Suppose we want to put a file called syllabus.pdf on a webpage on personal.bgsu.edu. We can transfer the file there using a FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program called Fetch (for the Macintosh; for Windows using FTP or WS-FTP). First, look under the Apple, Internet Applications, and click Fetch. Open a connection to personal in this way:
NOTE: The images here are from an older version of Fetch than what is installed in the Scientific Computing Lab as of January 13, 2003.
You will need to put the file in your public_html folder/directory in order for people to be able to see it when they go to your web page. After clicking OK, you should see something like this:
I already have several things in this folder on personal.bgsu.edu, but you will have less the first time you do this, and maybe nothing. In order to transfer a file from your local machine to personal.bgsu.edu, click the Put File... button.
Find the file you want, in this case, syllabus.pdf, select it, and click the Open button. You will get a dialog box like this:
You could change the name that it will be saved as on personal.bgsu.edu. For instance, you might want to change the name to 120syllabus.pdf or something else. Using the Raw Data format is a good idea. Click OK, and Fetch will transfer the file.
Now you can see that syllabus.pdf is a file in my public_html folder on personal.bgsu.edu. You should check to see that it really works by launching a web browser and going to http://personal.bgsu.edu/~zirbel/ (of course, change zirbel to your user name!). You will see something like this:
Clicking on syllabus.pdf should launch Adobe Acrobat Reader and display the file syllabus.pdf.
Incidentally, in Fetch, if you click on the box saying public_html, Fetch will show you where on personal.bgsu.edu your files actually are. In my case, they are in a folder called zirbel, which is in a folder called 25, which is in a folder called web, which is in the "root directory" on personal.bgsu.edu. In UNIX or PC language, you would say my files are in the directory /web/25/zirbel.
If you want, you can look at the other user folders in /web/25/ by clicking in this box:
There is nothing illegal about it. Anything you put on personal.bgsu.edu can be viewed by other people.