If you would like to provide educational information about an organization, agency, club, business or group in the local area, the following guidelines and information may be helpful.
On this page:
A tutorial for creating basic WWW documents.
visits since July 13 1996.
Government agencies, service organizations, associations, special interest groups and clubs, schools, civic organizations, churches, medical service providers such as hospitals and clinics, consultants and other businesses with information about their services. Generally anyone who provides public information free of charge is eligible.
No. There is no direct cost, it is all public service. Tax deductible donations to help increase access (more phone lines) and provide disk space (more disks) are always welcomed, however.
Coauthored grant proposals are also warmly welcomed when the data involved and number of menus involved are time-intensive to set-up and maintain.
It is left to the information suppliers themselves to maintain the information on their menus and contribute however they see fit in order to guarantee the continued existence of the system.
You need to have the approval of the agency, organization or association to be the spokesperson for this group. The person or persons providing the information need to have a freenet account and be able to use email.
a. Apply for an organizational account using the online registration system. This is normally separate from your personal account, as more than one person may be involved in maintaining it, and e-mail to this account will be about the subject matter maintained there.
b. Design your menu (or menus). Clear this with your organization as to what type of information they would like to offer. Next, look at the existing menus on Free-Net and see where it "fits". You can use the standard (text-only) system or the World-Wide Web Hyper-text Markup Language (HTML) system. We can offer some guidance on this.
c. When you receive your organizational account, see the instructions for creating a menu, and format of the .list file and creating a menu space in the Free-Net Information Supplier Tools 'menu (Menu = infosup). Upload (or use a local editor like Pico to create) your information to the appropriate directory(ies).
Notify us of updates and changes by sending mail to newstuff@afn.org
Information suppliers are responsible for all the information in their menus. Free-Net programs allow approved updaters to create and replace documents which are displayed by individual menu items.
such as our newsletters or reports?
Yes, but.. Free-Net's Home Direcory File Services (Menu = homefiles) menu has an option that allows you to upload information from your PC or MacIntosh. In order to be on a Free-Net menu, the file must be in something called ASCIIformat.
Most word processor programs such as Wordperfect, Word, and Wordstar allow you to write the file out in either ASCII or DOS-Text form with only a single keystroke or two. You will not have to retype the file, as this ASCII or DOS-Text format is what you will upload and use on Free-Net. (ASCII means, roughly, the characters like you can type on an ordinary typerwriter, no formatting characters of any kind.)The Free-Net standard interface does not support graphics or documents with more than 80 column line lengths.
However, clients with a World-wide Web (WWW) interface, such as Mosaic, or NetScape can accomodate color, still and motion pictures, and sound files as well as regular text.
This interface requires more than a standard dial-in connection to Free-Net, but can be viewed by anyone on the Internet, and is being considered as an option (probably as a fee service) available to any Alachua FreeNet account. Any information in the existing system is automatically migrated to the new one, but some information, such as maps and graphical data, will only be available via WWW client.
The text-based WWW browser, Lynx, is available with a standard dialup, and if aren't using slip or ppp, you are using Lynx to view this document right now!
We are ready to accept information supplied for this interface, and its use is encouraged.
Here are some introductory materials on the WWW: Web Tutorial
Send e-mail to newsupplier@afn.org or try this handy Form for sending mail.
In case you didn't check them out before, here are the main AFN tutorials on
creating Menu space on the Freenet.
