You made a web page. Great! You probably created the web page on the C: drive or on a flash drive. It looks good and it validates. Now you want your Aunt Tilly in Iowa to see the page. How are you going to do this? Aunt Tilly cannot see your C: drive or your flash drive. In order for Aunt Tilly to see the web page, you must put it on a web server. A web server is a computer that’s hooked up to the Internet (hopefully with a reliable, fast connection) and that has special server software on it. The server software and fast Internet connection allow this computer to act as a web server. So it can serve up web pages, just like a waiter serves up your food. Well, sort of. The web pages don’t taste as good.
So how do you get your web page to the server? There are several ways. One way is to use an FTP program. FTP stands for “file transfer protocol,” which is one of the protocols, or set of rules, used to transfer files on the Internet.
At Northern Virginia Community College we use an FTP program called Core FTP LIte. Why? Because it’s cheap and it’s good. Core FTP is already loaded on the computers in the NVCC open labs. If you want to use the program at home, you can download it from www.coreftp.com. (Click on the “Download” tab, then download Core FTP LE, which is the free version.)
All NVCC students have 10 MB of server space. It’s free, and it will exist as long as you are enrolled in classes. In order to send your web page to your NVCC server space, you need to know three things:
- Hostname: www.student.nvcc.edu
- This is the name of NVCC’s student web server.
- NVCC LAN ID : look it up here: https://www.nvcc.edu/stu_id/
- In front of your LAN ID goes nvstu/
- So if your LAN ID is stmiller2, your userid for FTP is: nvstu/stmiller2
- Password: 8 digits long
- The first 2 digits are the month you were born
- The next 2 digits are the day you were born
- The next 4 digits are the year you were born
Let’s get started. Open the Core FTP Lite program by double-clicking on the icon on the desktop. If the Site Manager Window is not open, open it by clicking on ” File > Connect.” In the Site Manager window, click the New Site button in the lower left corner. Fill in the following information:
Click the Connect button. The files on the left are the the files on your local computer. The files on the right are the files on the server. You’ll know you connected successfully if you see your LAN id on the right. Each student has a folder, the name of which is his or her LAN id, on the NVCC student server. All of the student folders are contained in a folder called “home.” If you were unable to connect successfully, call (not email) the IT help desk at 703.426.4141.
You navigate around your files in the CORE program much as you would navigate around Windows Explorer. Double click on a folder to open it. Double click on the two dots at the top of the folder listing to see the parent folder. The only tricky thing is when you want to see another drive, such as your A: drive or your flash drive. There is a little icon on the left, called Directory Tree. I think it’s supposed to look like a folder tree in Windows Explorer. If you click it you will see all of your drives.
To upload your web pages to the NVCC student server, first highlight the local file or folder on the left side of the CORE window, and click the blue right arrow. The file or folder will be transferred to the server on the right. After an upload, you should see the file or folder name listed on the right.
Once you’ve uploaded your web page, Aunt Tilly in Iowa, or anyone in the world connected to the Internet, can see it. How? By typing the URL in the web browser address bar:
http://www.student.nvcc.edu/home/YourUserID/projectone/
Of course, replace YourUserID with your actual userid, and replace the directory namel with the actual name of the directory you are using. Your files need not be in a directory if you are only creating one website.
Always open your browser and check out your web page as it appears on the server. Sometimes things look great on your local computer, but look different on the server.