Establishing your NASW individual web site

The National Association of Science Writers is able to make space available for regular members (not student members) to establish their own World Wide Web web sites.

Members' sites will have URLs in the form http://nasw.org/users/username/ (substituting one's actual username, of course.)

If you are an NASW member in good standing and wish to establish an individual web site, first read the relevant policies and procedures below. If these are acceptable to you, continue on to the detailed instructions. You'll see that setting up a web site is not something to be undertaken casually. It requires a bit of work, and a willingness to learn HTML and the use of ftp software. If you're still interested, send e-mail to the NASW Cybrarian who will set up a subdirectory for you to place your files.

Policies and Procedures for Individual Web Sites

• Regular NASW members may create and maintain individual web sites at no charge. These sites are intended to be used by individuals and regional science writing groups, not institutions.
• Individual web sites may promote services and products, such as a member's book. But they may not be used for commercial transactions. People wishing to transact business on the web can provide a link to another site.
• Individual web sites are intended to be primarily for text and images. If you want to try something fancy, like applets or audio, you should contact the cybrarian with detailed information first, including MIME type, to make sure the site can accommodate your material.
• The maximum disk space allocated to a single NASW member is 2 megabytes.
• You may not post anything illegal or infringe on copyrights.

Checklist for Setting Up an Individual web site

• Learn HTML — Hypertext Markup Language — the lingua franca of the Web, or find a program that takes care of HTML coding for you. Basic HTML is pretty easy, and there are many excellent resouces that can help you master it. Some of the best are right on the Web. You may wish to start with Composing Good HTML. Please note that the NASW Cybrarian cannot help you write or troubleshoot your HTML coding.
• Obtain, install, and learn to use an ftp (File Transfer Protocol) program. Richard Harris and John Ludwigson have written instructions for obtaining and using Fetch and Interarchy (formerly Anarchie), popular ftp programs for the Macintosh, and Bob Finn has written instructions for obtaining and using WS_FTP, an equally popular ftp program for Windows-based systems. There are other good ftp programs out there, but be sure to get one that supports non-anonymous logins and also allows you to issue "site" commands.
• Send e-mail to the NASW Cybrarian and ask him to set up a web site subdirectory for you. It will save time if you include your NASW username in this message. The cybrarian will let you know when your subdirectory is ready; this will typically take 24 to 48 hours.

• Use your HTML skills to create a file on your local computer called either index.htm or index.html. This will be your main page. After you upload it (using your ftp program), anyone pointing a Web browser to http://nasw.org/users/username/ will first see this index file if no other filename is specified. Create as many subsidiary pages as you want, and name them anything you want, as long as they end in .htm or .html. Images should have filenames ending in .gif or .jpg. The instant you use your ftp program to upload these files to your subdirectory, your home page will be accessible to anyone in the world with Internet access.
• If you wish, the cybrarian will list your individual web sites on NASW's main public page. Be sure to let the cybrarian know when you wish to be listed.

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