I was hoping to provide space on my web site for a couple others who cannot afford to buy a domain and pay hosting charges. (I know it isn't that much to get a name and space but...)

Does anyone know of a way to do that without having to type for example http://designingoutloud.com/name.html ? I have seen some URL's read: http://hostname.com/~name . Are only ISP's able to use the ~ ? If I use http://designingoutloud/name it will just give the directory information.

I will not be charging for space, just want to provide it without people having to type http://designingoutloud/name/name.html to find them.

Obviously, I know very little to nothing about it, thanks in advance for any help!

Linda

You can use http://designingoutloud/name. You just jave to call the main page of the hosted site "index.html" and put it into the "name" directory.

exactly.

Most hosts support:
index.htm index.html then some more like index.shtml, index.cgi index.php and so on.

The index page is automaticallyed when a directory is browsed (as in your case). If none is found, the content of the directory is showed, else the index.xxx file is used.

Thank you so much for you SPEEDY replies. I have done what you have suggested and it worked out fine.

Thank you again!

Linda

use a redirect script

Originally posted by designing
I have seen some URL's read: http://hostname.com/~name . Are only ISP's able to use the ~ ?

One of the things you are going to want to do, is set up an FTP account for this other user. This will allow them to upload their files to the server themselves (without you having to do it). I won't say there is only one way to do this (as things vary from server config to server config).

When you see the /~name used, it is probably similar to how my server is set up, in that when I create an FTP account (a user account), their space can be accessed via the web by two methods:

http://domain.com/users/username or http://domain.com/~username