HTML Resources and Information

Web pages at Penn:
Before you make your hompage, do you know how to set it up? There are a few things you'll need to know and be able to do before before the HTML kicks in. At Penn, students, staff, and faculty generally create their homepages by setting them up in a UNIX account. Examples of the UNIX servers that Penn students, faculty, and staff use for their accounts are:

mail.sas.upenn.edu
eniac.seas.upenn.edu
dolphin.upenn.edu
futures.wharton.upenn.edu
pobox.upenn.edu

All of you should have an account on one of these servers and should be familiar with the login process.

Setting your page up:
The University provides documentation on how to set up homepages on the various servers on campus. These documents only contain the basics on creating web documents.

documentation for mail.sas
documention for eniac.seas
documentation for dolphin and pobox (written by ISC)

As you'll see the process of setting up a directory for your HTML documents is fairly simple.

Some basic UNIX commands
Since we are using UNIX based servers to store our HTML documents you will need to be able to manuver your way around a UNIX environment (ie. mail.sas or eniac.seas). Engineering students should know that when they log into their account they are automatically placed at a UNIX prompt. However, most other servers on campus require you to type in a special command (most often simply "unix") to get into the UNIX environment. It is usually easier to edit and create documents this way. Here are the commands which will be useful to you during this process:

ls	List (names the files in the current directory you are in)
ls -l	List long (gives you more information about files, including permissions
cd /directoryname	Change to directory
cd ..	Change directory above or "parent directory"
cp file1 file2	Makes copy of file1 with name file2
cp file1 directoryname	Makes copy of file1 into a directory
rm filename	Removes or erases a file.
rmdir directoryname	Removes or erases an empty directory
mkdir directoryname	Makes a directory
mv file1 file2	Renames a file from "file1" to "file2"
mv filename directoryname	Moves file into a directory
chmod ### filename	Change permissions on a file, (HTML documents are usually 644). See a quick summary of this command
chmod ### directoryname	Change permissions on a documents, (HTML subdirectories are usually 755). See a quick summary of this command
more filename	Displays a file on your screen

Using PICO:
Once you have your directory set up, the creation of the actual HTML document can begin. To edit your HTML documents I will be making use of a text editor called PICO. In order to use PICO, you simply have to type

pico filename.html

After you do this you will be in PICO with a blank document. Note: you can also edit an existing document with the same command. A few commands the you will find useful in PICO are:

[Ctrl-y] - screen up
[Ctrl-v] - screen down
[Ctrl-o] - save file
[Ctrl-x] - exit PICO
[Ctrl-k] - delete line
[Ctrl-u] - undelete line or block (puts back what you just took away with [Ctrl-k])
[Ctrl-d] - delete character
[Ctrl-j] - justify text in a "paragraph"
[Ctrl-r] - insert file (that is in the directory you are currently in) into document

A good idea when you are writing your HTML documents, (as is the case in writing a paper or other important document) is to save often. Now you should be ready to write an HTML document!

Library Advisors:
Please read the guidelines for creating your homepage.