Pissed off

Godoftarot · Post by **Godoftarot** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 11:42 am

I am so fed up with this website it isn't even funny. If the waiting, bugs, or lack of information isn't enough to make one want to tear one's hair out, this certainly is. I was under the impression, mostly due to the fact that Keenspace gives you the CHOICE to use ftp or to login via browser, that there was at the very least an html editor. I have not seen one at all. There's no way to make a site or put in files without ftp, or at least not one I have seen. The fact that I have to go on the message board to get information that should be on a FAQ page or should be made apparent before I signed up, is just silly. So far this site has proven to be completely inaccessible. I would like some actual information, for once, on what I have to do to get my site actually working.

PsykotiK · Post by **PsykotiK** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 11:47 am

Right then, you'll be wanting the FAQ and the Workshop provided by the masterful Phalanx. As for the choice, i'm not entirely sure what you're refering to so its probably best i don't comment without more information. I would like to stress that keen is free, and maintained by a group of very hardworking and underpaid individuals. The keen community is here for people like yourself who need help, so you're right to ask, just try to remain calm and i'm sure we'll have you up and running in not time. As I'm sure you know, the sytem does work and has been successful for a lot of comics.

CodeGuy · Post by **CodeGuy** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 11:58 am

The FAQ is near the top of this very message board.

viewtopic.php?t=54103

Also, most of the things you're asking for are readily availible with very little effort. The site is basic enough that a fancy editor isn't necessary. It only took me a few hours to learn enough about HTML to use notepad and make my own site.

This is a nice little community that has been very good to me. If your experience hasn't been as good, just remember that everything here is free, and most of what has been accomplished here has come from people working in their free time.

Godoftarot · Post by **Godoftarot** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 12:06 pm

Okay, um, that didn't do me much good. How is that supposed to help? What the hell is that autokeenlite thing and how is it supposed to help? It certainly doesn't look like a program. It opens in notepad and says a whole lot of technical stuff that means absolutely nothing to me. What good does that do me?

PsykotiK · Post by **PsykotiK** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 12:10 pm

You don't need autokeenlite, that's for if you're using your own webspace instead of keen's. What the hell are you reading, did you click my links?

Godoftarot · Post by **Godoftarot** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 12:12 pm

Yes, I did, and that's what it said. I don't get it. You can't just connect me straight to the exact information I need?

Godoftarot · Post by **Godoftarot** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 12:18 pm

Right. Now, when I asked about FTP you couldn't have simply told me that one is required to make the site? Which is something Keenspace does NOT say before you sign up. Lovely. Because this hasn't been enough of a headache as it is.

PsykotiK · Post by **PsykotiK** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 12:26 pm

Look, you don't need an FTP as you put it to make the site. You just use FTP to upload it once its made. You can do that with internet explorer quite easily. See Boxjam's tutorial All you need is in the FAQ Check the bit titled "Phalanx's Simple Barebones Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Your Keenspace Site Online for Complete Beginners "

Phalanx · Post by **Phalanx** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 12:27 pm

*takes deep breath*

Ok, I'll assume you haven't had any experience in building websites outside of providers such as Geocities or Tripod which have built-in html editors. (My apologies if this is not true).

Fair enough. I never did before I signed up for Keenspace either.

Well. firstly Keenspace does not have Sitebuilders or File Managers or anything of that sort. Also, Keen requires FTP to update. There's not way getting around this. Sorry.

Keenspace is not exactly in the best of states right now. Kisai is the admin, and she's overworked and underpaid as it is, so don't blame her. The rest of us try our best to help out, so you'll have to settle for our meagre efforts.

LennyZ was kind enough to provide me with a list of downloadable (and Free) FTP Clients, which I have incoporated them in the FAQ. You'll need to download one of them to transfer your files from your computer to Keenspace.

You also need a HTML editor. Technically you can use anything from notepad to *shudder* microsoft word to do this. But if you want something more substantial but free, download Mozzilla ( http://www.mozilla.org ). It's a browser, but it also incorporates a built-in HTML editor and page-builder (called Mozilla composer) which I find fairly easy to use. It's like a simplified version of Microsoft Frontpage, minus the junk code. You don't need to write HTML at all.

There's a step-by-step guide halfway down the FAQ, which should help you greatly. Skip the FAQ questions first and come back to them when you don't understand something.

There's a version of the guide which has screenshots here ( http://thejaded.keenspace.com/workshop/Guide.html )

Good luck, come back if you have any questions and remember to keep cool. Look at the bright side, you didn't have to wait 6 months for the signup to be available

Phalanx · Post by **Phalanx** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 12:38 pm

godoftarot wrote:Right. Now, when I asked about FTP you couldn't have simply told me that one is required to make the site? Which is something Keenspace does NOT say before you sign up. Lovely. Because this hasn't been enough of a headache as it is.

