Featured conferences are encouraged to create web sites to draw in new participants, share information globally and provide a resource for conference members.


14.1 Your Conference Web Directory (Featured Conferences only)

Each Featured conference starts with a simple web page containing the original description of your conference, the hosts' names and logins, and a few links back to the conference categories, the conference itself via Well Engaged, and The WELL home page. Your conference's basic little page is just waiting for the full technicolor mastery of your imagination and creativity.

If you are accustomed to building web pages, go ahead and improve on your conference's web page with whatever web-building techniques you prefer.

The external URL is in the form of http://www.well.com/conf/mesozoic/ for example. Once you've logged in via SSH, telnet or FTP, the directory where those misozoic conference web page files reside is /well/web/misozoic/

You may change ownership of that directory to yourself at any time by typing:

   !webowner mesozoic 

"But wait, what about me?", you ask. "I don't know HTML, and even if I did, how would I get the files installed? I only know the PicoSpan interface!" Take heart, The WELL has a workaround for you.

Like the info directory, there is a web directory associated with each Featured conference in which you can house and edit your web files. This web directory is set up very similarly to your info directory and vai menu choices allows you to manipulate your files, create subdirectories, list the directory contents, and so on. To access your web directory menu,

type: !webdir

You'll be prompted for the real name of your conference. Once you enter it, you'll be shown this menu of choices.

_______________________________________________________________________
                   CONFERENCE WEB DIRECTORY MENU

                1 - List contents (short)
                2 - List contents (long)
                3 - View file(s) with pager
                4 - View file with lynx
                5 - Copy file(s) into web directory
                6 - Copy file from web directory
                7 - Remove file(s)
                8 - Edit file
                9 - Move (rename) file(s)
               10 - Make subdirectory
               11 - Remove subdirectory
               12 - List subdirectory contents (short)
               13 - List subdirectory contents (long)
               14 - List contents of your working directory

q=Quit this menu                                     p=turn Pager OFF
______________________________________________________________________
Select one of the above items (1-14 or a letter) ==>

These commands will work much as the !infomenu command does. One different choice you have is option 4 - View file with lynx. Lynx is a text-based web browser that is available to almost anyone with an Internet account. This option lets you take a look at how any of your web files show up to a user looking at them through the lynx browser. This is also an excellent check for web pages that were built in a graphical browser, like Netscape or IE, to see if they are still understandable and coherent in plain text. When you choose this option, it will prompt you for the name of the file you wish to look at, and away you go.

It's always a good idea to design your conference web pages either in your home directory or your personal WEB subdirectory, then transfer it to the conference web directory when you are satisfied with it. This way you can test your changes, look at it through a browser, and fix any cosmetic or content burrs before you install the page for the world to see. When you do finally get it designed and installed to your satisfaction, you can point your browser of choice at the URL of your page, which will look something like:

http://www.well.com/conf/mesozoic

Voila!


14.2 Creating your Conference Front Page on the Web

How do you create the pages themselves?

Web pages are coded in a simplified formatting language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language). Take a look at the code for the standard page that your conference starts out with. You can do this through option 3 - View files with pager of the !webdir menu, choosing the file you want to look at (it'll be named "index.html"). Or, if you have a graphical web browser like Netscape, pull up your conference page, then view "source". This will display the raw code so you can see exactly how the code correlates to what you see in your browser.

You will immediately notice a number of cryptic letters, words or phrases in brackets. For example: <title>About the Mesozoic Conference</title> <body> <h1>About the Mesozoic Conference on The WELL</h1> <hr> <pre>

These bracketed sets of letters are called "tags". Tags are what HTML uses to know how to format a certain string of text. You'll also notice that for almost every tag there's a complimentary tag that follows a bit after it but includes a slash: <title> </title> or <h1> </h1>. The first tag tells your browser where to start using that particular formatting command, and the second one tells it when to stop. The text in between is the text that the command is applied to. Some of the most common and useful tags to know are:

<pre> Preserve    the paragraphs and spacing    
                              exactly as typed </pre>

These are very basic HTML tips. If you really want to design complex web pages -- add images and custom formatting, make lists of things, and do some of the other really neat tricks you've seen on other folks' pages -- there are several resources to check out. Visit http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html and you'll find an HTML primer that covers a lot about commands, formatting, and general coding. There is also a series of excellent books out now by one of our very own authors, Laura Lemay, including Teach Yourself Web Publishing With HTML 4 In 21 Days. Not only is it a wonderfully-written guide to learning HTML, but she also teaches you about page design and information presentation.

In addition, if you find a page that you particularly like while surfing the web, or see some neat trick that you'd like to incorporate into your conference pages, take advantage of the "view source" command in Netscape (or the backslash in lynx) to investigate how the author did it. The WELL Web Conference is also a great source for tips and answers. For some examples of what hosts have done with conference front pages, you might also want to check out the web pages of the Cooking and Linux conferences.

If you point to graphics or pages in other web directories, on The WELL or elsewhere, you'll want to check your pages now and then to be sure the links still work. There's nothing more frustrating than clicking on an interesting link and getting an error message saying the material isn't there anymore.

If you use your conference directories to present graphics, sounds or words created by your conference members, you'll want to be sure to have permission to publish the material. You may want to save email containing the assurance that the conference participant is the author or artist, or otherwise has the rights to give you permission to publish the material in your conference web directory.

Most importantly, let your creativity reign and have fun! The conference web pages are one of the prime ways to put your conference on the map and attract great participants from elsewhere on the Net.