We will be saving our essays to the Pluto server, the server at Palomar that is devoted to student work.  You will set up your own home page and save each of your working drafts and essays to your folder on Pluto.  In order to do this you will need to create your own page, as a table of contents for your essays, then upload it and your essays to the server.

You might find these instructions easier to work with if you print them out on paper, so that you can refer to them while following the various steps on your computer screen.  For a version with smaller type that should  print on three pages, click here.

Before you attempt to upload anything to your Web site, you have to request a Pluto account.  To do that, go to this Web page: http://pluto.palomar.edu/.  Click on Pluto Account Request Form, the first option.  Complete the request form by entering your student ID number and your password for e-services, then click Login.  It will take about a day for your account to be set up.  After that you should be able to upload files to your Pluto Web site.  Read Account Information and Technical Information on the Pluto Web page.  They explain how to log on and give you information you might need if you use a specific ftp program.

A.  Creating your home page

First, you need to create and save a Web page that will serve as the table of contents to your work for the course, a set of links that will allow other students to open and read your essays in their Internet browsers.  This used to be a complicated process, but now it is simple.  You can do it in Microsoft Word and most other contemporary word processing programs.  In these instructions, I will assume you are using Word, but if you have Word Perfect or another program the process will be very similar.  If you are familiar with Web documents and want to use a more sophisticated program to create your page, feel free to do so.  

1.  Creating your table of contents page.  To create your home page, the table of contents with links to all of your essays, open a new document in Word.  At the top, put your name, centered, in a large, bold font.  Skip a few lines and type "Essay 1."  You may also include the title of the essay if you have it.  For your other three essays, just type the heading "Essay 2," "Essay 3," and "Essay 4."  You can add titles later.  So you should have a page that looks something like this:

 

Heather Brown

 

Essay 1: How Salamanders Learn to Swim

Essay 2

Essay 3

Essay 4

 

2.  Creating links to your essays.  Now all you need to do is to create a link to your essay file for each of your essays and then save the page as a Web page.  (Only the links for which you have actually finished the essays and uploaded them to your Web site will be active, but it's easier to create them all at once.  Then you don't have to resave your table of contents again.)  

        a.  To create the hyperlink, select the entire title line: "Essay 1 . . ."  

        b.  You can open the Create Hyperlink dialogue box in either of two ways.  

                        (1) Hold down the Control key and hit "K" or 

                        (2) go to Insert in the menu bar at the top of the page and click on Hyperlink.  

        c.   After you have opened the Create Hyperlink box, the cursor should be blinking in the line following "Type the file or Web page name."  On that line type the filename of your essay.  That should be your last name followed by "1.htm"  So if you are Heather Brown you would type the following:

                    brown1.htm

Then click OK.

        d.  Repeat the above process for the other three essays, changing only the number of the essay in the filename.  In our example, the link for Essay 2 would be to 

                    brown2.htm

3.  Saving your document as a Web page.  To save your document, 

        a.  go to File > Save As.  

        b. At the very bottom of the Save As dialogue box you will see a line called "Save as type."  Click the arrow to the right of that line and scroll down to Web Page and click.  Now "Web Page" should appear in the "Save as type" line.  (In some word processing programs the file type will be called HTML or Hypertext instead of Web page.  It means the same thing.)  

        c.  In the "File name" line, just above the "Save as type" line.  Type in the word "Default."  Then click OK.  You have now saved your home page as a Web document.

        d.  You will need to access this file in a window in order to upload it, so close the document, then open either Windows Explorer (not to be confused with Internet Explorer) or My Computer from your desktop and go to the folder where this file is saved, so that you can see the filename (Default.htm).  If you fail to close the document before trying to upload it, you will receive an error message in the ftp program.  You will follow this same procedure in order to save each of your essays as a Web page, except the file name for each essay will be the name that appears in the link to that essay on your table of contents page.

