How to
Make Kehilalinks Pages
Preliminaries
Introduction
Welcome to the "How to Make Kehilalinks Pages" course. The
purpose of the Kehilalinks project is to give Jewish genealogists a
place to post web pages dedicated to relating "the history of any
city, town, or village anywhere in the world that had a Jewish
community at any time in its history -- a place that has or once had
a synagogue, a Jewish cemetery, or other signs of Jewish community
life." That's a lot of places, the vast majority of which do not
have a Kehilalinks page. This is where you come in. This course is
offered at a low price by JewishGen to train people who are
interested in contributing to the Kehilalinks project, either by
creating a new Kehilalinks site, maintaining an existing site, or
serving as a general, web-savvy volunteer. The skills you learn in
this course will be just as useful in creating family history web
sites or other web sites, but the focus of the course is on creating
Kehilalinks sites.
During the next several weeks you will learn how to build web pages
using a web page editor. After you complete the course, you
will have basic skills for building web sites. Among other
things, this could make you popular in your local JGS and other
organizations because knowing how to build web sites is still a
relatively rare and sought-after skill.
The amazing thing is that building web sites isn't difficult to
do. Not so long ago you had to know a lot of highly
technical things to be able to create web pages. You still do if
you want to make a really fancy, state-of-the-art type of web
site, but the vast majority of us can build perfectly usable and
attractive web pages using a simple web page editor. The web page
editor that we will use in the class is about as simple to use as
a word processing program like Microsoft Word or WordPerfect. If
you have enough computer skills to use one of those programs then
you can learn to make web pages.
In this lesson I'll explain a bit about how the course works,
briefly introduce some terminology, and give you your first
assignment. In following lessons we will actually create a web site,
so that by the end of the class you will have a finished site on
Kehilalinks (those of you who are trying to do that). Although no
site is ever really finished, come to think of it. There are always
new pictures, records, and other information to put on a Kehilalinks
site, but at least you will have a starting point that you can
continue to add to as you find new material.
The Course
Install the
Software
The first thing to do is to install the web page editing software
that we will use in the class. We will use a free web page editor
called "Composer". Although not very feature-rich and by no means
considered a state-of-the-art web page editor, Composer is simple
to use, it works on most versions of both PCs and Macs (OS X 10.2
or later, I believe), and it is free.
Composer is one program in a suite of programs called "SeaMonkey"
(it's the old Mozilla suite, and before that was called
"Netscape", for those of you who care about software history).
SeaMonkey includes Composer and a web browser that we will use in
the class. (The complete SeaMonkey suite also includes various
other programs, like an email client, that we won't use in
this class.) To keep explanations simpler, in the lessons I
will often refer to Composer simply as "Composer", and the
browser as "SeaMonkey". For example, if I say "browse your
page in SeaMonkey", I mean to use the SeaMonkey browser to view
the page you just created in Composer.
You can download SeaMonkey (which includes Composer) from the
SeaMonkey project web site: http://www.seamonkey-project.org/releases/
. There are downloadable files for Windows systems and Macs. Be
sure to download the right version for your computer.
Download the SeaMonkey installation file to someplace on your
computer where you will be able to easily find the file, like your
desktop. Some browsers are configured to automatically download
files to a "downloads" folder, however, so you might have to hunt
for the file if this is the first file you have ever downloaded.
If you've downloaded the file, but can't find it, use your
computer's "search" feature to locate the file. Search for
"SeaMonkey".
When you find the file, double-click on it to open the file. That
will start the installation process. The next steps are different
for Macs and PCs, but, in either case, relatively easy to follow.
For PCs, you can use the default options, if any, and simply click
on "yes" or "next" each step. I don't have a Mac, but I think on
Macs that you simply drag the SeaMonkey icon to your desktop or
Applications folder. The result will be an icon on your desktop
(or, if you follow the Mac instructions, in your Applications
folder) that you can double-click to open SeaMonkey.
After you install SeaMonkey, you may delete the installation file
that you downloaded.
What if you have
other web page software?
Some of you may already have more sophisticated web page editing
software like NetObjects Fusion or Adobe Dreamweaver. If you are
comfortable using that software then you may use it in the class,
but I won't be able to answer your questions if you get stuck using
a program other than Composer. If you aren't already comfortable
using other software, please use Composer. Not only is it simple to
use, but after you learn the concepts taught in this class using
Composer, it will be much easier for you to learn how to use
another, more sophisticated program, if you choose to do so later on
your own.
