I have been roped in to help design a website for a local charity. I am currently a university student that has experience designing sites to good effect (Within university). I am comfortable using the relevant languages and packages. What I am not so sure about is hosting.
If I have a site that has a newsletter, for example. If I wanted the user to be able to download that newsletter, would I simply have that file uploaded somewhere on the hosting server and simply provide a link to that file?
Thanks
Yes. Although you might also wish to use a Content-Disposition HTTP header to ensure that the file gets saved rather than opened in the default application for whatever file type it uses.
Yeah, that's really all you have to do. The only thing is if its a file that the users browser will attempt to open then you need to force the download like David said, this would be the case for a pdf file, such as a newsletter like you said. And yes, to answer your other question, all hosting providers will support downloads like this.
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I ve got some knowledge in writing html and css so my friend wanted me to design something for him.But I dont have much knowledge about file transfer etc so I dont know how can I push my files to that domain and I could not find a trustable method in google.So basically how can I put my html code into a domain
Choosing a piece of software that can do FTP for transferring files to/from a server would be the first place to look.
I personally use FileZilla
You'll need the details of the web server and account to login.
I am a web developer. I know how to build websites from scratch using html, css, javascript etc.. but I want to give WordPress a try.
Before I start, I need to know if I can build my website without owning a domain or not?
Thanks
Depends if you want your website to be online or offline.
If you want it to be offline, you won't need a domain or a webspace. Just install XAMPP or WAMP like Diego said.
If you want it to be online, your Wordpress files need to be uploaded on a webspace (you could also get free hosting on http://www.bplaced.net/?lang=en) and if you don't want an own domain, you could use the IP address to reach your website.
The best option is to use the XAMPP and forget everything that confuses you for now.
You can get the detailed information here at http://wordpress.org
No, you don't necessarily need a domain name to have a Wordpress site. Just go to http://www.wordpress.com and create a free account. You won't need any technical know-how for making and publishing the blog, it's all done for you automatically and you'll get your free sub-domain as [username].wordpress.com.
I am learning the html course from the available tutorials on the internet. And with that knowledge I have developed some html files and I believe there is more to go. These files consist of our old school friends and their present condition and what they're doing. I have created a bunch of html files. Like I have created a website for now named as www.mypage.com
Arjun
So in the href I'm just giving the path but those files are in my desktop pc itself. How do I put them on internet and share with my friends who are living somewhere out of this town. I want to reunite all of my school friends using these files. But where do I upload them and make it like a webiste to my friends? Is there any free way to do that? Or any possible way to reach it.
And I'm saying sorry if the question is not for the tag I mentioned. Please let me know and I remove the tag. I don't know what is the link to wikiposts to share my views. If you know then let me see the link. Thank you.
Find a web hosting service (Google knows lots)
Sign up
Follow their instructions
Arjun
And use relative uris
I use http://webhosting.uk.com ... for about £32 a year you get asp.net hosting and access to sql server.
then you simply ftp up to your website something like this (using windows explorer) ....
ftp://mysite.com <-- not a real link
... that would then open up the remote server as if it was a local folder so you could drag and drop your files straight over.
there's an online chat link on the top right of the homepage, the support staff will walk you through getting setup.
don't forget though ... the cost of the domain name that's the bit that turns your server ip address in to stuff like google.co.uk ... I highly recommend them.
I shall just expand on Quentin's answer, because it is clear that you are new.
What you need is a web hosting service. This is a service which hosts your html pages, meaning stores them in their own computers, and also displays them to the world as webpages. Web hosting services are usually paid, but there are some excellent free services if your content is not too big. A simple and free service that I would recommend is Google Sites. You could also try Google App Engine, where you have more freedom and control over your content, but for the same reason it is a little more advanced. But since you are learning html, I believe it is a wise idea to learn more about these services and related concepts.
When you upload your files, the html links need to be changed. They can no longer point to files in your hard drive. When you upload these files, there will be a directory structure in it. All you need to do is place hyperlinks with relative addresses.