B.  Uploading your files by ftp.

1.  Logging on to Pluto by ftp. 

This process is different depending on what browser you are using.  You can do ftp within the browser in any version of Internet Explorer above version 5.  And you can do ftp in Firefox version 2.0 and above by using a simple downloadable program.  However, you cannot do ftp in Firefox version 1 or versions of Internet Explorer earlier than 5.  Also, if you have AOL, you will need to download the complete version of Internet Explorer; the reduced version packaged with your AOL software doesn't have ftp capacity.  To see what version of a program you have, open your browser, click on Help, on the right end of menu bar at the top of the browser, and click on About (followed by the name of the program), at the bottom of the drop-down menu. A box will open that tells you the version number.  If you do not have either Internet Explorer version 5 or above or Firefox version 2, you will need to update your software, which is simple to do.  One general warning: Do not try to do ftp while in Blackboard.  If you are accessing our course material within Blackboard, open a new browser or a new tab to do ftp.  You can be logged in to Blackboard, but you can't do it in Blackboard window.  Click the link below that deals with the program and version you have:

Internet Explorer, version 5 or 6

Internet Explorer, version 7

Firefox, version 2

Macintosh

2.  Uploading your table of contents page (Default.htm) to Pluto.

        a.  When you get to your folder on the Pluto page, you should see three folders names "_private," "images," and "Databases."  Ignore these.   We won't be using them.  You should also see a file named "pluto.htm."  That is the image you see now when you log onto your Web page.  Ignore it too.

        b.  You need to copy your Default document to your ftp site.  You can copy the new file to your Web site in two ways, copy and paste or drag and drop:

                (1)  To copy and paste the file, you can go Windows Explorer, select your Default .htm file, and either click the right mouse button then click Copy or hold down the Control key and hit the C key to copy the document.  Then go to the ftp window, click under the bottom folder, the right click and Paste or hold down Control and hit the V key to paste your document.  Your new Default.htm document should now appear on the page.  Double click on it and you will go to your Pluto page. (To move from one window to another quickly, such as Internet Explorer to My Computer, you can click the window in the taskbar at the bottom of your screen or you can hold down the Alt key with your thumb and tap the Tab key with your middle finger.  Each tap of the Tab key, while you are holding the Alt key down, will move to a different window.  When the selection box is around the window you want to move to, just release both keys and that window will appear on the screen.)

                (2)  To drag and drop files, reduce the size of the Explorer window and of the browser window, and resize them if you need to so they will both fit on the screen at the same time.  Then you can just place your cursor over the document you want to upload and hold the left mouse button down while you drag it to the ftp window, and let go.  A copy will appear in the ftp window.  (To resize a window, place the cursor over the lined portion of the bottom right-hand corner of the window.  When the cursor appears as a diagonal arrow pointing both ways, hold down the left mouse button and move the cursor to resize the window.  When you have adjusted the window to the shape and size you want, let go of the mouse button and it will remain that way.)

You have now saved your home page to the server.  When you add essays to the list you will simply add links to the page you have saved on your disc and then delete the old default page and upload the new one in the same way as described here.

3.  Uploading your essays to Pluto

To upload your individual essays, follow the procedure described in 2 above.  Make sure that you have saved the working draft or essay as a Web page with the correct file name.  Then log in to Pluto and copy and paste or drop the file containing the essay onto your page.  You will simply put your essay file in your Pluto folder, right next to default.htm, your table of contents page.  If the file name is the same as the name in the link you created on your table of contents page, readers will be able to click on that link and go directly to the essay.  Make sure that you save your essays in their final form as Web pages with the same file names you have given them in the table of contents.

C.  Changing your password

Your default password for ftp access to Pluto is the password you have created in e-Services.  It is the password you use to access e-Services and to login to Blackboard.  To change your password you need to go into your e-Services account and change it following the instructions there.

 D.  Backing up your work.  Remember that the staff in Academic Technology does not back up the Pluto server, which would be expensive and time consuming.  So it is important that you retain copies of all the files you upload to Pluto.  If anything goes wrong, you will need to upload them again.

E.  Troubleshooting problems

If you have problems accessing the ftp site or uploading your documents after having followed these instructions check the page on Troubleshooting FTP.

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