Creating Your First World Wide Web Home Page at Pitt

Based on Dennis Galletta's Web Page dated January 13, 1995
revised by R. Franklin, October 11, 1997

There are a couple of ways you could go about creating your home page. Since the HTML home page file you will be creating is a simple text file, no elaborate or complex software is required. This set of instructions explains how to create your World Wide Web page directly on your Pitt UNIX account using a full-screen text editor (PICO) that is available on the UNIX system. See Using Windows Tools to Create Your Home Page if your would prefer to approach the problem from that direction. You will need to log in to your Pitt UNIX account. Make sure you have your Network Authorization Account login and password before starting.

Step One: Connect to UNIX

There are a number of ways to connect to the Pitt UNIX systems. If you are not sure of what to do and you are in one of Pitt's Computer Labs, ask one of the Computer Lab Assistants for help.

If you are on a PC in a Computer Lab, or have dialed into the Pitt modem pool and have established a PPP connection, you can use TELNET to log in to your UNIX account.

For Windows 95, click the start button, then click Run..., then in the dialog box type
For Windows 3.1, click the File Menu, then click Run..., then in the dialog box type

telnet

and press enter or click ok.

If you are using Windows95, you should see a screen that looks something like the following (Windows 3.1 wil look similar)

Click on the Connect menu and choose Remote System

A dialog will appear that will let you choose where to connect:

In the Host Name field, type:

unixs

and click the Connect button.

If that doesn't work, then you might need to type out

unixs1.cis.pitt.edu

You will then be prompted to login. The login session will look like like the following:

(here we will use as an example ABCST123 as the network authorization account number. Whenever you see ABCST123, replace it with your own account number, then type your password.)
UNIX(r) System V Release 4.0 (unixs1.cis.pitt.edu)

login: ABCST123
Password: *******

********************************************************************************
CIS news and schedules available in "help cisnews.nws" and "help
schedule.nws"

Current and old announcements are also available at
http://www.pitt.edu/~document/cisnews

********************************************************************************
ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR WEEK OF OCTOBER 6

SSH Public Key Change for CIS UNIXS Timesharing Service help cisnews.nws
Evaluation Site for Windows NT 4.0 PCs Available help cisnews.nws
*Changes in ADM_HILLMAN and ADM_CL VMS Print Queues help cisnews.nws

********************************************************************************
ATTENTION: Internet connectivity for University PCs and services will be
unavailable from approximately 6:30 a.m. to 7:10 a.m. on Monday, October 13th
due to maintenance work at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. Network
traffic within PittNet will not be affected.

ALL SYSTEMS DOWN MONDAYS 02:00 to 07:00 FOR MAINTENANCE

To re-read login announcements type: more /etc/motd
For help on UNIX software and commands type: man man

(1) unixs1 $

Step Two: Create your file in your /public/html directory

After you log in, you'll be at the $ prompt. That prompt is like the C: prompt on a PC; it's where you issue commands.
What we will be doing is creating a file called index.htm (your "home page") in your account under your /public/html subdirectory. Web browsers look for a file by that name in that subdirectory.
At the $ prompt, type the following commands and press ENTER at the end of each:

$ cd public
$ mkdir html
$ cd html

The easiest way to create your home page file is to use a text editor called PICO. To start PICO, simply type the word pico followed by a space, then index.htm, (which is what the name of your home page must be) then press ENTER. Here's what it will look like to do this:

$ pico index.htm

The blank PICO screen will appear as follows:

  UW PICO(tm) 2.3                  File: index.htm







                        [ New file ]
^G Get Help ^O WriteOut ^R Read File ^Y Prev Pg ^K Cut Text  ^C Cur Pos
^X Exit     ^J Justify  ^W Where is ^V Next Pg ^U UnCut Text ^T To Spell

You can then type the contents of your home page. We will do something simple. Type all of what you see in the PICO window below, including the less than and greater than signs. These delineate "tokens" that signal the system to follow HTML (HyperText Markup Language) commands. Feel free to replace the "stock" text with text about you, such as your name, biographical information, and courses taken.

Type Ctrl-O to save, then Ctrl-X to exit PICO
You should be returned to the $ prompt.
At this point, minimize (but do not close) the TELNET session.

Step Three: Check Out your Home Page

Start a web browser such as Netscape or Internet Explorer. Click on the File menu, then on Open� or Open Location�

Type your home page address (if your account name is ABCST123, then your home page address would be http://www.pitt.edu/~abcst123.) and click the Open button.
You should see something that looks like this:

If you need to make changes to your page, restore the TELNET that give you access to your Unix account
Make the changes in the PICO editor, and then press CTRL-O to save and continue. Go back to your browser and click on the icon called "RELOAD" to see if the changes made an improvement.