Internet Law: Web page creation hints

Acquire a means of authoring an HTML document.

You can do this manually using the PICO editor at the law school if you are a control freak and/or have programming experience.

You can use the editor built into netscape navigator gold 3.x, available in the computer labs, or the editor built into netscape navigator 4.x, or recent versions of Internet Explorer.

You can find a freeware or shareware HTML editor on the Web. (Note, however, that some of the best ones such as HotDog expire after 30 days, and this course lasts longer than 30 days.....)

You can buy one (not recommended since many free ones are very good).

If you plan to have the law school host your web page (you are free to have it anywhere you like), create a WWW directory for youself as follows:

Log into the student server and go to the unix prompt

Type the following at the prompt:                       mkdir public_html

Now that you have created this new subdirectory, change directories to it by typing:                                        &n bsp;                           cd public_html

Now create at least a minimalist homepage for yourself.  Give your page the filename of index.html in the public_html directory that you created. (If you are using pico, you would type:                                                pico index.html          at the prompt, and then manually enter the relevant HTML codes).  (If you are using a program to create your web page on your PC you will probably have to upload it in some fashion; some browsers have the necessary FTP function built-in; others require that you FTP the file yourself).

Once you think you've created the

If you are having "file not found" troubles reading your page with a browser, and you are certain there is really a file there (try the "dir" command to check!) then try the following fix:
Log into the student server. From the unix prompt type:

fixperm --modify

You may need to do this every time you create a new file, but you should not have to do it after editing an existing file.

1. You may find it useful to check your HTML coding at the WebTech HTML Validation Service or the Weblint Validation Checker.
2. Please send an email to the class mailing list advertising the existence of your homepage and stating the correct URL for the page.

Version 1.1  Last modified Aug 27, 1998