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Basic Homepage Setup for Individual Accounts

The following instructions apply to individuals with regular member accounts who want to set up a personal homepage. (If you are setting up a Web site for your organization, please see Basic Web Site Setup for Web Hosting Accounts.)

These instructions assume you have the following:

• Internet access via PPP, ISDN, cable modem or other broadband connection
• a secure FTP program (more information below)
• a Web browser like Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc.
• you are familiar with HTML and are able to create Web pages

1. Your homepage address will be http://www.prairienet.org/~username where username is the name you use to log in to your account. The ~ character is called a tilde and is located at the top left of most keyboards.

2. Create and name your Web pages. Your default homepage file name can be either homepage.html or index.html. This lets you use a short URL, meaning you don't have to specify a file name. (Advanced users: if you are using PHP, index.php will also work as a default.)

3. Use a secure FTP program with the following settings to upload files to your public_html folder.

   Hostname: ftp.prairienet.org
   Username: [your login]
   Password: [your password]

   When you first log in, you will be in your home folder which is private. Files uploaded here cannot be viewed by anyone else.

   Switch to the public_html folder to upload files directly to your public Web directory. Files in your public directory can be viewed by anyone on the Web.

   CAUTION: some HTML publishing programs, notably Frontpage, will erase public_html and replace it with a local folder that will not work. Try to avoid using options that erase all old files on the server.

4. Once your files have been uploaded, you can view your homepage at http://www.prairienet.org/~username

Secure FTP

• We recommend the following secure FTP programs: WinSCP for Windows [download] and Fugu for Mac. Both are Open Source and available for free download. MacSFTP is free to try, $24 to buy.

• If you haven't used SFTP before, please see instructions for SFTP for Windows Users (WinSCP).

• Because we no longer make regular FTP available for security reasons, the built-in publishing via regular FTP in Microsoft Frontpage and older versions of Netscape and Dreamweaver will no longer work. Please see vendor sites for information on which versions support secure FTP. You can still use these programs to create and manage your Web pages, but you will need to use a secure FTP program to upload your files. Most Web-based blogging services have a secure FTP option.