Webmaster Information
This following links provide information that may be useful to a future Webmaster.
Responsibilities
Update Log
Directories
FTP Bookmarks
Downloading Pages
Modifying and Creating Pages
Uploading Pages
Quick Update Procedure
Frames
Hidden Files
Sophos Virus Information Feeds
Endymion Mailman
AddDescription Directive
Help Index
Meeting pages
Composing Meeting Descriptions
Meeting Notices
Statistics
IBM Club Article


Responsibilities

The Webmaster responsibilities include the following:

  1. Add, modify, and delete Web pages to keep the Club's Web site up to date.
  2. Include news items in the home page when requested by the Technical Support Chairman.
  3. Identify additional items of interest to the Club members and include them in new or existing Web pages.
  4. Provide a monthly report to the Technical Support Chairman that includes all the changes made during the month.
  5. Formulate and send monthly meeting notices to Club members and guests.
  6. Provide the IBM Club with an newsletter article about the our Club and update it when required.


Update Log
All changes to the Club Web pages will be posted in the /home/httpd/htm/updates directory under the page for that year.  The pages for 2000-20xx are named log00.htm-logxx.htm where xx are the two low order digits of the year.  A one row entry is made in a table each time a page is changed.  Each entry contains the page name, backup level of the page, and a short description of the change. When an HTML page is changed, the present page is saved as name.level.htm or name.level.html where "name" is the file name without the extension and "level" is a single alphanumeric digit.  The levels are cycled from 0-9 and a-z before repeating the level number.  For any page that is changed, only three down level pages are saved.


Directories
The home/httpd/html/ directory is the primary directory of concern to the Webmaster and it contains the home page, index.htm plus other files for areas that are covered in a single page  Some of the files of interest to the Webmaster are contacts.htm, contrib.htm, directions.htm, discounts.htm, internet.html, links.htm, mbrship.htm, newsletter.htm, sjpcmemb.htm, textmode.html, and virus.htm  Folders (sub-directories) in the /home/httpd/html/ directory are used mainly for areas that require more than one page.  Some of the folders of interest to the Webmaster are idtheft, internet, meetings, newsletter, presentations, software, support, trouble, and updates.  The System Administrator assigns the necessary read and write permissions to the Webmaster.

The following other directories are of interest to the Webmaster.



FTP Bookmarks
When using Netscape or Internet Explorer to perform FTP operations, setting up bookmarks (favorites) will save time since you will not have to key this information each time you FTP.  Also, having the userid and password in the FTP command avoids having bad passwords lock you out of FTP operations especially with Internet Explorer.  If you do get locked out, you must notify the Postmaster to have your password lockout count reset.  Since  Netscape 6-7 and Internet Explorer automatically insert /home/userid in the FTP, a club_html folder linkage to /home/httpd/html must be available in the Webmaster's /home/userid directory.  Note that when you "Add to Favorites" with Internet Explorer, the userid and password are not included, so you have to export favorites, modify the FTP, and import favorites to include the userid and password.  The following bookmarks (favorites) will FTP the Club files at /home/httpd/html:

Downloading Pages
FTP downloading procedures using DOS Command Prompt, Internet Explorer, Netscape, and WS-FTP LE as well as the SSH Procedure for WinSCP can be found by going to the help index at http://www.sjpc.org/internet/helpindex.htm.   Unless one is extremely familiar with the DOS Command Prompt FTP, this is probably the most complex and time consuming method of downloading.  Netscape has an excellent feature which enables downloading the file directly in Netscape Composer, but you can also download using an option under the File command called Save As.  Internet Explorer FTP is similar to a Windows copy which makes it very easy to use.  WS-FTP LE provides an easy to use source and target method of downloading.  The SSH Procedure for WinSCP provides an easy to use drag and drop interface for downloading.


