If you would like, I can send this document to you as an E-mail message. Just send E-mail to me at: vodhner@aztec.asu.edu. About AzTeC Web Pages --------------------- In case you don't know, AzTeC is the Arizona Freenet system, funded by local corporate donors, residing at and operated by ASU, and supported by volunteers. Any Arizona resident may have an account on this system without charge. Account holders have the use of E-mail with their own address on the Internet; many Internet newsgroups and some local discussion groups; full access to the World Wide Web; access to the card catalogues of most local libraries; etc. Local community organizations, such as churches, are recruited to become "information providers" by means of web pages containing information of use to the community. It would be helpful, but not absolutely necessary, for information providers to be represented by individuals who hold AzTeC accounts. Their information pages are visible not only to AzTeC dial-in users, but become part of the "World Wide Web" for access from anywhere on the Internet. The dial-in interface to AzTeC only operates in text mode, but web pages on AzTeC may contain optional graphics, and much of the traffic on our web pages comes from elsewhere on the Internet. For more information about AzTeC, visit this page: http://aztec.asu.edu/ ... or dial in on 965-6699 (9600 baud or higher) or 965-4151 (below 9600 baud), using User-ID "guest" and password of "visitor", read the information that will be displayed, and select the "AzTeC Administration" menu item to request your own account on the system. You can also connect to aztec.asu.edu via "telnet" from elsewhere on the Internet. 3. There is a policy on the part of AzTeC's Webmaster (as noted below) that AzTeC should have a substantive page on your behalf, not simply a "pointer" to somewhere else. This may be negotiable if you're already established elsewhere; I'd have to take it up with him if this looked like a problem. Of course your main AzTeC page can _contain_ pointers; but it has to have some good basic stuff right there on the system. I maintain our church's page both on AzTeC and here on PrimeNet. get an aztec account --- just to be in the spirit of things. It's free, and seems to take less than a week from your initial request. Dial one of these: 965-6699 >= 9600 baud 8n1 965-4151 < 9600 baud This is *not* a requirement. Just my personal suggestion. AzTeC is intended to be a community-oriented system, so we want to maintain a focus on local organizations, people and activities. You should make sure you have your church's approval for posting information in public. That's between you and whoever you feel you should check with. Enough said about that, it's not my concern. If your church has a "Welcome" brochure that is handed out to visitors, this would be a good starting point for your home-page. You probably want more information online -- if you're willing to keep it updated, you can have a monthly calendar of activities, and other material that may change fairly often. If the brocure has a little map, and the place is in fact difficult to find, you may want to add a section of text on "How to Get Here" from some easy-to-find location. If you will type the plain text of your proposed page, you can use this to review with others in your organization as needed. Then send it to me as a mail-message. (If you don't know how to mail a file from your PC, I can give you a cookbook for that.) I will be happy to perform the initial edit to produce an HTML page. This may be the most efficient way to start, though of course I can't maintain your document for you. I'll send you the edited text so that you can modify it for future updates. After that, you will need to send me each updated version as a mail message, or tell me how to obtain it. I'll screen it for correct format by running a couple of programs on it, then I'll send it to AzTeC for installation. That's all there is to it. Your page can contain "links" to other pages, anywhere in the world, which provide information about your faith, a world-wide parent organization, or other related subjects. The AzTeC administration retains the right to avoid links to pornography or other obviously inappropriate material. Also, we do insist that your page on AzTeC should contain substantial local interest, and should not be just a list of pointers to somewhere else. Every now and then all pages will be reviewd, to make sure none of them is going stale -- bad phone numbers, etc. If one becomes obviously obsolete, and the author won't respond to an update request, the AzTeC folks may choose to drop the page. So you need to stay in touch to ensure that your page remains appropriate. About Web Pages -- Technical Introduction ------------------------------------------- I don't know how much technical interest or knowledge you have about "web pages", so I will give you a simple explanation. You may want to print this message, so you can go through the example on-line while you are reading. My discussion assumes you are using a PC program called a vt100 emulator. If your terminal program can't emulate a vt100 -- most of them do -- let me know and we'll see if we can get you set up. The AzTeC system needs to be instructed to use vt100 communications. Starting at the main menu, make these selections: AzTeC Administration User Services Set your Environment Parameters. Set your Terminal Type vt100 'p' back to "Environment", and finally, Save your Environment Parameters. Reaching the Web from AzTeC: ---------------------------- When you have the address of a web page, you can dial in on AzTeC and view that page even if AzTeC has no direct link to it. After dialing into AzTeC, do this: Select #11, Aztec additional info, (access to WWW). The number 11 might change, if the menu has lines added or removed. When the AzTeC main page appears, type the letter for 'Go to a web page': g (watch the bottom of the screen, it will ask you for an address.) Enter the web address (known as a URL, Uniform Resource Locator). This example will show you my own home-page on another system: http://www.primenet.com/~vodhner/ (and press Enter) There is sometimes a delay while the page is received. You should then see it displayed on your screen. [[ Note: you CAN'T enter "g http:// .... etc." from the House of Worship selection, only from the "access to WWW" selection. ]] How to Navigate the Web using Lynx ---------------------------------- The program that displays Web pages on AzTeC is called Lynx because it follows "links" from one page to another. Here is a description of how to move around with Lynx. If on a PC, make sure "Num Lock" is turned on so that you can use the numeric keypad: Up-arrow = 8 = Previous. Down-arrow = 2 = Next-Highlighted-Topic. Left-Arrow = 4 = Go BACK to the page we came from. Right-Arrow = 6 = Go to the page for this Highlighted Topic. Home = 7 = Go to the Top of the page. End = 1 = Go to the Bottom. You may also try the separate arrow-keys if you have them. Other useful keys are: Space Bar = Jump down a page (forward through the document). Hyphen (-) = Jump up a page (backwards through the document). Slash (/) = Search for a word in this page. Equals-sign (=) = Display info about this page and the current link. Back-slash (\) = Display the Page with HTML mark-ups visible. The Help Key! Press the letter h (or H) for instructions. The program that displays Web pages on AzTeC is called Lynx because it follows "links" from one page to another. I will use my own church's page as an example, so please view that page to see what I'm talking about: On the AzTeC Home Page, use the down-arrow to move downward on the page, or type this: /worsh ... and press enter. Select "House of Worship". This entry also has its own selection on AzTeC's numbered Main Menu. Select "New Church of Phoenix (Swedenborgian)". Press the space-bar until you see a table of contents, with the heading "The New Church -- A New Christianity". Use your down-arrow or up-arrow key to move the cursor (or highlight) to "About the New Church." Then press Enter, and the screen will jump down to the next section, which looks something like this: The New Church The New Church is a worldwide Christian church that . . . over 200 years ago. It is based on the Bible, as ex. . . writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. ------------------ If you press the down-arrow key, the highlight will move to the words, "Emanuel Swedenborg." Then press Enter, and the screen will jump to a paragraph titled "Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772)". How did it do that? ------------------- Each web page is simply a text file, with some extra notes inserted to make it into HyperText. This just means that some words or phrases, called "topics", are highlighted where they occur in the text. If you select a topic in the text, and press Enter, the view changes to an article about that topic. This may take you into "World Wide Web", because this new article may reside on another computer, across town, in another state, or in another country. (The Lynx program will send a request to that other system, which will send back a copy of the page to be viewed. This normally happens in a few seconds, though a large page may take longer on a bad day.) Press your back-slash key ("\") and press Enter. The view will change to show you the Hyper-Text Markup Language, or HTML. You should see:

