How to Create a Personal Home Page
A guide to beginning and updating a personal home page
What is a home page?
A home page is a collection of accessible documents listed together in
one source for convenient access. A personal home page, then, is a
collection of personal information and associated documents located
conveniently for other people to access using Netscape or another
web browser. A home page may contain:
- A formal resume to be accessed by potential employers
- Pictures of people or interesting objects
- Links to other favorite sites on the Web to visit
- Addresses, telephone numbers, or email addresses to access the
home page author
- Other personal information which the author may want to share
with home page readers
Examples of other personal home pages may be found in the CS Department's local
personal pages
directory.
Before beginning a personal home page, it is helpful and important to
learn some basic HTML language. HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language and
uses tags to indicate changes in the text. Good sources for learning
about HTML include:
The HTML FAQ is an especially good place to start since it has links
to many other HTML reference documents.
To write a home page:
- Open a new file in any favorite text editor. Both emacs and vi
work well.
- Sketch on paper how the page will look and what information will
be included. Will there be any links to related files, like a resume,
or graphics? Think carefully about layout, since the page will be
seen by other people from various technical and non-technical backgrounds
alike.
- Begin writing the header, which will include the document title.
Type:
<html>
<head>
<title> Title Of Home Page Here
</title>
</head>
<body>
- Then begin writing the body of the home page. This is what
the reader will actually see when they access the page. Start by typing:
<h1> Home Page Title
</h1>
Then complete the page by using header formats, ordered and unordered
lists, horizontal rule lines, text, and graphics to create the best home
page. Be sure to include all necessary HTML tags.
-
To view the page while in draft form, open Mosaic or
netscape . At the menu bar,
pull down File and select Open
Local or Open File . Choose the directory and file where the page is
saved. Click on Ok to view the page as it will be
seen in the browser.
- At the end of the document, remember to include the tags:
</body>
</html>
to end the home page.
- To save the file to the directory where it may be accessed, create
a directory within your home directory called public_html. Move the
home page file into the new directory and rename it index.html.
Place all other linked files, like graphics, into the new directory as
well. The URL address for the home page will be:
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~username/
Links from one document to another within the public_html directory
must be followed by the filename after the proper URL address.
- For the home page to be accessible through Netscape or other
browsers, the permissions on the home directory and public_html
directory must be changed to allow others to read and execute in the
directory. To do so, save the home page and exit to the prompt. Then
type:
chmod o-w+rx public_html
to change the permissions on the home page directory, and type:
chmod o-rw+x .
to change the home directory permissions. This will allow other users to
execute and access files in your home directory, but they will not be able to
view the contents of your home directory, nor will they be able to write to
your home directory. This basically means that if someone knows the exact
filename of something in your home directory they will be able to execute or
look at the file, but if they try to %ls your home
directory they will get a 'Permission Denied' error.
- After installing an index.html file in your public_html directory your home page should automatically appear on the CS Department personal pages directory within 24 hours.
- If you've gone through all the above steps and still can't get it to work,
feel free to contact a CS dept. consultant for more help.
Copyright (c) HMC Computer Science Department.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1
or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with the no Invariant Sections, with no
Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts.
A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License.''
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