You've surfed the Web—Now First you started seeing those weird addresses on television commercials and billboards. You know, the ones that start with "http" and end with punctuation and groups of letters that aren't quite English—or any other known language. Then you surfed the World Wide Web, probably using Netscape. And you realized that something that starts with "http" is a Web address—or more properly, a uniform resource locator, or URL. Now you're thinking about providing information on the Web yourself. You may want to start a home page because your bookmark list is too big to be manageable, or perhaps you have important information to publish on the Web. Before you start working on your home page, you'll need an account on one of the KU multiuser systems. Most students have accounts on FALCON. You need to know a little something about how the World Wide Web works, some basics about moving around on FALCON, and finally, how to create a World Wide Web document. Computing Services teaches free classes on these topics (there's a schedule on page 3). You can also learn HTML from your friends, from information on the Web, and from a myriad of other places. But it is important for you to know something about HTML which stands for HyperText Markup Language. It is the most common way to prepare documents for the World Wide Web. The first step in creating your home page is to log into your FALCON account. When you have a shell prompt (a dollar ($) sign), enter the following commands. chmod og+x $HOME mkdir public html chmod og+rx public html cd public html These commands prepare your "Web directory"—the directory where you will keep your World Wide Web documents. And they move you to your current (working) directory. As you enter these commands—and the others that follow, remember that FALCON is a "case sensitive" system. It sees dog, Dog, and DOG as different words. Now your Web directory (public_html) is set up. Next you can begin to create your first HTML document using one of the text editors available from your FALCON account. (Most people use Pico—and the instructions here assume you'll make this choice.) Create a file called index.html. Do this by entering the command: pico index.html This command opens a file named index.html in your current directory. To include material in your file, enter the following lines, substituting your actual e-mail address for the phrase "your_email_address": My first home page

My first home page

Now save the file (press control-x to save your page) and you should now be back to your $ prompt. Again enter chmod og+rx index.html That's it. You've created a home page that you can view using Netscape. It is very important that each page that you create includes the line: This line establishes ownership of your page. If you follow the directions above, the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) for your home page will be: http://falcon.cc.ukans.edu/~your_login_name The Web browser you use will assume that your home page information is stored in a file called index.html. But what if a one-line home page wasn't quite what you had in mind? To add things to your home page, open the index.html file and add text, pictures, or hypertext links. If you just want to add a more text to your file, open your file: pico index.html and add any information you like. Be sure that you use the appropriate HTML tags (the letters that appear between < and >) to get the look you want. If you need some pointers on preparing HTML documents, you may want to look up: http://www.cc.ukans.edu/cwis/pointers.html But the Web can do so much more than text you create, so why shouldn't you include links to other material from your home page? Just remember that once you insert a link, it must point to something. People often include links to their friend's home pages. You can include these links by entering the following lines in your index.html file: Meet some of my friends who have home pages:

John and You now have a home page with graphics and links to other sites on the World Wide Web. Don't even think your job is done—all Web pages are always under construction. If you are like the rest of us, you'll never have a Web page you aren't working on. But relax. There aren't any deadlines and the work is fun! 4 THEJayhacker Spring 1996