Publish Your First Web Page

So far, the HTML files you’ve created have lived on your computer. You can open them in a browser, but nobody else can visit them.

Today we’re going to put one on the web.

The basic idea is simple:

your computer → web server → internet

RWU gives you space on a web server through your rwu.me account. We’ll use an FTP application to transfer files from your computer to that server — make sure you’ve installed one per the Get Your Computer Ready checklist before we start.

Step 1: Make a Web Page

Open Phoenix Code and create a new HTML file.

Enter:

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title>Your Name</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Hello, world.</h1>
    <p>I published this page myself.</p>
</body>
</html>

Replace Your Name with your own name.

Save the file as:

index.html

The filename matters. Web servers recognize index.html as the default page for a directory. When someone visits your web address without specifying a particular file, the server looks for an index page to display.

Step 2: Connect to the RWU Server

We’ll use an FTP application to move your files from your computer to the RWU web server.

Professor Kowalski will demonstrate using Transmit on the Mac. If you’re using another FTP application, the interface may look different, but the connection information is the same.

Use these settings:

Setting	Value
Protocol	FTP with TLS/SSL
Server	webspace.rwu.edu
Port	21
Username	Your cPanel username
Password	Your cPanel password
Transfer mode	Passive

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. We’re using FTP with TLS/SSL so that your connection to the server is encrypted.

Your FTP server and your website address are different things. You connect to webspace.rwu.edu, but people visit your website at your individual yourname.rwu.me.

Step 3: Find public_html

Once connected, locate:

/public_html

This is the public part of your hosting account. Files placed here can be served on your website.

Think of the two sides of your FTP application as two different computers:

YOUR COMPUTER             RWU WEB SERVER
index.html       →        public_html/

The files on the left are on your laptop. The files on the right are on a computer connected to the internet. FTP moves files between them.

Step 4: Upload index.html

Drag your index.html file into /public_html.

Once the transfer finishes, open a browser and visit your rwu.me web address.

You should see:

Hello, world.

Your HTML file is now being served from a computer on the internet. You published a website.

Step 5: Change It

Publishing isn’t something you do only once.

Go back to Phoenix Code and change:

<h1>Hello, world.</h1>

to something else. Save the file. Upload the new index.html to /public_html, replacing the previous version. Return to your browser and refresh the page.

Your workflow is now:

edit → save → upload → refresh

You’ll repeat that process throughout this course.

Understanding Folders and URLs

As your work becomes more complicated, you don’t want every project sitting loose inside public_html. Instead, you’ll create folders:

public_html/
│
├── index.html
│
├── resume/
│   └── index.html
│
├── project-one/
│   └── index.html
│
└── final/
    └── index.html

Those folders become part of the URL. For example, public_html/resume/index.html can be reached at yourname.rwu.me/resume/, and public_html/project-one/index.html can be reached at yourname.rwu.me/project-one/.

Notice that you don’t need to type index.html in the browser. The web server knows to look for it.

Local vs. Remote

This distinction is important:

Local means the files on your computer.
Remote means the files on the web server.

Changing a local file does not automatically change your website. You have to save the file and upload the new version to the server.

If something looks correct in Phoenix Code but the website hasn’t changed, ask yourself: did I upload the new file?

That’s going to solve a surprising number of problems this semester.