©1997,1998,2000 by Reptilian
Associates. Reproduction of this document for non-commercial use is
permitted as long as this notice is included and a pointer to this site is
included. To reproduce this document for commercial use, whether for
print or a for-profit Web site, request permission from alizard@ecis.com
This page contains
information on how to use the Web, how to get the best use out of Web
browsers, advice for Website
developers and related stuff.
What's here is based on my 9 months as a professional Web
surfer, in that time I estimate that I've looked at in excess of 8,000
Web sites. Some of my advice for Website developers is based on looking
at the same mistakes over and over and over.
By the way, if you really need to find something and you'd like to use my Websearch service, click here.
Websearching
If you already know that you're looking for a major organization or
corporation or college, you may not need to search. You can frequently
find them by translating their names or best known initials into a Web
address:
You can find information on searching the Web in an excellent 3 part
article from Computer Currents Magazine. It covers pretty much everything
I've been telling people about how to improve Websearch via Boolean
Operators and how to insert them and a few things I didn't know. That's
why this page is simply pointers to the articles and the odd helpful hint.
Helpful hint: An alternative to pointing and clicking to internal site links is to erase a
directory level at a time and tell the browser to go there... e.g.:
http://www.example.com/www/cannibal/recipes/
erase a level:
http://www.example.com/www/cannibal/
See what happens. Usually, you'll get an error message unless you've
erased to the top level of a site, in this case, www.example.com . Other
times, you'll get to an index screen listing all the files in this
directory. Sometimes, some of these files are ones the site author NEVER
intended you to see.
To find text within a long Web page, try Find in the Edit menu. Type in
a word or other arbitrary text string. Unfortunately, Netscape doesn't
support Boolean operators but neither does MS Explorer.
As for my
favorite search engines, I now use When I want to search everything at once, I go to a multi-search
site.
This type of site is linked to a large number of conventional search
engines and relay your commands to them and the replies to your
search request to you.
Ordinarily you won't want to
use the multi-search sites, ONE site will generally provide you with more
hits than you can use.
I now recommend Dogpile. I'd
bookmark this one. Note that syntax you feed it may not
work on
all engines this connects to... but nothing's perfect.
If it doesn't work,
do as the site recommends and go to Metafind from within the site. If you
can't find it from Dogpile or Metafind, either you didn't give the
metasearch engines the right keywords or the info you want doesn't exist,
or it's on a subscription-only site like Lexis or Dialog.
If you get a "File Not Found" error, you might try:
If you're really stuck, download a copy of Copernic. Even in its brain-damaged freeware form, it's as good as the reviews say it is, and it also frequently updates the modules within it that correspond to the various search engines. It'll warn you when you attempt to use search operators that don't work on some of the sites Copernic uses. Actually, I use it rather than Dogpile at this point when I get stuck. The argument against using it is that a search always takes a few minutes as it checks 8 or so search engines. It also has an e-mail address lookup and a few other options. I recommend it highly.
Here's a new one I'm trying out. It will look up a topic for you
based on the idea that what authors say about their own sites isn't
reliable, so it searches through comments about sites in their database of
sites to come up with a match. More explanation is provided on the Hyperlink Search Engine site.
Graphic Search Engines
The latest development I've seen are the graphics search engines,
you can use them to search for specified images. At this point, you can
check:
Due to the nature of images, they aren't that easy to process in ways
that will allow a computer program to search for characteristics other
than file type and size, color, etc., a computer can't look at a picture
and extract a human meaning out of them; if the file doesn't contain a
label of some sort describing the meaning, unless a human looks at it and
attaches a label, the computer used to search isn't going to get far. So
unlike a major search engine, a graphics search engine isn't going to be
able to do anything like a complete search of the Web. However, unless you
know exactly what you're looking for and have an idea as to where to find
it, it'll do a better job than pointing, clicking, and hoping.
For more information on these sites, go to the June 17,1997 issue of
Computer Currents, the Net Surfer
column. Helpful hints for using Netscape (or other browsers)
Plug-Ins and Helper Applications Or, you can simply go to the Netscape site and see what plugins
appeal to you.
A plugin is a third-party program that basically, integrates into
Netscape so you can view a file in real-time by pointing and clicking. A
helper application will require changes to the configuration screen in
the section that tells Netscape which applications go to which file
types.
I've got the player, why doesn't it play?
There are two
labels that describe a Web file type. One is the file extension, e.g.
