Phone: 616-331-2101
Fax: 616-331-2860
Computing and Technology Support
Helpdesk@gvsu.edu

207 Mackinac Hall
Allendale, MI 49401

All GVSU students may have a web page on www2.gvsu.edu.

  • Student web pages are stored on the students network drive space.
  • Students must create a folder at the root of their N: drive exactly named n:\public_html
  • All content to be displayed on the web such as pages images and nested folders must be in n:\public_html
  • A student home page may be named either of the following: 
    • index.htm
    • index.html
  • Your web address will be http://www2.gvsu.edu/~username
    (username is the same as your network login)

Saving Web Pages

  • Your web pages are saved on your network drive space in a folder named n:\public_html.  
  • On-campus students should login with their network account and save their files to their n:\public_html folder.
  • Off-campus students may use vpn.student.gvsu.edu to transfer their file to their n:\public_html folder. Your GVSU network ID and password will log you into the secure site.

Suggestions

Well-designed web pages are generally clean and simple, and will have the following elements:

  1. document title
  2. heading
  3. introductory paragraph
  4. a list of information included in the web page
  5. your address at the end

Also, it is a good practice to keep all filenames to eight characters or less, no spaces plus a three letter extension, so readers with earlier Window versions will get the correct files.


GVSU faculty

GVSU faculty may have access to a www2 account during the semester that they are teaching students how to create web pages.  The course coordinator should contact the helpdesk with a list instructors who are teaching that semester.

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT COPYRIGHTS: Copyright law applies to web documents! If you scavenge items from other web sites, ask permission to use it in your web page. Be careful of publishing material copyrighted by your textbook manufacturer (homework questions, answer keys, text graphics), for you are globally publishing this information.

You can learn more about HTML in A Beginner's Guide to HTML.

Glossary

Browser: A Browser is the software that lets the user access web pages on the internet. Examples of browsers are Netscape Navigator and Mosaic.

VPN: Virtual Private Network, a protocol computers use to secure a connection to another server and transfer data.

HTML: HyperText Markup Language, a language that is used to create web pages. From Netscape, you can view the actual HTML file that is used to create the web page you see by choosing "View" and then "Source".

HTTP: HyperText Transfer Protocol, a protocol web servers (such as www.gvsu.edu) and browsers (such as Netscape) use to transfer web documents.

URL: Uniform Resource Locator, an addressing system that allows you to uniquely address a file on the internet. Assumes addresses are of the form protocol://server/path/filename. An example is http://www.gvsu.edu/~smithj/homepage.html. This indicates we are addressing a web document (http://) that is on the server called www.gvsu.edu. The file on that server can be found down the path called ~smithj (a weird UNIX way of naming a path, or series of folders), and the name of the file is homepage.html.

Web Server: A machine on the internet that is able to publish web documents.
  Last Modified Date: August 25, 2009
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