Tips and Tricks

Some Frequently Asked Questions Regarding Web Pages

Q. I have created a link within my document to another file, but the error message "File cannot be found" keeps appearing when I try to link to it. What's wrong?
A. Many answers are possible to this one, but first do this: Check the spelling of your file name in your link. Is it spelled correctly? Have you used all lower-case letters in both the file name and the link name? The format for files names is case sensitive, so it's best to use lower case all the time rather than mix upper- and lower-case.

Q. How do I check the appearance of a prospective web file before it becomes permanent?
A. When you're ready to see how it looks on Netscape, open Netscape, under the File menu, choose Open File and put in your file name. Graphics may not appear if you do not have them on your harddrive.

Q. I want to use the official UD athletic logo and/or chapel logo. Where can I find these graphic files?
A. You will find the University's official logos, as well as decorative dots, lines and other items at http://homepages.udayton.edu/gifs. Don't recreate these files; rather, create a link that points to this directory and the filename you want to use.

Q. Where can I find other interesting art to use on my pages?
A. You can also find quite a bit of free clip art on the Internet. Here are some addresses to try:
http://www.dorsai.org/~ackerman/clip.html
http://www.valleynet.com/~nick/html.html
http://nansen.jhuapl.edu:80/iconlib/icon1/

Q. How do I put a counter on my page for the number of visitors to my page?
A. The code to create a counter is:

It would go into a line such as,

"You are visitor number since [add current date]."

The number code will not begin counting until you actually load the file onto the server (It shows a "1" when you view the file through Netscape). Once you load it (as long as it's using the same file name), the number adjusts to the correct count rather than going back to zero.

Q. What code do I use to automatically change the date I modified my files?
A. This is the whole paragraph I used at the bottom of one of my pages. You can word yours similarly if you'd like, but the actual code you need is the whole string between the words "modified on" and "by XXXXXXX."

This page, maintained by the public relations office, was last modified on  by XXXXXXX. Please send any comments to rizvi@udayton.edu

The output will look like:

This page, maintained by the public relations office, was last modified on by XXXXXXX. Please send any comments to rizvi@udayton.edu

NOTE: Both of these lines of code (visitor count and modified by date) are very picky, so it's best to copy and paste them rather than rewriting them. Also, if you view files with these codes through Netscape, you won't see the actual code. You can only see it if you FTP the real file to your hard drive.

Here are some other codes you can put in your documents. They use the same "#echo var=" method.

REMOTE_HOST -- The host name of the person looking at your page
REMOTE_ADDR -- The IP address of the person looking at your page
REMOTE_USER -- The username of the person looking at your page
HTTP_USER_AGENT -- The type of web browser that person is using

Most of this document was taken from the "Instructions for Creating Web Pages for UD" document (http://www.udayton.edu/info/htmlinstructions.html) written by Public Relations.

Back to Creating your Homepage

This page was last modified on by Michael O. Bartz. Please send any comments to www@udayton.edu.