Standby, K3IR-SPARC Logo Standin. SOUTHERN PENNSYLVANIA
Amateur Radio Club
P.O.Box 1033
Lancaster, Pa. 17608-1033

 
Site Notes

Purpose

These pages were constructed for the benefit of SPARC's membership, other amateurs and those having an interest in ham radio, or anyone else who found this page either through a search engine or just casual browsing.  Members and those interested in joining SPARC will find events calendars and membership rosters.  Other amateurs can learn what SPARC is doing both as a club and as individual members.  Casual browsers can learn a little about the hobby in general and what it has to offer.  Hopefully all will have found that the site is informative and that the visit was a productive use of their time.
Philosophy
Less is more was the rule for this site.  The pages were designed to be quick to load and to display well on almost any system.  Most pages have little or no graphic content aside from the SPARC logo.  The pages were designed for a display width of 640 pixels, or a standard VGA screen.  The title and footer blocks are set to that width to serve as guidelines when you size your browser's window.  The site was built using simple, low-cost tools, including the site host's HTML editor and Netscape Communicator.  No advanced or browser-specific features were used such as ActiveX, frames, or Java.  These choices were all intended to maximize the information content and to minimize design, maintenance, and load time.
Resources
Two web sites that were found to be particularly useful references for HTML coding and page design include: The first site is a tutorial that shows how HTML works and how to set up a site.  The second contains searchable HTML references along with usage examples and notes regarding any browser-specific behavior.

A book that continues to be helpful is "Creating Your Own Web Pages" by Andy Shafran (ISBN 1-57595-148-7; published by QUE).  This thin but complete book covers all aspects of page design and HTML coding and contains numerous examples and listings.  The author maintains his own web page with more information and examples.

For those who appreciate Java programming check out the Pinellas County club's home page for an unusual and useful example.  It takes a surprisingly small amount of code for what was accomplished.

Howto
This site is hosted on two different servers:  www.geocities.com, and www.k3ir.org.   SPARC's original site was on Geocities.  We were later given hosting priviliges on another server and got our own domain name.  Since there are still many visitors to the Geocities site and it does appear in the search engines, it is maintained as a mirror of the www.k3ir.org site.

The tools needed to upload files depends on the server.  Geocities has a mandatory web-based interface.  The www.k3ir.org site can be reached by ftp.  I use either a command-line ftp client running under Linux or an add-in to Windows Explorer called KnoWhere.  The site info is entered into KnoWhere which then creates an entry in a folder called Internet Neighborhood.  Files can be then dragged and dropped into the web site just as if it was another local directory tree.  For the FTP client, your filewall setup may require you to use passive mode (type PASV in the ftp window).  KnoWhere will use passive mode automatically as needed. 

Note that file names are case-sensitive for both sites, and both the GeoCities interface and KnoWhere will let you use files having spaces in their names.  These files will then be invisible to a browser because they expect an escaped-space character (%20) rather than a real space character.  In short, don't use file names with spaces. 

Following are the details for each site:
www.geocities.com/k3ir_sparc
 www.k3ir.org
  1. Using a web browser, find http://www.geocities.com
  2. Log in using the correct Username and Password.  Do NOT check the option to "remember me".  That would allow anyone to use your computer to access the site. 
  3. Select either File Manager or Easy Upload.  File manager will let you edit or delete files as desired, and add, rename, or change to subdirectories as needed. 
  4. To upload files, select Easy Upload.  Use File Manager if needed to be sure that you are in the proper directory.  Otherwise all of the files will go to the root of the server.  Select "browse" to find the file on your local hard drive, then hit the "upload" button. 
  5. Log out when done. 
The site will automatically log you out after a period of inactivity.  You can also leave and come back with out going through the login process if you do so within the time limit. 
  1. Using an FTP client, find http://www.k3ir.org
  2. Log in using the correct Username and Password
  3. Type MODE BINARY and PASV to set the transfer mode
  4. Use the standard FTP commands of PUT and GET to upload and download files. 
  5. Use CD and LCD to change remote and local directories. 

A few hints:
  • If you are using a command-line FTP client it will save keystrokes if you CD into the directory containing the files to be uploaded before logging in to the site. 
  • At any time you can type HELP on the FTP client command line for a brief list of commands and their syntax.
  • If you are using a unix FTP client, you can save the username and password in your .netrc file. 





The Fine Print
These pages are maintained by the webmaster.   The content is approved by SPARC's Board of Directors and is copyright (C) 2001-2004, SPARC, Inc.  Feel free to link to any of our pages or use our site as a reference.  Please ask SPARC for permission before using any of this site's contents elsewhere.  If you find anything that is broken, out of date, or incorrect, or if you need more information about the site or the page contents please do not hesitate to contact SPARC.

 
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 This site Copyright (C) 2001-2004, SPARC, Inc.
SPARC Inc. is a 501(C)(3)Not-For-Profit Organization Incorporated March 27th, 1992
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