Uploading Your Pages to the Web

by Randall S. Davis

"The Internet is transitory, ever changing, reshaping and remolding itself."

- Beginners' Central

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What is a Web Host and how I can choose the best one for me?
How do I use an account with Geocities?
How can I edit my html pages through my browser?

Purpose of Lesson:

You should understand about Web hosts, criteria for selecting one, the costs, and how to upload files.

What is a Web Host and how I can choose the best one for me?

You've created your pages, but how do you put your pages on the Web. A Web host is a company that allows you to store you files on their server (computer system) connected to the Internet that then can be view by the rest of the world.

There are many Web hosts: some commercial, some free. Often, particular Web hosting companies are designed for specific audiences. Generally, the commercial hosting companies provide additional services to their clients for a price. Fees for commercial hosting companies range any where from $10 on up per month.

Free sites will give you basic services like an e-mail account and around 20 MB of space as well as other features, but there is sometimes a catch: these sites generally support their costs by using advertisers, and your page by contain advertising on it, like a banner at the top of your pages. Finally, instructions to sign up for these services can be difficult to understand, particularly for first-time users.

The site, 100 Best Free Web Space Providers (http://www.100best-free-web-space.com/), contains extensive reviews of a large number of such services. For a reasonable monthly fee, you can have more full service web hosting, and the sites HostCompare (http://www.hostcompare.com/) and TopHosts.Com (http://www.tophost.com/) can help you search for a company that suits your needs.

In our class, you will sign up for a free hosting account with GeoCities from Yahoo.

How do I use an account with Geocities?

Your website address with be "http://www.geocities.com/" plus your user ID name. The URL to my site is http://www.geocities.com/eslrandall.

Geocities has been designed for both beginning and advanced users. The have two basic tools called Yahoo! PageWizards and Yahoo! PageBuilder which can be used for building simple pages, but you have little control on how to customize these pages. Also, you never really learn how homepages are created, and you have to settle for the designs and styles they provide. Therefore, we will NOT using the tools as part of our class, but you can play with them on separate pages to see how they function.

We will be using the Advanced Toolbox to create and customize our pages. These features include:

File Manager
Maintain and modify files and subdirectories with this tool.
Upload / FTP
Transfer files from your computer to your account.
Advanced Editor
Create and edit HTML files

When you first use Geocities, a main front page, or index.html, has already been created for you by Geocities. It basically announces that you have not started creating your page yet. Important: Your top page on your site will always be "index.html", all in small letters. Once you have created your first page offline in SimpleText or Notepad, you can then upload it to your site using the "Upload / FTP" feature, and replace your file with the one that already exists there.

How can I edit my html pages through my browser?

Students often start out creating their homepages using SimpleText (Mac) or Notepad (PC) on their computers. Once your files are uploaded to the Internet, you can the Advanced Editor to change and update your files; however, BE SURE TO SAVE YOUR CHANGES BACK ON A DISK!! With the Internet and free hosting services, you never know how long they will last or if they will be working when you need them.