Using Netscape Communicator with WebCom

Netscape Communicator is an Internet software suite which includes web browser, WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web page editor, email client, and other Internet related programs all bundled together in a single tool. Netscape Communicator can be used to create, edit and publish your web site without requiring any previous knowledge of HTML.

This document describes how to use Netscape Communicator with your WebCom account. It explains how to configure the settings which allow you to easily transfer documents back and forth between your local PC and our server.

If you do not yet have a WebCom account, you can use our freely accessible guest account to test out Navigator Gold right now, at no charge. To do this, use guest as the userid and password in the following examples.

Quick Reference:

• Configure Netscape Communicator Preferences
• Creating and Publishing a New Web Page
• Editing an Existing Web page
• Publishing -- Sending the Document to the Server

To learn more about how to perform specific tasks with Netscape Communicator, see Netscape's online Frequently Asked Questions.

Configure Netscape Communicator Preferences

There are some basic settings you need to configure in order to make Communicator work with any WebCom account:

1. Select Preferences... from the Edit pull-down menu to open the preferences configuration screen.
2. Click on the + (plus sign) next to Composer to open the list of sub-preferences for Composer. ("Composer" is the editor/publisher portion of Netscape Communicator.)
3. Click on Publishing. The right side of the screen should now show the fields for configure Communicator's publishing location.
4. In the field for FTP Publish to: enter ftp://ftp.webcom.com/./www
5. In the Browse to (HTTP) box enter http://www.webcom.com/userid.

Unlike Navigator Gold Communicator does not have a place for you to enter your userid or password, but will ask you when you attempt to publish.

Creating and Publishing a New Web Page

With Netscape Communicator, creating and publishing original Web pages is about as easy as using your average work processor. It is not necessary to know the intricacies of HTML code to create effective and attractive web pages, and it is not necessary to know FTP to publish your page, making it available to the masses.

With Communicator open, you can choose New from the File menu. The bottom three choices are options for creating new HTML documents:

• Blank will bring up a blank page.
• From Template will ask you for the location of an existing template, or connect you to Netscape's Web Page Templates page.
• From Wizard will connect you to Netscape's Page Wizard page, an interactive tool which takes information from you regarding the page you wish to create, and constructs it in real-time.

After choosing Blank you will be given a blank page on which you can begin typing your page, using the formatting tools built into Communicator to adjust font sizes and styles, insert horizontal lines and images, create hotlinks, and more.

If you choose Template or Wizard, you will be given detailed instructions for creating these types of documents online from Netscape's Web Site.

Once you are ready to put your page on the Web, follow the publishing directions given below.

Editing an Existing Web Page

The following steps demonstrate how to edit an online document, then repost it to the server, using Netscape Communicator and your WebCom account.

First of all be sure you're connected to the Internet. Next, choose a file in your WebCom account that you wish to edit. If you have a new WebCom account, the only Web page which exists in your account is the home.html file which is the "Under Construction" page. For demonstration purposes we will assume this is the page you wish to edit.

Go to the page in the browser mode like you normally would, by typing the URL (http://www.webcom.com/userid/home.html) in the Netsite: box. When you have this file fully loaded in your browser, go to the File pull-down menu, and select Edit Page.

You will now find yourself in Communicator's "Composer" editing interface. You can make changes to this file similar to the way you edit word processing documents. For detailed assistance with editing a file, try using Communicator's built-in help. When you are satisfied with your changes, you can then upload the file back to the server with the Publish command.

Publishing -- Sending the document to the Server

There are other options that you can use on this screen, such as pick and choose which files to upload during that particular publishing sesstion, but these are the basic steps that you need to get started. You can also see Netscape's help pages for more assistance.

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