Making a Web Page for CSI771 / STAT751

You can make web pages on any computer. A file containing a web page is an ASCII file consisting of HTML directives and text. Its name generally has the extension html or htm

Before presenting your web page to the world, it is usually best to build it on your PC and test it out. You may find it convenient first to build on your PC your entire directory structure of files that will go on the world wide web, and then upload it to a computer that has a www server.

To put web pages on the world wide web, you must have an account on a computer that has a www server and that is connected to the internet. Two at George Mason are mason.gmu.edu and scs.gmu.edu.

Instructions for making a webpage on the GMU mason.gmu.edu computer are here.

The George Mason computers require a secure connection for transferring files. (Telnet no longer can be used.) A widely-used program for secure connections is putty. (See instructions for secure connections.)

How to do it on a Unix/Linux machine

  • Log onto your account on a computer that has a www server and that is connected to the internet.
  • Make sure your account is worldreadable:
    cd ..
    chmod 755 (your accountname)
    cd
  • Make a directory for your Web stuff:
    mkdir public_html
    chmod 755 public_html
  • Make a directory for your CSI 771 Web stuff, within public_html:
    cd public_html
    mkdir csi771
    chmod 755 csi771
  • Within csi771, make an index file, index.html.
    This file contains text and information.

    The URL of your index page is
    server_name/~your_account_name
    for example,
    mason.gmu.edu/~jgentle

    Use your browser's command to view the source of a file containing a web page to see what a file looks like.

    A note of caution:

    The Web makes it very easy to copy text from someone else. That is generally OK, so long as you do not put it in your own account and present it as your own. Doing that is plagarism, and is a crime.


    After the pioneering work on the protocols and language for the World Wide Web done at CERN, primarily by Tim Berners-Lee, development of web browsers and further refinements of the language were done at the the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Here are some excerpts from a guide published by NCSA.