Welcome and thank you for deciding to host your web site at TrainWeb!
By now you should have received the essential information about your account via e-mail: the URL (web address) of your web site, your user ID and your password.
The following are the instructions for gaining access to your web account and uploading files:
To upload your web pages, you can use any FTP software to connect to "trainweb.org" and use the User ID and Password (lowercase only!) that were sent to you via e-mail from us. (You must FTP to either "trainweb.org" and NOT TO "www.trainweb.org" or any other URL or URL subfolder). DO NOT use "www." in front of "trainweb.org".
Please note that your "User ID" and your "www.trainweb.org" suffix are not necessarily the same. If you have a long suffix, we will usually assign something shorter for your "User ID". However, your actual web address will be the web address that you requested and not the shorter "User ID" version of the name.
You can use any FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program to upload and download files from your new web account hosted on TrainWeb. Click here if you'd like to read FTP for Beginners published by WIRED magazine.
I use "WS_FTP Pro (32-bit)" that costs about $39.95 and am very happy with it. It appears that the free versions, "WS_FTP LE", might no longer be available. If you do not want to pay for WS_FTP Pro, there are many free FTP programs you can download. Click here to read reviews and download any of The 5 Best Free FTP Clients according to WebpageFX.
Once you have FTP installed on your computer, FTP to "trainweb.org". Log into your web account using the User ID and Password that have been e-mailed to you.
Once you have used FTP to log into your web account, you will need to upload a new index.html file to replace the temporary one that we have placed into your account. That file becomes your top web page. You can upload additional web pages and graphics into that directory or you can create additional subdirectories under that directory. ("Directories and "subdirectories" are also called "folders").
Your home page at TrainWeb must be named "index.html" or "index.htm". If you use 3 letter filename extensions (".htm") instead of 4 letter filename extensions (".html"), then you MUST delete the temporary "index.html" file that we have placed into your web account. You can use FTP to delete this file.
To view your web site, just set your web browser to: "http://trainweb.org/???" or "www.trainweb.org/???", whichever you prefer. They both work. In this case, "???" represents the web address suffix that you requested. This will not necessarily be the same as your User-ID !
You can use any web design utility to create your web pages.
However, I would strongly recommend that
you DO NOT use Microsoft Front Page to create your web pages. We get more problem
reports from WebMasters using that software than any other. Microsoft Front Page is also
more likely to generate web pages that violate the current HTML industry standard than
any other web design utility and could result in pages that will not operate properly
on our server or sometimes only display properly for people using Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Microsoft Front Page also generates a large array of files in various folders with
encoded names that make it very difficult for us to help you if you run into problems with
your website. We have not seen similar problems with any other web design tool and would
suggest that you use any tool other than Microsoft Front Page.
