at UNH:
Creating and Serving Web Pages.
There are two main issues here: getting Web pages created for use in a course and then serving those pages on the Web. The same choices apply for both faculty-authored pages and for student-authored pages.
Creating Web pages.
The most basic way to create course-related Web pages is to learn a little bit of HTML and to develop them manually with a text editor. The next step up in buffering yourself from the HTML details is to use an HTML editor (Netscape Composer (formerly Gold), Microsoft FrontPage, Macromedia Dreamweaver, among many others). The final step away from the HTML details is to use an authoring environment such as Blackboard CourseInfo that is a course-oriented tool that lets you completely avoid HTML or to selectively include it. The trade-off in taking these steps is that you accept less control over details in exchange for less required HTML knowledge. Usually that is a good trade-off.
If you do decide to learn some HTML, many online tutorials exist. See, for example, those linked on the pubpages usage document.
Serving Web pages.
Your Web pages need to be located on a system that is running Web server software that can respond to requests from Web browsers. That should be a system that is on a direct (Ethernet) network connection and that is available all the time. The choice is yours whether to use a non-public office or departmental server, versus a public server. The advantages of a public server are a high level of accessibility that is taken care of by central computing staff (physically secure room, conditioned air, conditioned power, system backups, and other system maintenance).
If you did want to use your own desktop or office system, there are several choices for the server software. With use of Microsoft Windows NT Workstation as the operating system, it includes Peer Web Services as a server that you can install. With use of an Apple Macintosh, the recommended Web server software is the commercial WebStar product.
There are several choices for a server for course pages. Increasing numbers of faculty are using the Blackboard system. An alternative public server to use for course pages is the "pubpages" server that is part of our central Unix systems (CISUNIX). All faculty members and students are entitled to a CISUNIX account (see Using Unix at UNH).
If you follow the pubpages conventions, nothing else is needed to begin serving Web pages from your account on that server. You may, however, want to develop and test your pubpages course pages on your desktop. One way to do that is to use either an HTML editor or word processor and copy the pages (via FTP transfer) to the pubpages system. Another way is to use the form on the Simple Start main menu and follow the directions there to save it and copy it to the pubpages server.Still another public server, the usual public server for office, departmental, and organizational pages is the "UNHINFO" server. That requires a special contributor account.
simple.start@unh.edu [an error occurred while processing this directive]