Your Web Site

Now you can use Western's servers to publish web pages on the the school network. They will be accessible to anyone anywhere within the school system (but not to Internet users outside the school system).

Here's how it works:

Once you are logged into your home directory on a school computer, all you need to do is copy a file in HTML format to the Sites folder in your Home directory. That's it! You're done - your page is ready for viewing.

Where to put your files

Your Sites folder is at the first level of your home directory, along with your Documents folder. To find it:

Open the "docs" sharepoint, found on the desktop (Mac) or in My Computer (Windows). On some school Windows computers, you may not see the "docs" sharepoint, but rather your own home directory, as shown below.

Find your home directory, which is a folder with your user name. If your user name were "andrewt", your home directory might look something like one of these icons.

Open your home directory and you will see a number of folders, including your Documents folder and your Sites folder.

What's my address?

Any HTML file you put into your Sites folder is automatically served as a web page to the BCPSS network! It's address will be http://whs3/~yourusername/, but all you really need to type in the address bar is whs3/~yourusername/. That little ~ is called a tilde, and you it can be found just above the Tab key on most keyboards; type it while holding down Shift.

Any HTML page that you place at the first level of your "Sites" folder and name "index.html" will be your "home page." People who type the address "http://whs3/~yourusername/" into their Internet browser will view your "index.html" page. By default, the page you are reading now is your home page: it is named "index.html" and is located at the first (root) level of your Sites folder.

While your pages will be accessible only within the BCPSS network, they are a great way to test out your web page skills and see how your pages would look on the world-wide Internet. They are served via Apache web server, the industrial-strength, industry-standard technology that is used to serve most Internet sites, so however your pages look here is how they will look on an Internet site.

Of course, you are responsible and liable for what is published on your personal web site. While not public to the whole world, it is publicly accessible throughout the BCPSS system. You may not publish anything in violation of BCPSS policies or in violation of local, state, and federal law. Western High School reserves the right to cancel this service, at its discretion, in general and specifically for any individual it deems has abused the service.

Contribute to the school Internet web site:

If you want to make pages and submit them for posting to the school's public Internet Web site, you can publish them on our internal school network, let the webmaster (webmaster@westernhighschool.org) know, and they can be considered for posting.

HTML, anyone?

The good news is that you don't have to learn HTML to use it: Appleworks and Microsoft Word generate HTML documents for you.

For the benefit of new users: HTML - short for hypertext markup language - is what webmasters and designers use to publish text and graphics on the Internet in a form that can be read by anyone.

In the latest version of Microsoft Word, for instance, all you have to do is open the document you wish to publish and select Save as HTML in your File menu. And that's it. Word will save your work as an HTML document, ready for publishing on the Internet. In AppleWorks 6, select Save As in your File menu, and pick HTML in the pop-up menu. Next, just type in the name you want to save the document under and click on the Save button - instant HTML.

Want more help? See Mr. Tomlinson or send him an e-mail message (tomlinson@westernhighschool.org).