Using Netscape Composer to Build Your Web Site
Netscape Composer can make it very easy to create your web home page. It is a WSYIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) page editor that can completely shield you from the HTML, should you desire that. It is also integrated with Netscape Navigator, so you can easily capture someone else's design and utilize that yourself. Best of all, it has a built-in FTP client, so you can copy your work directly onto your Pitt UNIX account.
This guide will NOT teach you how to use the page editor -- that's up to you (and it is pretty easy). Instead, it will provide a couple of helpful suggestions for getting started, and will also explain how to use the FTP client.
Getting Started
- Set up a directory on either a floppy disk or your hard drive called "html". Use this directory to exactly duplicate what will go onto your Pitt UNIX account in the "html" directory there. For the purposes of this guide, we will assume you have placed this directory on a floppy disk, so we will refer to it as "A:\html".
- Open one of the template web pages (don't use the "frames" template) in Netscape Navigator.
- Under the "file" menu, choose "Edit Page". That will open Composer, which is the page editor.
- Under the "file" menu, choose "Save As". Select "A:\html" to save in, and name the file "index.htm". One of the cool features is that the editor will do its best to copy the graphic files.
- Now you can edit the page.
Using the built-in FTP client to move your pages up to the UNIX system
- Under the "file" menu, choose "Publish". A dialog box that looks like this will appear:
- The tricky part is what to put in the field that is called "HTTP or FTP location to publish to". What is shown is a good start, but you may have to check. What goes in there is a combination of two things:
- The address of the UNIX system, which is "ftp://unixs1.cis.pitt.edu/"
- The full path to your html directory on the UNIX system. To get that, log in to UNIX, change to your html directory, and type "pwd". Whatever comes back should be added to the end of the "ftp://unixs1.cis.pitt.edu/".
- Netscape composer will automatically copy any image files your page uses to your UNIX account.