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How to Create Your Own Website to Support an On-line Course: tips, hints and practical information.

by Sloan-C

This article is addressed to anybody who would like to create his/her own Website to support an on-line course. This article is PC-oriented so you will find a lot of information concerning PCs. Some information about Apple will be given as well. A good page for Mac users to consult is the Guide to Macintosh Development Tools.
We will review different topics listed below:

• Equipment (Hardware, Software)
• Architecture of your site (on the server)
• Maintenance and Updating
• Glossary
• Tips

I. EQUIPMENT

You need a server where your site will reside. In this article we will assume that you have a connection available to the Internet (such as at universities or colleges). If you don't have a connection to the Internet you can rent some space on a server from a Internet Service Provider but we won't explore that solution. The Microsoft FrontPage site has links to hundreds of ISPs that provide FrontPage service.

You will need a computer, a http server (software) and some tools that will help you to edit and create pages or analyze your site.

The Computer

A server can be a computer located on your desk or some where in your institution. The advantages of using a "shared" server are (1) you don't have to maintain it, (2) it won't cost you much (nothing or monthly fees). The disadvantages are (1) you don't have full control of your site, (2) changes may require support staff time.
If you use your own server, you are "the Chairman of the Board". That sort of privilege means however that you need to know the technology to run a server, how to maintain it, and it will cost money before you start. The advantages are that you will have full control over the site (hardware and software) and the programming. (Personally, we like the latter solution much better than the former).

If you decided to go with a "shared server" you need to discuss with the system manager to know what you need to deliver to him in order to provide your on-line course, what kind of http server they use, what kind of scripts (script language) they support, what kind of security issues they have, etc.

Now let's assume that you decide to go with your own server. You will see it is not so difficult. First you need to choose a computer that will be able to support easily the number of hits (accesses) requested on your site, a fast machine with enough disk space to store the content of the course(s).

PC users: some examples:

• Pentium 120 MHz, 32 M of RAM with 2Gb of disk space will be enough to support a few courses
• Pentium Pro 200MHz, 64 M of RAM with 2.2 Gb of disk
• Practically speaking: you don't need a very high speed machine. You must have lots of memory (e.g., at least 32 MB) and big disks - the bigger the better). On the ALN Web, we used enormous amounts of disk space to store PowerPoint slides, for example.

The HTTP Server

If you choose a PC, Microsoft NT is a very good and easy to use operating system. NT 4.0 comes with the IIS server (Internet Information Server) which includes an HTTP server, FTP and Gopher servers. You can choose another HTTP server such as Website, EMWAC, Netscape communication, etc.(complete list here). They are usually very easy to install. Most of them have a free version for education. If you need a secure server (to be able to limit and control the access to the site) you need to pay for it.

You can also install an http server on Windows 95 or NT workstation. The Front Page Personal Server from Microsoft works very well. Note that versions of the FrontPage server have limited the number of webs that you can create. However, FrontPage works with other http: servers.

For Macintosh users, httpd4Mac or Web Server 4D are two http servers among others.

The Tools

Web documents are written in a format called HTML, standing for HyperText Markup Language. This language use "tags" that will be recognized and translated by the server and transmitted to the "browser" or web client. To know about HTML language, look at some guides such as A Beginner's Guide to HTML or The HTML Quick Reference Guide (You will find others with an Internet search with key words: html guide).

EDITING: You can edit your document with a text editor such as Notepad in Windows. The document needs to be saved with an extension ".htm" or ".html". With this method you will have to write yourself all the tags in your document. To help beginners and those who don't want to learn all the tags, some software companies have created tools that put the tags for you in the document. One of the most used is called FrontPage from Microsoft. FrontPage is a very friendly editing tool that permits creating an html document without knowing a single html tag. For complex documents (for example, using frames) you may have to work the "old way" with Notepad.
"Internet Assistant" for MS Word helps also to create html documents. Mac users can consult the paragraph "Internet authoring tools" from the Guide to Macintosh Development Tools.

FIGURES: The figures you insert in your documents must be saved as GIF, JPEG or XBM format. GIF is the most common format used. You can make some animated figures. There are just a series of figures that are loaded with ordered sequences. Different software exists to prepare your animated figures. Here is one example for PC and one for Mac:

• GIF Construction Set for Windows (animated figures) from Alchemy Mindworks
• GIFBuilder 0.1.1 for Macintosh by Yves Piguet

It is nice also to make your figures transparent. Consult this page, to learn more on how to convert figures into transparent figures (For PC and Mac users).

INTERACTION: In an on-line course it is nice to be able to interact with students asking questions, giving quizzes,etc..There are different ways to do this.