MOVIE.MPG, which is a MPEG video. The other is the MIME (multimedia
extension) type, which is a label buried in the file that Netscape will
process and attempt to do something with. The problem with this is that
MIME labels aren't completely standardized, a file extension might have
several different MIME labels depending on what program processed the
video and who ran the program. If you click on a file that Netscape
hasn't been told what to do with, it'll give you a screen prompt asking
you what to do with it, with the choices being to save, forget it, or do
some real fast configuration if you happen to have a program that'll
read the file extension but not the MIME type. (e.g. This is a qt-video
file) The other thing is that some file extensions go to multiple
incompatible file formats, .MOV is used by both Apple for QuickTime and Silicon Graphics for it's internal video
format. Once you know what you're doing, you'll be able to play back
most video files most of the time. Even if the files aren't corrupt,
either as stored or in transmission, that's the best anyone can
do.
This site is not intended as a tutorial, Web site tutorials are all
over the Web. This is intended to present helpful hints to what makes
for Web sites people won't back out of because the home page took too
long to download, and pointers to other resources. Most of my hints are
things that you either generally don't see in print or might have to dig
for to find. What's here is what I figure are things that you're better
off being told than having to learn from experience.
NEVER announce a site or page before you know that it is
really ready and looks as you intend it to. I announced this page to one
newsgroup during the only hour or two in the last year or so when it
wasn't up. Then I checked it in Netscape (Opera is a bit more forgiving
of certain mistakes) and spent the last half hour frantically fixing
problems. The problems are now fixed. I hope. Please let me know if they
aren't.
Also note that my site is not an example of good Web site
design, it needs better organization of content, and better internal
navigation. Someday I may even have time to do this.
While I do plan to link any book listings you see here individually to Amazon Books
to allow you to see book reviews and related information and to allow
you to order the books conveniently, you can use the search form below
in the meantime:
This form will, of course, find anything that's at Amazon Books, not
just my recommended reading list. Note that they are adding music and
video to their products. For authors, the form is last name,first name.
For books, simply type in the title.
Unless you're setting up a business site attached to a business that's already in a fixed / known location, when you register for a domain, when you fill in the Administrative / Billing addresses, point the address at a PO Box, NOT your home address, make the phone number a business voicemail (if you don't have one, go to Onebox or E-Voice and get one. I mention these two because they're free and they work. I suggest this because if you're setting up a religious or personal site, there's always somebody who will really dislike it and you and you're probably better off if that person can't find you.
Make sure that your billing address, especially is one to which mail will actually work, otherwise, you might find your domain unexpectedly unplugged when the time you paid for runs out and the reminder didn't get to you.
The most important advice
I can give the Web site developer is to VIEW YOUR SITE AS IF YOU WERE
A USER SEEING IT FOR THE FIRST TIME. Can you read the text? Is it
easy on the eyes? Does it require new plug-ins and if so, have you
provided a site link to them? Does it require an incredible amount of
download time? If more people would actually LOOK at their sites,
there'd be a hell of a lot less totally useless Web pages out there. Need a Web site development tutorial? This one has an
internal search engine for looking things up. An html color chart can be
found here. By the
way, if you're a Web developer updating a site by hand, remember to get
the final " into your hyperlink commands. If your Web page seems to be
missing chunks after your last update, that's probably why. And if your
page doesn't look like you intended it to, check for unbalanced tags,
i.e., like a (h1) tag that isn't followed by (/h1) at the end of the
heading. NEWS: Remember that experienced
Web users generally want to find the site with the info we're looking
for, we want to find our way to the location in the site quickly,
and get the hell out so we can do something with the info. This means
breaking the site into logical sections and labeling them appropriately,
and using a Table of Contents with internal page links
(page.html#anchor) if you have long pages. If appropriate, use an
internal page search engine. Check searchbutton to find out how, or find out
about cgi scripts. CGI scripts are programs or scripts (scripts are the
unix equivalent of DOS batch files) that run in response to clicking on
a link or other event triggered by a user's browser. All your favorite
search engines use cgi scripts, that's why you see cgi or cgi-bin at the
end of a search query response. For more information, scroll down to the
link to the Web Power Tools article.
Many of us will have graphics turned off on purpose when we hit your
site. This means if you use imagemaps for navigation, have a text backup
path as well, and use the ALT tag on graphics to provide labels on
graphics so we can look at graphics of special interest. A person who
has to turn images ON to use a site will either find some good content
or leave and not bother to return.