Modifying and Creating Pages
An HTML editor such as Netscape Composer or MS FrontPage can be used to modify or create HTML pages.  Netscape Composer does not support a frame page such as is used in the meetings.htm page, but MS FrontPage does.  HTML can be created and modified using a text editor such as NotePad or WordPad, but this requires knowledge of the HTML tags.  Non HTML pages and script statements in HTML pages can only be modified by using a text editor.  Netscape which includes Netscape Composer is available on the Club CD or it can be downloaded from http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/default.jsp.  The full function MS FrontPage program must be purchased, but some PC's are preloaded with a minimal version of MS FrontPage.  NotePad and WordPad are available on all Windows PC's.

If you use the Netscape 4 "Open Link in Composer" option or Netscape 6-7 "Edit Page" option to download a Web page directly to Netscape Composer, the relative addresses are changed to FTP addresses in the Netscape Composer copy to make the Preview option work.  If you click the Save icon,  the disk copy will contain FTP addresses rather than the relative addresses.  When you click the Publish icon, the FTP links are replaced with relative address links in the page at the Web site, and everything works correctly.  However, if you don't use the Publish option and  upload the disk copy directly, you will end up with FTP addresses at the Web site which is not the desired result.



Uploading Pages
FTP uploading procedures using DOS Command Prompt, Internet Explorer, Netscape Composer Publish, and WS-FTP LE as well as the SSH Procedure for WinSCP can be found by going to the help index at http://www.sjpc.org/internet/helpindex.htm.   Unless one is extremely familiar with the DOS Command Prompt, this is probably the most complex and time consuming method of uploading.  Netscape 4 provided an option under the File command called Upload File, but the option is not available in Netscape 6 or 7.  To upload a file with Netscape 6 or 7, you need to use the Publish option which will work only for HTML files and the files included in the page such as image files.  Internet Explorer FTP is similar to a Windows copy which makes it very easy to use.  WS-FTP LE is a very popular way of uploading, and is very easy to use once you initialize it.  After initialization, the SSH Procedure for WinSCP provides a very easy drag and drop interface for uploading.


Quick Update Procedure
The present Webmaster primarily uses the extremely simple Netscape feature to download the file directly to Netscape Composer, perform the update,  and Publish (upload) it.  This requires no keystrokes and a minimal number of point and click operations making it extremely fast and efficient.  The procedures require only the following steps:
Netscape 4
1.  Launch Netscape Navigator, click the "Bookmark" icon, and click the appropriate FTP directory bookmark.
2.  When the directory appears, right click the file to update, and left click "Open Link in Composer"
3.  When the download of the page to Netscape Composer is complete, update the page.
4.  Click the "Publish" icon, set the directory to publish to in the drop down list (if necessary), click "OK", and the file will upload.
Netscape 6 or 7
1.  Launch Netscape, click the "Bookmark" icon, and click the appropriate FTP directory bookmark.
2.  When the directory appears, open the file to update, and click "File" and click "Edit Page".
3.  When the download of the page to Netscape Composer is complete, update the page.
4.  Click the "Publish" icon, and the file will upload (Only first usage will require entering password if save password is checked.).


Frames
The only page that uses frames is meetings.htm.  By using a frameset, the screen is divided into panes which allows  user sees more that one page at a time without completely cluttering up the user's screen.  Each frame (pane) contains its own Web page.  This provides the ability to interrelate the information in each of the pages in a frameset. For example, the frameset, meetings.htm has a "content" and a "main" frame.  When you link to http://www.sjpc.org/meetings/meetings.htm, a "content" frame appears on the left with links to all the yearly meeting pages available, and the "main" frame on the right initially contains the meetings page for the present year.  When you click on a meetings year in the "content" frame, the page for that year appears in the "main' frame.  At the start of each year the meetings.htm page must be modified to point to the page for the new year and the "contents" frame should be modified to include a link to a new meetings page for the following year.


