Publishing Webpages on Frank

"Publishing" web pages means saving HTML and related files to your account on frank. It is sometimes called "saving remotely."

If you are on the campus network, you can publish files by using an FTP client such as Fetch or WS-FTP. These programs allow you to move files from the hard disk or floppy disk on your computer—called "local"—to your account on frank—called "remote."

If you created your web pages with a local HTML editor and didn't use Homepage Creator as a starting point, you will need to create a subdirectory to hold your web pages. To create this subdirectory:

1. Telnet to frank.
2. Login with your username and password.
3. At the frank prompt enter the command to create a subdirectory

   frank $ mkdir public_html

4. After you create the pubic_html directory, copy your web files there with your ftp client.
5. Make your web pages available to the public

Making Pages Publically Accessible

All of the files that you create or upload to your account on frank have default permissions that allow only you to read them. This keeps your memos, letters, and personal files protected from other people. However, you want all of your web page files to have file permissions that will allow anyone and everyone to read them.

The chmod command will allow you to change file permissions (read, write, or execute) for the user, group, others, or for all. To see a list of items in the directory and the permissions for each item, use the ll (long list) command:

frank $ ll

total 2
-rwxr--r-- 1 jdoe oit 427 Oct 30 13:44 index.html

-rwxr-xr-x 1 jdoe oit 427 Oct 31 12:04 syllabus.html

drwxrwxrwx 1 jdoe oit 427 Oct 31 12:04 fall2000

The permissions are listed in the first column. The list always has 10 spaces, and the letters cannot switch places. The permission list for the first line is structured as follows:

—	r w x	r — —	r — —
The first dash tells you that index.html is a file rather than a directory (folder). If index.html were a directory, a d would appear here.	The next three letters show the permissions that the user has on the file. The user can read the file, write to the file and execute the file.	The second three characters show the permissions that the group has on the file. The group can only read the file.	The final set of characters shows the permissions that others (the world) have on the file. Others can only read the file.

To change a permission on a file, at the frank prompt:

1. type chmod spacebar
2. type the group that you wish to change the permission for u for user, g for group, o for other, or a for all groups
3. type + if you are giving a permission or - if you are taking away a permission
4. type the permission that you are giving or taking away (r for read, w for write, or x for execute)
5. type the name of the file or the directory you are setting the permissions on or use * (asterisk) for all files and subdirectories in public_html
6. press enter
7. check the new file permissions by typing ll at the frank prompt

Usually, you will want to give read permission to the group and others. If you want everyone to access (read and execute) files in your public_html directory, you would enter:

frank$ chmod a+rx public_html

Setting the Same Permissions for Multiple Files

Often, you will have uploaded several files and will want to change the permission on all of them. You can change the permissions of all files in public_html with a wildcard (*).

Note:Make sure your present working directory (pwd) is public_html before you use this command.

frank $ pwd enter

frank $ /users/depts/username/public_html

frank $ chmod a+r *

This command gives user, group, and other (a) read permission (r) on all files (*) in the public_html directory.