CamNet web space facilities

A brief description of what CamNet provides and what the limitations are.

Uploading web pages to CamNet

The essentials for those who already know how to write web pages and are familiar with the use of FTP.

Creating web pages

Some hints and further sources of help for those new to HTML.

FTP

An introduction (detailed information for particular operating systems can be found on a separate FTP help page).

Troubleshooting

Answers to some frequently-asked questions.

CamNet web space facilities

Each user has a subdirectory called 'web' in their home directory on the CamNet file server. This web subdirectory appears on the CamNet web-site with the following (equivalent) URLs:

• http://www.cam.net.uk/~username/
• http://www.cam.net.uk/home/username/
• http://www.cam.net.uk/home/webalias/

You can use any of the three forms of URL when referring to your pages (the first has the advantage of brevity, the last that you can choose a more meaningful and perhaps memorable name to identify the pages).

In order to upload files (such as HTML pages and GIF or JPEG image files) from your own computer to your CamNet home directory or subdirectories of it - using the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) - you must have a piece of software called an FTP Client, and use it to connect to our FTP server ftp.cam.net.uk, logging on with your usual CamNet username and password.

Limitations:

• We do not plan to support the use of CGI scripts (such as web counters) in users' home web space - Java applets can be used instead.
• We do not support Anonymous FTP.
• Web pages cannot currently be uploaded using the CamNet BBS interface.

Uploading web pages to CamNet

1. Dial up CamNet in the usual way (unless your computer is already connected to the Internet by some other means).

2. Start your FTP client in the directory of your computer which contains the files you want to upload, or change to that directory once the program has started.

3. Connect your FTP client to ftp.cam.net.uk, supplying your usual Camnet username and password to log in.
   This should land you in your CamNet home directory; a listing of its contents should show your CamNet mailbox, any other local files you may have, and a subdirectory called 'web'.

4. Change to the web subdirectory.
   NB This is important, because only this directory and any subdirectories under it are seen by the web server; we don't want people to be able to see all your files, after all. If you forget to do this you will probably wonder why your pages do not appear on the web once you've uploaded them.

5. Upload your files - you should be able to do this one at a time or several files at once. Remember, if transferring binary files (eg GIFs or ZIP files) to set your FTP client to binary mode first.
   If you are putting some files in subdirectories you will of course need to have created these first - your FTP client will let you do this.

   NB: If you want to be able to use a URL ending in a directory name rather than a file name (eg http://www.cam.net.uk/home/username/) to refer to your home page or the main page in a subdirectory, you should make sure the file is called index.html or index.htm (or uppercase versions of these) because these are what the CamNet web server will look for by default; it is not a good idea to have files with more than one of these names, as we may change the exact search order in future. Your FTP client should allow you to rename files either as you upload them or afterwards, so you can call your default pages index.html even if you write them under DOS.

6. Don't forget to check out your new pages in a web browser.
   Note that the web subdirectory does not appear in the URLs of your pages; thus the file called /home/username/web/index.html will show up on the web server as all three of http://www.cam.net.uk/~username/index.html, http://www.cam.net.uk/home/username/index.html and http://www.cam.net.uk/home/webalias/index.html, and so on for other files with pathnames relative to this one.

7. Close the ftp session.
   If you dialled in, don't forget to hang up when you've finished!

NB: It is a good idea to keep local copies of all the files you upload to CamNet, both to protect against disaster and save you from having to download a file every time you want to update it.

Creating web pages

The Reference section of the CamNet Library has some links to Web Tutorials which may help you get started with HTML and learn some style tips; you can also get advice and training from CamNet volunteers at certain times in the CB1 coffee-shop.

When your CamNet account is first created, a dummy home page is created for you in a file called index.html in your web directory. This file contains some basic HTML including a couple of hyperlinks, and even if you haven't written any HTML before, you may find that you can get started simply by editing a copy of this file and viewing the results with your web browser. Also, remember that all web browsers allow you to view the source of any HTML page you visit, so you can always use this to see how a particular effect you like the look of on somebody else's pages is achieved.

All web browsers allow you to view HTML files stored on your own computer as well as ones delivered to you by a web server, so you do not have to upload your files before you can see what they look like.

Graphics on web pages are usually represented in GIF or JPEG files, and most drawing packages and image viewing/editing software will be able to save pictures in one of these formats.

Nowadays, it is getting easier to create web pages without writing HTML directly; most 'what you see is what you get' word processors now have an option to save a document in HTML format, and there are special-purpose HTML editors available for most platforms.

Please remember that many web browsers do not support all the newer, more lurid or proprietary HTML extensions, and if you use these you may run the risk of failing to reach part of your intended audience; in particular, many CamNet users will be viewing your pages in the text-only browser Lynx, via our BBS interface. To ensure that your pages are legible in a text-only browser:

• use inline images sparingly, and make sure any essential information they contain is also covered somehow in the text;
• use ALT tags for all inline images;
• don't rely on font size, bold text, or italics to convey your message;
• don't use preformatted text that is more than 80 columns wide;
• don't use tables that will need more than 80 columns of text;
• don't use frames at all;
• (easiest) see what your pages look like in Lynx by logging on to the BBS yourself.

Lastly, ever since the World Wide Web was invented, it has been easy to pay an expert a large amount of money to create professional-looking web pages for you; if you really want to do this, Cambridge Freenet Ltd. (telephone Cambridge 500600) would be happy to recommend someone!

FTP

Perhaps confusingly, 'ftp' is also the name of the standard unix command which can be used to transfer files to and from a remote computer using this protocol; the ftp program is an example of an FTP client, so called because it works by exchanging messages with an FTP server process running on the remote computer. Like most standard unix commands, ftp has a slightly cryptic text-only interface which you operate from the command-line; reasonably faithful versions of it are also available for many non-unix operating systems (for example, both Windows 95 and OS/2 Warp come bundled with a command-line ftp).

