Upload Your Home Page

To upload your completed home page to www.tdl.com, and to edit it once it is uploaded, you will have to understand your directory structure, and you will have to learn to use an FTP client program. Don't panic. Both are easy.

Each user at TDL has their own directory on our www server. It is symbolically referred to as ~username. In other words, a user whose address was confused@tdl.com would have a home directory of ~confused. The absolute path to this directory is: www.tdl.com/home/confused -- you might need this information for some scripts.

The home directory ~confused has one sub-directory, public_html. This is the directory where you want to upload your files. There is also a sub-directory in public_html called cgi-bin. Your cgi scripts will be placed there. You can create sub-directories under public_html and upload files there to help you stay organized. Your initial home page should be called index.html.

To transfer your completed html documents, graphics and scripts to your website, you will need to use an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client. The one we recommend and provide is called WS-FTP for IBM, and Fetch for Macintosh. The basic use of Fetch is simple. You give the FTP client an address (www.tdl.com) a username (confused), a password (I_forget), and a starting directory (public_html), then you tell it to connect. After completing the connection, you will be placed in your public_html directory.

You will "put" your files there one at a time. To download a file that is already there, you "get" it. You can also rename a file, delete a file and make a directory.

Now, let's look at how this will actually be done using Fetch. When you open Fetch, you will see asmall window to enter te site you want to connect to. Change the values on the profile screen to match the values in the image below, but substitute your user name and password for the ones shown. When you have filled in all the required information, click on OK to connect.

Now for uploading your files. As you can see from the graphics below, the upper left corner contains the "current" directory on the remote site, and under it is the list of files in that directory. On the right, are the command buttons and other things such as a progress display.

To upload your files, click "Put File." Then, go find the directory that has the files you want to upload. Do this by selecting the hard drive the files are on (or the desktop, if that's where you put them) in the drop down box, then navigate to the proper directory by double-clicking directory names. When you find the right directory, highlight a file you want to upload, and click Open.

Now, you have to do one more thing. Make sure it's sending the file in the proper format. For .html files, the type should be text. For pictures and sounds and other downloadable files, the type should be "raw data," and not AppleSingle, BinHex, or MacBinary II. Fetch should automagically decide that .html files are text, but it may guess wrong on some of your files. The "file type" select screen is below. After changing the file type if needed, then just click OK, and the file will start uploading. When it's done, you can click "put file" again to put a new file.

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