I.

“Hello World”

There are rituals and traditions in every discipline.  Famous first words are a central part of technological innovation.

  1. September 30, 1452 — Johann Guttenberg published the first book using his new printing press, the Guttenberg Bible, an edition of the Latin Vulgate. "In principio creavit Deus cælum et terram. . . ." But you know the rest.
  2. May 24, 1844 — Samuel Morse sends the first telegraph message, "What hath God wrought?", taken from Numbers 23:23, KJV.
  3. March 10, 1876 — Alexander Graham Bell makes the first telephone call, saying, "Mr. Watson — Come here — I want to see you."
  4. 1972 — Brian Kernighan publishes a manual for writing code in the Language B, and includes the instructions for making the computer give the output,  "Hello, World."  Since that time, it has been traditional to make the first words of any program be "Hello, World."
Clearly the more sophisticated the technology, the less we have to say.  Someday we may gain telepathy, but we will have lost the ability to form statements.

The goal of the "Hello World" assignment is always the same — to show that you have gained the minimum competence to make the progam say what you want it to.  At the other end of the process, you make the computer sing "Daisy" when you have achieved such mastery over the dread machine that you have given it a nervous breakdown.

What follows are my instructions for getting going on a website at Tech.  ULM has similar procedures, but I'm not familiar with them. 

I'm fine with you setting up a site somewhere else.  In fact, it might be preferable because you can keep it after you finish school.

II.

Setting up a Web Site at LA Tech

I stole these directions from the Tech HelpDesk. Let me know if you have any questions

Student Webspace
Every student has access to webspace to create and build websites. This article contains instructions on how to access that space.

From the labs:

  1. Open My Computer.
  2. If you have an E: drive, skip to step 4. If not, continue to step 3.
  3. Click on Tools > Map Network Drive. Choose any available letter. In the Folder field, type \\hyperion\(insert your username here). Click finish.
  4. Click on File > New > Folder.
  5. Create a folder named public_html (must be typed in lowercase, using the underscore, not the hyphen).
  6. Go to where your html files and graphic files you want published are stored.
  7. Copy all these files to your public_html folder.

From off campus with an FTP program:

  1. Use your favorite FTP program to login to beta.latech.edu with your normal username and password.  One good program is FileZilla.  It is an open-source, free program.
  2. If asked, the type should be auto detect.
  3. Make a folder called public_html.
  4. Copy your files to the public_html folder.
  5. I've been having some problems with files that are ftped into my web site.  They can't always be seen by a browser.  There is a tab labelled 'permissions' to the right of the file.  It should be 744 of 755. 
    1. If it reads some other number, right click on the file and select permissions.
    2. Click on 'Read' in group and public permissions.
    3. You may need to do this to the folders too.  You can have the program change the permissions for all the files in a folder.

Notes:
 

Write your page using the editor of your choice.  You can use the Tryit Editor we've been practicing on, then save it as your index.html file. 

WARNING: Don't use Word; it produces horrible code.  Use one of the programs I recommended or one of the online services like WordPress or Drupal.