Creating Your Own Web Site on Citadel Network

If you do not already have a Citadel Network web hosting account, see our Web Hosting Services page, where you can order your site online, including domain name and any other options.

A web hosting account is a place to house a web site. The web site itself must be developed, including any text and images you wish to have on your site. This is called composing the site. After the site is composed it must be posted, which means copying the files containing the site to the server space provided by your web hosting account.

Following is some general information to get you started in this process of composing and posting your web site. Citadel Network also provides web site development services. If you wish to have your site developed for you, contact us at sales@cnz.com.

Composing Your Site

If you know HTML, you can use any word processor or text editor to create web pages. If you do not know HTML, there are numerous HTML editors available, many of which are free.

There is nothing proprietary about your Citadel Network web hosting account that requires the use of a particular HTML editor. If you have one you are comfortable with, there is usually no reason you shouldn't use it. The only exception we know of is Microsoft FrontPage, which we specifically recommend not using. If you have one of the newer versions that do not use the much-maligned FrontPage Extensions, it should be functional, but we still recommend against it.

If you want to use an HTML editor, but do not already have one, here are some recommendations.

For Linux and Mac OS X users, we recommend Bluefish.

For MS-Windows users, we recommend Nvu.

Posting Your Site

After the site is composed, it needs to be posted (uploaded to your web hosting space at Citadel Network). Most HTML editors have this ability built-in. If you are not using an HTML editor, you can use any standard FTP client software. FTP (file transfer protocol) is used to upload and download files. If you do not already have an FTP client, a good free one is FileZilla. For details on configure FileZilla, see our FileZilla Help Page. The FileZilla Help Page also has the information that is needed by any HTML editor, but the method of setting the parameters will depend on the software.

Site Design Tips

• Only files located in the /doc folder will be directly accessible from a web browser. Other folders would be used only by programmers.
• Name all your HTML files with the extension .html. The extension .htm will work, but this is considered obsolete.
• If you have a PHP-enabled site, any pages that use PHP should have the extension .php.
• The main page in each folder must be named index (with the appropriate file extension).