Integrating Technology in the Foreign Language Classroom

It's fine to make WWW pages, but if you want to share them with others, you'll need to put them on the Internet so that anyone can brows them.  The World Wide Web is a collection of servers all around the world.  In order for your page to appear on the Web, it has to reside on a server that will allow a URL (Uniform Resource Locator or Internet address) to find it.  All of the files that are used by your Web page have to be in the directory on your WWW server if the user is to see the complete page.

There are a number of different ways to "publish" your Web page.  The two most common are the FTP (File Transport Protocol) program and a built-in publish utility in your web page editor, such as Netscape Composer.

In order to publish your page in your Alpha account here at SUNY Cortland, you first need to prepare your account to receive the pages.  This only needs to be done once. If you have web server space through your Internet Service Provider account, follow the instructions furnished by your ISP.
 

n.b.  The instructions in this box are specific to the SUNY Cortland SNYCORVA www server and are not meant to be used on any other computer: Log on to your account on the alpha VMS computer which is used for email.  This is the SNYCORVA machine whose address is snycorva.cortland.edu.  Once you are in your account, type: @public:www_user This will create a WWW directory, prepare a default page called INDEX.HTML, and set all of the options in the directory to allow the files there to be available on the Web.  This will not change any security options in any other part of your account.  Once this is done, you should see a directory called WWW.DIR when you enter the DIRECTORY command. You don't need to do anything else in this account or know anything about VMS to use your new Web address.

For this activity, we will assume that you have a WWW page called INDEX.HTML.  It is wise to place all of the files four your page in a folder by themselves.  This will make it easier to move them around.

FTP:

To publish your page, we will use FTP.  Using FTP is just like logging on to your account, except that all FTP allows you to do is to copy files between computers.

We are using WS-FTP Limited Edition, a free program easily found on the Web.

Check WS-FTP options to be sure that you are set to automatically detect and convert extensions for ASCII and Binary files for proper format:
 

• Convert extensions [Session / Convert extensions]
• Auto Detect [Session (cont'd) / Auto Detect]


And check that HTML files are recognized as ASCII.
 


Finally, connect to your account, switch to the WWW directory.  Place you login name in the USER_ID window.  Be sure not to save your password.  It is safer to type it in each time.
 


Once you are connected, copy the files from your local system to your remote system. Do not forget to check that you are moving files to the correct folder.  Select all the required files on your local system, make sure that Auto is checked, then press the arrow pointing towards the remote system.
 


Finally, check to be sure that your page is in place by opening Netscape and typing in your URL.  For example, mine is:
 

http://facultyweb.cortland.edu/~ponterior/


Publish:

To publish your pages using the built-in publish utility in Netscape Composer, select the meu item File / Publish. The utility will automatically provide the Page Title, HTML Filename, and Files associated with the page.
 


You will need to know the HTTP or FTP Location to publish the file to. In the example above, the HTTP location is http://facultyweb.cortland.edu/~ponterior/ .  The FTP location is ftp://snycorva.cortland.edu/www/ .  The folder name in the address must be specified from the location of the default WWW or FTP folder in the account, whatever that may be. Provide the user name and password for the account, then click OK. The publish utility will tell you is the files have been successfully copied to the new location.

Caveat: Be sure not to save your password if you are not working on your own secure computer.