Dreamweaver Lab (Part 2)

Be importunate—IT people need to know where to go to get help because IT details change all the time.

Last week, you created home pages for yourself, but the only way that you could view it was to use a browser to open up the files directly from your H: drive. No one else could see it unless you sent them the files. This, of course, misses the whole point of the World Wide Web: to make websites conveniently available to other people. In this lab, we'll remedy this by publishing your homesite to Calvin's webserver.

Reload Your Site Definition

Use the instructions from last weeks project to load your website definition.

Publishing Your Website

We'll now tell Dreamweaver how/where to publish your website; this is done by changing your site definition:

1. Choose "Site"-"Manage Sites".
2. Select your site and click "Edit".
3. Select the "Servers" page, and then click the plus sign (+) to add a server.
4. Set the values on this page appropriately, using the following diagram as an example:
   
   The only changes you're allowed to make are to use your own username as the SFTP login (of course). So:
   • "Server Name" should be "Calvin Webpages"
   • "Connect Using" choose "SFTP"
   • "SFTP Address" should be "webpub.calvin.edu"
   • "Username" should be your calvin username
   • Do NOT enter a password
   • "Root Directory" should be "public_html"
   • "Web URL" should be "http://webpub.calvin.edu/~<yourusername>"
5. Hit "Done".

Immediately save/export your new site definition since some of its settings have changed:

• Select your site, and hit "Export" in the "Manage Site" dialog.
• You'll be asked what you want to save in the site definition. The first option is fine.
• Overwrite your old site definition file, and hit "Save".

NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WANT THIS SITE EASILY ACCESSIBLE, SKIP TO PRIVACY INSTRUCTIONS!!!

Otherwise, you can now instruct Dreamweaver to upload your website by choosing "Put Files" from the menu above your file listing:

Enter your email password (but don't click "save"). If Windows's firewall complains, unblock Dreamweaver.

You (and everyone else) should then be able to view your website on Calvin's webserver as follows:

Once you get the site loaded into your browser, navigate through the site to make sure it all works. It is very likely that some things that work on your computer may not work when the site is published. You have to find the errors by going through the site yourself.

If you discover that you need to fix something about your site, first, make the fix in Dreamweaver. You can then use the "Synchronize" button to make the files on the server match your local files. The Synchronize button is 3 to the left of the "Put Files" button above your file listing and looks like two arrows pointing to each other in a circle.

Privacy

If you don't feel good about publishing your personal information or picture on the web, then feel free to change the information before publishing it. The grader doesn't care whether the information is accurate or not.

You can also publish it to somewhere very difficult to find. That is, create a new folder in Dreamweaver named something non-sensical like "fasdkweir" (Stick to just letters and digits though, no punctuation or spaces!). Move all of your files into this new folder. Now, when you publish your website everyone (including yourself) will have to use the non-sensical part to access your site at something like
www.calvin.edu/~smn4/fasdkweir/
It's unlikely anyone would ever find it without you telling them. Ask your instructor for further details of this approach.

Informational Website

The informational website that you started (or will be starting) for Project 6 is in a subfolder of your website. It comes along for the ride! So you should be able to find it as well. If Vander Linden put his in a folder named informational, his URL would be: http://www.calvin.edu/~kvlinden/informational/.

Submitting your Work

Submit only the URL of your published home page as your Moodle submission. (Hint: pull the page up in a browser, and then copy-and-paste it into the submission field.)

You will be graded only on your home page, your schedule, and the image (not anything that you're working on for your informational site).

Do not submit the .html and image files that you produced and submitted as last week's lab. You get no credit if you don't submit a working URL. We reserve the right to re-grade you on previous issues (like working links, visible images, good looking tables, etc.).