Actually, the role of a service provider is simply to be a server for you to host your files and nothing more. Most service providers expect you find your own way to transfer your files to their server, and that's usually done through FTP.

Providers like Geocities and Tripod are meant for those who want it quick and easy, with minimal work. These features are EXTRAS unique to these provider, and should not be taken for granted. They should not be expected from every provider you come across.

But, If you do want something of that kind, try Drunk Duck. I hear they have set templates where you don't have to bother about that kind of stuff.

ps: Thanks for the great tutorial link, Psychotik! I'll have to add that to the links section when I have time!

Godoftarot · Post by **Godoftarot** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 1:10 pm

This still makes no sense whatsoever. All it tells me is what folders to put my files in. Real great, but that doesn't do me any good. It doesn't tell me how anything links up to anything else.

CodeGuy · Post by **CodeGuy** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 1:39 pm

OK, let's start slow. What is the first thing that you want to do bu...

screw it. You've been nothing but hateful. That FAQ rocks, and I'm sure that you could build a site yourself if you calmed down and read it. I'm sure that you would get plenty of help if you asked nicely and actually asked specific questions instead of just complainging about how "everything" doesn't work.

At this point I'm not even sure that you want to run a comic. I'm thinking that you're just a troll who wants to start arguements.

I could be wrong. If you really want to start a comic, then just ask us politely for help. Tell us specifically what you're having trouble with and we'll try to help you.

Godoftarot · Post by **Godoftarot** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 1:58 pm

I am TRYING to be patient, but I have to keep relogging into this stupid message board CONSTANTLY and I keep having to retype my posts, so my patience is frayed.
I'm going to ignore the childish little name-caller here. I don't need to sink to that level.
Now that I've figured out what these damn "tags" are (something that's sort of vague in the FAQ, especially for someone who's used to linking everything in HTML), these template things...obviously they're going to get changed. So do you reload the file everytime, or does it automatically update the file in your ftp?

Terotrous · Post by **Terotrous** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 3:27 pm

How to make a Keenspace website:

Step one: Draw a comic in some format, scan, CG, whatever, and get it into one of either JPG, PNG, or GIF. Name it like this YYYYMMDD and the extension (ie, if I updated today it would be 20031216.gif)

Step two: Copy the following into IE's address box ftp://YOURNAME@ydk.keenspot.com/, replacing YOURNAME with the comic ID you signed up with. Enter your name and password as requested.

Step three: Double click on workspace. Double click on comics. Copy and paste your comic file to the IE window. It works just like copying anything else in windows, except that it takes a while.

Step four: Go here: http://siteadmin2.keenspace.com/cgi-bin ... /login.cgi. Fill in you comic name and password. Select the option "Manual Update (the name of your comic) Comics". Select the "Full update option and hit "Submit". Now select "Back to Main" and then "Logout".

Step five: Wait 2-15 minutes (depending on how busy it was when you updated), and visit your site. The comic should now appear. Your site will be absolute bare bones but it's a start. Technically, you could update any number of comics like this and your page would be fully functional.

How to change your dailytemplate and indextemplate:

Download the file from workspace by using the copy and paste method, but this time copying from the Ie window to your hard drive. Back up the file and keep it somewhere. Now, open of the file with notepad and tinker around with it. When your done, copy indextemplate and dailytemplate back to workspace and request a full update again. If you want to have images (like buttons, for example), they go in the "images" folder in workspace. If you don't have an images folder in workspace (I didn't), then they go in public_html / images. You will have to run a full update every time to see the changes.

How to make additional pages:

You can create any amount of other pages that you want by creating them in notepad and then uploading them to workspace / webpages. When they are processed, they end up in the root directory, so remember that for linking purposes. Each webpage must contain the ***advertisement*** and ***comic_name*** is hosted on Keenspace, a free webcomic hosting service for webcomics, so you'll want to use your indextemplate as a guide when making new pages.

Phalanx · Post by **Phalanx** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 3:38 pm

godoftarot wrote:I am TRYING to be patient, but I have to keep relogging into this stupid message board CONSTANTLY and I keep having to retype my posts, so my patience is frayed.

Then take a break and calm down. Do something fun, relax then come back. You're doing no one any good in your present state.

I'm going to ignore the childish little name-caller here. I don't need to sink to that level.

You don't mean Codeguy. do you? Goodness, If you think that little outburst was name-calling... well... *shakes head*

The outburst is understandable. We're frustrated too. We have to keep logging in to this message board to read your posts, and we have to keep retyping answers and explaining stuff already explained to you. And despite all that... well...

Let me put it this way... you haven't been exactly gracious despite the fact we're all our trying our best to help you. We're not looking for fulsome thanks, but at least try not to snap at us in your replies. I know you're frustrated, but it's still no excuse to be rude and sarcastic. We're not bots. We have feelings too.

