Tutorial 2 - Developing a Web Site

Most Important: We start Tutorial 2 this week, and continue our work into the next week. This is easily the most important topics we will cover this semester.

Tutorial 2 and Tutorial 3 will be covered over 2 weeks. During the remainder of our semester we will cover Tutorials 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 in one week each. Tutorial 9 will be covered during the last 2 weeks, and will also server as your final exam. Our Site Index has links to all the remaining assignments. Do NOT look too far ahead. Our text is well organized and each Tutorial builds on what is learned in previous Tutorials.

Web site structure is considered next. Multiple documents are required to construct a web. Why is structure important? And last and certainly not least, linking your web site to external resources ... they don't call it the World Wide Web for nothing. Our text does an excellent job of introducing these topics. Work through these sections carefully. Ask questions if you get confused.

Site Index: Are you using our site index? It has links to every web page we've used so far (and into the future). New this week is a link to an HTML Template, that is a good starting point for beginning a new web page. And a link to The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) HTML Markup Validation Service.

Student WebSites: Are you using the Student WebSites page? It has links to assignment web pages, and to their item level grading. Remember, once you are looking at some web page, you can "view source" ... meaning you can see the HTML for that page.

There are new forums available in BlackBoard Discussions with names ending in 2Feb. These will become part of the grading rubric in the next week's (Feb.9) Assignment that is due Sunday, Feb 15.

1. Find a text only version of the US Constitution
2. Using the 7 Articles of the Constitution
3. Make one web page
4. With an index of the Articles at the top
5. Link the index to each Article
6. Upload document to your web site
7. eMail George the URL
8. before 11:59 PM, Sunday Feb 8

Required: All the HTML
you write for assignments in this class is expected to be error free as certified by W3C.org's Markup Validation Service. This is a graded element of all assignments. I suggest that you make a habit of checking your HTML as you write. Use W3C Markup Validation early and often. It is a lot easier to correct an error when you first make it. Remember - Strategy for editing HTML?

Required: FTP Client
Read what Wikipedia has to say about FTP ... and about FTP Client software. FTP is how I want you to copy the web pages you develop for this class from your own computer to your web space on Tulane's Student Server. There are many FTP clients. Wikipedia has a list of some. There are others. I like SSH - freeware FTP Client for Windows, and the one Tulane recommends. For Mac, I like Fetch ... although it is a commercial product, you can apply for a free educational license.

Using an FTP client, you "connect" to Tulane's Student WebServer. To do so, you need to know the Hostname (the name of Tulane's computer), Username, Password, and maybe Initial Folder.

public_html/     folder is where all your Web Pages reside. As we go along, we will see that you can have as many sub-folder inside of public_html/     as makes sense for your web sites. If you already have web pages on Tulane's Student WebServer, I suggest you make a sub-folder named, for example, CPST-240.

I expect that everyone will succeed using FTP. If you experience problems, you can attach your web page documents in an eMail message to me.

Real OLD News
Here you will find linked Chapter 5 of my Masters Thesis. It is celebrating it eleventh anniversary this year. I still enjoy reading it, even though some of it is showing its age. Chapter 5 is about Writing Space, which I still consider to be the biggest contribution of the World Wide Web -- crating a new writing space. I hope you find something relevant to our work this semester.

Remember ... ask for HELP ... ask early, ask often.

What is it?