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). 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 typical steps required for someone using Microsoft Windows and a ftp client called 'WSFTP' is given below.
Note! Wsftp can be downloaded from http://ipswitch.com/

  1. Start your ftp client and set it up to connect to "www.realtime.net" Using your Realtime user id and password.
    Once the ftp session has started and you are connected, you will see that you have access to your own WWW directory at Realtime .
  2. Create the subdirectory called 'public_html'.
  3. Change to that directory.
  4. Upload your 'index.html' file into the 'public_html' directory. ( If need be, make sure that the transfer mode is set to 'ascii' and not 'binary'. )
  5. Make sure that the file is still named 'index.html' (all lower case) , as some ftp clients will mangle the file name during the transfer. Rename it once it is in place if needed.
  6. Close the ftp session.
That's all there is to 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 "joe" would be "http://www.realtime.net/~joe/".

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

Once you are happy with your home page, if you would like it to appear in our list of 'Personal Home Pages' - use the following steps:

  1. Create a text file called 'index.me' which has nothing in it (not even spaces). This should be done with an ascii text editor ( such as 'Notepad') or with a word processor which has the ability to save files in 'ascii' format
    (Example: Start Notepad and immediatly 'Save' the file, and name it 'index.me')
  2. Use the same steps as above when you uploaded your home page, only this time upload the 'index.me' file, and make sure that its name was not mangled as above.

Your page will be automatically indexed and placed in our list of Personal Home Pages the next day.
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.

 

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