Posting a Home Page

Setting up a home page with Cport.Com is not a difficult process, but there are a few things that you should know before you embark on your mission.  And remember, please use ONLY lowercase letters on all file names and references to those files.

KNOW YOUR LIMITATIONS... AND OURS

Please remember that authoring and maintenance of home pages is the user's responsibility. Cport.Com cannot author your pages for you, nor can we teach you how to write code in HTML, Perl, Java, JavaScript, C/C++ or any other programming or markup language. We are simply not set up to provide these kinds of training services. If you need a page authored for you, please contact our office to set up a consultation for web development services. This is an additional service and carries fees commensurate with complexity, size and content.

If HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is completely foreign to you, please download (or purchase) a copy of Microsoft FrontPage and read the documentation from the Help menu. FrontPage includes a fairly intuitive, WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) HTML editor that behaves much like a word processor. This application will enable you to develop attractive web pages quickly and easily without the hassle of having to learn HTML first.

However, there are still plenty of reasons to try to learn HTML. Think of FrontPage as a paint-by-numbers kit and HTML as a paint brush and canvas. The paint-by-numbers creation will probably look pretty sharp if you can stay within the lines, but it will also look almost identical to any other versions generated through that very same kit. The paint brush and canvas method, on the other hand, will, without a doubt, result in something genuinely yours. However, without an understanding of certain painting techniques and other skills that make up the art, you'd be very likely to produce something that would scare the hair off of a cat. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you do a little research on the subject of HTML and compare it to what FrontPage produces for you. It won't take you long to figure out how HTML works and why actually knowing how to hand code in this langage is beneficial.

BE TASTEFUL

While users should feel free to express themselves, they should also exercise common sense and good taste when serving up their creative efforts to the rest of the planet. Be respectful of the fellow members of your community and remember that what you think is "cool" may seem offensive to someone else. Keep in mind that offending someone on the Internet often carries the following ramifications:

• Just as your identity is essentially unknown on the Internet, so is that of your home page visitors. If someone doesn't like what they see, they may "flame" you. Flaming is the practice of using one's state of anonymity to intentionally hurt or insult someone via e-mail or Usenet Newsgroups. Flaming is generally considered cowardice since it reflects behavior that rarely takes place outside the protective anonymity of the Internet.
  
  
• If your page is viewed by a child who later informs his parents of his wonderful discovery, you may find yourself in hot water with the child's parent and perhaps the victim of a lawsuit.

Protect yourself and be considerate of others. Don't be too outrageous.

COPYRIGHTED MATERIALS

Under no circumstances should an Cport.Com subscriber use his or her own web/FTP space for the purpose of distributing, receiving or trading pirated software, also known as "warez". Software piracy is a punishable crime and the authorities are "cracking down" on those who engage in the practice. If you use your web or FTP space for this purpose, your web privileges will be revoked permanently and your Cport.Com account may be terminated as well, at the sysop's discretion.

It is important to note that the use of other materials may fall under this policy as well. Be aware that it is generally considered copyright infringement if you use the published works of any artist, writer, actor, etc. This is especially true if such work is used for the benefit of one's personal finances; for instance, if a busines owner decided to use Mickey Mouse as his own personal mascott on a web page intended to generate sales. This is considered copyright infringement and it is common knowledge that advertisers typically pay a certain fee to use such materials for advertising purposes. If we are contacted by the rightful, legal owner of such material, we will inform you of this and ask that you remove the content in question. If the content is not revised or removed, your URL will be deactivated until you agree to remedy the problem. In general, it is a good idea to stay away from copyrighted material of any kind unless you have been granted the written permission of the owner of that material.

Now, on to the fun stuff...

WHERE IS MY WEB SPACE?

By default, Cport.Com web URLs (Uniform Resource Locators or "addresses") are mapped as follows:

http://www.cport.com/users/login_name

This means that if you dial into the system using "foo" as your login ID, your web space will be mapped to the following address:

http://www.cport.com/users/foo

Understand that /foo is a directory which points to a physical location with a different name on our web server. The URL is set up this way for the convenience of your visitors. However, the physical location of the files on our server is unfortunately a little more complex.

For example, the physical location of the directory associated with the URL above would be:

ftp.cport.com (you don't need to specify /users for uploads)

For the sake of clarity, we'll examine what the various parts of this location mean.

ftp.cport.com is the name of the Cport.Com FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server. It is also the InterNIC-registered name. InterNIC is the organization through which all Internet addresses must be registered.  More on FTP here.

/ represents the highest level directory any user of the Cport.Com FTP server can access. The preceding slash indicates that this directory falls under the server root. For all intents and purposes, / is the server root for all users of the Cport.Com FTP server.

/users is the user directory. Your user directory /foo is the place to store files that are  ready for publishing.

/foo is where you will build your home page and place all of its components. You may create any number of directories and divide your content any way you like, but you must remember to specify those directory names when you create your web pages. For instance, if your home page (index.html) resides in /foo and you have created a directory named /foo/pics that contains a file called picture.gif, you must reference that file in one of the following manners:

<IMG SRC="http://www.cport.com/users/foo/pics/picture.gif">
<IMG SRC="pics/picture.gif">

Note: The latter example illustrates how to reference files and directories relative to the location of your current document, while the former illustrates absolute addressing using a full server path. However, it is also possible to leave off the server information and begin the URL reference with "/foo/pics/picture.gif". What this does is cause the server to start at its own root and process the rest of the path from there. This is a convenient method of accessing other resources on the server. For instance, to reference another Cport.Com user's home page, you might link to it in the following manner:

Visit <A HREF="/gumby/index.html">Gumby's Home Page</A>

producing the following result:

Visit Gumby's Home Page  (but don't click it—it doesn't work)

HOW DO I GET THERE?

To gain access to the Cport.Com FTP server, you need to use a program known as an FTP client. WS_FTP and CuteFTP are examples of such client applications and they are called clients because they access servers, hence the term "client/server".

FTP is based on the Telnet protocol which is used to gain access to remote computers using a text-based interface that generally requires the user to enter commands at a prompt. Menus are sometimes provided as well. The main difference between the two protocols is that FTP is used exclusively for the purpose of transferring files between computers. Access privileges are usually assigned at the user level, with individual users being granted certain privileges based on their needs and their security clearance. A common access level is known as anonymous and is used widely on the Internet for the purpose of making software available to a wide array of users without granting those users access to anything other than the intended resources. The great advantage of this is that the syntax for logging into an anonymous FTP site is always the same: the user name is always anonymous and the password is always the user's e-mail address. Uploading means to transfer a file from your home computer to a remote computer and usually requires a special level of access as granted by a systems administrator (or "sysop").

Cport.Com's FTP server does not support anonymous logins.   Your personal web space is not intended to be accessed via FTP by other users or the general public, it is not accessible through anonymous FTP services. You must supply your login name and password when accessing your web space. This is the same as the first part of your email address (i.e. foo@cport.com -- login would be foo).