1. Use an FTP client to log in to your home directory on www.his.com. Don't specify a path when you log in - just specify your login name and your password, and the FTP server will take you to your home directory. (Don't try to log in as "anonymous" - that won't work on www.his.com).

2. Create a subdirectory called public_html (all lower-case). If you're using WS_FTP under Windows, click the MkDir button on the "remote system" side of the screen and enter public_html into the dialog that pops up. If you're using a Mac, use Fetch or Anarchie. (If you're using Fetch, specify "raw" mode, rather than "MacBinary").

   Click here to download WS_FTP32 (Windows) or Fetch (Mac). There is documentation for installation and use included with each package.

3. Using your FTP client, go into the public_html subdirectory (looks like a folder in many FTP clients). Upload your .HTML and .gif or .jpg files. The file you name index.html (index.htm, home.html, or home.htm will also work) will be the default page that will come up when people specify:

   http://www.his.com/sample

   ... assuming your user name is "sample" ...

   If you want them to be able to go to a specific page, they can do so by specifying the page this way:

   http://www.his.com/sample/whatever.html

4. Upload whatever support files (.jpg, .gif, whatever) to the public_html subdirectory. Don't put them directly in your home directory - they have to be in public_html for the system to find them.

5. Note that upper/lower case in file names matters, since our server is a UNIX system. Wombat.html and WOMBAT.HTML and wombat.html are different files as far as UNIX is concerned, so be mindful of this. If you're uploading files from a PC, note that file names may come out in all-upper-case; this is OK - just set up the link the same way so the case matches and everything will work fine. Also, since Windows machines can't handle (or create) file names with more than 3 characters in the suffix, your files will have names like WOMBAT.HTM instead of WOMBAT.HTML ... that's OK - .HTM works as well as .HTML on the www.his.com server.

6. Tip: www.his.com is a very fast server - the hardware it runs on is very fast, and the software it runs (BSD UNIX and the latest Apache web server) is very powerful ... but remember that many of the folks who are going to access your pages are calling over 14.4 modem connections, so they'll appreciate your keeping your image files as small as possible. Consider using .JPG instead of .GIF - JPEG supports more colors than GIF and files are usually smaller. An image in .JPG format might only be 40K, and that'll come up on people's screens in 1/3 the time that a 120K GIF version will require.

7. Tip: while working on your web pages, if you're using Netscape, go under the OPTIONS menu, to PREFERENCES, to CACHE & NETWORK, and check "every time" next to "Check documents." If you don't do this you may think you've lost your mind when you change your .html files, upload the new ones, and don't see your changes reflected. Netscape caches web pages and graphics to disk to save time on subsequent accesses, and you want it NOT to do this while you're making changes that you want to test and see the results of right away.

8. If you want the system to log how many times your pages have been accessed, include the following in your html code:

   This page has been accessed <!--#exec cgi="/cgi-bin/counter"--> times.

   Example: This page has been accessed 1805269 times.

   Substitute "counter-ord" for "counter" if you want your output to say "23rd" instead of "23" ...

9. If you want to automatically show the last-modified date of your page, include the following in your html code:

   Last modified: <!--#echo var="LAST_MODIFIED"-->

   The result will look like:

   Last modified: Sunday, 18-Mar-2001 23:30:08 EST

   The following code formats the date and time of modification a little differently:

   <!--#config timefmt="%A %B %e, %Y at %R" -->
   Last modified: <!--#echo var="LAST_MODIFIED"-->

   The result will look like:

   This page was last modified: Sunday March 18, 2001 at 23:30

   Click here for date formatting ideas.

10. If you want to have your home page listed on the www.his.com page, drop an email note to HIS Support and let us know. Your page need not be listed under your name - if you've developed a set of pages for Sample Corp., we can list them on the www.his.com user page list that way. Having your page listed at http://www.his.com/userpages.html has the following advantages:
    • Search engines (altavista.digital.com, www.lycos.com, etc.) will find your pages automatically so you won't have to submit your URL manually if you don't want to.
    • Our system will generate a web-access report for you every day. See samples at http://www.his.com/userlogs

11. We can set up a guestbook for you that visitors can post to. See this sample for an example. Guestbooks can be a lot of fun - if you have us set one up, though, keep in mind that anybody can post anything they want, so be prepared for anything. HTML-savvy visitors can even embed images in their comments, so you'll want to pay close attention to your guestbook to make sure it doesn't contain anything that you'd rather not have posted on your site. You can remove things you don't like by downloading the guestbook.html file via FTP, editing it, and uploading the replacement over the original. The basic guestbook page is plain-looking, but you can customize it however you like once we've set it up for you. Drop a note to HIS Support if you'd like us to set up a guestbook for you.

12. Virtual Web Server sites can use the SWISH-E (Simple Web Indexing System for Humans - Enhanced) full-text search engine - for examples, see:
    
    
    • http://travel.state.gov/search.html
    • http://www.twf.org/search.html
    • http://www.npg.org/search.html
    
    This is a very powerful search engine that uses an indexed database. Full boolean (and/or/not) searching is supported. Despite its power, SWISH-E is very fast. Drop a note to HIS Support if you'd like us to set up SWISH-E for you on your virtual web site.

Icons available for your use.

Image	HTML Source to Add to Your Page Code
	<A HREF="http://www.his.com/"> <IMG SRC="http://www.his.com/icons/hosted_by_heller.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="Hosted by his.com"> </A>
	<A HREF="http://www.his.com/"> <IMG SRC="http://www.his.com/icons/hosted_by_hiscom.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="Hosted by his.com"> </A>

Choose a background color . . .

• Dougie's Color Picker
• Background Color Selector

• Julianne Tolson's textures page
• KPT Background Archive
• Pattern Land
• Texture Land

• The Compendium of HTML Elements
• The HTML Reference Library
• Web Design Group: Web Authoring Reference
• Top 10 Web Tips
• How to Avoid the Top 10 Fatal Website Mistakes

Tune Up Your Web Site Free:

• Webalizer - www.his.com stats for the past year - updated: [an error occurred while processing this directive]
• Analog - www.his.com stats for current month - updated: Thursday, November 13, 2003 at 01:00
• Your Pages - extract current or past-month log data for your web pages
  • Get a copy of Analog to analyze your log extracts and generate your own reports
  • www.his.com sites listed at http://www.his.com/userpages.html get automatically generated reports daily - for samples, click here.

• To have your site added, drop a note to support@his.com