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NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
School of Continuing and Professional Studies
Center for Publishing
Publish Online
Course Info

Home : Second Class :

Internet 101

Assignment 1:

Textbook
Read Chapter 2 in "Poor Richard's Web Site"

Assignment 2:

Create a simple web page
Site creation is free at these and many other sites:

I know many of you think it's hard, but the whole process should only take a few minutes
I created an account at homestead.com and created this page (http://matt126.homestead.com/) in less than 5 minutes.

  • Put the message 'hi matt' on the page
  • Send me an email with the URL (address) when you're finished

Assignment 3:

Web Site Critique
Find 3 small, content-based websites and write a paragraph about each one describing how they succeed or fail in the following areas:

  • Content
  • Design
  • Structure & Navigation
  • Speed
  • Use of technology
  • Interactive

Read this list of Web site guidelines
But also use your own judgement. Do you like the site? Did you find what you were looking for? Would you go back? Would you recommend it to others?
Select lesser-known websites that still haven't "arrived". amazon.com and ebay.com are obviously succesful, and not very interesting to critique
Email the homework to me by next class.

Assignment 4:

FTP Exercise
The best way to learn this stuff is by trying it out, so here are detailed instructions for a simple FTP exercise:
I made a simple site at Tripod.com, which contains nothing but a list of email addresses for all of us in the class. Your goal is to add your name to the left of your email address. (look at my name and email address for an example) You won't need to type any HTML, just:

  • get to the site
  • use FTP to download the page (index.html)
  • use any text editor to add your name to the text file.
  • use FTP to upload the page again.


The URL for the page is:
http://members.tripod.com/~mslaybau/

With my tripod account I got an account for the FTP server: The user name is 'mslaybau' and the password is '5001fox'

So first you need an FTP client:
As I mentioned in class, there are lots of free FTP clients. Go to download.com (or jumbo.com if that download.com is too slow) and do a search for 'free ftp client'. You'll get a list of several to choose from, it doesn't really matter which. (Just like different Web browsers look a little different but essentially do the same tasks, ftp clients differ slightly in appearance but perform the same functions)

Most download-able software is compressed so that the download doesn't take so long. You may need some software to de-compress the FTP client. In most cases, though, you can just double-click the download icon and let it install. If you have trouble at this point, send an email and I'll help you out.

Once you have the FTP client installed on your computer, you need to direct it to the server 'ftp.tripod.com'. For most clients, you'll need to select 'Connect', which will pop up a box where you type in the server address. Where it asks for a 'user name' or 'user ID' type in 'mslaybau' and where it asks for a password, type in '5001fox'.

The FTP client will have directories from your computer on the left, and the server on the right. If all goes well you should see a directory with three things in it. The file called 'index.html' is the one you need. In most cases you can simply drag and drop the file onto your desktop, which downloads a copy of the file to your computer. You could also select 'Get' which will do the same thing. Look to see what directory on your computer you are downloading to; it's easy to download something to your hard drive but not realize what folder it's in.

Now open the file 'index.html' in some text editor (notepad will work, but I wouldn't recommend using Microsoft Word) And simply find your email address and type your name to the left of it.

And now drag-and-drop or 'Put' the file back - upload it to the server.

Look at this page again:
http://members.tripod.com/~mslaybau/
If all goes well, you should see your edits on the page (you may need to press 'reload' in the web browser to get the new version)

At this point you should have a better sense of what FTP is. It's really like having an extra hard drive at your diposal. When you put a floppy disk in your computer, you can drag and drop files back and forth between the floppy and your desktop.

Let me know if you have questions.