All Categories :
HTML
Chapter 5
What You Need for a Web Site
CONTENTS
Although creating HTML pages is easily the most time-consuming
part of building your Web site, another equally important part
is figuring out how you're going to get those pages on the Web.
You'll need Web server software, an Internet connection, a Web
URL for your pages, and a system for organizing your pages and
graphics. Depending on how you gain access and how complicated
your site is, just getting your first page up on the Web can take
a certain amount of planning.
Before you can display your HTML pages on the Web, you'll need
access to a Web server. This may already be taken care of for
you, especially if you work with an Information Systems (IS) department
in a larger corporation. If this is the case, you'll just need
to know how and where to send your HTML files when you want to
update the site. Otherwise, you'll need to make some arrangements
on your own.
It isn't terribly difficult to set up your own Web server-especially
if you already have a high-speed connection to the Internet. If
you access the Internet through an Internet service provider (ISP),
you'll want to discuss this with them, though. More than likely,
they're willing to provide you with space on their Web server
computers. If your Web site is a fairly small venture, or if you're
not ready for a heavy investment in equipment, then using your
ISP's Web server is a great (and very common) alternative.
In its essence, it's the job of a Web server to accept connections
from Web browsers all over the Internet and, when requested, send
them the HTML documents that are available from your site. This
is done using the HTTP protocol discussed in Chapter 2.
A Web server is simply a computer with an Internet connection
that runs software designed to send out HTML pages and other file
formats (such as multimedia files) (see fig. 5.1). The server
computer should have a relatively high-speed connection to the
Internet (faster than any available modem connections, for instance)
and be powerful enough to deal with a number of simultaneous connections
from the Internet.
Figure 5.1: WebSTAR Web server software running on a Macintosh computer.
Web server software generally requires a fairly robust operating
system (like UNIX, Windows NT, or OS/2), although software is
available for other versions of Microsoft Windows, and the Macintosh
OS is a very popular choice for Web server computers. The software
you use depends on your level of experience with Internet connections
and various operating systems.
The other major consideration is how popular your Web site will
be. The more hits, or connections, your Web server receives
at one time, the more powerful the computer should be-and the
faster your connection to the Internet. What do I mean by a fast
connection?
Most Internet connections are measured in terms of bits per
second (bps), which translates loosely as "how
many bits of data can be transmitted across the Internet in a
second." In computerese, it takes eight bits to make up one
byte of computer information-and a byte is what is required
to create a character of text.
The typical modem connection is 14,400 bps, which translates to
roughly 1,800 characters (bytes) transferred every second. If
a typical page of text contains 300 words then, and each word
averages six characters per word, this connection would yield
roughly a page-per-second transmission rate. A 25-kilobyte (KB)
file (such as a very small GIF file) would take about 14 seconds
to transmit over this connection.
This doesn't sound terribly slow, until you start to take into
account the idea that more than one connection might occur with
the Web server. If ten people connect to our server over this
connection, it will take ten seconds to complete the task of sending
each of them a single page of data. If that page totaled 25 KB
in size (that is, if it included graphics and other elements),
it could take over 140 seconds to complete that same task.
| Note |
These transmission rate numbers all reflect ideal conditions. In real life, phone line noise, traffic on the Internet, and other factors will slow down transmission rates. Throughput on a 14,400 bps connection is often somewhere between 1,100 and 1,300 characters per second.
|
If the typical well-designed Web page is between 30 KB and 50
KB in size, you can see that we're going to start running into
problems with this type of connection. There's the potential for
someone to wait a number of minutes between the transfer of each
page they request on your Web site. If the average commercial
break on television is three minutes, just think how annoyed your
users are going to get.
So your server will need a faster connection. But how do you get
one? If Internet access is available to you through your company's
Local Area Network (LAN), you probably already have a high-speed
connection. Ask around your IS department. If you're running a
small business or home office, you won't have to worry about high
speed if you make your Web pages available on your ISP's Web server.
If you're going to use your own Web server computer, though, you'll
need a high-speed Internet connection that you can connect to
that computer. Table 5.1 details some of the possible connections.
