English 394
Fall 2000
"Writing (in) Cyberspace"
There are basically three ways to upload documents to your personal web space while in the classroom:
To use the "publish" feature on Netscape Page Composer, you must know the correct FTP address to your personal web space. That address was listed on the default page ("index.html") to your web space when you signed up for personal web space and many of you printed out that page. The address is a little complicated, but basically it would look like this if your user ID were "abcdefg":
Notice that after the "users" portion of the address, your user ID is broken up by the first three characters separated by slashes and then your complete user ID and then the "www" folder. It's a little tricky to remember this address, but if you type it into the correct box when you try to publish your document, I think it will be retained as part of your preferences the next time you log on. You will also need to provide your user ID and password to publish this way.
Using the "drag and drop" method
This method simply requires that you save all of your work to your diskette first (or to the desktop) and then opening up a window that shows the contents of your diskette and another window showing the contents of your M: drive's "www" folder and dragging the necessary files from your diskette to your M: drive. I recommend this method for documents that you want to work on for awhile before publishing to your personal web space.
The first part of this method should be simple: just work on your documents from your diskette, saving them back to your diskette, until you are ready to upload them to your personal web space.
The second part of this method gets a little more tricky because you're working with multiple windows. To get to the first window that you will need, make sure your diskette is in the A: drive and double-click on the "My Computer" icon on the desktop. You will then see an icon for the 3.5-inch (A:) drive. Double-click on it to see the contents of your diskette. Keep that window open, but feel free to close any previous windows to declutter your desktop. Then, double-click on the icon on your desktop that represents your M: drive and double-click on the "www" folder inside your M: drive. You need to keep this last window open but can close the main M: drive window to declutter your desktop. Now, simply click on the window that represents the contents of your diskette, click on the files that you want to copy to your web space (either one by one, or you can select multiple files by clicking on them while holding down the Shift key), and drag them over to your "www" folder and release them to be copied into your personal web space.
Remember to copy all necessary files, including graphics, backgrounds, pictures, etc. While publishing directly from Page Composer will copy all necessary files to your personal web space, when you use the "drag and drop" method, you have to make sure all necessary files are copied over.
Saving directly to your personal web space from Page Composer
This method should work in our classroom, but I experienced some difficulty making it work on 2/1/00, possibly because we are using Windows NT as the operating system in our classroom, rather than simply Windows 95 or Windows 98. I dunno. Anyway, how this method works is that you compose your document using Page Composer (either from scratch or by accessing it from your personal web space using Navigator and then using the "Edit Page" option) and then use the "File-SaveAs...." command to save it directly to your M: drive's "www" folder. This method is worth trying, especially if your editing pages that have already been uploaded, and should work at any computer on campus where you have to log in using your ASURITE ID and password, although it seems to be a bit problematic in CPCOM 223.
Some final words of advice:
A "glitch" that I've noticed with Page Composer is that if you have a page on your personal web space and choose to edit it and then link to a file on your disk and then upload the page again using the "publish" function, Page Composer will tell you that the link is not valid because the page you are linking to is on "a different device" than the page you are editing. To avoid this, when you choose to edit a page from your personal web space using the "File-EditPage" command, save the page to your disk first before linking to another page on your disk and then Page Composer will recognize both pages as being on the same "device." When you try to upload, it will warn you that your local links (as opposed to "absolute links" which use the http:// form of an address) may not be valid, but you can ignore that message and publish anyway.
Also, when you upload a new version of a page, you have to hit "reload" in Navigator in order to see the newer version of the page.