Deploying Your Presentation

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This section covers deploying a web presentation with an ISP server. Setting up your web server is beyond the scope of this course.

Some ISP's have user accounts set up with the main directory already created and all you need to do is log in using FTP and upload your files, creating any required directories in the process. This is the simplest and is covered in section 2 of this document.

Other ISP's set users up with both an FTP and a Shell account, which requires access via telnet. Section 1 provides some basic detail for accessing your server space using a telnet client.

Telnet Site Preparation

In order to use these steps, you must be connected to thhe internet and have a telnet client on your computer. Windows 95 comes with a built-in telnet client. For Windows 3.x users there are a variety of telnet client programs available as shareware.

Follow these steps to connect to your ISP and prepare your space for your presentation:

1. In Windows 95, click the Start button, then choose the Run option and type telnet into the text box, then click OK and a telnet session window will open.

   
   Figure 1

   Windows 3.x users (Windows 95 users with custom telnet clients) must double-click the icon to start the telnet client program.

Figure 2
	In the telnet client, choose the Connect option from the menu and then the option, Remote System, sometimes referred to as Remote Host or just Open. (Figure 2)
		Figure 3
Enter the address provided by your ISP for your shell account in the appropriate box, usually called Host or Host Name. This is not necessarily the same as your WWW url. (Figure 3)

4. Click on the Connect button and Telnet will establish a connection.
5. At this point, you will get a login prompt (see Figure 4) where you enter your userid and password.

Figure 4

6. Type cd to change to your home directory, though most servers will automatically place you there when you login.
7. Next you need to create a directory for your web presentation. Different servers use different standards. Some use public_html, some use www, while others may use something else. Check with your ISP what directory name you need to setup.
8. Also check with your ISP about access permissions. You may need to set these for your web directory by typing chmod 755 public_html or chmod 755 www.
9. Your directory is ready now. Type exit or logout to end your telnet session, then follow the directions in section 2 to upload your files to your web site using FTP.

Here a few other commands to use during your telnet session to check for files in your directory:

Uploading Your Files

This section is based on the non-commercial freeware version of WS_FTP client. Steps may vary with other software or other versions of this client.

Create a new profile and save it using the following steps:

1. Enter a Profile Name in the top box to identify this profile.
2. Enter the ftp domain name of your ISP, or actual address in the host name box.
3. Select Automatic Detect (default) from the Host Type list
4. Enter your login name in the User ID box
5. Enter your password in the Password box
6. Check the Save Password box off so you won't have to re-enter it each time
7. Place a forward slash, if necessary, in the Remote Host box, or leave blank to connect to your home directory
8. Enter the full path to the directory on your local computer to open when connecting.
9. Click Save to save this profile for future use, then click OK to connect to your ISP.

Figure 5

Once connected, the directory window will be visible showing both the local and remote file systems. The current directory for each is displayed in the top box, with the directory tree in the next box, and the file list of the current directory in the bottom box.

1. Select the appropriate directory in both the local and remote sides of the directory window by double-clicking on the directory names, so that you transfer the correct files to the correct location.
2. Select all the file sin the current directory which need to be transferred, then click the right-arrow button in the center to transfer the files to the remote host.
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 for ach sub-directory as required.

Figure 6

The FTP client may be used to deleted files, create and remove directories and files as required.

Quit the ftp session and test out your work, live!

Organizing and Managing Your Web Site

As individual web presentations and overall web sites grow in complexity, managing the HTML documents and related files becomes increasingly important. It is important to know where files are located and how they fit together, both for locating files easily to update pages and to insert new sections into a presentation or site.

Using a combination of a site map, similar to the map used during the design phase, and an actual directory structure for storing files helps simplify the task of managing and updating.

Here is a sample site map we will use for this demonstration:

Figure 7

The HTML documents would be organized using directories which match the structure of the site map, as illustrated in Figure 8.

Figure 8

The HTML documents for each topic would be placed in the appropriate directory, and the associated files (graphic images, sound files, map files, etc) would be stored in one of the following methods. All associated files stored in the root (home) directory. This is practical for small to moderate sized presentations, but becomes impractical as the size increases. Sub-directories setup off the root directory for each file type. This is better suited to presentations which are medium to large in size. Sub-directories setup off the root directory for each file type which are used throughout the presentation, with sub-directories off of each topic directory for associated files which are specific to inidividual topics. This is appropriate for large to extremely complex presentations.

Web Site Mirrors

Finally, keep a mirror (an exact copy) of your web site on your hard drive as your master copy. This is where you edit and test changes and additions prior to placing them online.

Don't forget to use the same format for file names in your local mirror as you do on the web server. This makes site maintenance much easier. Also, be sure to use relative references for all of the links within your site to easily allow for moving the presentation to another location.