A
disciplined approach in configuring the directories for our
HTML files is necessary if problems are to be avoided.
Here are my recommendations.
1. Create a development directory named '1develop' on your
hard disk.
2. Create a production directory on your hard disk named
'www'
3. Finally create a presentation directory named 'www'
just below your home directory on Polaris.
4. Below each of these three top level directories create a
series directories to hold your site files. For example
just about all will need a directory for graphics and at
least one or two topic directory. So at a minimum all of you will
have a setup on the order of:
c:\1develop\
c:\1develop\graphics
c:\1develop\topic_one
c:\1develop\topic_two
c:\www\
c:\www\graphics
c:\www\topic_one
c:\www\topic_two
/users/student/ID/www
/users/student/ID/www/graphics
/users/student/ID/www/topic_one
/users/student/ID/www/topic_two
5. Use c:\1develop\whatever for doing all of your creative
work. When satisfied, move the completed file to your
production directory c:\www\whatever. You production
directory is just to hold completed and well tested files
ready for upload to Polaris. It is never used for any other
purpose. The reason for this? A slip of a finger
at 3AM can cause havoc to files. Your production directory
provides the needed backup. It also would be a good idea to
copy your production directory to floppy periodically.
6. After moving a file from c:\1develop\whatever to
c:\www\whatever set the archive flag to off. Do the same
after uploading from c:\www\whatever to Polaris. This helps
you keep track of your 'build.'
7. Use relative addressing for all of your internal file URLs.
8. Don't forget to set your Unix file and directory
permissions properly, all directories <chmod 711>, all files
<chmod 644>. I find using ws_ftp particularly useful for
moving files from my PC up to Polaris. The default setting
on ws_ftp will chmod your files 644. For more upload
information see 'Prep for Upload' in this module.
The comments above are suggestions.
What follows is a REQUIREMENT for this class:
a. Your lead-in file MUST be named 'index.html'
b. It MUST be located in '/user/student/ID/www' on Polaris.