Access and Setup of your Student Web Page Service Using FTP

In this course, you will be required to publish your assignments on the World Wide Web. In order to do so, you will need to upload (copy/transfer) the files you create from your machine to the York Web Server to make them accessible for Web browsing. As a participant in this course, there are reserved spaces in the York Web server where your files may be stored for this purpose. This document describes how to prepare your web space for uploading future assignment documents by creating directories/folders in the remote server.

Remember, at this point, nothing has been assigned yet so you have no files to deal with, you are only preparing your Web space with folders for storing your future assignment files.

Task 1 - Activate Web Page Account

Ensure that your Student Web Page Account is activated via Manage My Services (This may take up to 24 hours).
You may already have this feature activated from previous courses but everyone must ensure that there is a green check mark on the Web page account icon in the list of your subscribed services in Manage My Services. When activated, you will see a green check-mark beside the service name, "Web Page", as with all your other active accounts services as shown in the example below.

Task 2 - Download and install a FTP Client Software

A File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a communication service of the Internet and FTP clients are software you can use to upload/download files from/to your machine from/to another; in the present case, copying your Web documents from your computer to York′s Web Server computer.
If you do not have an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client software already installed in your machine, download one of many free FTP programs from a reliable source.
Without any particular bias, I will use Core FTP LE for illustration. - Here is a link to a free download of Core FTP LE from the publisher.
Apple Mac users may download free Fetch from York′s Computing site.
Once you have saved the installation file in your system, execute (2x click) the saved program for an automatic installation.

Task 3 - Launching and Using FTP

Although there are many flavours of FTP software, the basic logic of the process is simple so if you understand the basics of using one FTP program, learning to use something else will be quite easy.

Even so, if you are a novice, it is vitally important that you read, attend to, and follow the instructions below precisely without skipping any parts.

Failing to exercise requisite care and attentiveness will cost you unnecessary frustration and time-wasting troubleshooting efforts.
The process at hand is simple but demands your precise attention to details.
FTP (vis-à-vis the Unix network) environment is case-sensitive - Use lower-case characters only when naming folders and files to minimize the risk of confusion.

Step #1 - The Core FTP LE Site Manager

Launch Core FTP LE program; the Site Manager interface (Fig. 1) will appear.
Create a New Site connection profile using the following settings to open a FTP connection:

Site Name:	Choose an appropriate name, e.g., My_York_Web_Space
Host / IP:	www.students.yorku.ca
Username:	Your Student Web Account username
Password:	Your Student Web Account password.
Port:	21
Connection:	FTP; Leave default values in all other fields.

Fig. 1 Site Manager - Connection Profile

Once you have specified (and checked the accuracy of ) the profile details, select Connect.
If correct entries have been made, a new connection interface similar to the example below (Fig. 2) will appear.

Step #2 - The Connection Interface

At first sight, the FTP connection interface may seem complicated and intimidating, but upon further inspection, you should find that it is essentially simpe and logical in its layout.

Inspect the interface elements and do mouse-over the various buttons available in the button bar below the menu before proceeding.

The remote site address is displayed in the Title bar of the window, and the Auto Mode button is active by default, i.e, the program will deciede what type of file, text or binary, is to be transferred and how.
The dual (two) site directory display (each side similar in function as the typical file manager interface): (a) the left side represents your system, the local source site; (b) the right side represents the remote or the target site.
Many other useful information is displayed here. - For example, in Fig. 2, the "/" shows that I am connected to the "root" level (the upper-most level of the volume structure) of the remote site's directory tree.
Students will see different paths that look something like this: /home/perweb/14/yourusername/ - which, by the way, also tells you that you are connected to the root of your allocated remote site volume.
The Fig. 2 example shows that my remote site's root contains a folder called "MyWebSite" which I created some time in the past.

A student in this class must first create a folder called "itec1000a" in their root directory; then inside that directory, three more subdirectories named, a1, a2 and images. The information that follows will help you complete this task.