Even if you figure your average user is running 56K or faster, Net
conditions might constrain the speed at which your user might be
downloading to not 5600 characters per second, or even 2880, 100-500 cps
page downloads are a lot more frequent than 1K and upwards. In other
words, what you see when you Websurf via dialup is what people are likely to see
when they look at your site. Even if you have your own personal T1 or
cable modem, you're still going to see the occasional site
download at 2 cps. One 'tard who won't be named here when I complained
about download time at his site told me to upgrade my system to modern
technology... let's be charitable and say he's new to the Internet.
(Update: The 'tard claims to have developed content for major
corporations. Ever wonder who's responsible for those bloated
corporate sites that take ridiculous download times?)
For those who have noticed I'm not in compliance with the above
recommendations about navigating through content... I'll get to it
sooner or later. Also note that I don't have multi-meg graphics and
don't use imagemaps yet.
As for frames vs. no frames, that's a religious discussion I'm
staying out of. Frames often provide continuous access to valuable
navigation tools. They are often overused to the point where you see
more frame border than site content, especially if you're running
multiple browser windows at the same time. As a rule, think real hard
if you're thinking of breaking your page into more than two regions.
I recommend exercising care in the use of Java applets. They won't
necessarily run on everyone's machines, some applets may crash some browser /
computer combinations, a fair number of people who have
Java capability in their browsers turn it off either because the applets
take too much time to download or because of security reasons. People
who've waited several minutes (say, due to a slow Net feed) for a Java
applet to download only to find a dancing icon are not going to be
coming to your site a second time. Some applets do add
functionality to your site and can often be used instead of cgi scripts.
The main thing I suggest if you use them is to make them optional, e.g.
if you're running a specialized search engine, don't run your
search engine as a Java applet. Use them for interesting and useful site
extras, not main site content.
If you've got a personal site and you'd like some of the Web site
user tracking capabilities (how many, where users are coming from, what
kind of browsers, .etc/) that normally take access to your ISP's server
logs, try ExtremeDM.
All it takes to run on your site is the usual cut and paste html which
will put a reasonably inconspicuous icon on your page.
If you don't want people
wandering around your site into places you'd rather they didn't go,
create an index.html page in each directory level whether you have
anything to say there or not. For instance, if you've got some XXX-rated
graphics in your /images directory, if a person sees that you've got an
/images directory from the browser status line and gets curious, the
person can check your /images page and get a complete directory of
what's there whether you linked it to your main pages or not.
Video Files: Make SURE
that your video files are in an accessible format, play them back on a
Windows machine and on a Mac using a common viewer (the one supplied by
Apple (.QT,.MOV) or Microsoft (.AVI) to make sure of this, supply a link
to a player / plug-in if the format you use isn't a commonly supported
one, but AVOID unusual file formats if at all possible, there's no
guarantee that a viewer is going to want to install YET ANOTHER player,
complete with multi-meg download and installation hassles just to view
YOUR site.
View Source: If you
frequently use this command (from Netscape) reroute the view-source
viewer from Netscape-internal to an external text editor or word
processor. I suggest the WRITE.EXE that comes with Windows, unlike
Notepad, it isn't limited in file size. Better is a programmer style
text editor as it supports commands you might want to use (e.g. select
column) that a word processor won't have. The problem with the Netscape
internal viewer is that it doesn't support text search. If you like
something on a page and wondered how it was done, from Netscape you have
to go down the page until you find the code yourself. From a text
editor, all you have to do is tell it to find a distinctive text string
somewhere around the part of the page you're looking for, and you can
cut and paste from the browser window.
Make SURE the text
and background on your site contrast strongly. Examples of BAD
combinations are yellow text on white background, but there are plenty
of others. Remember, if your site is hard to read, most people won't
bother. A high contrast combination to avoid... white text on black
background. Looks cool, but the instant eyestrain isn't worth it. I
recommend you experiment until you find the right one. Black on white is
almost as bad. From my observation, black text on either green or amber
background is easiest to read, but neither looks all that great. As I
said, experiment. And know that not everyone is going to be satisfied
with your choices. However, one can solve that problem as a Web user by simply downloading and installing a copy of Opera. Opera lets you punch a screen button and impose your choice of fonts and background on the site no matter what imbecilic color/contrast combinations were used by the author. It also lets you see a page at magnification levels ranging from 20%-1000%, and does enough other things that I get irritated when a moron writes browser-specific code that tells me that I need to "upgrade" when I show up with the current version of Opera.
