HOW TO ...

Nynehead FTP Please contact the WEBMASTER for the magic words!

If this is so much gobbledy-gook - read on! FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is the process by which material is sent from one computer to another to make it universally viewable on a browser. It is similar to and almost as easy as sending an email. Just as you need specific software to send an email (typically ‘Outlook’ or ‘Outlook Express’ although there are many others) so you need specific FTP software in order to ‘up-load’ or ‘down-load’ stuff to or from a website. You probably already have FTP software as part of your ‘Windows’ set-up. You can also FTP with most browsers and many other programs such as those for producing html or websites like ‘Aracnophilia’ (free!) or ‘Dreamweaver’ (not free) also have FTP capability within them. Or there are stand-alone FTP programs such as Cute FTP - which is what I use.

Most FTP PROGRAMS work in a similar way to CD burning software; your screen is split vertically, one half representing your computer the other half representing the target URL on the computer to which you wish to send stuff. In order to connect to the Nynehead website you will need to enter the above gobbledy-gook in the appropriate place. This will be some sort of dialogue box that appears when you want to ‘connect’, ‘send’, ‘upload’, etc. [If you want FTP access to any website other than Nynehead's, you will need to ask the provider of the webspace for the equivalent info, i.e. the FTP host name, FTP user name and FTP pass word. It is highly likely that you already pay for webspace as part of your internet package. Go on; build a website!]

FTP to EXISTING PAGES. Suppose you want to change the Gardening Club page. There are two possibilities. 1) Use the existing page but simply add to or edit it or 2) replace it with an entirely new page. For 1 connect to www.nynehead.org with your FTP software find the Gardening Club file (called garden.html); click on it to ‘select’ it then ‘download’ it to your computer. (There will be a downward pointing arrow, download button/menu command etc depending on what software you are using.) The garden.html file will then be copied to whatever folder you select on your computer. The original file will remain on the website. Job done. Well, half of it anyway. Tinker with it, edit it, add pictures to it etc then go into reverse. Fire up the FTP thing, connect to the website, select the new garden.html on your computer and click the ‘upload’ button. BEWARE! This will over-write the garden.html file that is already on the website. You will get a warning to that effect along the lines of ‘the file garden.html already exists; do you want to replace it?’ Bob's yer uncle and Fanny's yer aunt. For 2, to replace the existing Garden Club page with an entirely new one you obviously do not need to bother with downloading the existing page. Just create a new page, call it garden.html and fire it off. BANG! Just like that. This will over-write the existing page. Any of the existing links on the webiste to garden.html will now show what you have placed there rather than what was there before.

FTP for NEW PAGES. Suppose the W.I. revives and they want their own page. They call it womens_institute.html and fire it up as above. Problem; how is anyone going to know it is there? A sign or LINK will have to be created that firstly suggests to a viewer “here's a page about the W.I.” and secondly, when clicked, takes the viewer to that page. Here's one way that could happen. By convention, the first page a browser opens on any website is called the INDEX page. By and large all websites have on them a file called index.html and this is the case with www.nynehead.org and that is the page you see when you type www.nynehead.org in your browser. It has, among other things, ‘WELCOME TO NYNEHEAD PARISH” at the top and a list of links down the left hand side. This would be a good place for a link to the W.I. new page. To do add a link here you will need to DOWNLOAD the index.html to your computer (see 1 above) and edit it as follows. Towards the bottom of the page you will see something like this;

<div id="nav">
<a href="additions.html">ADDITIONS</a> 
<a href="business.html">BUSINESS</a> 
<a href="canal.html">CANAL</a> 
<a href="church.html">CHURCH</a> 
<a href="club.html">THE CLUB</a> 
<a href="cricket.html">CRICKET</a> 
<a href="environment.html">ENVIRONMENT</a> 
<a href="javascript:openWindow8()">FLOOD ALERTS</a> 
<a href="paths.html">FOOTPATHS</a> 
<a href="garden.html">GARDEN CLUB</a> 
<a href="history.html">LOC. HIST. SOC</a> 
<a href="map.html">MAP</a>br>
<a href="newsletter.html">NEWSLETTER</a>> 
<a href="neighbourhoodwatch.html">NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH</a> 
<a href="9html.html">9HTML</a> 
<a href="court.html">NYNEHEAD COURT</a> 
<a href="links.html">OUT-PARISH</a> 
<a href="plan.html">PARISH PLAN</a> 
<a href="police.html">POLICE</a> 
<a href="school.html">SCHOOL</a> 
<a href="thespians.html">THESPIANS</a> 
<a href="transport.html">TRANSPORT</a> 
<a href="webmaster.html">WEBMASTER</a> 
<img class="noborder" src="http://www.counting4free.com/cgi-bin/counter.pl?id=7221">
</div>

These are all the links that were current at the time of writing down the left hand side of the INDEX page which, when clicked, take you to the relevant page. To add a link for the W.I.'s new page you would need to insert something like this

and logically place it immediately after the ‘WEBMASTER’ link as the links are in alphabetical order. And if, for the sake of argument, you wanted a new page for a dog show the link would be <a href="dogshow.html">DOG SHOW</a> and placed between CRICKET and ENVIRONMENT. The link should then look and behave as do all the others once this new index page is uploaded. Uploading it will of course overwrite the existing index page! Two things finally to note are; 1) the file name in the link <a href="womens_institue.html"> must be EXACTLY the same as the file to which it is pointing. In html file names are case sensitive. I make a habit of ONLY using lower case for html file names. 2) Whatever you type in the space where it says W.I. is what will actually be seen in the browser.

If you want somewhere to practise you can put what you want on www.nynehead.org/test.html This gives you a basic platform on which to strut your stuff, but you will be stuck with the existing layout, background colours etc - unless you know how to change them!

To view CLICK HERE or type www.nynehead.org/test.html in your browser.

If you want your homework marked, click on the W3C icon on the left after you have uploaded anything. This will link the page to the W3C validation service. If there is an error in your html you will get a rude message along the lines of “this page is not Valid HTML 4.01 Transitional!” Please mop up after you have finished admiring your handiwork.

HTML IN 5 MINUTES For those of you who don't know, HTML is the ‘language’ needed to create a website. It contains the ‘grammar’ which tells a browser (the software you are using to view this page) how it is to display information, the ‘information’ being most usually text and images. The instructions are in ‘tags’ which in html are always contained between <this sort of bracket>. If you right click on this page and click ‘VIEW SOURCE’ you will see everything that is in this document as opposed to just what the browser will display, i.e. all the tags and all the text. So, for example you will see that the word everything is in fact composed of the opening tag that tells the browser to make what follows bold, the text “everything” or whatever is required to be bold, and then the closing tag that tells the browser that bold is no longer required. You will note that what distinguishes an opening tag from a closing tag is that the instruction in a closing tag is preceded by a forward slash. Altering the tags on a page will effect the way a page displays in a browser. Conversely, altering what is contained between the tags will change the content of what is displayed but not its appearance. Try it and see. Right click on this page, tinker with it at will and then ‘SAVE AS’ with whatever name you want so long as it has the file extension .html and not just a .txt file. Double click on your saved file and your browser should lurch into action and show you your handiwork. If you search on the internet for “free website templates” or “free html templates” you will get loads of hits. Grab some and play! Right; five minutes are up!