Web Publishing ABC

A

Prepare Documents:

Important suggestion on file names : To make sure that your files are readable on most computers (Windows, Mac, Unix/Linux, etc), please never use blanks in your file names but use "-" or "_" instead and avoid other special characters. ("This_is_ok.html", "This-is-also-fine.pdf")

Technically, any digital files can be put on the web. However, the accessibility depends on the sofware the viewers use.

The most supported file on the web is HTML, the lingua franca for publishing hypertext on the World Wide Web.

The most supported image files on the web are JPEG/JPG (JPEG is short for the "Joint Photographic Experts Group"), GIF and PNG (Portable Network Graphics), a patent-free compressed format.

There are many software packages which can convert different image formats to JPG, GIF and PNG formats, ImageMagick is a copyrighted free software available on scires and most Linux systems.

PDF is a file format created by Adobe that let readers view and print a file excalty as you designed.

More and more new file formats are added on the web. The rule of thumb is that the newer the file format, the less likely it will be supported on most computers.

If the browser on the viewers' computer can not open the document, it would simply save the document. You can put some non-portable files on your web page but you have to provide information about how to open these files on your web page.

You should put all the to-be-published documents in one single folder on your local computer drive and test all the links with your web browser. (You can open a local file in you web browser the same way you open a file with word processor)

There is one special file on your folder called index.html or index.htm, which is the first page people would see on your web pages. You should at least learn a little bit HTML so that you can make links to other files from your index.htm.

B

Upload Documents to Web Host:

Once you are ready to publish your documents on the web, you need a web host them. The name of your host computer might be different from the name of the web address (URL) of your web page. For example, the name of NYU personal web pages is pages.nyu.edu but the host computer of your documents could be is.nyu.edu, is2.nyu.edu, ..., is9.nyu.edu.

You might have your own host provided by ISP or free web hosts on the internet. The principle is the same, you have to know your URL, the name of host computer and the directory (folder) name on the host that you can put your documents. These should be provided by your ISP or your system adminstrator.

There are lots of tools can transfer your documents to host computer, some ISPs provide their own uploading tools. The most used tools are FTP programs. (Check out NYU ITS FTP howto.) FTP is a kind of file copy, but the files are on different computers.

Please only upload the files your want to pulish and leave the source documents such as .tex, .doc, .tif, .bmp on your own local computer.

C

Set Access Permissions of Documents on Web Host:

Some hosts do not set the access permissions of your documents automatically, that is a safety feature. If this is the case, you should make the files on your host (not your local files) readable by everyone.

Most of the lastest FTP programs can set remote permissions: In WS_FTP for Windows, click on the remote file with the right button of your mouse to pop up the menu for permission setting. In Fetch 3.0.3, after you highlight the file on host, select the set remote permissions on your menu bar.

Final remind: Check all your web documents through URLs (not your local files) and make sure that you don't have dead links and wrong permissions. And put contact information on your pages for bug report.