CityNet Web Author Page




We have attempted to pull together many of the resources available on the net that deal with the creation of World Wide Web resources.




General Authoring

CityNet Web Author Newsgroup

 A great place to ask (and hopefully get answers for) authoring questions is our local newsgroup.


Usenet Web Related Newsgroups

 For those questions that may be difficult for us locals to answer, you can try one of the Usenet groups. These groups are are places to get answers to basic and advanced questions about creating documents. If you are just begining, you probably want to start out with either the comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html group or the comp.infosystems.www.authoring.misc group. If you have finished that web page that is going to impress the world, you can announce is on If you are interested in other Web providers (how could you!?) and you want a good place to pick up the latest gossip on when MicroSoft is going to buy the Net (some people do believe this will happen) then try

Tutorials

 We are new to Web Authoring ourselves. We are sure that some of our subscribers could teach us a thing or to. As we created this document, we visited some of the following Tutorial sites. The first is the most basic. The second site contains a pretty comprehensive tutorial. The last site runs the gamut from simple to complex. It has pointers to even more tutorials.

Web Style Guides

 Once you get the mechanics down, you may wish to work on the estetics. Somehow combining the various elements into a harmonious whole. These two guide provide a little insite into this. They also discuss some of the things that should exist on every html document. This includes things like the signature that appears at the end of this document.

Public Domain Icon Collections

 You have the mechanics down, you have visited a few sites and noticed that they contain ... graphics While putting this page together, I borrowed graphics from some of the following sites.


Tools

A good HTML Editor can make the task of writting HTML documents considerably easier. It can also force you to create better documents.


Mac Authoring

The Mac authoring scene is pretty mediocre at the moment. The Windows people currently have us beat in this area, but this situation should be quickly rectified with the release of HotMetal for the Mac.
HTML SuperText
I used the product to create the document you are looking at know. It is relatively easy to use, but is not as smooth as it could be.
BBEdit 3.0 plus HTML Extensions b7
I previously used this excellent text editor combined with the HTML extensions. This is not a What You See Is What You Get editor. But, it works.

Other Mac Authoring Sites

Other goodies we have discovered on the way for the Mac inclined.


Windows Authoring

 I can not claim to have much experience in this area, although this is something I want to change real soon. There are two editors that I have heard a good deal about. HotMetal and HTML Edit. They are geared towards different sorts of users.
HTML Edit is easy to use.
There is not much of a learning curve (in comparison to HotMetal.) It may be a good place to start. We have not had any direct experience with this. If anyone does get a chance to use it, please drop us a line with your experiences.
HotMetal is a little difficult at first, but quite powerful.
It forces you to use correct syntax. HotMatal is by SoftQuad, a company that specializes in SGML applications. HTML is moving towards complete conformity with SGML. It is the choice of the serious Web Author. You may also want to get either the HotMetal Postscript documentation, if you have a Postscript printer available, or HotMetal text documentation if you do not.

CityNet Authoring

 We have gone over much of the general information available, now we will get into the things you need to know in order to interact with the CityNet WWW server.

How do I put my documents on the Server?
Each person with a Full Access account on CityNet has an area on the Web Server where Web Resources can be made available to the world. This area exists in the subdirectory /usr/people/username/public_html. Substitute username with the username you use to connect to the system. Any document you place in public_html will be accessable via the URL http://www.city-net.com/~username/resource.name. The resource.name will be the name of the document or image or whatever you are making available. You can put material in this directory using an FTP client, such as Fetch or Anarchie for the Mac, or WS-FTP for Windows.

What is the Default Document Name?
The default document that will be displayed when a person enters only a directory name is index.htm. As an example, if someone where to attempt to access the URL "http://www.city-net.com/~subscriber/", the document named "index.html" in the subscribers "public_html" subdirectory would be displayed.

What WWW Server Software does CityNet use?
CityNet has switched from NCSA's httpd to Apache. This basically is NCSA's httpd with many performance and security enhancements. It should speed things up a bit. The above link will provide you with more information, if you are interested. Most of the information from NCSA's httpd still applies.

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CityNet Web Author Page / CityNet, Inc. / douglas@city-net.com