Whichever
software you want to use, note that you can't jump back and forth
between programs. Each program generates HTML in a certain order
and not every program generates the same HTML commands. It will
confuse the programs (and confuse you, too, since you won't know
why things aren't working) if you switch. This is true if you edit
a page in Composer that was created with a different program, or
if you use another program to edit a page created in Composer. Choose a program and
stick with it. (This applies only to single pages. If you have
multiple pages in a web site, you can use different programs to
edit each page. You just can't use multiple programs to edit the same page.)
Don't Use Microsoft Word
People are sometimes tempted to layout their pages in a word
processing program that they are familiar with, like Microsoft Word,
and then copy and paste the text and pictures into Composer. Don't make that mistake.
Word, especially, generates a lot of Microsoft-specific commands
that you can't see, but that will mess up your web pages. Do your
layout in Composer. DO NOT copy and paste from Word documents.
Lessons
The lessons can be found on this website: http://www.Kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/class
Over the next 6 weeks, once or twice a week, I will post a lesson on
the course web site and notify you through the course forum. In each
lesson, I will introduce some feature of building webpages. Your
assignment will be to use that feature in a web page that you
create.
These lessons are for you to complete at your own leisure.
There will be no homework to turn in (other than a Kehilalinks site,
if that applies to you) nor will you receive a grade. The pace
of the course is intentionally slow to allow everyone to have time
to complete the lessons and to ask for help when they get stuck.
Asking Questions
You must ask questions through the course forum: http://www.jewishgen.org/education/forum/forums.html.
Please be sure to
post your questions in the on-line course forum, and do not send
them to me directly! I get a lot of email from various
places and your question might get lost. If you post to the
course forum then I am sure to see it. So will the rest of the
students (many of whom probably have exactly the same question). I
encourage you all to help each other as much as possible in the
forum. Help from other course participants will be especially
important for people who use a computer or operating system that I
don't have. I use a PC that runs Windows 10. If you are
running Windows 8, or 7, or Vista, or a Mac, then there will
certainly be times when something in your system works a little
differently than how I describe it. Without being able to see what
is happening it will be difficult for me to help you. Someone
else in the course, however, is likely to have a similar system and
may be able to answer your question.
Also be sure to check the previous posts in the forum before you
post a question, in case someone else has already asked the same
question. To make it easier to find out what questions have been
asked, in the forum please always use a descriptive subject. For
example, "How do I center images"
is a good subject because at a glance we can all tell what the
question is. "I have a problem"
is a bad subject because we don't know what the question is.
Logging in to the
Course Forum
Use your numerical JewishGen ID with the password "password"
(without the quotes) to login on the forum site so that you can view
and post messages. Remember, do NOT use your regular JewishGen password for
the course forum. Even though you will use your regular JewishGen
ID, you must use a different password for the forum!
There are different forums on the forum web site for different
classes. The forum for this class is the "KehilaLinks FORUM".
But note that this forum will only be visible after you have logged
in. You must first login on the forum site in order to see the
course forum.
(If you have
correctly logged in on the forum site, but still can't see the course
forum, it could be because your ID was not given correct
authorization for the course forum. Let me know and we'll sort it
out.)
Terminology
Before we get into the course proper, I want to define some terms
that we will use throughout the course.
Web Browsers and
Web Servers
Because you are enrolled in this course, you've obviously already
spent some time using a program called a web browser
to look at web pages. Safari and Internet Explorer are two
examples of web browsers. When you want to view a web page
(for example when you click on one of your "bookmarks" or click on
on a link in a web page), your web browser sends a request message
over the Internet to a computer that stores the web page.
That distant computer is running a program called a web
server (sometimes the computer running the web server
program is also called the web server). When the web server gets a
request message from your web browser, it sends a copy of the web
page over the Internet to your computer.
Hypertext Markup
Language (HTML)
Most web pages are computer files that are written in a computer
language called hypertext markup language (HTML).
HTML is a method of describing and distributing electronic documents
that may contain text, images, and other digital data. Web
browsers are programs that understand HTML and can convert the HTML
commands into the visual representation that you can see on your
screen. Web page editors, like Composer, are programs that let
you visually organize a web page the way that you want it to look,
and then create an HTML file. Because Composer takes care of
generating HTML for us, we won't need to spend much time learning
HTML in this class.
Reserving your
Kehila
Most of you taking the course are probably planning on creating a
new Kehilalinks site. If this describes you, it is important to
start the process of reserving your Kehila right away. There is a
bit of bureaucracy, plus forms that need to be filled out, before
the process can be completed, and that may take some time. If you
start the process now, by the time we get to lesson 6 (where you are
asked to upload a simple version of your site to Kehilalinks -- not
for public display but just to practice and let me take a look),
everything will be ready to go.
(If you are a
volunteer for Kehilalinks who is not planning to create a new
Kehilalinks site, but just to help with existing sites, you'll
find that the lessons are oriented toward those who are creating a
site. You will get much more out of the course if you actually
create just a simple practice site as we go along, even if you
don't go to the trouble of reserving a kehila.)