Table 5.1 Internet Connection Speeds and
Technologies
| Connection Speed | Connection Technology
|
| 14.4/28.8 Kbps | High-speed modem
|
| 56 Kbps | 56K leased line |
| 64 Kbps | Single-B-Channel ISDN
|
| 128 Kbps | Basic Rate ISDN |
| up to 1.5 Mbps | Primary Rate ISDN (U.S.)
|
| 1.5 Mbps | T-1 dedicated line
|
| 45 Mbps | T-3 dedicated line
|
The minimum for an acceptable Web server connection is probably
a basic-rate ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) connection,
which offers 128,000 bps connections to the Internet. ISDN technology
uses your existing phone wiring to provide an enhanced, digital,
telephone connection. Using a special network adapter card for
your computer, you can use the ISDN line to dial an appropriately
equipped ISP. You can also use the ISDN connection for regular
telephone calls.
| Note |
ISDN is a service of your local telephone company, and you should contact them for more information. Also be aware that emerging technologies such as cable modems (offered by your cable TV company) may be another high-speed alternative.
|
The basic-rate ISDN connection is still somewhat slow, depending
on your Web site's traffic (that is, the number of visitors to
your site). But it's also the most reasonably priced, generally
falling between $50 and $150 a month for the ISDN line (from your
local phone company), with $50 to $100 for the ISDN account (from
your ISP), and $300 to $1,000 to purchase the ISDN equipment.
| Tip |
Relatively low-cost ISDN "modems" are becoming more common for both PCs and Macs in the $300 to $500 range.
|
A T-1 line is the typical connection for an ISP or a large business,
and these lines generally cost thousands of dollars per month
for Internet access, as do primary-rate ISDN connections. T-3
lines currently serve as the backbone of the Internet, and are
generally only found connecting university, government, and supercomputing
organizations.
For any sort of connection to the Internet, you'll probably need
to deal with an Internet service provider. These companies offer
dial-up and special high-speed connections to the Internet, as
well as generally offering Web and other types of Internet servers
for your use.
| Note |
Looking for a provider for your Web page? With your Web browser, you can access some lists of ISPs around the country (and world) at http://thelist.com
or http://www.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Companies/Internet_Services/ Web_Presence_Providers/ which includes a listing of free Web page providers. You might also check with your current ISP for Web deals, and realize that many popular online services offer free or cheap Web space.
|
For the typical smaller Web site, you'll want to buy space on
the ISP's Web site. Generally this will give you an URL that begins
with the name of the ISP's host computer, but points to a special
directory for your HTML pages, such as http://www.isp.com/username/index.html.
With most Web server programs, the default page that is first
loaded is named index.html,
so that's the name you'll use for the first page you'd like presented
to users when they access your Web site.
If you're looking for an ISP for your Web site (as opposed to
using your company's computers or your current ISP), it's important
to consider two factors. Most ISPs will charge you based on how
much disk space your Web site consumes and how much throughput
is registered for your pages.
Throughput can be seen as the average amount of information transferred
from your site to a user multiplied by the number of users who
access your Web site:
average amount of information X number
of users = throughput
If, for instance, each user who accesses your site transfers an
average of 50 KB, and 1,000 users access your site in a month,
then your throughput for that month would be 5 MB of data. If
your ISP charges $1 per megabyte of throughput, you'll be charged
$5 (not including the disk space charges and any monthly fees
the ISP may charge).
So why charge for throughput? If hundreds of people access your
site at any given time, this means that many fewer people can
access other services provided by the ISP, so they charge you
more. Consider the scenario where everyone is downloading a 250
KB shareware program from your Web site, and over 10,000 people
access your Web site in a month. This is approximately 2.5 gigabytes
of data transferred, for which you might be charged $2,500 (at
$1 per megabyte).
| Tip |
Look for Web sites that offer monthly maximums and special deals to avoid surprise bills for hundreds or thousands of dollars.
|
A sum of $2,500 is a little high for that sort of traffic, but
it does make a good point-many ISPs will limit your site to a
certain amount of data transferred or a certain number of visitors
per month (for a particular price plan). To get past these limitations,
you may have to opt for the next higher plan available from the
ISP, or accept additional charges for extra throughput.
Once you've decided on an ISP that you feel is reasonably priced,
you're ready to create your HTML pages and upload them to the
server. To do all this correctly, though, you'll probably need
to ask a few questions:
- What is my site's default URL?-This should be something
like the ISP's host address and a directory for your username.
For instance, if my username is tstauffer and my ISP's
Web server is www.webco.net, then the default URL for my
site might be http://www.webcom.net/tstauffer/. Different
ISPs will organize this in different ways, so you'll need to make
sure you get this right.
| Note |
Many ISPs will give you the option, at an increased price, of creating your own domain name for your site. Then users could access your site at http://www.yourname.com/.
|
- How do I upload files to my site's directory?-You should
get instructions for accessing your Web site's directory on the
Web server computer using either FTP or a UNIX shell account.
We'll discuss this more in the section "Updating Your Web
Site," later in this chapter.
