Topic: How do I add multiple web pages to my website?

[Robotbuilder]

How do I add multiple web pages to my server?

[James Blond]

There is a thing called vhosts (virtual hosts).

You can take a look at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/vhosts/name-based.html

if you still have a question please ask again.

[Robotbuilder]

So if I want to have a website i.e. domainname.com
I can't add a about page i.e. domainname.com/about without vhost?

[Robotbuilder]

I have another question:

I have this HTML code in a document:

<form name="create_account" action="html_form_action.asp" method="get">
Username: <input type="text" name="user">
<center> <p> </p> </center>
Password: <input type="password" name="user_password">
<center> <p> </p> </center>
Email: <input type="email" name="user_email">
<center> <p> </p> </center>
Accept terms: <input type = "checkbox" name="checkbox">
<input type = "Submit" name="submit_button">

I would like to receive the input the user types in how do I?

[Anaksunaman]

Whenever you have a website, there is a typical folder tree structure involved. So it may be helpful to think of a URL (or a web page) in these terms.

When you want to create a new web page, you create a new plain text document, type in (or copy/paste) your html or script code into the document, save it, and change the extension to something the web server recognizes as a valid web page (.htm and .html are most common, along with .php, .asp, .jsp and .shtml for particular web applications). Then you place this document on your web server in the folder that houses the data for your website.

For instance, let's say domain.tld is your website. There is a folder on a server (whether you host the server yourself or you buy space from a hosting provider) that houses all the data for that site. This is where all existing pages are found and new web pages are placed.

If put a new text document called "about.html" in the root folder that holds the data for your website, you can access that page with something like http://domain.tld/about.html. If there is a sub-folder called "help" and you put your new "about" web page there, then you can access the new web page via http://domain.tld/help/about.html.

Here is a very simple example layout.

http://s17.postimg.org/9oah3by7z/layout.png



In this case, there is a root folder which houses the main page (index.html), an image and two folders. If I wanted to add an "about.html" page, I would put it in the same folder as index.html if I wanted it accessible via domain.tld/about.html or, if I placed in a folder (say mail), the URL would be domain.tld/mail/about.html similar to the example above.

As to your second question, you need to have a server which has a scripting language installed, such as PHP. Scripting languages are not the same as HTML. A scripting language is what takes the HTML form data and captures it for further use. The web server and scripting interpreter are two separate programs -- each one is independent of the other but they are configured to work together to use submitted information.

So the first thing to do would be to make sure that the server you you are using has scripting. If you are going through a hosting provider, your hosting company can tell you what scripting engines they have installed.

Otherwise, if you are hosting your own server, you would download and install the scripting engine program on the PC running your website, along side the web server software itself.

Either way, the next step would be to upload two separate pages -- one that has the HTML form data (like the example code you posted) and a second page that has some scripting in it to capture the submitted data and do something with it. Then the URL for your "submit" button of the form would be altered to point at the scripting page URL. So when someone fills in the form and clicks "submit", the web server transfers the data to the script and the script does whatever it is supposed to do.

If you would like to see an example where form data is submitted via an HTML form and e-mailed to some email address via the scripting language PHP, you can look at a free bare bones contact form below.

http://www.freecontactform.com/email_form.php

And just so you know, the example you posted was designed to interact with a scripting language called Active Server Pages (ASP or .asp for web documents) originally developed by Microsoft. You would have to have a server with ASP installed and some script called "html_form_action.asp".

[Robotbuilder]

Thank you! I appreciate the help. I have seen some websites that have: www.domainname.com/info/about and the about is actually not a directory it's a web page. How do they do that?

[Anaksunaman]

Actually, it is a directory... sort of.

What you are seeing is actually a default file in a folder called "about". This type of default file is usually named index.htm or index.html.

So while you type in a web server directory request