Fig. 2 - Successful Connection Example

Step #3 - Setting Local System File Paths

Note: This is not critical until you actually do the assignment and create the files to upload but it is useful to plan to mirror the folder structure in both systems for convenience.

Ensure that you are in the correct local directory by navigating to where the files you want to upload/publish are located.

If required, use the Up Directory button to move up a level in the directory tree, or 2x-click on folder icons to move down deeper.

This icon may also be used to move up a level in the directory tree. Note that there is also a similar icon in the Local side but without the angle brackets. The two consecutive dots, .., are commonly used to represent the notion of "up directory" in network related contexts.

Step #4 - Making New Directories/Folders

Now we are ready to make new directories or folders (the two terms are interchangeable). There are several easy ways to make new directories/folders wherever they are desired (both local and remote) to organize your files sensibly. Below are two examples.

Option #1.

Perhaps the simplest way to make new folders is to click in the directory area within which you want to create a new folder then click the Make Directory button belonging to the same side to initiate the process; then enter a name in the dialog box that pops up (Fig. 4).

Fig. 3 - Local and Remote Site Button Arrays

Fig. 4 - Name A New Folder Dialog Box

The first folder to make in the root is itec1000a - .All in lowercase.
When it is displayed in the remote site (right) side, 2x-click the new folder name.
Now you are in the itec1000a folder within which you will create three more folders: a1, a2 and images - All in lowercase.
Note: the images folder will be used to store all your image/graphics files relevant to all your web pages.

Option #2.

Another way to create a new directory/folder is by right-clicking inside the desired target directory (the one in which you want to create a new subdirectory/subfolder) to open a pop-up menu.

Fig. 5. shows the root directory of the remote site as the target directory within which a sub-folder will be created.

Place the mouse pointer any empty space in the desired target area and Right-click to open a pop-up menu.
Now select: Directory Commands>> Make Directory>> then enter the new folder name.

Fig. 5 - Make A Directory/Folder By Right-Clicking

Repeat the Make Directory procedure for any remaining folders required .

Your remote site preparation is complete when, for example, the remote site - /home/perweb/14/yourusername/itec1000a/ - contains the subfolders as displayed in Fig. 6.

Fig 6. - Subfolders created inside the ../itec1000a/ directory

Congratulations! - Your Web space is now organized and ready for your assignment files.

A brief caveat note: although I have given the impression that a FTP client, such as Core FTP and Fetch, is required to perform the tasks described above, it is not exactly the whole story. There is also a simple way to achieve similar results using your Windows Explorer file manager interface (as some of you may already know) which will be discussed later in a different context. That being said, we should note, however, that it too relies on FTP as a part of the fundamental Internet service infrastructure.

Once you construct a web page file and upload it to, e.g., the a1 folder, that web page is published in the World Wide Web (WWW) which means that anyone may browse it using its Uniform Resource Locator (URL) address that looks something like this:

http://www.students.yorku.ca/~yourusername/itec1000a/a1/somefilename.html (More on URL specifications later.)

Note the URL format example above contains a tilde symbol, "~" prefixed to yourusername indicating that a short-cut version of the path specification is used in place of the longer remote site volume path specification mentioned above.
Remember to prefix yourusername with a tilde symbol when constructing URLs of Student Web pages hosted by the York Web server.
Also, note the Unix convention forward-slash symbol, "/", rather than the Microsoft convention of using the back-slash, "\", for delimiting file paths.

...But, at this point, since there is nothing in your folders to browse, obviously there is no point in trying to 'test-view' your site with a browser.

Speaking of browsers, there are occasions when different flavours of browsers render the same file differently. In many instances, the differences are minor but in other instances, compatibility is a serious problem. I have found that the Moodle system is highly compatible with Mozilla based browsers such as Firefox (3.x or later) or Google Chrome or Apple Safari. All online documents provided in this course are tested for compatibility with these browsers. Unfortunately, Microsoft's IE has been reported to be troublesome at times although much less so since the release of version 8. If you must use IE as your browser, please ensure that you have the latest release version.