Be careful about icons /
images whose origins are offsite. Remember that your user will have to
wait while these images load from wherever they happen to be, at however
long it takes for the request to get to those servers plus the response
time plus the return trip. Sometimes this takes quite a while. Think
about this when you're considering doing ad banners, you're best off
maintaining the images on YOUR site in a local directory if the
situation allows it.
The most helpful hint I
can give you, other than to provide decent content is. . . check your
site from a dial-up modem!!!. If your site takes 20 minutes to load
from a 56K modem, you want to find this out before your users do. . .
get pissed off and NEVER return to your page. This mistake is
made most often by people who access the net via high-speed T-1 / cablemodem / xDSL
link, but if you create the files in your PC and simply upload them as a
batch to your site while you go out for coffee, this can happen to you,
too.
And examples of what not to do. Coca-Cola's "Coke
Card" Web site section may well be the
worst Web design I have seen in my 7 years on the Internet. Try
finding out about the Coca-Cola card. Don't do this unless you've got at
least half an hour to waste. It's rather pretty, and will probably win
Web design awards... given by people who Websurf via T-1 who have the
delusion that this is the way the userbase surfs the Web. It requires
going through a number of slow-loading pages to find out what one needs
to know to find out about Coca-Cola's promotion. Actually, I never did
get to the end, my patience ran out, my connect was probably running
about 200 cps or so. At 1000 cps, it's probably merely annoying.
More what not to do: There's a listing at Web Pages That Suck. Follow
the recommendations on this page and your page might not wind up
on that list.
Read the next section
even if your users haven't complained to you about page loading time. .
. implement the recommendations and user complaints about how slow your
site is will be rare and generally not your fault.
Your Web Site's Running SLOW?
The main culprit in this
area under your control is graphics. Keep your graphics to minimum file
size. For help in this area, go to the Bandwidth Conservation
Society site. This will give you advice on 1,2,4,8,24 bit/pixel
files with samples showing you what the difference is between a 256
color and a 24 bit 16 million true color graphic, and that frequently,
there's no visual difference between the two, except in download time.
Another thing to watch for is multimedia files that automatically run
when people enter your site... if someone is going to wait several
minutes to download a file, they had damned well better find something
they want!
Design your page using a
screen resolution of 640 x 480 pixels... it's the least common
denominator resolution, everyone will be able to look at it without
scrolling sideways. People who have to scroll sideways to read a site
won't be back unless they're really desperate to get your information.
This is rare, usually, there is always somewhere else to get it.
Annoy people and that's where they'll go. Design your page to
require as few file accesses as possible. You may have noticed that
pages load slowly when they have lots of separate little files. . . 1 -
2 seconds for the server to respond may not seem like a long time, but
if you've got dozens of little icon files and graphics and frames,
you've got a user frantically hitting the "BACK" button to get the hell
off your site. If you're site is STILL running slow after putting your graphic
files and reducing http accesses, find out what's up with your ISP. If
your ISP has:
If you've got a corporate database already on a mainframe, this article
will tell you how to get it on the Web without porting it to another
operating system. Big Iron Meets The
Web. Now forget the word "mainframe". Think real big server.
I only found about this by accident. . . That's as far as the usual state of the art will take you. If you
decide to try a supercomputer / massively parallel machine, good luck in
finding a Web http/https server which will run on it, and if you can
make all of the above work at the same time, please contact me and let me know what you did and
how.
An interesting alternative to this is Cisco Director at the
For the ugly truth about Windows NT in a high-volume environment,
click Microsoft
internal NT user problms and
here.
There are software tools, e.g. Net.Medic
which will tell you if the problem is your site. It's a monitoring
utility which will show you exactly what is going on when you download a
Web page. Download it, point it at your site, or better yet, have
someone else not on your ISP download it and check your site with it.
If the problem is your ISP and they won't/can't fix it, find another
ISP. Unless you're getting free service for some reason, chances are,
there's another ISP which will have better service for the same or a
lower price. Remember that while you need local ISP access for your
personal account, your Web site can be literally anywhere, you'll be
accessing it via telnet and ftp and via your browser, and for those, it
doesn't matter where your dialup is.
To find out about getting
listed on the major search engines and what they can do for you, go to
Calafia. They also have
other things for people who manage web sites.
To simply get listed on 87 or more search engines, go to Broadcaster, and try the demo.
