Student's Guide to Creating a Home Page

Getting Started

Setting up a functional homepage is quite simple. Using Netscape Communicator you can create your homepage in less than 5 minutes. Here are the basic steps for setting up a home page in chronological order (we assume you are using unix):

In your home directory create a subdirectory called public_html
cd into this directory create a file called "index.html" there. Read the section below on Netscape Composer or HTML to learn how to make the file "index.html".
Read the section below on Guidelines so you don't anger the web power-brokers or the FCC.
If you need to scan some photos, you will be able to use the scanner in the library.
To view your home page while you are creating it you can do one of three things,
- If you don't have netscape running yet, run the command "netscape index.html &" from your public_html directory
- Go to the white location bar on netscape and write "file:" followed by the FULL PATH of the file, for example "file:/home1/biostats/ririzarr/public_html/Web-Tutorial/resource.html" for this one.
- Click on "file" on the Netscape menu and then on "open page" from the submenu. Then click choose file and either enter the full path of the file you wish to view or browse throught all your subdirectories.
View your official page at the URL: http://biosun01.biostats.jhsph.edu/~username.

It's that easy.

Creating a Web Page using Netscape Composer

Now you can create your own homepage without even knowing HTML. (Although it is still useful to learn HTML) Using different fonts, adding pictures, making tables, changing colors, using images for backgrounds can now be done pretty much by pointing and clicking. Whenever you wish to create or edit a webpage cd into your www directory and use the command open the page you want to edit, go to file in the menu bar and choose "Edit Page". This opens up the page in Netscape Composer, this will enable you to edit HTML files with an editor kind of like Microsoft Word. Here are some steps to follow :

Once you change to this directory you can open Netscape by writing netscape&. Starting Netscape from the directory YOURPATH/public_html will make things much easier.
Using Netscape, open this location (http://www.biostat.jhsph.edu/~ririzarr/Web-Tutorial/resource.html) and choose one of the example html files below. Once you chose which one you are going to use, say Example 1, click on the link that takes you to Example 1. When you see Example 1 on your browser, click on File and then on Save As. This will ask you to save the file. You should save it to the file index.html in the directory YOURPATH/public_html (you should already be in this path).
Now you are ready to mold the example file and turn it into your own web page.

Once you save the file its on the web! The whole world can see it. Your web page will be located at http://www.biostat.jhsph.edu/~username You should understand the difference between the file YOURPATH/index.htmland the world wide web location http://www.biostat.jhsph.edu/~username. The file can be accesed and changed at any time. You can look at the file by using the Open Page command (under File in the menu bar). There is a difference between opening a file and opening a location. Opening a file is like using the command more in Unix but instead of showing text files it shows HTML files. The world wide web location is updated (it reades the index.html file to see if there has been any changes) by someone else, not you. If we turn off the webserver your webpage wont be able but index.html file will still exist.

Netscape offers you TEMPLATES that you can use to start up your home-page. Open a Netscape Composer window. Then click on file. Then click one new. You will get various options as to what to open the new html file. One of these options is the templates. http://home.netscape.com/browsers/templates/index.html

Here are some EXAMPLES of home pages that you can copy and change to your own.

Example 1 (Contains explanations)
Example 2 ( A simple one)
Example 3

All these examples have links to web pages with personal stuff. You can create your personal stuff web page the same way you created your home page. In any case here is an example. Here is some information on how to use links.

HTML Basics and Examples

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is far less intimidating than it sounds. The best way to learn is by looking at a web page and the HTML code that produced it. An easy way to begin is to use another person's page as a template, and change the information to match your own Then, you can customize it more and more as you learn more HTML. Some useful information:

It is possible to see the source code of the pages you view with Netscape by going to the "view" menu item on the top your Netscape window and selecting "source".
Some very useful references to HTML the HTML Quick Reference Guide.
Source code for all web pages can be viewed by clicking on View and then on Page Source.

Here are some EXAMPLES of what you can do with a homepage:

David Aldous - Simple and nice
David Brillinger - Simple and a little nutty
Philip Stark. - A bit more complicated (This page contains frames. Note that Netscape Composer can't edit pages with frames, you have to edit the HTML code.)
Garikai Campbell - Very nice, but complicated. (He used PC software as an aid to create this)

Guidelines

There are some official departmental guidelines for having a web-page. Here is a brief synopsis of the rules:

Your top (first) page should only be about "professional" things, although a photo is great. Any personal links or information you wish to include should be on another page which is accessed by a link from your top page.
The posting or advertising of personal items for sale and the posting of any published material (including articles authored by the student) are forbidden.
Participants must observe all copyright laws.
The Department of Biostatistics reserves the right not to post submitted material.
If it would make your mom blush, it is probably not appropriate.

Please mail questions or comments to rafa@jhu.edu

Last updated:11/19/00