Help

Glossary notes for terms used throughout HELP will be placed in this sidebar.

Default is the selection that a program or process starts with. The default can be changed to accommodate custom settings.

Browser is a software program such as Netscape or Microsoft IE that is used to look at various kinds of Internet resources such as the WWW.

Frames allow the user to see more than one window or page on the screen at the one time.

Counters indicate the traffic visiting the website.

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language and is the language used to compose web pages.

Chatroom is Internet Relay Chat- IRC allows users to interact through live discussion on line.

Guestbook allows users to interact usually providing feedback about the website.

Upload is when data is copied from a local computer to a remote computer.

Tag is the syntax for a particular way html is written.

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. It allows users to access and transfer files from one host computer to another over a network.

Home Page Help

Introduction
Default Home Page Customization

Introduction to the Default Home Page

myinternet Limited has provided you with a default home page to give your school a presence on the Internet immediately. This page has been designed for those schools who are new to the tools of the Internet. If you already have a home page you may want to adopt some of the side bar features described in the following section 'Customizing the default home page'.

This home page will come up when you open your WWW Browser (eg Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer) and enter the following URL or location:

Screenshot of the default home page

http://www.schooldomain.schoolzone.net.nz eg. http://www.telecom.schoolzone.net.nz

This default home page is supplied with a number of tools ready for your school to utilise, such as a search engine, frames, counters, HTML tutorials, chatrooms and guestbooks. All of these features are able to be adapted for individual school requirements.

You may already have a home page which you wish to upload to the WWW Server to replace the default home page we have provided.

To assist you in developing your own web page for the Internet, we have provided a number of tools through Web Manager and a selection of tools on your default home page.

The following are tools available ready for you to use.

Search our site

Guestbook *

Chat room *

Department of Education/Appropriate body

Search the WWW

Visitor counter

Help

SINA

* These tools are not available in all deployments

The default home page provided by the SINA Service is tagged 'Welcome.html' and is unable to be overwritten. To replace the default home page and then upload your existing school's home page to the SINA Server, you will need to change the tag on your school's home page to 'index.html'. The SINA system has been prioritised to recognize the 'index.html' page first if it exists in your WWW files.

To upload your existing page, the SINA provides an upload tool to avoid the technical requirements of FTP. It then becomes a 'point and click' function. For instructions on the upload tool, please refer to the Web Manager section of the SINA.

Default Home Page customization

There are several features on the default home page which you may wish to utilise when constructing your own home page.

First of all you need to recognize the structure of the html page which you see. You will need to copy the html code and place it in your new html pages.

To copy html code is as simple as copying and pasting as in any Windows environment. Make sure you have made a new text file saved with the html extension.

For example, go to WordPad, Notepad, Word or a Web Authoring Tool to create a file called index.html. Save this file to a directory which will be only for your html files.

Go to the web browser and open up the html file you wish to copy. Go to View/Source and highlight with your mouse the code you want and paste into your new file: index.html.

Graphic files will have a file extension of either gifs or jpgs. If you wish to copy graphics, all you need to do is copy the code and make sure you right-click on the image in the browser and save to the home page directory.

If you require more of this introductory information go to the HTML Course in Web Resources in MyInternet.

Frameset structure

The default home page contains a frameset structure. It allows the loading of more than one html page at a time. For example, the side frame could load another page and the mainframe could load different pages from the Internet after the hyperlink has been activated.

Some frames are static, that is, you cannot scroll or a scroll bar does not appear to enable you to scroll. This occurs in this default page. The links are placed in the left hand side bar and are the main navigational tools for this default page. Therefore the intention for this frame is to remain static and other html pages will load in the right frame.When one of the hyperlinks in the navigation bar is pressed, the new html document loads and if the latter has a scroll bar option it will appear immediately.

The default home page also contains a top frame which holds the header logo and/or other information.

A Frameset holds the information about the HTML pages within the Frames. It does not hold any information itself. The frames are named as html files and have target codes so that the browser can know where to load them. An example to illustrate a frameset is the Heading of the document does not hold any information but acts as an indicator of the content of the page.

FRAME [Nav Bar] is a html page. In this frame are hyperlinks which when pressed will load a new page in the right frame FRAME [main] Look at the html code and see the code TARGET which indicates in which frame the new html page will load (eg. target="main"). This frame also contains a counter. The counter is a CGI script which is dynamic. This means that whenever the page reloads or someone visits the site the counter will automatically forward one on the counter. The path for this link is important as the myinternet Limited servers hold this information. You must copy this information exactly.
FRAME [Header] is a html page. This frame contains a header logo which will be seen across all pages using this framset.
FRAME [Main] is a html page. This frame is used as a target for the sites internal content. A html page can be designated to run in this frame. This frame is scrollable.

This default home page should be the entrance to your schools website. You do not need to include much detailed information here. Create hyperlinks to reload a new html pages with the detailed information.

As stated previously the default home page actually uses frames. If you go to the SINA HTML course there is a section introducing Frames.

Go to http://www.schooldomain/myinternet and press on the HTML course link in the Web Resources Property box, thereafter clicking the hyperlink 'Frames'

Note: You will need to know your user name and password to get to MyInternet desktop.

The Frameset

The Frameset for the default home page is below. Remember that it does not hold any of the html [frame] pages. It just directs where the pages will load.

