Create a web site
using the Public folder

SUMMARY:
My Docs Online users with basic HTML skills can host simple yet complete web sites within their account's Public folder and its subfolders. All it requires is creating an appropriate "index" or "home" page including links to other HTML files, to image files or to downloadable files of any type.

My Docs Online users regularly move selected files to their "Public" folder so that they can post or email the URL of the file. URLS of files in the Public folder look like this:

http://www.mydocsonline.com/pub/LOGIN-ID/FILENAME

Where LOGIN-ID is your login ID and FILENAME is the name of the particular file.

When a web user "requests" that URL, by clicking on a link you sent in an email, or by clicking on a hyperlink you have included in your own web page, My Docs Online acts like a regular web server and sends the file.

This feature was designed to make it easy for users to distribute files of any type to a wide audience.

What isn't widely known is that an entire web site can be stored in your Public folder, including a "home page", graphics, additional pages, and special files of any type.

Just remember to keep all HREFs "relative", for instance:

<img src="your-image.gif">

<a href="another-page.html">link to another page</a>

where your-image.gif and another-page.html are files also stored in your public folder

Most HTML editors will do this for you by default.

A Public folder "website" can only contain "static content" — you can't include forms or query databases, etc.

If you want to organize your web pages by using subfolders under the Public folder (for instance by placing your image files in a subfolder called "Images") just remember to include the subfolder in your links, for instance:

<img src="images/your-image.gif">

If you are a Windows user, you can also leverage the My Docs Online Upload Manager for Windows ability to upload to your My Docs Online account all the new and updated files in a particular folder on your PC's harddrive.

Simply create a folder called "Public" on your harddrive, do all your web page creation, updating and testing in that folder and its subfolders (if any), and when you are ready to "publish" your updates, run the Upload Manager, select "Public" on both your PC and My Docs Online, and you're done.