Webpage Resources

About

This is a resource page that provides a template for webpages for students (and faculty) at the Department of Mathematics at the University of Oklahoma. Please contact Thomas Madsen or Jeff Breeding for comments and suggestions for improvements.

Locating Z:\WWW

To create a department webpage, you must first locate the correct directory to store your files. This directory is Z:\WWW. You can locate the directory by following these steps:

• Go to the Start Menu
• Click on My Computer
• Double-click on " jgraduatestudent on 'ZEUS (zeus)' (Z:) "
• Double-click on the WWW folder
• You are there!

Getting and Setting Up the Template

Now that you know where the Z:\WWW directory is, you can start creating your webpage. Here are the steps to downloading and editing a basic template for your page:

• Right-click and download this page, this background, and this profile picture to your Z:\WWW directory, saving them as index.html, wall.gif, and picture.gif, respectively.
• Now you want to edit the page so that it is for you and not for John Graduatestudent.
• If you know HTML, locate the index.html file in your Z:\WWW directory and edit with Notepad.
• If you don't know HTML, locate the index.html file in your Z:\WWW directory, right-click on it, and edit with Dreamweaver.
• Replace John Graduatestudent's information and picture with your's: your e-mail address, office number, and office phone number.
• Now you can access your page at http://math.ou.edu/~jgradstudent/index.html or at http://math.ou.edu/~jgradstudent/. This, of course, is if your name is John Gradstudent. If your name is, for example, Zubin Mehta, the address will be http://math.ou.edu/~zmehta

What Next?

This page is only a standard template. You should play around with an HTML-editor to make your homepage look the way you want it to look. You might want to list your office hours and links relevant to courses you are teaching on your webpage. Look at the other pages that people in the department have to see what kinds of things they have on their sites.

Here are some other backgrounds you could use: wall1.gif, wall2.gif, wall3.gif (If you want to use one of these backgrounds, make sure to save it as wall.gif in your Z:\WWW directory. Otherwise it won't load.)

Once you are satisfied with the way your page looks, e-mail Dr. Schmidt and ask him to link your webpage on the Math/People page.

Where do I find an HTML editor?

Here is a short list of free HTML editors:

• Alleycode: http://www.alleycode.com/
• PageBreeze: http://www.pagebreeze.com/
• NVU (similar to Dreamweaver): http://www.net2.com/nvu/
• WebDwarf: http://www.virtualmechanics.com/products/dwarf/

The next step - keeping the code cool

Big companies love to squeeze every penny out of you by making you buy their expensive semi useless programs for creating web pages. A way to combat this is to learn how to write the code (HTML) for the web pages yourself. You do this by writing the code using a nice free text editor. If you have any experience with programming you should have not problems learning HTML. All it takes is a little bit of effort. There are several good reasons to learning HTML.

1. By learning HTML you set yourself free from depending on a particular editor. A lot of the editors out there do not write your page in "clean" HTML code, which may lead to errors. This means that your page might not look the way you want it to look on certain browsers.
2. Learning HTML will give you a deeper insight into the structure of a web site.
3. It looks good on a resume if you can write that you have a basic knowledge of HTML.
4. You have total control over the design of your web site. There is no hidden code that you are not aware of.
5. You can take the full credit for the design of your web site.

One place that you can learn HTML for free is W3Schools. You could also try to google "Learn HTML". If you want to know more about certain standards of HTML code, visit W3.org. Here you can forexample read about the standard XHTML 1.0 Strict. The MGSA web site has been created in accordance with this standard and we strive to keep it as such.

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