• One can use forms and scripts. A form allows the user to send information to the server. Forms are built with a series of html tags and a CGI (Common Gateway Interface) script is attached to the form for the submission and processes the information. The script can be written in different languages such as Perl (Perl for Win32), C or Visual Basic. The program reside on the server, usually in a directory reserved for cgi scripts.
• JavaScripts allow also interaction with the user. The codes reside in the html page.
• Java from Sun is an object-oriented language. This is for more advanced programmers.
• If you want to learn more, see the on-line course by John Bourne: http://jrbnt.vuse.vanderbilt.edu/274/

DATABASE CONNECTIVITY: It may be useful to keep records of students or other information in a database. Information can be gathered from the web and stored directly in a database and data from a database can be shown on a web page. Some software exist that makes the connection between the html page and the database such as:

• Cold Fusion from Allaire
• R:Web from Microrim
• IDC (Internet Database Connector) from Microsoft comes with the NT4.0 server (including also the IIS)
• For Apple users, consult the paragraph "Tools for dynamic Web applications" from the Guide to Macintosh Development Tools.

II. ARCHITECTURE OF YOUR SITE

Your site needs to have structured file system.

All the information stored in your site is contained into files arranged into (sub)directories.

• The files should be named with words that relate to the files contents with the appropriate extension (.htm or html for documents, .gif or .jpeg for figures, .pl or .exe for scripts, etc).
• (Sub)directories should be used to ease the management of the site. Choose relevant names.
  For instance, you can have a main directory named by the course such as ES130 or MOT213, and have subdirectories for each subject of the course such as Intro, chapter1, or statistics. The figures can be stored in one subdirectory called figures or images, or each subdirectory (subject) can have its own subdirectory for the graphics related to that subject.
  A special subdirectory, usually called cgi-bin or scripts, contains all the scripts.

III. MAINTENANCE AND UPDATING

Maintenance

• Do a backup regularly.
• Verify and adjust links.
• Use a site statistics package to analyze your site (software that needs to be install on the server) such as Hit List from Marketwave.
• Review the guest book, if you have one and send visitors periodic emails when there is a significant update. People who sign the guestbook are probably interested in your site. (It is worth noting that on the ALN Web, the inclusion of the JavaScript banner asking folks to sign the guestbook is very effective).

Updating

• Update the content of html pages.
• Review the site statistics and use the given information. For example, work carefully on the most visited pages, delete or replace the pages with very few hits.
• Use feedback from users.

IV. GLOSSARY

• CGI: The Common Gateway Interface is a standard for external gateway programs to interface with information servers such as HTTP servers.
• Client: A client is a user (computer or software) who uses processes or software processes running on a server.
• Form: A set of fields on a page that will be processed (when submitted) by a CGI script residing on the server.
• GIF: Graphics Interchange Format. A method of encoding images.
• HTML: HyperText Markup Language. This language was created documents delivered on the WWW. It is a series of tags inserted in plain text that indicate how the elements of the document will be displayed.
• HTTP: HyperText Transfer Protocol. One of the standard used on the Internet for delivering information.
• Home page: The home page is the starting page in a web displayed by default when you visit a web.
• Internet: The world-wide collection of interconnected networks.
• Intranet: A network whose access is restricted within some domain (e.g., within an organization).
• IP address: An IP (Internet Protocol) address is a standard way of identifying a computer that is connected to a network. The IP address is four numbers separated by periods, and each number is less than 256, for example, 129.68.100.69.
• JPEG: Joint Photographic Expert Group. A 24-bit per pixel color image format
• Link: A link connects text or an image to a page either in the current web or on the World Wide Web. It is represented as a URL.
• mailto: The Internet protocol that is used to send electronic mail.
• MIME type: Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extensions. A method used by web browsers to associate files of a certain type with helper applications that can display files of that type.
• Protocol: A method of accessing a document or service over the Internet, such as ftp, for File Transfer Protocol, or http, for HyperText Transfer Protocol.
• Server: A computer that runs processes shared by multiple users (clients) or software processes that serve client processes. In the World Wide Web, the server is the computer that runs the web-server program that responds to http protocol requests by providing web pages.
• URL: Uniform Resource Locator. An address convention for indicating the location of materials to be accessed on the WWW.
• Web: A set of html documents delivered on the WWW.
• Web Browser: A WWW software client that allows to displays web pages as hypertext, with embedded images (e.g., Netscape or Mosaic).
• Web Site: Location where a Web is stored.
• WWW: The World Wide Web is the collection of knowledge and information sources provided on the Internet in hypertext transfer protocol (http) format.

V. TIPS

• Make it easy to navigate through your site. For example, put links to return to main pages.
• Give the opportunity to the user to return feedback. (Use a form or simply via a email address)
• Use that feedback to update your site.
• Remember that some the browsers don't support all the new features of the newest browsers such as Netscape3.0 or Explorer 3.0. (Frames, JavaScripts, etc. may not be supported)
• Sound and video required special hardware. Not all computers are equipped with sound and video cards.
• Be sure that the files are not to big (long time to download). Figures increase download time.
• Pages that display only text is boring the look at. Use graphics, colors, tables, and lists in your pages.
• Be sure that the figures are not bigger than the size of the screen.
• Use a simple color palette for the figures.
• Use relative links into your site (in case you need to move on another server).