Web: Lecture 12b

Lecture 12b: Web Publishing and FTP

Use an Internet Service Provider to create an account and establish a URL for your web site.
Select and use tools to upload pages to the server, including FTP.
Test your uploaded web pages.
Submit your site to search engines.

To have your own URL, e.g. http://www.companyname.com, you must pay an ISP.
- Domain registration (with www.networksolutions.com) requires paying a yearly fee.
- You must choose a unique name that is not already in use.
- You also need to provide the IP address of your ISP.
Free services provide a longer URL like http://gvogl.tripod.com/ or http://www.geocities.com/~gvogl

Determine the amount of server space you will need; allow room to grow.
- Many free services allow 10 to 20 MB which is a lot if you do not use many large images.
Some services offer only HTML hosting; others offer CGI and other server-side script hosting.
Free services generally require the user to see a banner ad when your pages appear.
Support for SQL databases and Secure Socket Layer (SSL) are useful for e-commerce.
- SSL allows encrypted communication between browser and server.
Support for streaming multimedia (e.g. www.real.com) is needed for high-performance audio and video.

Each server has its own procedures for uploading pages.
Generally you need to connect using the host name, username and password provided by the ISP.
If your company's web server is on a LAN and you have an account, simply copy the pages to the appropriate folder.
You can use FTP, but many web editing tools have their own built-in publishing features.
Intelligent FTP or publishing software assures that only the modified files are re-published.
Always have a complete backup of your site on disk. Do not rely on the web server's copy alone.
Use the same directory structure on the server as on your local copy (so all relative links will work).

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a protocol for transferring files between computers on the Internet.
FTP is also an application that uses the FTP protocol.
FTP is used to publish (upload) web pages and to download software and documentation.
To access a FTP server from a browser, type in the address field the URL ftp://servername, e.g. ftp://ftp.tripod.com
Command-line FTP can be used from a Linux shell or the DOS command prompt.
There are many GUI versions of FTP which make FTP easier to use, e.g. drag and drop to transfer files.

Commands to type	What the commands do
ftp	Start FTP from the command line
ftp servername	Start FTP from the command line and connect to a server e.g. ftp.tripod.com
username password	Enter your username and password for this server. For some sites, you can enter anonymous as your username and your e-mail address as your password.
help	See a list of commands
help command	Get help on a specific command
open servername	Connect to a FTP server
ls or dir	list the contents of the current directory
cd foldername	change to another directory on the server (the remote computer)
lcd foldername	change to another directory on your computer (the local computer)
binary or ascii	change the file transfer mode (binary is used before transferring a binary file like a .zip file or image)
put filename	upload a file from your computer to the server
get filename	download a file from the server to your computer
mput * or mget *	upload or download all files in the current directory (other wildcards like *.html can also be used)
close	close the connection
bye	exit FTP and return to the shell prompt (also closes the connection)

Test all features of your pages before and after you upload.
Follow the server's naming requirements and conventions (e.g. .htm or .html, default or index).
Check whether the server is case-sensitive. If so, your links must use the right case.
- Many FTP programs have an option to automatically convert file names to lowercase when uploading.
Check that your links between your own pages and files are relative links, not absolute.
Clear your browser's cache to simulate download speeds that first-time users of your site would experience.
If you receive a message that access is denied or forbidden, you may need to change file and folder permissions.
- HTML files, other documents and images should be readable. CGI programs and folders should be executable.

Submit your site to a search engine if you want many people to find your site easier.
Ensure that your pages have meta keywords and description tags.
Choose keywords that uniquely identify your site and that match your document's title and contents.
- Avoid tricks like repeating the same keyword multiple times. Modern search engines are not easily cheated.
The first words of your description are the most important and should accurately describe your site.
Resubmit your URL periodically to prevent your site's removal.
Focus on the most common search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo, Lycos).

See Lecture 12a.
Book References: Hofstetter Ch. 22, Carey Appendix C, Sklar Appendix A, Reding & Vodnik AP-2-5