The Kehilalinks project has a web page that describes how to go
about making your own Kehilalinks page. I'll summarize some of the
key steps here, but you can read the whole document yourself: http://www.Kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/documentation/writing.htm
. There's a lot of stuff in there that won't be terribly useful to
you until we've gotten farther into the course, though.
In the past, the process of reserving a kehila for the Jewishgen
Kehilalinks project has sometimes been confusing. Sometimes the
instructions were ambiguous, or sometimes a form had old
instructions and had not been updated. If that is still true, please
be patient and, eventually, it will all work out.
Step 1: Read the
Kehilalinks Project Policy
Seriously, read it. You can find this policy at http://www.Kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/documentation/Policy.htm
. You should know before you start creating your site
about JewishGen's policy with regard to choosing a Kehila,
copyrighted materials, etc. Plus, when you reserve your Kehila, you
will be asked if you have read the policy, so if you read it now you
won't have to rush to read it (or lie).
Step 2: Choose a
Kehila
As I said above (quoting the Kehilalinks Project Policy), the
Kehilalinks project pages are aimed at cities, towns, or villages
that have or had Jewish communities. Generally, small hamlets and
farming communities where small numbers of jews lived but that did
not have a Jewish community are included in the Kehilalinks sites
for nearby towns. You may also create a Kehilalinks site for a
geographical region or administrative district. Check on the
Kehilalinks site to make sure that no one else is already working on
a Kehilalinks site for the Kehila that you are interested in. If
someone is already working on a Kehilalinks site for your Kehila,
you can offer to help. Although Kehilalinks project policy is that
there can be duplicate Kehilalinks pages for a Kehila if two people
cannot work cooperatively, it's better to have sites for more towns
rather than duplicate sites for the same towns.
Step 3: Reserve
Your Kehila
Fill out a Kehilalinks Project reservation form on the web at http://www.Kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/documentation/signup.asp
.You will need to log in using your regular Jewishgen user id and
password. Among other things, you need to know in advance the modern
country in which your Kehila is located, some idea of where it "was"
located (I take this to mean prior to WWI, although that is not
stated), and the latitude and longitude of the Kehila (use the JewishGen Communities
Database -- http://www.jewishgen.org/Communities/ -- to find
that).
You will also be asked to provide some information about your
computer system and what type of software you are using to create
your web pages (probably Composer, for most of you in this class).
A key, but confusing, set of questions involve how you are going to
copy your pages to the Kehilalinks web server (under the heading
"Access Required"). You can choose to have the Kehilalinks staff
upload your files for you, but after you finish this course there
will be no need to bother the staff. In a future lesson, you will
learn how to use an FTP program (the "FT" means "File Transfer") to
upload your files, so say "yes" to the "FTP Access" option. (You can
choose both the FTP and self-authoring options if you want to keep
your options open).
A relatively new question on the signup page is "Have you taken the
JewishGen Education course on creating web pages?" Answer "yes"
(even though you haven't finished the course yet).
Within a few days (hopefully) a volunteer from Kehilalinks
will contact you via email.
Step 4: Complete
and Return a Donor Form
You must fill out a donor form in order to create a site on
Kehilalinks. Although you retain rights to your work, you are
effectively donating a copy to JewishGen when you upload your site
to Kehilalinks.
You can find the form on https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1T8OCp4TOCn09fFdQdusekcQRfXvf0Ei9cKimtGhCvdI/viewform
.
When you fill in the Donor form, be sure to check "KehilaLinks" in
"part II: Description of the Donation".
In the second page of the form, enter the current name and location
of the Kehila.
The form has an optional field for the U.S. Bureau of Geographical
Names (USBGN) number assigned to the Kehila, but don't worry about
filling that in if you don't happen to know the USBGN number.
After the Kehilalinks coordinators receive your completed donor
agreement, you will become an official Kehilalinks web master. If
you said "yes" to the FTP (and self-authoring) upload option, you
will also be given an FTP address and password. You will need that
address and password to upload your web pages to the Kehilalinks
server in upcoming lessons, so be sure to keep that information
safe.
Assignment
There will be an assignment at the end of every lesson. This is
encourage you to apply what you are learning in the course.
The assignment
for this lesson is as follows:
- Install SeaMonkey on your computer
- Read the Kehilalinks project policy, choose a Kehila, reserve
it, and complete a donor form.
- Post a message to the forum to introduce yourself and to tell
everyone the name of the Kehila that you reserved.
Once you have completed the assignment steps above, you will be
ready to go on to Lesson 2.
Copyright ©2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016 Mark Heckman.
All rights reserved.