Susanna Cumming, May 2001

Introduction

This is a step-by-step guide intended to help Linguistics faculty and grad students set up an on-campus website. It covers getting a web account, creating a simple webpage, and uploading it to the website. Both "low-tech" and "high-tech" approaches to these tasks are discussed. Links to additional resources are supplied as relevant.

UCSB faculty and grad students use two different servers/services. LSWeb serves faculty but also can be used by TAs and students working with faculty on conferences, grants etc. You need to be faculty or have a faculty sponsor to use their space, which is virtually unlimited. UWeb serves students: all students automatically get a UWeb account (with a somewhat limited amount of file storage space).

Why use the Web? Well, to quote LSIT: "If you just have 2-4 hours to invest in initial training, you can learn how to put your syllabus, bibliography, assignments etc. on the web in the same time it takes you to format and print them in Word (probably less if you Dreamweaver and you factor in the time you would otherwise spend at the copier)." Pretty much any time you have some digital data (text, pictures, sounds) you'd like to distribute to more than one person, it's faster and more efficient for you to upload it and let them use their resources to download it, than to e-mail it or distribute it on a disk.

You'll also quickly find that, like typing, it's usually faster to do it yourself than to explain to someone else what you want and get them to do it for you. And it's essential for public announcements: lots of folks won't look anywhere else for conference information etc.

Web publishing can seem difficult and intimidating; and in fact, there's a lot of complexity out there (and it increases daily). However, if you want it to be, it can also be extremely simple. Getting some text on somebody else's screen via the Web is not in itself a difficult task. Beyond that, there's exactly as much complexity as you want there to be.

This guide is oriented towards the simplest possible documents. Start small, expand gradually, use good tools, and accept that there will be a period of trial and error each time you attempt more sophisticated appearance and greater functionality.

I should note that I'm not by any means a Web guru; I've only been doing this for about a year myself, and I'm still learning. Fortunately the Web is highly self-referential; there is a ton of material out there, as well as hundreds (at least) of books. If you're interested in exploring beyond what's in this document you could do worse than to start with LSWeb's WebHelp or the UWeb Information Center.

Click on the tabs at left to go to the section you're interested in.