One multipage form to fill out. One click of the submit button. First,
I'd go to altavista and
carefully read the section on how to get listed on their engine,
pay attention to what they have to say about the META keyword and META
description statements, that's how automated search engines read and
figure out what's on your site. If I were you, I'd do Broadcaster, wait
a day or so, then go to:
The main search engines are just different enough from each other that
Broadcaster doesn't handle them optimally... the reason for waiting is
that Broadcaster will cover them anyway and what you want to do is put
in new entries to replace the ones sent by Broadcaster.
Banner Exchanges - This is a program where you submit your banner (a
graphic image in a certain size/format) to an organization, which runs
your banner on different sites in exchange for being allowed to run the
banners of others on your site. I find that LinkExchange is worth the trouble
for its Webcounter setup alone, it appears to be more accurate than the
regular hit counters, it also has a developer mailing list and other
services. I haven't gotten much response from people clicking through
the banners, but my banner isn't all that hot, either. You may have
talents I don't in this area.
Usenet - IF you're capable of writing enough consistently good
posts to establish a presence on newsgroups related to the subject of
your Web site, this is a good way to publicize your site. Orbdinarily,
your URL should be in your newsreader signature file. If the answer to
someone's question is in your post, it makes sense to point someone at
the specific page in your site with the information that someone needs.
Even if you don't think you are, include your URL in your newsreader
signature file anyway, you never know when you might pick up a hit or
two.
Miscellaneous Useful Info
DON'T USE MICROSOFT FRONT PAGE. Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's good. It's main problem is that it uses html extensions only supported in Microsoft Internet Explorer, if you're doing anything unusual with the code, you'll be wondering why people with Netscape and other browsers like Opera are complaining to you about it because their browser crashes when they access your site.
If you're doing a single page and want to make a change in, say, the font name everywhere in it at once, you can use the Replace function in the Edit menu of your word processor / text editor / web authoring tool. If you've got a big site and want to make a change in all the pages at once, check out Search and Replace, freeware from Andromeda Software.
If you want information
on how to add to your site functionality through adding guestbooks, chat
pages, page counters, etc. with or without adding cgi scripts and Java
applets, go to click Web Power Tools.
Remember that if you use
imagemaps, provide alternate text links to make your site accessible to
those who leave graphics turned off. A person who has to turn images ON
to use a site will either find some good content or leave and not bother
to return.
For a Windows keyboard,
to get the © circle-C copyright symbol instead of the traditional (c)
used on Internet, put in Alt-169 from the keyboard. You do this by
holding down the Alt key while you type in 169 on the numerical keypad.
When you let go of the Alt key, the © appears. I'm not sure how ASCII
169 looks on Macs and Unix machines, if you see anything but a copyright
symbol (circle-C) here:© please catch me in e-mail. Netscape uses & copy
(space inserted to show you what I mean) in all browsers.
For reasons I've never figured out, sometimes inserting the paragraph
tag doesn't work in separating paragraphs from each other or from blocks
of images, one inserts one or more paragraph tags, saves, checks and the
separation still isn't there. When that fails, try this (parentheses substituted for
brackets):
(br) (p)
The blank between the break and paragraph symbols is the ASCII character
160 ($A0) which shows up as a blank in common fonts I've looked at so
far. The following code will force a blank pretty much regardless of
conditions. To get to that character from a DOS clone, hold down the alt
key, type 160 on the numeric keypad, and release. If you see anything
but a blank between (br) (p), please let me know and tell me what
computer and browser you're using.
The HTML Writer's Guild is an organization you
can join. They provide Web - html related information and services that
might interest you. Their logo also looks cool on your site.
There are worthwhile
print magazines with helpful hints, software reviews, etc.. This
includes reviews of the http server programs that transmit your Web
pages to the outside world; which one is used can make a very big
difference as to how quickly your pages load on user machines. Try the
ZD Internet magazine, try Boardwatch, try New Media. As for good books on how
to create Web sites. . . sorry, been too busy to read any. However,
check out Laura Lemay's books. I've read her Usenet posts and chunks of
her site. I generally don't recommend
books without reading them, but if I had to buy a how-to book on the
Web, I'd buy one of hers first. There's a site on the Web
that alleges that if you download their (free, for now)60K (about 13 sec
@ 33.6K, with luck) Java applet and put it on your site, it can be
downloaded by your users along with your audio and video files and
allows instant streaming playback. This isn't an endorsement, I haven't
tried it yet. You can see for yourself at the Emblaze site. If you buy it, please
let me know how well it works. Web / media information for commercial developers (i.e, rules of
thumb for Web page creation costs) can be found at the GISTICS Web site.
So You Want Your Own Web Server?
