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Understanding the internet and how it works

The Internet or WWW

The Internet is a network of computers that joins thousands of computers together from around the world. The World wide web has accelerated in growth of the internet by giving a easy to use point and click style interface to receive information from one computer to another. The term WWW is short for the World Wide Web. The www is just one part of the internet. It is here where the exchange of information that can be made to viewed with style and in interactive ways.It uses hypertext links called hyperlinks, to find and retrieve pages from the www servers. The servers store pages as HTML Hypertext Markup Language, within this HTML one can combine graphics, sound, animation, text, and software programs into dynamic documents to be viewed in the www, with Browsers that display the HTML to your computer. As time passes the the way we view home sites and companies sites change from the first text only pages to today's high graphic and Java enriched pages, too tomorrows 3D virtual reality sites. The internet and how the information is viewed grows.

Other then the www the internet has other parts that can be used when one is connected to it. Here are some of the other popular services that the Internet can provide:

  • FTP: (File Transfer Protocol) FTP is a service that will allow one to transfer files from one computer to another. Servers may allow you to FTP to thier FTP site with a "anonymous" login to retrieve files and programs from thier computers. On others you must obtain a logon name and password to receive access to the files and programs. You can find both freeware and shareware programs to download from the internet. Here is just one Tucows after you get there just pick a mirror site close to you to help on download times.
  • Gopher A Gopher is an Internet browsing service set up as a series of menus. Gopher menu items can be set up as server files, or be set up to point to other files on other servers. By this navigating you are going through a series of servers to get to a file of information you are seeking.You can find both freeware and shareware programs to download from the internet. Here is just one Tucows after you get there just pick a mirror site close to you to help on download times.
  • Electronic mail This is well known as Email or E-mail and is most noted for the "@" symbol. E-mail is the mail system of the internet. A e-mail address is your user names from your provider in most cases, with the @ followed buy your servers info ..i.e trout@fish.net this is tell where the note is to be sent to by provider or pop3 account @fish.net. When reached the provider looks up the account the mail need to go to "trout@". E-mail lets one send notes and messages to one or many people that have e-mail addresses. E-mail as the rest of the internet is going through growing pains and new changes to better fit the needs of today's fast growing internet. You may have seen some of the E-mail systems out today with Full sound and sight. You can find both freeware and shareware programs to download from the internet. Here is just one Tucows after you get there just pick a mirror site close to you to help on download times.


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What are Servers and Clients

All Computers programs that communicates on the internet is one of two things a SERVER or a CLIENT.

  • A SERVER offers services to other computers on a network or on the internet. As a Example, a server known as a File server contains files for users in a network. The service it offers is storage of files as well as retrieval of the files. When it comes to the Internet there are thousands of of file servers offering files on many types.
  • A CLIENT is one requesting service from a server. Most servers are set up so that specialized software must be used to interact with the serve. As a example say you want a file from a server, a client program on your computer must format and send the request to a program running on the server. The server program will find the file on the server and sends a copy of it back to the client program which then saves or opens it for your use. When this Client and server transfer in this way it is called a PROTOCOL. A common used protocol that you may have heard of is TCP/IP this is the software used on the internet to pass information from computer to computer or from network to network. It contains two components, Internet Protocol better known as (IP) and Transmission Control Protocol better known as (TCP). The IP breaks up the information and sets it into software packets that can be sent across the Internet. If each computer on each end can understand the IP they will accept and send the packets. Once the packets reach the target computer the IP on the target computer reassembles the packet to the files. The TCP works with the IP to make sure that all information is transmitted in the right way across the internet. The TCP also requests that lost or damaged packets be resent

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    What is HTML

  • When the internet was started there was a need to come up with a way to come up with a standard language for describing the contents and the structure of pages on the word wide web. From this HTML was started HTML stands for HYPERTEXT MARKUP LANGUAGE this is that the browser will read and retrieve information on how the page will be viewed. A few other terms that may help you out

    HTML attributes:
    A name-value pair used within an HTML tag to assign additional properties to a object being defined.
    HTML character encoding:
    A table which associates a numeric index with each character in a character set. The table used when creating a web page for a specific language.
    HTML tag:
    A symbol used in HTML to identify a page elements type or format and structure.


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      How do I set up a Dir. for my site

    Each HTML editors can be different from another and if you are using two or three HTML makers to get the effect you wish for your page you can run into a few problems. One way to over come this problem is to start a new file or directory on your hard drive. This way you can 1: have a copies of your site for a back up. 2:You can do all the work on your hard drive before you FTP it to the web 3:If you set your directories right the editors will link it to the right directory as you make your site. Make a directory names as your user name "username" in this directory you can set up you file structure as your server have it set up. (Tip: FTP to your site and download it to this directory the way the server has it set up). Some servers you must use a directory like "htdocs" to store you HTML, some do not check on your site or ask your service provider.Typical directories on a server will be:

  • cgi-bin
  • cgi-dos
  • cgi-shl
  • cgi-shl-prot
  • cgi-src
  • cgi-win
  • htdocs
    You will also want to add a few like
  • images (In images add 3 more this will help you keep track of your jpgs and gifs)
         Backgrounds
    Buttons
    Logos

  • sounds

    With this directory set up you will be able to work off your hard drive and know that when you FTP the site up to the Web it is ready for view. And that if you need to check on the HTML or pic's in your site you will be able to find they fast. Above I listed many files with cgi, not all providers will let you run CGI so you must call and ask how they wish you to set up directories to run CGI . In the files marked images you can set all the web art your home page uses. In the sounds (If you are using sounds) you can store all your midi, wav, ect.ect.


