This page documents issues related to the display of web page in general. Problems that typically are indicated by:
- When you type in the url to your page you get a Not Found error
that says the page cannot be found - nothing shows.
- The page displays but elements within the page (graphics, Flash, etc.) don't display.
If you are getting a Forbidden message you are on the wrong page. Instead, read the page that describes that problem under the help topic of permission problems.
The Dreaded 404 Error - "File Not Found"
Most of the problems of this kind are experienced by Windows users and I'll get to the reasons of why this is shortly. But I want to say at the start that this is not a windows-bashing article! The point here is to learn how to interact with the most popular type of web server in the world - Apache running under UNIX. The intent is to help you solve your problem and learn from the experience <smile>
So, you've created and uploaded your wonderful web pages to our server, type in the URL into your web browser, only to be presented with the following error message. This is by far the most common problem experienced by students when dealing with web publishing issues for the first time.
The student asks the instructor what the problem is and the instructor replies:
The filename in the URL you are typing does not in fact exist on the server.
The student then replies:
But it worked on my home computer.
The instructor, who has heard this countless times before, readies their reply. They don't want to sound condescending, but they know their comment is valid and hopes the student persevers so they understand the crux of the problem:
Well that's fine, but you know we are trying to do web publishing here, not web publishing on your local computer. If the files are not accessable to the public who is trying to view the site, then what good is the site? What we have to do is figure out what the problem is and resolve it so clients can actually view our site. The server is giving us a pretty clear pointer to the problem, lets investigate and see if we can understand and solve the problem... sound reasonable?