Creating your NCF Home Page =========================== Contents: Creating a HomePage.html file Referencing files in your Work directory Links to an text file in the menus Links from your Home Page to FreeNet menus How to See your Home Page What does URL mean? What is the Lynx Browser The "finger" gateway on NCF How to supply public information about yourself You can share personal information with the world on your very own "home page" on NCF. It will be accessible to anyone on the Internet with the ability to browse the World Wide Web (WWW or just "the Web"). NOTE: THIS IS A TEST SERVICE AND MAY CHANGE OR DISAPPEAR AT ANY TIME! Creating a HomePage.html file ----------------------------- To start your home page, go to your NCF Work directory and create a new file called HomePage.html as follows: Your Choice ==> go manage ==> 5 Create/Edit a file [Call the file "HomePage.html"] Make sure you capitalize the H and P -- it must be spelled this way. Then go into the file and edit it. To edit this file you must know about HTML (hypertext markup language), a fairly simple language used to identify different parts of your "Page" as titles; headings; internet URLs (Uniform Resource Locator); text; etc. If you don't know this language you can access documents at NCF to help you: Your Choice ==> go help-www Referencing files in your Work directory ---------------------------------------- It is acceptable to reference files to include in your HomePage.html file such as HomePage.background.gif or HomePage.volunteer.html. These will also reside in your Work directory. If I wanted to reference a graphics file from my home page, for example, I would add a line similar to this (replace "aa000" with your own userid): Here is picture of my cat Skipper sleeping as usual. If you are using Lynx, you won't see a picture, just text like "[IMAGE]". People using those fancy graphics browsers will be served up a picture. Just remember that if it took you 3 minutes to upload, the person accessing you home page will likely abort the picture before it gets displayed (if they even have this feature turned on!). There are no guarantees at this time that large files won't be marked for deletion if disk space becomes scarce on the FreeNet system. However, if you access the file in any way, it is less likely to be removed. Also, keep the file size "reasonable" as NCF does not have unlimited storage. ("go policy" for more information on the current policy on personal file storage and the AUP, acceptible use policy.) Links to an text file in the menus ---------------------------------- I can create a link to display a text file in any of the NCF menus. For example, if I wished to include the brochure for the public "Get Connected!" (go training), located in: /freenet/rootdir/menus/using/training/brochures/get-connected I would replace the directory names "/freenet/rootdir/menus/" with "/ip/" in the URL. Here is a brochure to help people Get Connected! to NCF. Note that a URL can be split into several line, but the text between the quotes ("/ip....get-connected") must be on one line. The "selection" text for the Web browsers, and what you click on if you are using a mouse, is "Get Connected". Links from your Home Page to FreeNet menus ------------------------------------------ If you wish to find the URL of any NCF menu, type Your Choice ==> info You will notice the WorldWideWeb URL is displayed. For example, the PC Users SIG menu URL is: http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/freeport/sigs/computer/pc-user/menu If you wish to include it in your home page, it would look like this: If you use a PC with DOS or Windows software, check out the PC Users SIG for discussion and information. Do NOT use a trailing slash in the URL as this indicates you want the default page from that directory. How to See your Home Page ------------------------- NOTE: THIS IS A TEST SERVICE AND MAY CHANGE OR DISAPPEAR AT ANY TIME! Anyone on NCF can see your home page by using the "g"o command in the Lynx browser and typing in the URL: http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~aa000/ * Substitute "aa000", with your own user id. * Make absolutely sure you include the "/" at the end. To see your own home page: Your Choice ==> go www ==> 5 See your Home Page (via WWW) So your personal home page becomes a place to store any text you'd like to share with the world -- an archive of information of your choice that can also store URLs to other places on the Internet. You could also then send your home page URL to places like WebCrawler; Yahoo or NCSA Mosaic. If they add the URL to their "index", then it will be available to millions of people by doing a simple text or subject search. If they don't, then you can tell people about it by including it in your signature file. What does URL mean? ------------------- URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, which allows your software to interpret what "page" you wish to access. Also, there is more than one term to describe a URL on the Internet: - a link - an address - a Web site - a World Wide Web site (or WWW site) - a Web page - a home page This is the price of anarchy I guess. :-) What is the Lynx Browser ------------------------ Lynx is the name of the browser software program that we use on NCF, as do many other sites. Lynx is a text-only Web browser program. You may have used or heard of browsers like Mosaic or Netscape that allow you to display graphics, play sound files, and run video "movies". Unless you are using a very high-speed modem, some of these features can add a lot of time to your "browsing" so often people prefer to turn off the fancy but slow features of their browser program. So don't get carried away with including pictures. Many people won't even see them. The "finger" gateway on NCF --------------------------- When someone uses this NCF "finger" gateway to look you up, then all the information that you have supplied about yourself in your personal files will be displayed. This is the same information you see when you use the following command to see someone's public information: Your Choice ==> lookup URL: http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/finger/freenet/aa000 (replace "aa000" with your own userid) NOTE: THIS IS A TEST SERVICE AND MAY CHANGE OR DISAPPEAR AT ANY TIME! How to supply public information about yourself ----------------------------------------------- To supply public info about yourself in the following files, type "go profile-public": * location * interests * affiliations * projects * plan * Your signature file * Date/time you last logged in * Date/time you last read e-mail If none of these files exist, then the NCF "finger" gateway displays just your name to someone "fingering" your NCF userid.