Writing HTML pages is fun and even fairly easy. Getting them up on the web is a bit more difficult.

Reading some posts on mcs.support regarding the sticky subject of setting the UNIX permissions so that your files may be read on the Web, I decided to make s "shell script" to make things easier. My script has been modified (3/9/96) to be more flexible:

Having just seen the Roll Your Own Website page, the stuff below looks pretty lame. Still, here goes....

fixhtm script version 1.5b, modified 9/8/96
Enhancements: no longer assumes that the top HTML directory exists, supports multiple subdirectories; easier configuration/editing of script; really uses extension names, not just phrases; no temporary files are created!

September 8th, 1996: basically I made a couple small changes to the script to accomodate the system at clark.net. Forgive my not upadting this whole page ;-).

• Your main homepage can have any name. Mine is a file called home.htm. (I use a PC and the only way I can work on files in OS/2, Linux, or Win95 easily is to use the old DOS 8+3 FAT filesystem. Yuck.)
• Your homepage resides in the top level of one directory, and the rest of your web stuff is in any number of subdirectories. Mine is in one called html.
• The script can either change only files whose names end with extensions like .htm, .gif, and .map; or all files in the subdiretory and its subdirectories.
• If you want your homepage listed on the MCS list of subscriber homepages and would like a link called home.html which points to your home page.
• What do you mean, a "link"? Well, it's like a Mac alias, OS/2 shadow, or Win95 shortcut. A "symbolic link" is a pointer to another file. If you ask for "index.html" in my home directory, UNIX will give you "home.htm" instead. If home.htm changes, index.html points to the changed version. Very slick.
  While the MCS FAQ reccomends using a "hard" link (`ln foo bar`), I highly discourage this. A hard link is more like a copy of a file; if you FTP a new home page the hard link will not follow the change, but will retain the old contents. Not very nice.
• If you want your homepage to come up when someone types http://www.clark.net/pub/myname/ without having to specify myname/something.html, the script will make a link as appropriate.
• The script can also create an empty html.log for recording "hits" on your pages.

I generally recommend the following setup:

Keep a "mirror" on your PC and use "relative" path references; i.e. <a href="fixhtm.htm"> not <a href="http://www.clark.net/pub/peterw/fixhtm.htm">. Fiddle around with the files on your PC and once they're OK you can ftp them in to the proper places and run my script to fix your permissions throughout.

To get the script: telnet in to your shell account. Once you're at a UNIX prompt type
"cp /ftp/pub/peterw/fixhtm $HOME/fixhtm" to get the file to your home directory and then
"chmod u+x $HOME/fixhtm" to make it executable.

To run the script you should telnet in to Clark and type
"~/fixhtm" and then your home.htm and all under ~/html will be set!

I encourage you to take a look at the script; it is fairly straightforward and I tried to comment adequately.

Use at your own risk

This script works fine for me, but I make no guarantees. If you do have any trouble with this, please let me know.

Happy weaving.

Need more info? Check out comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html and the other comp.infosystems.www newsgroups.