The coloured pink text should assist you in deciphering the html. Do not cut and paste this code.

This Frameset html source code:

        <html>
        <head>
        <title>SchoolZone</title>
     You could put your schools name here eg. Renaissance High School Home Page
        </head>
        <frameset framespacing="0" border="0" frameborder="0" rows="154,*">
        This sets the parameters and description of the frame called "Header". This frame uses schoolZoneHeader.htm as the source html.
        <frame name="Header" scrolling="no" noresize target="contents" src="schoolZoneHeader.htm" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0">
        <frameset cols="150,*">
        This sets the parameters and description of the frame called "NavBar". This frame uses schoolZoneSideNav.htm as the source html.
        <frame name="NavBar" target="main" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" src="schoolZoneSideNav.htm">
        This sets the parameters and description of the frame called "Main". This frame uses home.htm as the source html.
        <frame name="Main" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="auto" src="home.htm">
        </frameset>
        <noframes>
        <body>
        This message is displayed in browsers that don't support frames..
        This page uses frames, but your browser doesn't support them.
        </body>
        </noframes>
        </frameset>
        </html>

The Side Frame Example

The Frameset holds three files: schoolZoneHeader.htm ,schoolZoneSideNav.htm and home.htm . Remember to right click the

mouse to VIEW FRAME SOURCE.

You will see the following for schoolZoneSideNav.htm <html>
<head>
<title>SideNavigation</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="school_stylesheet.css" type="text/css">
<base target="main">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" topmargin="0" leftmargin="2">
<table height =100% width="127" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" height="261">

This is code to display the border image for the side navigation bar
<tr>
<td width="8" height="253"><img src="images/space1.gif" width="8" height="8"></td>
<td width="1" bgcolor="#336699" height="253">
<img src="images/space1.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>
<td width="118" align="left" valign="top" height="253">
This is the table to enter the site links in
<table width="118" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" class="OtherTabs">
<tr>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="OtherTabs"><a href="home.htm" target=main class="OtherTabs">Home</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>

This is the hyperlink path for the search site button and loads the ourSchool.htm page in the main frame
<td class="OtherTabs"><a href="ourSchool.htm" target=main class="OtherTabs">Our School</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>

This is the hyperlink path for the search site button and loads the search.htm page in the main frame
<td class="OtherTabs"><a href="search.htm" target=main class="OtherTabs">Search Site</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>

This is the hyperlink path for the school chat room
<td class="OtherTabs"><A HREF="/cgi-bin/utils/chat/chat.cgi"

target=main class="OtherTabs">Chatroom</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>

This is the hyperlink path for the school guest book
<td class="OtherTabs"><a href="/cgi-bin/utils/guestbook.cgi"

target=main class="OtherTabs">Guestbook</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>

This is the hyperlink path for the education site
<td class="OtherTabs"><a href="http://www.tki.org.nz" class="OtherTabs">Education</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>

This is the hyperlink path to search for education related information
<td class="OtherTabs"><a href="http://www.tki.org.nz/e/search/" class="OtherTabs">Search TKI</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>

This is the hyperlink path for this page
<td class="OtherTabs"><a href="help.htm" target=main class="OtherTabs">Help</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>

This is the hyperlink path for the for students and teachers to login to the intranet
<td class="OtherTabs"><a href="intranetLogins.htm" target=main class="OtherTabs">Intranet</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> </td>
</tr>
</table>
This table holds the file which has an extension of cgi meaning that it is a dynamic graphic which will change every time the page is visited.
<table border=1 bordercolor="#336699" width=100%>
<tr>
<td align=left valign=top class="OtherTabs" >Visitor </td>
<td align=left valign=top><img src="/cgi-bin/utils/counter.cgi?index" height=25></td>
</tr>
</table>

</td>
<td width="1" bgcolor="#336699" height="253">
<img src="images/space1.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>
<td width="4" align="left" valign="top" height="253">

</td>
</tr>
This code loads the correct border images for the page
<tr>
<td width="8" height="8"><img src="images/space1.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>
<td width="1" bgcolor="#336699" height="8">
<img src="images/space1.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>
<td width="118" align="center" valign="bottom" height="8">
<img src="images/bot_line.gif" width="118" height="7"></td>
<td width="1" bgcolor="#336699" height="8">
<img src="images/space1.gif" width="1" height="1"></td>

</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

If you wish to remove any of the links on the sidebar (if you wanted to not have a guest book or a chat room for example) then you can do so by deleting or commenting out the html code for that link from the sidebar.

We recommend commenting the link out, that way if you change you mind at a later date it's easy to fix it.

You can comment out the buttons by putting the following tag before:

<!--

and after:

-->

the html code that makes the button. So, for example, if you wanted to remove the guestbook link which is created by the following code:

<td class="OtherTabs"><a href="/cgi-bin/utils/guestbook.cgi" target=main class="OtherTabs">Guestbook</a></td>

you would alter it so that it looks like this:

CHECKLIST FOR MODIFYING THE DEFAULT HOME PAGE

Make a Frameset containing 3 frames, both of which are saved in html. SaveAs default.htm or index.htm or default.html or index.html

Make sure you construct three html documents one for the sideframe, one for the header and one for the mainframe.

Enter hyperlink information for links.

Go to the SINA Web Manager

Follow instructions and upload files