<<<=== This is the "anchor".

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772)

<<<=== Text of the Header. Note that the anchor uses the word "swedenborg" as its "name". Press back-slash again for a normal view. Then press the left-arrow key, or '4' on the numeric keypad, and you'll return to the paragraph on "The New Church". Press back-slash again, and you'll see: The New Church is a worldwide Christian church that was established over 200 years ago. It is based on the Bible, as explained in the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. There you have the anchor containing a link to the anchor you saw before, that contained name="swedenborg". Links to other files on AzTeC, or on other Internet sites, become only a little bit more complicated. Instead of "swedenborg" I could have used any other word, or even a number, but it's easiest for the author toremember if the word relates somehow to the paragraph's subject. Also note that the words that were highlighted are part of this anchor. The anchor begins with . If you would like a copy of my page in its raw (marked-up) form, I'll send it to you as a mail message. If you don't know how to copy a mail message onto your PC, I can advise you on that. You can also save it, from a mail message, as a file on AzTeC and edit the file. In either case you can "hack" the contents of my page, inserting your text while retaining my markups. Feel free! But you have my standing offer to _do_this_for_you_ the first time. Learning More about HTML ------------------------ When in Lynx, you can type 'h' for 'help'. This will display a web page which offers help in a number of areas, including tips on HTML. Personally, I work best by example; that's why I'm offering to send my page, or suggesting that you view other pages in 'raw mode'. You can, of course, invest in books about web pages, such as the HTML Sourcebook. That's the only one I've seen, and it's now a little out of date, but the stores are continually receiving new material. Also, there are newsgroups about HTML authoring, etc. No shortage of material if you have the time. If you would like to become a real wizard in HTML, and especially if you have a recent-model computer, you can get a lot more elaborate. However, a user logged onto AzTeC can't see the nifty graphical features. Your page will also be visible world-wide over the Internet, to users on other systems, who might be using more sophisticated web-browsers. But it's really not necessary to get into it deeply, especially at the beginning. Building a page is an effort where you can get almost immediate satisfaction without a lot of study and work. There are also some tools which translate from PC word-processor formats to the HTML format for web pages. In my experience, HTML translators don't produce pages that work well with different types of browsers; but they are a good start, and I can fix them up from there. Best regards, Victor Odhner