And about what your website will be called, www.whatever.com, that is quite another business. For that, you need to register your own domain name, for which you must pay. If you don't want to, then your website will be labelled something under the hosting service domain name. This forum is not adequate to go into a more elaborate explanation of all this, but I think I have mentioned all the key terms, so do some research!
here's my website:
www.newportclassic.com
do you know of any free, easy to use, content management systems, that will allow me to simply edit the text on my site without having to download the file, open the file, edit the code, save the file, upload the file ???????
I know of a few CMS's that have done well, here are two of them.
Wordpress - free - http://wordpress.org/ - 3.0 is coming soon
Perch - paid - http://grabaperch.com/ - very light and easy
Wikipedia has a very good list of content management systems broken down by language and cost (open source/proprietary) and DBMS. Most of the ones I've used/evaluated in the past have been .NET based, such as DotNetNuke. Pretty much any CMS will give you the ability to edit your HTML without changing any files on your web server. If you're going for simplicity, the Wikipedia list has several that use a flat file instead of a database, so I would start there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_management_systems#File_.2F_Flat_file
As an alternative to installing a CMS on your server, you might be interested in a service like CushyCMS. It allows you to specify what parts of your page are editable by setting an appropriate class in each editable div tag. Then to edit the contents of those div blocks, you log in to the CushyCMS site and make your changes right there. CushyCMS connects via FTP to the server for you and updates the HTML page.
You can use emacs -- it has a mode (tramp) where you can open, edit and save remote files as if they were on your local machine. This makes it really easy to edit files on a webserver.
haven't used it myself but i've heard Surreal CMS is quite good and easy to setup. Here's a tutorial to get you started.
In terms of user friendliness zimplit is hard to beat.
Try their demo.
You can literally edit your website with a wysiwyg interface inside your browser.
Refinery HQ is probably the easiest way to create, edit and update your website. You can upload images and files as you describe in your question.
You can also connect it to your own domain (it's a hosted service). So you'd be able to hook the site you create up to newportclassic.com
I have what seems like a typical usage scenario for users downloading, editing and uploading a document from a web page.
User clicks a link to download a document
User edits downloaded file
User saves the file
User goes back to the web page and uploads the new file with the changes
The problem is that downloaded files are typically saved in a temporary directory, so it can be difficult to find the file after it is saved. The application is for very non-technical users, and I can already imagine the problems with saved files being lost or the wrong versions being uploaded.
Is there a better way? Things I've thought about:
Using Google Docs or something similar.
Problems: forcing users to use new
application with less features,
importing legacy content, setting up
accounts for everyone to edit a
file.
Using WebDAV to serve the files. Not sure how this would work exactly, but seems like it should be possible
Some kind of Flash or Java app that manages downloads and uploads. Not sure if these even exist.
User education :)
If it matters, the files will be mostly Word and Powerpoint documents.
Actually, despite the fact that you have more flexibility with AJAX in developing application, the problem of uploading multiple files is not solved yet.
To the thoughts you've mentioned in your question:
Google Docs:
Online apps like Google docs are certainly appealing for certain use cases. However, if you'd like to upload Word and Powerpoint slides, you don't want the content to be changed once you've uploaded the document. The problem is that Google Docs uses its own data format and therefore changes some of the formats. If you go for an online app, I'd go for a Document Management Solution. I'm sure there are plenty (even free ones) out there; however, I didn't use any on them yet.
WebDAV It is possible and seems to me like the best solution. You can embed WebDav like any directory. Documents are locked until a user releases the document. Unfortunately, you don't have a web front end to manage the files or administer access restrictions.
It
Flash or Java app They do exist, for sure. I'd prefer Flash over Java since Flash Apps still run smoother within a browser. I would definitely not use a rich application, even if it is a Java Web Start app that can be downloaded and opens in a separate window. More and more, users seem to accept browser based web applications. Which brings me to point 4:
User education You can educate them, sure. But in the end you want them to want to use the system. Most often, users get easily used to a tool. However, if they don't like the tool, they're not going to use it.
Clear instructions to save to their desktop is a start. Then clear instructions to go to the desktop to re-up it. I've not run across an online MSWord viewer/editor or whatever format the file is, but I'm sure they exist, now that Google Docs and a few other online versions of MSOffice exist.
I would make sure that there are easy to follow instructions, plus a tutorial somewhere else (perhaps with a video too) to guide users through the process.