And for the record, Codeguy's been one of themost inoffensive and helpful people hanging around these forums. Other people would have been rude straight from the first post. And they wouldn't have minced their words.

Like so:
viewtopic.php?t=54910

So do you reload the file everytime, or does it automatically update the file in your ftp?

Reload? What are you talking about? Stop being so vague and make yourself more clear.

Reload? As in FTP? or in SiteAdmin? Or are you talking about reloading your page on a browser? You need to be more specific. State what you're trying to do, what you've done, what error messages you are getting. THEN we can help you.

Now that I've figured out what these damn "tags" are (something that's sort of vague in the FAQ, especially for someone who's used to linking everything in HTML)

I apologise for my inability in writing FAQs then.

Godoftarot · Post by **Godoftarot** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 3:55 pm

I wasn't being vague. I said exactly what I meant. If I change the file with Mozilla to update it, do I use ftp to transfer the file again, or does it automatically change?

LennyZ · Post by **LennyZ** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 7:20 pm

Yes, every time you make a change to any file in the FTP program, you have to upload it again. Then you have to go back to your LOGIN site (already explain up above) and click MANUAL UPDATE and choose one of the options and click SUBMIT.

Faub · Post by **Faub** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 9:27 pm

Let's start from the very beginning.

Most everyone on this board understands HTML, FTP and generally how the web works that many of your questions are seem trivial, common sense. This is why your questions aren't being answered.

Keenspace help:
I make no apologies about the Keenspace FAQ or help system. It sucks. It's nonexistant. You have us. End of story. Phalanx has done a very good job of putting together a FAQ for new users. This FAQ cannot answer all your questions. You will have to do some work to make things happen on Keenspace. You will have to do some research and you WILL have to learn HTML, FTP and possibly a range of other acronyms that make no sense to you right now. Relax. Everyone must do this. Keenspace works a little differently than anything else you've ever encountered. That's a given. You will probably be doing this for a couple weeks at least.

Let's start with a little about how the web works. This will be a long post so bare with me.

How the web works:
When you type an address in your browser or select something from your Bookmarks menu, your computer sends a message over your dialup service or broadband to the next computer in the line. That computer continues to bounce the message closer to the target computer until finally the message is received. The target computer referred to in your address bar sends a reply (acknowledgement or ACK). Then the two computers talk. Your computer requests a file. The other computer sends a message with the file attached. Your web browser saves the file to your computer and when enough files have been received, it displays what it got in its window.

Think of two people talking on a telephone. First you dial the telephone number. The person at the other end says "hello." Then you talk. Information passes back and forth for a while. Then you hang up. The conversation is done.

Every time you click a button on your web browser, you're essentially dialing the phone number, waiting for "hello" and talking for a while then hanging up. This is the way the web works. EVERYTHING on the web works this way. That's what makes it the World Wide Web. Things like HTML, HTTP, FTP, Telnet and so on are secondary. The real backbone of the WWW is TCP/IP (transmission control protocol / Internet Protocol). This is what dials the phone, answers and talks.

You don't need to know these things and I'm sure you're as confused as ever. That's okay. You have the information now.

Where do the files come from?
Somewhere in the nebulous electronic space of the Internet, there is a person (usually a group of people) with a computer who has generously decided to reserve some of the space on this computer to publish files on the Internet. There's nothing special involved with this. The files are saved to the computer's hard drive the same way you would save a file in Word or Photoshop.

A program that is constantly running in the background called a web server (Apache is the program Keenspace uses) waits for a request from the Internet, somebody dialing the phone. Upon receiving this request, the web server tries to strike up a conversation. Request a file from a web server and if the file exists the web server will try to send it to you. It is possible to send requests to a webserver for a specific file and to save the file anywhere you want on your hard drive. Your computer probably even has the tools to do this. How is a little technical and not really important so I won't go there. Your web browser makes the whole process transparent so you don't need to know any specifics.

What are the special types of files the Internet uses?
There are four main types of files:

HTML: These are text files. You can open them in notepad and edit them directly. You've done this with whatever HTML editor you're used to already. The HTML editor just makes it a little less obvious that all you're really doing is typing text. If you use a graphical editor like Dreamweaver or Mozilla the you may not even know what the formatting looks like.
GIF and JPG: These are the standard image formats that any web browser from Mosaic on can open and display. You would make these in Photoshop.
PNG: is a relatively new image format that was made to replace GIF for entirely legal reasons. PNG is patent free so anyone can make a program that saves PNG files. Internet Explorer has supported PNGs since at least version 5. Mozilla was designed around free standards so it supported PNG from the beginning.

How do you create HTML files?
That's a huge topic by itself. You will not receive any instant gratification in this. There is not some magical program to make it all work. Go here and learn:

http://www.w3schools.com/
http://htmlgoodies.earthweb.com/
Ask for more. I don't keep HTML learning tools around.

