Carroll County Maryland Chapter	Setting Up A Web Page Dean Wilson 3-1-02 Hi. Lots of people at the last wine club tasting asked about web space on the Internet. I hope this answers some of them. But reader beware, I only get you started here. It takes a little doing the first time If you have a CCPL Library Internet account, you have 5MB of disk space available for your personal web site. Even if it's not with the library, almost every Internet Service Provider (ISP) provides some web space with a paid account. You can even get FREE web space - actually disk space that is visible to web browser software like Netscape. 5MB (5 million letters) is plenty of space to put up quite a bit of text (easily a short book) but the major portion of web space is graphics - photos, icons, buttons, etc. A picture is a thousand words? Yes, a small picture! If you need to post a big photo album, you'll need more, which you can purchase, or more accurately, rent. The next issue is what goes on a web page. First, we will assume you have stuff that you want to share with the WHOLE WORLD - literally - you may as well write it in big letters on the moon. Keep in mind: you are PUBLISHING. If you put private stuff on the web, it's not private any more. But you should also to consider what the likelihood of the entire population of Chicago or Pittsburgh looking at your stuff is. It all depends, but in general, if you don't announce it, only those you tell directly will look at is. So, you could consider it as exposed as written on your T-shirt at the supermarket. Ask me about my dog, Elmer with the iron-on photo of Elmer. To get it on the web, you need to get it into your computer first. Type it yourself, scan the photos, draw it in photo software, whatever. But you need one more thing - a web page editor program. Right now, I happen to be using Web-Express, part of the Web Page 5.0 Construction Kit I bought at Staples. But you can even use a simple tool in Netscape, called Netscape Composer, or the Web Publishing Wizard in Windows® or lots of other tools just to get started. Then, you need to get it into your web space - that sounds freaky, but it's the best way to think of it. Everything on the web is on a computer somewhere - anywhere - your files can physically be on a disk in Idaho or South Africa. Once they are on the web, it doesn't matter. So wherever your web space is, you need to be able to put things there, - to publish, or post things - but ONLY YOU. It's useless if kids or terrorists or just anybody can change your web stuff. So you need an FTP Account Password. This will allow only those who know the password to change your website. Once it's there, the whole world wide web can see it, but they can't change it. Along with this password, you need FTP software. There are lots of free programs on-line to do this, but you can usually set it up with Web Publishing Wizard in Windows, or Netscape Communicator, or maybe several other ways already on your computer. But you need to know the FTP access URL and the password. This information comes from your ISP, usually as one of the first emails you get when you opened the account. You will get the FTP address, where files can be stored for your account, an initial password, which you should change yourself, and information on tools to manage your web files. These issues are too varied to discuss here, so contact your ISP. They HATE phones, you should do all correspondence through email, and read their websites for details. The information will be there, that's how they make money! For example, if you have an Internet account with CCPL, the CCPL library account has information for posting your information on the web at http://library.carr.org/accounts/pages.html Even if your account is with someone else, this site can give you some idea of what to do in general. Once you have all this address and password information, put it into your publishing software. It can be a pain at first, but once you get it set up, it's pretty easy. But don't get me wrong, there's lots to learn, but even more to ignore. K-I-S-S is best (keep it simple...) Hope this helps. If you have a question, email me here: dean.wilson@adelphia.net. I'll try to answer, or at least get you on a path to an answer. Or I'll just give up and ask John Pardoe. Bye! Dean.
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