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      What is the http:// and ftp://

    http:// and ftp:// are forms or URLs. A URL is a Uniform Resource Locator known as a URL. URLs give the address of a file on the WWW (World Wide Web) and also identifies the internet service, like if it is a FTP or a www file that it will handle. When hyperlinks are used on a page, the destination of the link is encoded into a URL. When broken down a link is in many parts, look below foe a example:

  • http://www.fish.net/trout/dir_name/doc.html/#location_on_page
  • Now when we break this down :

    • http:// (This is the Protocol the URL is asking for)
    • www.fish.net/ (Here we are telling it the Location of the site)
    • trout/ (This is in most cases a users account name. But in fact it is the path. You may see a ~ in front of this path.)
    • dir_name/ (If a site is set up into directories you are giving the directory to the file you need)
    • doc.html/ (Now you are telling it to find this file for www you will find that the extension HTML or HTM are use the most)
    • #location_on_page (this is used then you are looking for a bookmark or target on the page. The bookmarks must be set by the HTML maker. This will take them to a spot on the page after the HTML doc has loaded.

    You will see many types of protocol other then http://. Some of them are:

    • ftp This tell you that the file is on a FTP server example of a ftp URL: ftp://ftp.fish.net/file_name.type
    • file This tells you that the file is in a file system of a computer on a network or on the internet. example of a file URL: file://a.sample.host/file_name.type this tells us that the file is in a network with the a.sample.host./ . If the URL is more like this : file:///dir/file.doc as you see no computer was given this tells us that the file is on the same computer as the browser is on.
    • mailto Here the URL is telling us that it to a E-mail address example of a email URL: mailto:trout@fish.net , when the browser reads the mailto it will open an e-mail from or program to the address listed
    • http Tell you that the file is on a word wide web server example of a http URL: http://www.yasky.com/index.html


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    How do I get my pages to the the internet from my hard drive?

    To transfer files from your hard drive to your server when you have finished working on your home page. You should first get a FTP program and a telnet program. If you are not familiar with these programs I suggest that you take some time to understand them. For a quick over view, a FTP program is used to move files from your computer to a server. A telnet program does not move files but instead it can control and manipulate files on a Unix server. Before you transfer your htm or html files, check to make sure all your links are correct. That and jif, jpgs and other docs or links to other doc's are pointed to the right dir's.
    some may have to log on with a telnet software log onto the the server with:

    host name:
    login name(DO NOT put a capital P in front if you are on a slip ppp account):your user name
    password:your password

    You will see a message of the day and you might come to a menu in you shell account. if you come to a menu press x and return and it should give you a prompt. At this prompt type in:

    webmanage

    You will now have another menu before you. You should use the first two of the option in this menu. What this does is creates a directory in your shell account called something like (you may need to ask your provider):

    public_html

    and then it sets the permissions on your directories like this for most

    chmod 711 .
    chmod 755 public_html

    After you are done with that and the webmanage has created your directories, use your ftp program

    FTPing to your account

    You will need your servers FTP address. (call your provider if you are NOT sure)

    host name:
    login name:your user name
    password:your password

    and it will put you into your user directory. You will see files and directory some will see public_html others may see a htdocs, some just directory and a file names index.html. Go into that directory and then transfer your files from your computer to that folder. Make sure that the first page you want people to see is called:

    index.html

    Transfer your files and directories from your hard drive to the directory you may be asked if you wish the directory structure to be loaded ad it is in you drive say Yes. You will then see your FTP program start working on moving the files up to the provider. This can take some time. After you are done you can use a web browser to view your work! If you have followed these instructions and still are having problems, Please e-mail or call your service provider with the problem and any error messages. There are many server types and each have different ways to FTP and set up web sites this is just a guide
    You might need to set your permissions on the new files that you put in your directory. In order to do that use your telnet program and log into your shell again. At the prompt type

    cd public_html

    This moves you into your public_html directory. Once inside public_html type:

    chmod 755 *

    The * means that it is going to change the permissions of all the file in that directory. If you wanted to change only certain files you can replace the * with the filename of the file you want to change the permissions on.

    If you are set up with a webstie you will just need to follow the FTP guide transfer all dirs and files to the provider as you have set them up to make sure you will have everything working in the right way.
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