FTP

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is osed to send information from one computer to another. In the case of the internet, a file is sent from a user's computer to a server. The server then responds to the data it receives. FTP uses 2 ports; 1 for administration (passwords etc) that stays open during the whole transmission, and 1 for data that opens and closes as needed. This is called 'out of band'.

FTP, when used by itself, can be a problem because all transmissions are in plain text, so anybody can read them. FTPS adds SSL or TLS encryption to FTP. 'Secure FTP' uses FTP over SSH. This will only secure the administrative and not the data port.

FTP is good for transferring large files, as it is basic and will usually transfer data directly to TCP without processing any of this information itself.

We also learned how to publish our work on 'Fetch'. This is my published site using Microsoft Word.

Iweb vs HTML

Our last assessment for this class was an Iweb website. Iweb is okay if you want to build a site that doesn't require any specific styling. You are very limited to the way you can make your page look and operate, especially if you are publishing to an FTP and not mobileme. There are certain tricks that you can use to get around most things, but Iweb won't tell you about them.
For example, if you want to use your own fonts, and they are not on a users computer, and not web safe fonts, you have to shadow the text and keep the opacity above 5%. You can still hide the shadow with it's other attributes eg. shadow angle and shadow width. This will make Iweb save the font as an image and it will work on any computer in any browser.
Also, you can't add metatags to your site (without hiding text within your pages) without downloading Iweb SEO tool. There are a few other cool things you can do to your site with this application, and more so with websites in general with downloads found where I found this one at RAGE Software.
Iweb's comment boxes don't work without publishing to Mobileme. I tried a couple of different ones out, just by using the HTML snippets, but they worked strangely and I couldn't figure out why. One in particular works fine with my notepad HTML page, but won't work in Iweb. Don't know.
Although I have only scraped the surface of HTML, CSS and especially javascript, I still find a lot more freedom in coding. Fair enough, coding takes more time and knowledge, but you confined only to the styles that you can conceive. Within Iweb, some of the simplest ideas you have cannot be executed without physically changing the code, which you have to do every time you publish. So why bother using a program that restricts your possibilities, and you still end up reverting back to the code anyway?
The RSS feeds and podcast subscriptions are cool though.
Most of the images are my wife's photography. She is an amazing photographer and I'm not, so that's why most of them are hers.
All in all, the site isn't too bad. Not a lot of content, but if I didn't have to spend so much figuring out why shit just doesn't work, then I might have had more time to add stuff. Doesn't matter. I'm pretty pleased with the overall layout, and I think I'll only change a couple of things before using the site in a practical manner, namely the podcasts. Podcasts rock!

Have a look: http://athene.csu.edu.au/~pfrase07/iweb

Technorati

Technorati seems to be basically a ratings tracker for blogs. I can see how it would be useful to those who are interested in getting their blog to the top of the hitlist, or simply for those who are interested in what is popular in the blogging world. Technorati's site is annoying to navigate around and I don't think I'll be visiting the site again. It is definitely handy technology, but popularity and trends have never been a personal pursuit of mine. Although, if you type in 'Peter Fraser Drum and Bass' into google, you'll find my site at the bottom of page 2. Fuck yeah!

CSS

Cascading style sheets are used to add the cosmetics or 'style' of a website. The code is kept independent to the HTML that makes the site work. CSS can be used to execute the same information in regards to the same type of HTML element. For example, if you want to always have the same border around any images you place on your site, instead of writing the same style code into the HTML, you can write it once using CSS and then refer the relevent HTML to it.
Using templates in Blogger, you can change many things; fonts, colours, column size, how many columns. What you cannot change using templates is the colour and style of links and how they will execute when clicked on eg. open in same/new window. You also can't insert your own background image, or tweak your columns, fonts, fontsize etc to your own needs or desires.
The term 'accessibility' in relation to web design refers to how many people have access to a website or page, in particular, people with a disability. The use of CSS combats the problem of the visually impaired as it separates the style from the basic information needed to make the page run. This allows the use of a screen reader to decode the information. Also, people without a fast internet server can usually load the basic HTML version of a site.
The problem I am finding though, in regards to coding HTML, CSS and to an extreme extent, javascript is that they each use a different language with different rules. You need to have a grasp on the language that each uses before you can have an insight to how your site is going to work. But I guess that's why we've got Dreamweaver.