- Are there any limitations to the names I can give my files?-The
operating system in use by the Web server may not be instantly
obvious to you. If this is the case, you'll want to ask if there
is a certain filename length or a certain format for naming files
you need to follow.
| Tip |
When in doubt, use the DOS 8.3 filename convention in the style filename.ext where filename can be no more than eight letters, and .ext is a three-letter filename extension, such as .htm.
|
- Can I create subdirectories within my main Web site directory?-Most
Web servers will give you this capability, but some will not allow
you to create new subdirectories.
- What support is offered for CGI programming? Some servers
won't allow you to add CGI scripts to your Web site for processing
forms or adding other interactive features. At the same time,
some will, but require you to pay extra or pay to have the provider
write those scripts (regardless of your ability). If you plan
a highly interactive site, then you should ask about CGI support.
The most important thing to remember when organizing a Web site
is how the server computer you're using will differ from the computer
you use to create Web pages. This is because you'll need to know
the exact path to HTML pages and multimedia files you use in creating
your Web page. As we've seen before, an URL requires both a server
name and a path statement to the file. This includes files that
you've placed on your own Web server-so while you're creating
your Web pages, you'll need to know where your files will eventually
be.
Although there are a number of different ways to arrange a Web
site, there are some rules of thumb to keep in mind. For the most
part, any organization you create for your Web site files should
be designed to make updating your pages easy in the future. If
you have to move all your files around every time you change something
on a Web page, you'll also be forced to change all the hypertext
links on many other pages-and that can be incredibly time-consuming.
Let's look at a couple of different types of organization for
Web sites:
- Single-directory sites-Smaller sites (with just a few
HTML pages and graphics) can often get by with a single directory
on the Web server. All your graphics and HTML pages are in this
one directory. One of the biggest advantages of this system is
that links to local files and graphics require no special path
statements.
- Directory by function-One way to organize more complicated
sites is to put each section of related Web pages in the same
directory. For instance, in your main directory you might offer
only your first (index) page and its associated graphics. For
a business site then, you'd have subdirectories for About the
Business, Product Information,
Technical Support, and so on. In each of these subdirectories,
you'd include all the related HTML files and the graphics for
those pages.
- Directory by file type-Some people prefer to create
subdirectories according to the type of file as opposed to the
content of the page. Your main directory may have only the index
page of your site. Other subdirectories might be Graphics, Web
Pages, Downloadable Files, and so on. The main advantage in organizing
this way is that files generally have to be replaced only once.
If you use a graphic on a number of different pages, for instance,
you replace it once in the Graphics subdirectory, and all the
HTML pages that access this graphic will use the new one.
- Hybrid-The best way to organize a large site might
be a hybrid of the last two methods above. Creating separate subdirectories
for nonrecurring items (such as individual Web pages in each category)
while creating other subdirectories for items used multiple times
(such as graphics) lets you get to all the files in an efficient
way.
We've already mentioned that file extensions are an important
part of all the filenames you use for your Web site. Because other
Web browsers may rely on the file extension to know what sort
of document or file it is, you'll need to include the appropriate
extensions with all your Web site files.
Your Web site will almost always begin with a file called index.html.
Most Web server software programs will automatically load this
page if the URL of your site is accessed without a specific path
and file reference. For example, entering http://www.sun.com/
in your browser actually results in the URL http://www.sun.com/index.html
being loaded in your browser. Your Web site's first page (whether
it's a "front door" page or the first page of your site)
should be designed with this in mind. If you plan to offer only
Netscape-enhanced pages, for instance, you'll want to let your
users know this on the index.html
page.
The other consideration for naming your files is the organization
you plan to use for your site. If you're using a single-directory
organization, your filenames should be as unique as possible,
and graphics and other files should probably have names that relate
to associated Web pages. For instance:
about_company.html
about_header.jpeg
about_ceo_photo.jpeg
When possible, these names will help you determine which files
are associated with which HTML pages when you go to update those
files.
| Note |
Remember that it's important to know what operating system your server uses. Some of the suggestions in this section for styles of filenames will not be helpful if you're using a DOS-based server, since names are limited to the 8.3 format.
|
For graphics and other files that show up on multiple pages, you
might want to come up with a memorable prefix, like gen_
or site, just so you can
easily replace these universal files when necessary.
To create a reasonably sized site for my home-business Web site,
I'm going to use the hybrid style of organization. I have three
different sections on my site: About My Business, Services, and
Samples. Each of these sections will have its own directory structure.
Graphics will be in their own subdirectory, as will downloadable
files that I'm including (see fig. 5.2).
Figure 5.2: The directory organization for my site.