This section is a work in progress.
Think three times about this. The computer you get for this will be
the least expensive part of doing this, unless you have free direct
access to a computer at your college campus or workplace. I'd expect to
pay at least $10K to get it running and possibly quite a bit more.
If you simply want your own domain name, e.g. www.yourname.com,
simply ask your ISP how much they're charging for DNS registration these
days. Letting your ISP provide you with a "virtual domain" will save you
lots of time and trouble.
Operating systems: I recommend avoiding Windows NT and
anything that runs on it as a Web server, unless you aren't expecting a
whole lot of incoming traffic, and you aren't ever going to have time to
learn how to handle unix. Unix is the operating system of choice for all except
the highest volume sites. It is not only riddled with security holes,
it's specifically unpopular with the hacker community... do you really
want people to find out what the latest security problem with your
site is by reading about it in Wired News? NT is a perfectly adequate
workstation operating system, in fact, it generally works OK with
up to 20 simultaneous users or a few major applications. For more than this, you have
to buy another box. Microsoft has several thousand servers. I think the comparable point with conventional unix
boxes is 100 or so. For more on NT, try this Wired News article.
An article I'm trying to find right now discussed the problems
Microsoft is having with their use of several thousand NT
servers for Web servers and e-mail. If you have trouble getting into
www.microsoft.com, remember that it's running on a stack of NT servers.
If your e-mail from MS never gets answered, it may not be because the
person at the other end is too arrogant to care what you think, the
message may have disappeared into the void, try again.
If your time and technical expertise are limited, you might consider
a Macintosh-based Web server. For more info, go to Apple Corporation. While they aren't as
cost-effective as unix/DOS clone boxes, Macs and Mac based products are
generally free from the ugly surprises one takes for granted in Windows
environments. They also are really plug-and-play... not
plug-and-play when everything goes right. Note that my personal
computer is a Wintel clone, I've used just about every personal
computing environment available in the last 10 years or so, and one
reason why I prefer people to use Mac is they are a lot less likely to
call me for help afterwards.
If you've got a real overload problem and serious money (this
solution will cost you $1,000,000 plus) try this.
Webservers: One Web (http) server for unix and that's free for
personal use is Apache. You can download it
or get information about it there. There are even ways to get it to run
Netscape SSL (Secure Socket Layer.) It is already one of the most
popular Web servers around. Feeds to the Net: There's a piece in Computer Currents which covers
it at the most basic level. I'll link to it shortly, though it leaves
out wireless high-bandwidth connects.
For information on
transmitting information on the Web in secure mode (SSL), a quick
explanation can be found at this location. If you want to place
things like streaming video and audio, etc. on your site or
personal/company server, simply contact the vendor that supplies the
player you want to support. In most cases, this software package will
have to be installed on your server, whether it's at your ISP or your
personal/company site. Other explanations can be found at the Netscape site, starting here. I
recommended the ApacheWeek article because it told me things I didn't
know. You can allegedly find
out what kind of encryption is used in connection with the SSL
implementation on the site of interest to you via software distributed
somewhere on this site. I say
allegedly because the site is SLOW and my patience ran out before
the info showed up, if it was there.
You can see what percentage of webservers are using the various http
servers at the Netcraft site.
If you create a file,
place it on your site, and find that you can't access it from the Web,
the directory permissions may be set incorrectly. You probably can't do
anything about it from your Web authoring program. Hopefully, your Web
site at least allows you telnetable shell access. (I'm assuming a unix
site, the rules are different for NT servers, and if you're maintaining
your own personal Web server, directory permissions are set in the
platform software.) If so, the command for ordinary read access is:
What you should see when doing the:
The ls -al command is list (verbose, including directory permissions)
filename(s). The text string on the left shows directory permissions,
the left rw shows your permission (read and write), the second r shows
that local users have read access, the last r shows that the public
(anyone accessing your site from anywhere other than your ISP) has
read-only access. If off-site users have read-write access (-rw-r--rw-),
they could modify the site. This could be embarrassing. Send mail to me at alizard@ecis.com
If your original URL ends with .html, try shortening it to .htm
If your original URL ends with .htm, try extending it to .html
These are the ones you need immediately.
You can find out how to get to information on the latest html 4.0 release here.
It supports a stack of new capabilities you will probably want sooner or
later.
chmod 0644
ls -al faxcover.txt
command from the shell is:
-rw-r--r-- 1 alizard users 11008 Jul 2 19:06 faxcover.txt