About web pages

A web page is a HTML document (using either .HTM or .HTML in their filename extension) stored on a web server- this page for instance is such a web page - stored on the SOI server. As soon as a web page is stored on a web server - it becomes automatically accessible on the net.

Note:
A "homepage" is a special kind of web page. The term is often used for a web page which is associated with a person - and/or is used as a "door" to other web pages - a kind of table of contents so to speak.

 

Room- and nickname pages

SOI recognizes 2 special kinds of web pages:

  1. A room page
    A room page is always associated with a particular SOI room and has to be stored in that particular room directory (folder). Another peculiarity is that the room page's filename always must be "homepage.html"  If there is a room page associated with a particular room and a visitor in that room clicks the room title - it will automatically open the associated page.

  1. A nickname page
    A nickname page is very similar to a room page. The only difference is that it is associated with a particular nickname instead. The nickname page has to be stored in that particular nickname directory (folder) and its filename also has to be "homepage.html". If there is a nickname page associated with a particular nickname and someone clicks the ~ (tilde) right after the date in any of the posts of the person it will open a form from which he/she can open that page.

Note 1:
Besides those 2 special kinds of web pages - you can of course store any other kind of web page on the SOI server. This page is an example of a web page that is neither a room- or a nickname page.

Note 2:
SOI not only recognizes the web page as your nickname page, it also automatically creates a link to it in the "Slices of life" page. From here you can also link to another SOI page which lists all room pages.


end of this part - click a topic to the right!

 

 

 

 

How to construct a web page

As I  already have mentioned before - you have 4Mb of server space on the SOI  server to utilize and you can store any kind of files you want there - web pages among other things. This part explains different methods for how to construct a web page of your own.

You can construct a web page in 2 ways:

  1. construct it all by yourself - i.e. do all the HTML coding manually. This is normally done in a common text editor - Notepad for example - which is included in your Windows xx package. If you want to learn how to do the coding yourself you might have a look at my HTML tutorial.
  2. use a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor like the Netscape Composer - which is included in the Netscape Communicator package - Microsoft's FrontPage or Macromedia Dreamweaver. All these applications look and work very much like a common word processor - so if you have any experience of such - you should have no problems using either of them.

The construction phase is usually done off line in either case. If you do all the coding yourself - you must add the .htm or .html extension yourself the first time you save your document or else it will be saved as a .txt document -  which is unrecognizable for a browser. Netscape Composer and FrontPage will do this for you automatically. You can freely preview your web page offline in any browser - just start the browser and open the web page from the browser's "File" menu.

As soon as your web page is done and ready - you have to upload it to a  web server - say the SOI server - in order to make it accessible for others.


end of this part - click a topic to the right!

 

 

 

 

Using the SOI editor

If you want to construct a room- or a nickname page and do the HTML coding manually - then you can use the SOI room page- or nickname page editor. The advantages of doing so are that the page:

The disadvantages are that:

This is how to work with the SOI editor:

Room page Nickname page
  1. Click the [Controls] and go to your control room.
  2. Click the [Room Controls] and it will open a form which lists all your rooms as links.
  3. Click the room for which you want to construct a page and it opens the room's set-up form.
  4. Click the Edit Room Home Page button and it will open an additional form from which you can construct the room page.
  1. Click the [Controls] and go to your control room.
  2. Click the [Nickname Controls] and it will open a form which lists all your nicknames as links.
  3. Click the nickname for which you want to construct a page and it opens the nickname's set-up form.
  4. Click the Edit Your Home Page button and it will open an additional form from which you can construct the nickname page.

Note:
Make sure you save the room- or nickname page often with the button down the text box - because if your browser crashes - you might lose everything you have accomplished.


end of this part - click a topic to the right!