Assignment #2 - Due Tuesday, March 20th

For this assignment, you are going to create your own home page on the World Wide Web using the UNH PubPages server. Because it is an assignment, you will be required to take some steps you wouldn’t normally take in the creation of your web pages. For the sake of the assignment, follow the steps outlined below. Later on, if you wish, you can apply the material you’ve learned to create your own more individualized presentation.

Note: If you already have a home page established on the pubpages server, you will need to temporarily rename any files whose names conflict with those specified in this assignment for the purposes of completing this assignment. You can then rename them back to their original names after this assignment has been graded. See me if this presents problems for you.

Your first task is to collect the files you need together in one place. Start by creating a subdirectory within your cisunix home directory named public_html as a place to hold the files. Collect the files you need in this directory as follows:

1. Copy the file named pubpages.howdoi from the /usr/local/notes directory on cisunix into your public_html directory.
2. In the home directory for the cisunix account named amgilder, you will find a subdirectory named honors. This subdirectory is the topmost level of a rather complicated directory tree. Your job is to locate a specific file within this tree. You are looking for a file in this tree which contains a banner displaying the last digit of your student ID number. As you explore the tree, you’ll probably want to draw a diagram of the portions you have explored so that you don’t waste time searching in circles. Once you’ve found the appropriate file, copy it back into your public_html directory.
3. Within the file you just copied, you will find the name of yet another file. Copy the specified file from the backgrounds subdirectory of the home directory for the cisunix account named amg401 into your public_html directory.
4. Create a new folder named Assign2 on a floppy diskette (Windows or Mac).
5. Using anonymous FTP to access the host named ftp.cs.unh.edu, retrieve the text files named partone.txt and index.html from the /pub/cs401h directory and store a copy of each in the folder on your floppy diskette.
   
6. Using a Web browser, click this link and save the resulting page as a text file named partthree.txt in the folder on your floppy diskette. Using a text editor, verify that the first line of the file is:
   
   <!-- This should be the first line of body.txt -->
   
   If this is not the first line of the file, you have not saved the file as a text file, and you will need to do this step again. If this is the first line of the file, delete this line and resave the file without the line.
7. Move a copy of your resume.txt file from Assignment #1 into this folder on your floppy diskette.
8. Now use FTP to copy the files from the Assign2 folder on your floppy diskette into the public_html subdirectory of your cisunix home directory.
9. In your public_html subdirectory, rename the resume.txt file so that it has the name parttwo.txt

Next, you’ll need to collect some files and information using the World Wide Web. Eventually, you will be required to write a paper on some aspect of computer technology and its impact on society. For this assignment, however, simply select your topic for this paper and start accumulating appropriate online research sources. Your topic should be something having to do with an aspect of computer technology and its impact on society. Try to pick a fairly academic subject (not how cool you think the latest computer games or MP3s are!). Although you are not limited to picking a topic from the book, you will find lots of ideas for paper topics in the Computers in Society text book.

Using AltaVista, formulate a query to find resources appropriate to your chosen topic. Your goal is to come up with a query that condenses the most useful and appropriate resources available into the first twenty results listed by AltaVista. Spend some time refining your search until you have achieved this goal, and then print out the pages showing the first twenty results. Explore these first twenty results until you have identified five different Web sites that you feel would be useful in completing your paper. (Hint: If you can’t find five good ones out of the first twenty, you have not spent enough time refining your search.) Circle those entries on your printouts.

Using Yahoo!, locate some sources of free Web graphics and use these sources to find three different images that you would like to display on your home page. Save the images you intend to use into the Assign2 folder on your floppy diskette, and then use FTP to copy these binary files into your public_html subdirectory.

Now you are ready to start manipulating the files in your public_html subdirectory. Assume that all of these steps are to be done in the public_html subdirectory unless otherwise specified.

1. Concatenate the partone.txt, parttwo.txt and partthree.txt files (in that order) into a fourth file named resume.html.
2. Using a text editor, open resume.html, locate the text BACKGROUND="filename" within the file, and replace the word filename with the full name of the background image file you copied in step 3 above. Be careful not to replace the quotes around the word filename and to include the extension on the file name. Also remember that file names are case sensitive in Unix.
3. Now open index.html and make the following changes to its contents (when making each change, be very careful not to replace anything but the indicated text or your page may not work properly!):
• Locate the two occurrences of the text yournamehere and replace each one with your first and last name;
• Locate the text yourtopichere and replace it with a one paragraph description of your intended paper topic.
• Locate the text urlone, urltwo, etc. and titleone, titletwo, etc. For each pair, replace the text url... with one of the URLs of the five sources you identified using AltaVista and replace the text title... with the corresponding title (or a description) of that resource. The idea here is to create list of hyperlinks to the five resources you identified using AltaVista. Don’t forget that URLs are case-sensitive!
• Locate the text imagefileone, imagefiletwo, etc. For each, replace the text imagefile... with the file name of one of the three images you obtained using Yahoo!. Remember to pay attention to the case of the letters in both the file name and its extension.
4. View the contents of the file named pubpages.howdoi previously copied into your public_html directory, and use a Web browser to access and read the file at the URL it specifies.
5. Create a shell script named publish in your home directory that will perform the following steps when run:
1. Set the permissions for all files and subdirectories in your home directory such that no one other than you can access them in any way. (Hint: Use wildcards to make this easier.)
2. Set the permissions for your home directory such that anyone can access it for reading and listing its contents.
3. Set the permissions for your public_html directory such that anyone can access it for reading and listing its contents.
4. Set the permissions for all of the files in your public_html directory such that anyone can access them for reading. (Hint: Use wildcards to make this easier.)
5. Display a short message on the screen indicating completion.
Your script must begin with one or more comments containing your name, the date you wrote the script, and a short description of what it does.
6. Manually set the permissions for your publish script so that you (and only you) have permission to execute that script.
7. Run your publish script to make your web pages available to the world, and then print out a copy of your publish file on the Kingsbury machine room printers. (Keep the header sheet attached to the printout.)
8. Test your Web pages thoroughly by accessing them via the link representing your name on the Homepages page of this presentation. Make any fixes or enhancements that you feel are needed or appropriate.

Redirect long form directory listings for your home directory and your public_html directory into two separate files and print those files. Also, change the view of your Assign2 folder window to show the details, make sure all of the files and details are visible, and print out the window. If you need instructions on printing a window, they are available for both Windows 98 and the Macintosh.

Submit the directory and folder window printouts, the AltaVista printouts, the printout of your publish script and your floppy diskette in your envelope. Your Web pages will be graded on-line. Therefore, you should make sure that your index.html page is available by clicking your name on the Homepages page of this presentation, and you should verify that the link at the bottom of your home page leads to your resume page. Any page which is not available will not be graded.