Creating Your Own Personal Home Page

Real/Time users can create their own WWW documents and make them available via their personal home page.

WWW documents are written in a special format known as HTML (HyperText Markup Language). Information on creating HTML documents is available in the Real/Time Web server section entitled About the World-Wide Web. One of the easiest ways to learn about HTML is to look at some examples. If your WWW browser supports a view source option, you can use it to look at the HTML source for documents on this and other servers.

 To create a personal home page you need to author an HTML document named "index.html" and place it in a directory named "public_html" in your home directory. The index.html file is your personal home page.

An outline of the steps required is given below. These steps should be executed from a UNIX shell prompt. (Any text after a "#" is a comment and can be ignored.)

  1. cd # go to your home directory
  2. mkdir public_html # create a directory for HTML documents
  3. chmod go+rx public_html # make sure directory is readable by everyone
  4. chmod go+x $HOME # allow other users to locate public_html
  5. cd public_html # change directories to public_html
  6. [create "index.html" using your favorite editor]
  7. chmod go+r index.html # make sure everyone can read it
For testing, you can reference your document as
http://www.realtime.net/~userid/
Replace "userid" with your account name. For example, the path for the home page belonging to user "dpm" would be "http://www.realtime.net/~dpm/".

Refer to the documentation for your WWW browser (e.g., Mosaic or Lynx) to learn how to open a particular document by specifying its path (known as a URL).

Once you are happy with your home page, create a file called "index.me" in your public HTML directory, and your page will be automatically indexed in the personal home page index the next day. You can create this file with the command: 
touch ~/public_html/index.me
You can change your personal home page at any time simply by editing the index.html file. As you become familiar with HTML, you will learn how to reference other documents and services from your home page.

NOTE: The 'chmod go+x $HOME' command sets the permissions on your home directory so that other users can read unprotected files if they already know their name. Other users still won't be able to list the contents of your directory to see what files are there unless the "r" permission bit is also set. A more detailed discussion of file and directory permissions can be found in almost any introductory UNIX documentation.

 NOTE: For security reasons, some advanced features such as CGI scripts (e.g., forms) are disabled for the personal home pages. 

DISCLAIMER: The WWW is a public publishing medium. All users are individually responsible and liable for ensuring that the content of their documents does not violate copyright laws and is appropriate for a public forum. Real/Time Communications assumes no responsibility for the content of the user-created documents.

The Personal Home Pages are provided as a courtesy to Real/Time customers. Real/Time reserves the right to withdraw this service from any or all users at any time when the generated server load becomes unreasonable.

Personal home pages are for non-commercial use only. Contact webmaster@realtime.net for information about commercial WWW services. 

webmaster@realtime.net