SINA Default Home Page Help

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

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

Default 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:

http://www.schooldomain/ for example, http://www.mhs.vic.edu.au

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. Just click on the links on the left.

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 the 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 buttons are placed in black 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.

The right frame does not have a scroll bar at the moment but you will notice that when one of the hyperlinked buttons is pressed that the new html document loads and if the latter has a scroll bar option it will appear immediately.

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 [side] is a html page. In this frame are the hyperlinked buttons. These buttons are image based 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.
The HTML code is attached to the buttons. This can be viewed in FRAME SOURCE when you right click with the mouse in the frame area.
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.
In the right frame FRAME [main] the image are gifs which you can create in a graphic software package. You need to check out the dimensions of the graphics and make yours exactly or close to the same dimensions. If your graphics are larger you will not see them when the page loads as this frame has no scroll in the html code.(mainly for visual purposes). When another page reloads in the page it can be scrollable.
The text is html code which you can copy and paste. You most probably will include your own school's information here.

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. The red coloured text is the name of the html files for the default home page.

This Frameset html source code:
<html>
<head>
<title>SINA Home Page</title>
You could put your schools name here eg. Renaissance High School Home Page
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>
<frameset cols="158,740" rows="*">
<frame src="sinasidez.htm" name="left" frameborder="NO" bordercolor="#FFFFFF" scrolling="NO" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0">
This sets the parameters and description of the frame called "sinasidez.htm" Use the same name even though you may have changed info within the frame.
<frame src="sinamainz.htm" frameborder="NO" bordercolor="#FFFFFF" scrolling="AUTO" name="right" marginwidth="10" marginheight="0">
This sets the parameters and description of the frame called "sinasidez.htm". Use the same name even though you may have changed info within the frame.
</frameset>
<noframes><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
This is the colour of the background which is place in inverted commas.
</body></noframes>
</html>

The Side Frame

The Frameset holds two files: sinasidez.htm and sinamainz.htm. Remember to right click the mouse to VIEW FRAME SOURCE.

You will see the following for sinasidez.htm

<html>
<head>
<title>sinasidez.htm</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#000000"black text="#FFFFFF"white link="#3300FF"blue vlink="#FF3300"purple alink="#33CC00">red
<div align="center">
<p></p>
<p></p>

<A HREF="/public/search.html" target="right">
This is the hyperlink path for the search site button and loads the search.html page in the right frame

<img src="/public/images/ssz_fit.gif" ALT="Site Search" width="114" height="27" border="0">
This is the hyperlinked search site button image and the path where it resides on the myinternet Limited server

<A HREF="/cgi-bin/utils/chat/chat.cgi" target="right">
This is the hyperlink path for the chat button and loads the chat cgi. page in the right frame. This is loading from the myinternet Limited servers.

<A HREF="/cgi-bin/utils/guestbook.cgi" target="right">
This is the hyperlink path for the guest button and loads the guestbook cgi. page in the right frame. This loads from the myinternet Limited servers

This is the hyperlinked education button image and the path where it resides on the myinternet Limited server. When pressing this button the page will load in the right frame. If you wish to change this education url you could replace the area in green with the desired URL.

This is the hyperlinked search the www button image and the path where it resides on the myinternet Limited server
<A HREF="/public/generic-eq-ls.html" target="right">

This is the hyperlink button for searching the world wide web button loading the Looksmart Search Engine.html page in the right frame

<A HREF="/public/defaulthp2/defaulthp.htm" target="right">
This is the hyperlinked help button image. This link will assist you with customizing the default home page for your school. Extra assistance with web publishing is found in SINA under Web Manager/HTML Course.

This file has an extension cgi which means that it is a dynamic graphic which will change everytime the page is visited.

</div>
</body>
</html>

If you wish to remove any of the button 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 button 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 button which is created by the following code:

you would alter it so that it looks like this:

Likewise if you have sidebar links that are disabled by default as some states are - you can reenable them by adding the appropriate html (see the examples above) to your sidebar.

The following the the html code for mainframe.htm <html> <head> <title>Home Page</title> You could place your Schools name here <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">

Note the dimension of this gif when you are replacing it with your own.

Use this page to find out more about Our School and as a starting point for browsing the Internet.

This is written in the default text font and size
<ul>This is code for opening pair tags for beginning a list
<li>Search through Our School web pages using Search Site</li>
Each list item starts and closes with the 'li' tag
<li>Participate in an on-line discussion in the Chatroom.
<li>Why not leave some information about yourself in our Guestbook?
<li>Keep in touch with the latest in education in South Australia through Education.
<li>Search the Web will connect you to LookSmart for rapid location of information about Australia and the World
<li>Help will enable you to understand this Home pag</ul>
<hr>
This provides a line to separate the main sections in the page
</body>
</html>

CHECKLIST FOR MODIFYING THE DEFAULT HOME PAGE

Make a Frameset containing 2 frames, both of which are saved in html. SaveAs default.htm or index.htm or default.html or index.html

Make sure you construct two html documents one for the sideframe, one for the mainframe

Check the dimensions of items in the frame. For eg. Image buttons are 114 x 25 pixels

Attach hyperlink information to buttons. Paste text and images into relevant frames

Go to the SINA Web Manager

Follow instructions and upload files

You may find that you wish to utilise the features of the side buttons, but find that the button colour is inappropriate for your home page.

myinternet Limited has provided you with 2 more button choices:

blue buttons or

green buttons

Click on the links to see these extra options.

Note: You can substitute any one of the buttons by right-clicking on each button and saving the graphic file to your html directory.

Remember that the code needs to call on the particular graphic which is in the one directory.

If the link appears broken when you open your browser to view the page before upload, check to see that all the graphics files and the naming of each is the same. This includes case sensitivity. If you have named the graphic file "Lightbulb.gif" and the html code is "lightbulb.gif", the file will appear broken.