosting services.
File extensions: The suffix (file extension) tells a browser how to display your file. Files ending in .htm or .html are displayed as web pages. Files ending in .txt are displayed as plain text (ASCII), exactly as they are. The two most commonly used extensions for graphics files are .gif and .jpg (also spelled .jpeg).
If you want your file to be displayed as-is, please make sure that the file name ends in .txt .
Files saved in .rtf or in word processor formats will not display properly on the World Wide Web.
On some host computers (those running the Unix operating system), but not others, file names may be case sensitive: myfile.htm, Myfile.HTM, MYFILE.htm, and MYfile.HTM are all considered different. Make sure the file name agrees with all references to it, including case; I recommend using lower case as much as possible.
Each page is uploaded as a separate file. Each graphic image is a separate file, too. If one of the files is called index.html, it becomes your "home page", the one that opens first. Many host computers will insist that you name your home page index.html, and it's a good idea to do this even if not required. Then, this page can link to any others.
One file can refer to another by a hyperlink reference like this:
<A HREF="filename"> Click on this text </a> When written this way, clicking on the words "Click on this text" will bring you to the file identified by "filename". The filename can be just a simple filename like excuse-lett.txt or else a complete URL like this: http://members.fortunecity.com/myaccount/excuse-lett.txt
On many commercial computers, an "Under Construction" notice appears as soon as you set up an account. This will automatically disappear as soon as you load up something else, or as soon as you have a file called index.html .