Before you can follow the instructions in this section, you must have created your personal web page.  If you haven't done that yet, go back to Creating Your Personal Web Page.

Acronyms used on this page:

• HTML - HyperText Markup Language, the formatting language used to create home pages for the web.
• FTP - File Transfer Protocol, a method of moving files from one computer system to another.
• URL - Uniform Resource Locator, the address of a  page on the web; starts with "http:// "; you see it in the "Location" or "Address" box of your main browser screen.

When your personal web page is ready to move to our server, gather it and all of its associated files (graphics, etc) in one place, or make a list of them so you don't forget any.

To copy your web page and associated files to our server, you will need an FTP program.  Many FTP programs are available on the Internet, and several of them are available free of charge.  Two that we've had good success with are CuteFTP and WS_FTP.  You can download an FTP program at download sites such as Download.Com or Tucows.

Install your FTP program and load it.  Before you connect to our server with FTP for the first time, you'll need to enter your username and password, and the address of our FTP server (which is ftp.iland.net) .  Most FTP programs allow you to save this info so you may easily connect to our server the next time you want to update your page.

Now that you've entered this basic information, you should be able to click on a button (possibly named Connect or Open) to connect to our FTP server.  Watch the status of your FTP application as it connects to our server to ensure your connection.  On most FTP applications, the left window shows files and directories on your computer, while the right windows shows files and directories on our server.  You'll be placed in your directory on our server after you connect, which is /export/home/u/username where "u" is the first letter of your username.  Because your home will reside on a server that uses a Unix operating system, you'll use  forward slashes to separate file and directory names (unlike DOS and Windows, which use backslashes).

Next, create a subdirectory under your home directory to hold your home page and graphics files.  It MUST be called public_html.  In most FTP applications, you'll click on a "make directory" button (probably called MkDir) to create the directory.  Don't forget to name it public_html! The name must be all in lower case letters, and it must have an underscore character between the two words.

Now move into the public_html directory.  Most FTP applications will allow you to do this by double-clicking on the folder.  It will be empty this first time.  To copy your web page and graphics files into it, double click on them in the left window (shows files and directories on your computer).  You move around the directory structure just as in Windows, double clicking on a subdirectory to move into it, and double clicking on ".." to move up a directory level.

The next and final step is to be sure you home page file is named index.html.  To do that, highlight your homepage file in its location on our system (in the right hand window), then click on the button for the rename function (in most FTP applications, the button is simply titled Rename) and enter the filename of index.html.

That's it!  Exit your FTP application then load your web browser.  After your web browser had loaded, you can now type in your very own URL, which is:

http://www.iland.net/~username

That character before your username (the little wavy thing) is called a tilde.  Here's an example of an existing home page on our system.

http://www.iland.net/~username

The HTML document that you see when you click on the above link is called index.html and resides in a subdirectory called public_html under Jon's home directory. 

HTML programming is fairly easy to pick up on.  Spend some time with it, and before long you may be routinely turning out nice, basic pages with graphics and links. 

Once your home page is out on our system and accessible from your web browser, please fill out our User Directory form.