Hidden Files
File names that start with a dot are hidden files.  Netscape, Internet Explorer and WS FTP-LE do not see them.    DOS command prompt FTP doesn't list hidden files, but it will allow you to use the change directory command to download, modify, and upload hidden files.  WinSCP is a file transfer program that shows hidden files, and it uses secure shell protocols which are inherently more secure.  Information on  DOS command prompt FTP and WinSCP can be found by going to the help index at http://www.sjpc.org/internet/helpindex.htm


Sophos Virus Information Feeds
Sophos currently provides three different information feeds which include top viruses in the previous month, the most troublesome virus hoaxes in the last 24 hours, and the latest virus alerts.  After registering at http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/infofeed/, Sophos provides instructions for incorporating the latest virus and hoax information into a Club Web page, virus.htm.  The code for the three feeds are in a table with one row and three columns so that the feeds appear across from each other rather than down the left side of the page.  Also, links
to McAfee and Norton virus information are included in the descriptive paragraph at the top of the page.  Since the information feed is on an Internet Web page, the site will be automatically updated with the very latest virus and hoax information.  No changes should be required to this page.


Endymion Mailman
The Endymion Mailman file, mailman.cgi, provides a Web mail capability for the SJPC e-mail.  Endymion Mailman is built out of a perl script (mailman.cgi) and template files (*.htm).  These are all in /home/httpd/cgi-bin/mailman-3.2.9/.  The template files have imbedded JavaScript code which builds the pages you see on the fly.  Therefore, you cannot download and modify the pages you see from http://www.sjpc.org/cgi-bin/mailman-3.2.9/mailman.cgi, and instead you must work with the templates, e.g. t_login.htm.  File t_login.htm has the top-of-page text for the Club at the top of the starting with <!-- MailManSnippet(GREETING)...  The following files required modification in the original Endymion Mailman:
/home/httpd/cgi-bin/mailman/t_login.htm
/home/httpd/cgi-bin/mailman/t_help.htm
/home/httpd/cgi-bin/mailman/t_message_form.htm
No changes should be required unless a new version is used.


AddDescription Directive
The .htaccess directory configuration file is being used to add descriptions for online newsletters to the /home/httpd/html/newsletter directory and /home/httpd/html/support directory.  Since .htaccess is a hidden file, Netscape, Internet Explorer and WS FTP-LE do not see them.  DOS command prompt FTP doesn't list hidden files, but it will allow you to use the change directory command to download, modify, and upload the .htaccess.  WinSCP is a file transfer program that shows hidden files, and it uses secure shell protocols which are inherently more secure.  Information on DOS command prompt FTP and WinSCP can be found by going to the help index at http://www.sjpc.org/internet/helpindex.htm
EXAMPLE
HeaderName HEADER.html
ReadmeName README.html
IndexOptions FancyIndexing DescriptionWidth=*
AddDescription "2002 January newsletter   " *200201.pdf
AddDescription "2003 January newsletter   " *200301.pdf

The following is from  http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_autoindex.html#adddescription .

AddDescription directive
Syntax: AddDescription "string" file|directory [file|directory] ...
Context: server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess
Override: Indexes
Status: Base
Module: mod_autoindex
This sets the description to display for a file or directory, for IndexOptions FancyIndexing. file|directory is a file extension, partial filename or directory name, wild-card expression or full filename or directory name, for files or directories to describe. String is enclosed in double quotes (").

EXAMPLE:
AddDescription "The planet Mars" /web/pics/mars.gif

The description field is 23 bytes wide. 7 more bytes may be added if the directory is covered by an IndexOptions SuppressSize, and 19 bytes may be added if IndexOptions SuppressLastModified is in effect. The widest this column can be is therefore 49 bytes.

As of Apache 1.3.10, the DescriptionWidth IndexOptions keyword allows you to adjust this width to any arbitrary size.
Caution: Descriptive text defined with AddDescription may contain HTML markup, such as tags and character entities. If the width of the description column should happen to truncate a tagged element (such as cutting off the end of a bolded phrase), the results may affect the rest of the directory listing.