FTP client software

Your FTP client software will allow you to transfer files to and from your home directory on the CamNet file server, taking account of any differences in the way files are kept on machines of different types; it will also allow you to create subdirectories and delete or rename your CamNet files.

For further documentation on how to use ftp, GUI equivalents of it for some popular operating systems, and the 'Upload' function in Netscape, see our FTP help page. If your operating system is not covered there, please see your specific CamNet Quick Start guide, or ask for help in the appropriate support newsgroup. If you're still stuck, see the Support Page for further sources of help.

Troubleshooting

• Where can I learn how to write HTML?
  See Creating web pages above.

• Can I have a counter on my page?
  Not unless you do this without running CGI scripts on the CamNet servers.

• What's the address for my personal home page?
  http://www.cam.net.uk/~username/, http://www.cam.net.uk/home/username/, and http://www.cam.net.uk/home/webalias/ will all work if you home page is called index.html or index.htm (since the web server looks for either of these file names by default whenever you supply a URL which ends in a directory name rather than a file name).

• How do I set my web alias?
  See the page on How to change your personal details.

• How do I put my home page onto CamNet's computers?
  See Uploading web pages to CamNet above.

• How do I change an existing page?
  Just upload the new version; this will replace the existing one.

• Can I upload pages without dialling CamNet directly?
  Yes, because access to our ftp server is password-protected, you can upload files via any Internet connection (at your place of work, say, or at one of the public access terminals around town), so long as you can use a suitable FTP client.

• Can I upload pages from the CamNet BBS interface?
  Not at the moment, no. We're looking into this.
  There is a grisly and unsatisfactory workaround, but you don't want to hear it. Oh all right then: PINE allows you to save a mail message in an ordinary file (hit 'E' while viewing the message), so all you have to do is mail the HTML source to yourself, save it in a suitably-named file in your web directory, and put up with the mail headers appearing in an unformatted mess at the top of the page.

• Can I put adverts in my web pages?
  Good question. Dunno. Ask BJ.

• Can I see the server statistics?
  Good question. Dunno. Ask BJ.

• Why do I get three alternative URLs for every page? Which one should I use?
  Good question. The three kinds of URL have slightly different properties, so which to use depends on what you're doing. The ~username and /home/username versions are fixed, and so have the advantage that they are not affected by the setting of your web alias - the only thing to choose between them is brevity versus use of the tilde character (which some people may not recognise easily); the /home/webalias version on the other hand can be made more recognisable and personal to you, so long as you don't change your web alias after publicising your pages.

• Why can't I connect to the ftp server once I've dialled in?
  The CamNet ftp server does impose a limit on the number of simultaneous connections it will accept, so it's possible that you may be prevented from connecting to it during busy times (if this happens, your FTP software should print an informative error message). If you've never managed to connect it may be that you've got the server's name wrong, or that your FTP software is broken; of course it is also possible that the ftp server itself might conceivably have fallen over and not been picked up off the floor, even though the rest of CamNet appears to be functioning normally.

• Why can't I see my page now I've uploaded it?
  Did you remember to put it in the web subdirectory?
  Did you give it the wrong filename?
  Are you using the right URL?
  If you have replaced an existing page, but are still seeing the old version, it may be a cache problem in your web browser (ie the browser has kept its own copy of an old version of the page) - you can resolve this by reloading the page, clearing the cache, or just exiting and restarting the browser.
  The CamNet proxy server also caches pages, and sometimes it can be a little slow to notice that a page has changed, so if clearing your browser's cache doesn't help the best thing to do is wait for a while.
  On the other hand, if you uploaded a new home page called index.htm but didn't remove the default home page index.html which was generated for you when your account was created, you may still be seeing this file when you supply a URL which ends in the directory name. We don't specify the exact order in which the server looks for these default files, or promise that the search order won't change in the future, so it's a really bad idea to have both files (or uppercase versions of them) in your directory.

• Why does my web browser sometimes display a slightly different URL for a CamNet page (with a different server name)?
  The WWW site is accessed through a proxy server. This should usually be invisible, but in some cases the proxy currently tells the browser about the redirection it has performed and this is reflected in the URL you see. This problem should be fixed soon; meanwhile, please ignore what your browser tells you about the URL, as it is an internal detail which may change without warning in the future.

• Why do I have to switch between ASCII and binary modes to upload files of different types?
  One of the things FTP software does is convert files between the different storage conventions on different machine types, so for example a DOS text file with carriage-return/line-feed pairs at the end of every line will be converted to the unix style where each line ends with a single newline character; if you upload a binary file in ASCII mode, the chances are that it will be corrupted because of this.

• Why do my images look all wrong?
  Perhaps you uploaded them in ASCII mode instead of binary?

• Why can't I follow a link to a site elsewhere on the Internet?
  To submit a site for our web proxy, or report that a site we have linked to is not visible, send email to support@cam.net.uk (or the author of the page concerned, if the link is in someone's home web space).

• What do I do if 1Mb really isn't enough?
  Get rid of some large image files, or pay us more money.

• I can't find the funny ~ character on my keyboard!
  The funny ~ character is known as a tilde. If you really can't find it, use %7E or one of the other forms of URL instead.

• I can't find the 'web' subdirectory!
  Maybe you've got into the wrong directory somehow (your home directory is called /home/username); or maybe you deleted it accidentally. You can create it again using your FTP client software (for example, the command to do this in the command-line ftp program is mkdir web) .

• Help - I'm still stuck!
  Try contacting CamNet support (although there may be up-to-date help already available on the support pages if others have had a similar problem). Please make sure as always that you mention the names and version numbers of the operating system and other software you are using.