Once you have made your HTML pages, you can have W3C validate it for you to be sure you did it correctly.
http://validator.w3.org/

NOTICE: There are many versions of HTML: HTML 2, Netscape Extensions to HTML 2, HTML 3, HTML 3.2, HTML 4, HTML 4.01, DHTML (Microsoft's Extensions to HTML 4.01), XHTML 1.0 Transitional, and XHTML 1.0 Strict (and I think an XHTML for forms). There are MANY extensions to HTML, many buggy HTML renderers. Keenspace uses XHTML 1.0 Transitional by default. The problem is, your editor WILL PROBABLY NOT SUPPORT IT. This is the reason why everyone says to do HTML in notepad. Notepad doesn't care about versions because HTML is text. You can type any version of HTML in notepad.

Great. You never mentioned FTP once in all that crap.
No, I didn't and for good reason. It's irrelevant to anyting above.

Back to the webserver. The communication protocol that the webserver uses is called HTTP or HyperText Transfer Protocol. Notice that HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. HTTP is a method of using the lower level TCP/IP to transfer HTML type documents. In reality, though, HTTP is useful for transmitting any file type. Its greatest strength and weakness is that it can only READ the files it transmits. It can't write anything. This is where FTP comes in.

FTP is File Transfer Protocol. It was designed to copy a file from one computer and store it on another. As a protocol, FTP is overly complex and nearly outdated. That's okay, though. Keenspace uses it so that's what you have to use. Don't bother complaining about it because it's the ONLY thing you can use. The good part is that the protocol is so well known that almost everything can use it. Internet Explorer, for example, can act as an FTP client and file manager. There are MANY other programs that are solely dedicated to being FTP clients and they do a much better job than IE. Find the link that so many other people have provided above for LennyZ's list.

How do you use FTP? Many others have said it better than me:
http://www.uic.edu/depts/accc/network/ftp/vftp.html
http://www.webcom.com/help/ftp/
http://www.helpdesk.umd.edu/systems/wam ... /ftp//847/
Or just Google for "using FTP"

Okay, what next?
Next is Keenspace.
viewtopic.php?t=54103

Read it and understand it.

Many of us spent a few painful months in the middle of 2003 trying to figure out how to make Keenspace go without this piece of knowledge. Phalanx was good enough to compile our hair pulling and nail biting.

Before it makes any sense, though, you need to know what it's based on so read above. If you don't believe me, Google for it and read about it from the people who made the thing.

Did I miss anything?

Post by **Kisai** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 9:54 pm

An interesting thing to point out, is that this thread resembles telling someone how to program a V60i phone (never buy them, they are junk) ... eventually either the person asking, or the person answering is going to call the other an idiot because they don't understand or the person giving instructions is too far ahead of them.

Keenspace is not Geocities, in fact anytime some geocities-like feature/bug shows up it immediately gets compared to junk hosts like geocities and tripod, which is why I have ZERO intention of providing a html web builder. (that and is the number one source of "exploits", since people will try to do things to bring down the server)

FTP on the other hand, is something that "real hosts" have and "crappy free hosts" do not because using FTP on the free hosts reduces their ad revenue as people find ways to use the sites as dumpsites by sharing the ftp passwords around.

Any host you pay for will not provide a 'page builder' 's because that would mean extra maintenance. Normally people paying for space either know HTML already, or know someone who does and pays them.

I can at some point in time provide a "template editor" which would be basically a text editor link to the templates so you can skip the FTP step.

Likewise I might also provide a 1-step-update system that allows you to upload the comic and comments all in one go.

But this still will happen when I have time to do the programming, not because people whine and bitch about keenspace not having a red carpet and 5 star customer support... there are no paying customers, and there is no paid customer support staff.

All you get are people who know their stuff who want to help, or the occasional person who just likes to inflate their post count by posting something barely helpful.

Occasionally you get the admin who drops everything to check the forums once a day to track trends.

Godoftarot · Post by **Godoftarot** » Wed Dec 17, 2003 4:25 am

Okay now people, listen close, I'm only going to say this once:
TAGS! Make sure that information on TAGS is readily available and very easy to get at, because if you've used HTML for as long as I have, TAGS make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Do you understand what I'm saying? Not everyone is going to get it right away.
If you are going to maintain a website like this, you need to expect that people are going to complain, because it has a lot of problems. Did I mention the three weeks it took for my password to work? Right. Add to that having to repost my messages on this board several times, my FTP logging me off everytime I was away from it for more than five minutes, and a VERY long afternoon in Fashion Merchandising with the single most boring teacher in the world, and you'd be at the end of your patience too.
Now you could sit around bitching, or you could simply accept the fact that people have bad days and move on. It happens.