The directory names, then, will be as follows:
about_pages
service_pages
sample_pages
graphics
sample_files
Files and graphics are named for where they appear, unless they
show up in multiple Web pages. For this site, the prefixes I'm
using are as follows:
about_
serv_samp_
gen_
index_
By naming files in this way, I'll be able to replace any graphics
or update my sample files easily-without being forced to load
each file or graphic to figure out what it is. Making the names
as descriptive as possible (aside from the prefix) will help too,
as in the following:
about_photo_me.jpeg
samp_resume1.doc
sampl_catalog_copy.txt
Updating Your Web Site
If you organize your site well, updating the site is simply a
matter of replacing an outdated file with a new file using the
same filename. For instance, if I wanted to replace the picture
of me in the previous example, I'd simply name the new file about_photo_me.jpeg,
and save it in the same directory. Now the associated Web page
will load the new graphic without requiring any changes to the
HTML codes.
You'll need to check with your company's IS contact or your ISP
to figure out exactly how you'll update files. With an ISP, you
can generally use an FTP program to put new files in your directory
organization on the Web site. You might instead be required to
use a UNIX-based shell account for your uploading. In either case,
it's a fairly simple process.
Your Web space provider will require you to enter a username and
password to gain access to the Web server, whether by FTP or shell
account. Generally, you will point your FTP server to the Web
server itself (for instance, www.isp.com), unless the provider
has created a mirror site to avoid direct access to the
Web server.
| Note |
A mirror site is generally an exact replica of a Web server's hard disk, but it is kept separate for security reasons. For instance, you might not be able to directly access your company's Web site files-but you can change a mirror of that Web server, and your changes will be handled by knowledgeable Internet specialists. Many companies prefer to isolate their Web servers from their corporate network so that important data is impossible to access from outside the company.
"Mirror" is more generally used to represent any more-or-less exact copy of an Internet server. The FTP site mirrors.aol.com, for instance, offers copies of nearly every shareware file available on other popular FTP servers around the world. This gives more users access to the same files at the same time.
|
After clearing the security procedure, you'll most likely be in
your personal Web site's main directory. (If not, you'll need
to use the cd command in
UNIX or otherwise change directories in your FTP program.) From
that point, you can update files using the Put command. Simply
upload the updated files with the same names as the outdated files-in
nearly every case, the old files will simply be overwritten. If
you're using new files, upload them using the names and paths
that your Web page links use to refer to them.
| Tip |
It's a good idea to maintain a folder or directory on your own hard drive that is as identical as possible to the Web site you make available on a server-so you can test your organization and filenames.
|
Before you can start showing the world your HTML pages, you'll
need to find a Web server where you can store them. This server
can be a corporate server, an Internet service provider, or a
computer you maintain yourself. In any case, it needs to run Web
server software and have a high-speed Internet connection.
Once you've established where you're going to put your HTML files,
you need to decide how you'll organize them. There are four basic
ways to do this: in one directory, in directories organized by
functions, in directories organized by file type, or a hybrid
of the latter two. For larger sites, a hybrid is most effective.
An important part of your Web site organization is the way you
name files. The best way to do this is to be as descriptive as
possible, while using name prefixes that best describe what Web
pages are used to access these files. This will also help immensely
when it's time to troubleshoot your Web site or update some of
the files.
- True or false. You'll need an extra, very powerful computer
if you expect to have a Web site on the Internet.
- Aside from the computer itself, what two basic things does
a Web server require to operate?
- If bps stands for bits per second, what does Kbps
stand for? How is this different from Mbps?
- How can you find out if ISDN phone service is available in
your area?
- What is throughput? Why do some Internet service providers
charge based on throughput?
- If your Web server runs the MS-DOS operating system, what
are your filename limitations?
- Explain the hybrid style of Web site organization.
- The file about_ceo_photo.jpeg
is most likely what sort of file? What might the HTML page that
it is linked to be about?
- What is the FTP command for uploading files over the Internet?
Does "uploading" mean you're currently sending the file
or receiving the file?
- After you have a Web site available to you, test it by creating
a text file called text.txt.
(Just use WordPad, SimpleText, VI, or a similar text editor and
type something in this file.) Then, upload the file to your Web
server. After it's there, use your Web browser to access it, using
the appropriate URL. An example might be http://www.webcom.net/tstauffer/text.txt.
After you get it to appear in your browser, you'll know you're
on the right track!
- Create a special hierarchy of directories on your own hard
drive that mirror the type of organization you're going to use
for the Web site. When possible, your lowest-level directory should
be named the same as your directory on the Web server.
- Access your ISP's other Web pages and, from the URLs, attempt
to determine what OS the ISP is using for its Web server. (Is
it Mac? UNIX? PC? This may be difficult, but not impossible to
tell.) Once you've guessed, contact your ISP to figure out if
you're right. Don't forget that you'll need to use that OS's naming
conventions when you create your site.