Help Index
The page, helpindex.htm, was added to provide links to all the help pages to make it easier to find the desired information.  Any time a new help section is added, a link should be added to the help index.  The help index contains the following sections in upper case and links in the numbered and lettered lists:

INTRODUCTION
1.  Internet Services
2.  How to use FAQ's & Basic FAQ's
PPP DIAL-UP INTERNET ACCESS
1.  Graphical PPP Access
2.  Getting Your SJPC Userid
3.  Setting Up A Windows Dialer
     a.  Windows 95/98
     b.  Windows 2000
     c.  Windows XP
4.  Changing Your Password
5.  Dial-up FAQ's
E-MAIL SERVICES FOR POP & IMAP
1.  E-Mail Protocols - POP and IMAP
2.  Setting Up E-Mail Software
     a.  Netscape 4.x
     b.  Netscape 6.x or 7.x
     c.  MS Outlook Express
     d.  AOL 9 with Outlook Express
3.  Spam Prevention Tools
4.  E-mail FAQ's
WEB E-MAIL
1.  Mailman Web E-Mail Program
2.  Web E-mail FAQ's
WEB HOSTING
1.  Web Page Hosting
2.  Setting Up a Personal Web Page
3.  FTP Procedure using DOS Prompt
4.  FTP Procedure for Internet Explorer
5.  FTP Procedure for Netscape
6.  FTP Procedure for WS-FTP LE 5.x
7.  SSH Procedure for WinSCP
8.  Web Hosting FAQ's
TEXT MODE INTERNET AND MAIL ACCESS
1.  Text Mode Access
2.  Text Mode FAQ's
OTHER SOFTWARE (browsers, readers, etc.)
1.  Other Software FAQ's
PRE WINDOWS 95 AND LINUX PPP DIALER SOFTWARE
1.  Windows 3.1 Trumpet Winsock
2.  DOS Arachne
3.  Linux ifconfig



Meetings Pages
Each year a separate page is used to contain the Board meeting dates, the General Meeting dates, and a description of all scheduled meeting topics and speakers.  Since the new page is a fairly complex table, the easiest way to create the new meetings page is to copy the prior year's page to a working folder and rename it meetingsxx.htm where "xx" are the two low order digits of the new year.  Then, all the dates must be changed to the correct dates for the new year, and all the descriptions must be deleted except for December.  The December description must be modified to reflect the correct year information and any short topic to be presented if applicable.


Composing Meeting Descriptions
When a speaker is booked, a description for the Club's Web site should be composed that includes the following:
1.  Speaker's Name
Include first and last name.
2.  Speaker's affiliation
Give the speaker's title and company (or organization).
3.  Topic to be presented
State the topic name and give a brief description of the topic.
4.  Features or items to be covered
Get a list from the speaker of the features or items to be covered and include them.
5.  URL reference
Include a URL reference if one is appropriate.

The following is example of a description:

Alan Hamill, Application Engineer at Adobe Systems, Inc., will give a presentation on Adobe Photoshop which is a powerful photo editor with a large variety of editing tools.  Some of the features to be discussed and demonstrated include the Healing Brush to remove dust, scratches and wrinkles while preserving shading, lighting, and texture; Auto Color command to correct colors; applying a transparency or a partial transparency; and superimposing images, text and other elements on multiple layers.  For more information go to http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/main.html.



Meeting Notices
Meeting notices to members and guests are sent out the Friday before the General Meeting using pcclubmembers@sjpc.org and pcclubguests@sjpc.org respectively.  The membership chairman maintains a list of members and guests, and these lists are periodically updated and transferred to the main server to control who receives the member and guest notice e-mails.  After the e-mails are sent, the Webmaster receives messages at the start of the next hour indicating that authentication is required to release the member and guest messages.  The Webmaster logs in to the authentication sites  http://sjpc.org/mailman/admindb/pcclubmembers  and  http://sjpc.org/mailman/admindb/pcclubguests, approves the messages, and checks the option to save a copy for the System Administrator.  At the start of the next hour, the member and guest messages are are sent out.  The reason authentication is used is to prevent others from spamming members and guests.

