Friday, 17 February 2006 - 8:50 AM EST

The full http://URL links you're using are called absolute links. It is not necesaary to use them if all of your pages will be uploaded to the same directory at your account. In that case you can use relative links, a shorter version of the link file path needed to reach the file that is "relative" to the path of the page you are viewing and linking from. There is a short tutorial above that may explain it better.

When you upload your pages and files to your account they will be reachable from their URLs and the links should work..... provided you've written the path to linked files correctly in your links- meaning the path reflects the exact location they are stored at your account so that a browser can locate them to display them.

Friday, 17 February 2006 - 12:02 PM EST

a few of your pages are online. Can i offer a suggestion? Every page does not need to be named some variation of index.html. index.html is needed as the default home page but after that you're free to name pages whatever you wish. More descriptive names for page files can help you pick them out more easily in your webshell list. So instead of index.2.html you might want to name it something like contact.html, fees.html. about.html or something along those lines.

If you change any page file names you must also change the name in the file path link code written into any of your pages, as well.

Friday, 17 February 2006 - 1:30 PM EST

Thank you CW! So you say a few of my pages are online. Hmmm. How would I find this out? I wonder if any of them link? Now I have to go explore. If you have a moment to tell me how you found them online, I would very much appreciate it.

Friday, 17 February 2006 - 1:35 PM EST

I just used your membername your entry was signed with and constructed an AF URL from it. Start with your index.html page and test the links on it. That's how I found the ones I did.

You can also check from the webshell. Anything that is uploaded is live or published and can be reached with an appropriate link from another page.

Friday, 17 February 2006 - 2:38 PM EST

OH MY GOD!! I did it! I saw my pages on the web!! Ok, enough excitement. It's fabulous and everything, but how do I get the pages to my new domain name now and out of angelfire.com/planet/chocolatedoula? I'm hoping that my new domain name will help me get business when people do a search on the net. By the way, I changed all my index names and ALL my links work! Thank you again.

Friday, 17 February 2006 - 3:43 PM EST

What an interesting and blessed career you have :) May you have much success with it through your web site.

re your domain- If you bought the domain name through Lycos then you will be able to manage your domain name through the domain manager here. There is a link to it on the "my account" page at AF. If you bought it elsewhere then you will need to go there to set it up. You want to point your domain name to the main directory your site is uploaded to here:

https://www.angelfire.com/planet/chocolatedoula/

Generally, it takes 24-72 hours until the domain name becomes functional across the board.

Use of a domain name is where absolute vs relative links may be important to you. If you wrote all your internal page links absolutely, then when you click on a link to them the full AF URL will show in the browser location bar . But if you chose relative links instead, then the AF URL should not show. You should see the page file name listed in the URL right sfter your domain name. This can be corrected at any time so if you need help with that later just post back.

And though you didn't ask... You will need to submit your site with it's domain name to some of the larger search engines (like google and yahoo) if you want your site indexed and included in them so your site can be returned in a search by them. Eventually all the smaller engines will catch up to include you, too, if you submit to the big guys first.

Friday, 17 February 2006 - 4:57 PM EST

I just want to add that once you have your domain name set up and pointing to the right place then you will have 2 working URLs to reach your site. A domain name is a more or less fake address, like renting a PO box so that people can reach you without seeing where you really live.

Your site really lives at AF and as long as your site is hosted here the AF URL will always function along with your domain name URL. But when you submit to search engines, submit the domain name URL. Also, in answewr to your initial ?, it's probably best to replace any absolute URLs used to reach your site's internal pages with relative ones so that your AF page URLs will not be picked up by search engines when spidering your site. Any other site that links back to your site should also use your domain name URL.

Friday, 17 February 2006 - 5:12 PM EST

Thank you CW. I'm off to try to point my domain name to my AF URL. I did replace all my absolute URLs with relative ones and although I have no idea what "spidering" is, it sounds like something I don't want to have happen. And as per your suggestion, I gave all my files names, which will make it so much easier to remember what is in each file. Yes, my career is amazing. Birth is a phenomenal event. Right now, I'm experiencing the same emotions as I give birth to my website. This is so darn EXCITING!

Friday, 17 February 2006 - 5:38 PM EST

well, pant, pant, blow! and the very best of luck :)