15.963 -- Electronic Commerce and Marketing

Frequently Asked Questions


What is the World Wide Web?

For a good understanding of the World Wide Web, see the World Wide Web FAQ (click here).


How to write HTML documents

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is a text-based language which contains special "tags" which describe the formatting of a page. For example, some tags indicate that whatever is contained between should be in a particular font. Other tags describe the position and location of an image file, and other tags spell out the address of other documents which can be linked to text in your document (this is known as "hypertext").

For an illustration of HTML code, you can view the source code for any page on the Web. Viewing the source code for a page is very easy. All you need to do is display the page on your browser, then go to the Netscape "View" Menu and select "Source..." The machine will then download and display the HTML source code in a text editor. Try this now with this page. You can also save the source to a local file and modify it as necessary to include you own content.

Check out the HTML Primer site to learn more about HTML. In addition, The Microsoft site is also a good information source for plug-ins which permit you to generate WWW pages from Word, Powerpoint and Excel files.

Once you have an understanding of HTML syntax, you might want to take a look at our list of HTML graphics resources for inspiration.


Tools for Web Authoring

Web authoring tools (editors which facilitate the creation of HTML documents), are in a state of constant flux. For the most up-to-date information about Web tools, go to
Yahoo and search for "HTML editors".

In the Sloan Mac lab, we have several HTML editors:

In the Sloan PC lab, we have:

We also hope to have copies of Netscape Gold (a Netscape browser with WYSIWYG editing capabiltiies) as soon as it is available.


Creating and Registering your Home Page Directory on Athena

This section will walk you through the process of creating a web page on the Athena server. All you need to do is follow the steps below.

  1. Get an Athena Account

    If your email address is something like "UserName@mit.edu" you probably already have an Athena Account, and may proceed to step 2.

    As a registered Sloan student, you are entitled to personal "locker" space on Athena, where you can store your home page so that it is publicly accessable. To arrange to get an Athena Account, contact Athena User Accounts. If you have a valid MIT student ID number, you may also register yourself for an account at any of the Athena workstation "clusters" on campus. There is an Athena Cluster in the basement of Building E51.

  2. Create your Web page.

    HTML is HyperText Markup Language. It is the text format the World Wide Web uses to interpret information to be displayed graphically. HTML is not particularly complex. The easiest way to learn it is to take a look at the source code for an existing page and compare it with the graphical representation.

  3. Access your Athena Locker

    To do this, you must use a program called "TelNet" to first connect to Athena, and then to create a WWW folder and allow public access to it. Telnet is available on all platforms: Use one of these programs to "open connection" to:

    athena.dialup.mit.edu

  4. Make your WWW Directory Public

  5. Upload your "home.html" file using FTP (File Transfer Protocol)

  6. Register your page with MIT, Sloan and 15.963

    Your page is no good unless other pages around the Web are linked to it. You can register your site with these three groups by simply sending an e-mail to the webmasters of these sites. You must send them your name, your class (i.e. first-year Sloan student), and the address of your homepage.

    This address will typically be something like:

    http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/UserName/

    For your convenience, we have created an automatic registration process to register your page with MIT, Sloan and 15.963 in one simple step. Clicking on the Auto Registration will open an e-mail addressed to the webmasters of all three sites. Once you have registered, it will take several days before a link to your page appears on the respective MIT, Sloan and 15.963 sites.

    Remember to include your name, class and web page address.

    Auto Registration: REGISTER

    If you have previously registered your homepage with MIT and Sloan, then just e-mail Stephen Buckley to register with 15.963 alone.


Comments? Questions? Contact Stephen Buckley