The following are typical member and guest notices

Member Notice

Dear San Jose IBM PC Club Member,

o The San Jose IBM PC Club will meet Tuesday (insert month day, and, year) at 5:00 PM in the SVL cafeteria room K222.  For directions, click http://www.sjpc.org/directions.htm.  Note that the security gate is now open from 5:30 AM to 6:00 PM, and it is no longer necessary to check in at the security gate.

(Insert topic and speaker description for next meeting.)

(Insert news items)

o Your help in locating speakers for future meeting would be appreciated.  If you have a contact who may be willing to give our Club a presentation on a topic of general interest, please notify Bader Kudsi at programs@sjpc.org.

o If you prefer not to receive these meeting notices or you wish to change the e-mailing address, please notify John Zimmerman at membership@sjpc.org.

Bader Kudsi, Program Director
E-mail: programs@sjpc.org

Guest Notice

Dear San Jose IBM PC Club Former Member or Guest

o You are welcome to attend the San Jose IBM PC Club monthly meetings which are open to non members.

o The San Jose IBM PC Club will meet Tuesday (Insert month, day, and year) at 5:00 PM in the SVL cafeteria room K222.  For directions, click http://www.sjpc.org/directions.htm.  Note that the security gate is now open from 5:30 AM to 6:00 PM, and it is no longer necessary to check in at the security gate.

(Insert topic and speaker description for next meeting.)

o If you would like to join (or rejoin) the Club for $10 per year, please go to http://www.sjpc.org/mbrship.htm to find out more about becoming a member.  When you join, you will receive free Internet access (no ads), free e-mail accounts, free web hosting, and the monthly Club Newsletter postal mailed to you.

o If you prefer not to receive these meeting notices or you wish to change the e-mailing address, please notify John Zimmerman at membership@sjpc.org.

Bader Kudsi, Program Director
E-mail: programs@sjpc.org



Statistics
The System Administrator automatically obtains all the dialup server and main server statistics.  In 2002, the Webmaster evaluated dialup line usage by using last and ac dialup server commands with SMTP mail capabilities.  However, in 2003 SVPAL blocked the port for SMTP mail, and the dialup server can no longer send mail out.  Also, the ac command is no longer available in the dialup server.  There is no requirement for the Webmaster to gather any more statistics.


IBM Club Article
The IBM Club Newsletter is on an IBM internal Web site, and it includes a San Jose IBM PC Club article provided by the Webmaster.  To simplify the process, a completely new PC Club article was written that refers readers to our PC Club Web site, http://www.sjpc.org, for meeting and other information.  With this arrangement, the topic/speaker information is no longer sent monthly to the IBM Club to include in the IBM Club Newsletter.  Also, since the new PC Club article refers readers to the PC Club Web site, http://www.sjpc.org, for officer information, a chart of the officers is no longer required.  No changes should be required unless the functions, date, time, or location of the Club's meetings change.  The following is the present article:

The San Jose IBM PC Club meets at 5:00 p.m. at the IBM Silicon Valley Lab, 555 Bailey Avenue, San Jose in cafeteria room K222 on the second Tuesday of each month, and the meeting lasts about two hours. To find the date and topic for the next meeting, go to http://www.sjpc.org, and click the "Meetings" link for the appropriate year.

The meetings include an information exchange to give members a chance to ask PC questions and receive responses which may help members solve their problems.  After the brief business portion of the meeting, the remainder of the evening is turned over to a speaker to present a topic on software, hardware, or another subject that is of general interest.

Since the meetings are open to non members, you are welcome to come as a guest to see if this is a Club that you would be interested in joining.  Our members range in experience from novice to highly proficient, so no matter what your skill level, you will be welcome.

The San Jose IBM PC Club invites you to join our Club which is open to IBM employees, retirees, and family members who are served by the San Jose IBM Club.  For information on joining, go to http://www.sjpc.org, and click the "Membership" link.

When you join, you will receive the monthly Club Newsletter postal mailed to you. You may also have free Internet access, free e-mail accounts, free web hosting. For information on Internet access, go to http://www.sjpc.org, and click the "Free Internet Access" link.

To contact Club officers and committee members, go to http://www.sjpc.org, and click the "Officers and Contacts" link.