As promised, here is a quick guide to editing files on Magpie in a friendly text editor like Notepad or Wordpad. I discourage you from using Microsoft Word to edit these files. Also, this tutorial is for Windows users. I don’t have a Mac so I can’t offer any instructions that I feel are correct enough to put my name on. However, this google search looks promising and I implore you to read through directions any way since modifying them for OS X should be pretty easy.

First, we’re going to use a free program called WinSCP3. It is a program that will let us connect to Magpie and transfer files to and from it.
Download it here and proceed to install it like you would any other software.

Second, follow these directions for using WinSCP3. Instead of the details for Columbia, use our server, magpie.case.edu, and your own username and password.

Third, once you connect, you can browse your files on your local computer on the left and the files on Magpie on the right. You can drag between the two windows. Copy your files over from your public_html folder to your local computer. Now go find where you put them and open them up in whatever text editor you like (Notepad, Wordpad, TextPad). Once you’re done editing, save your changed files, go back to WinSCP3 and copy the new versions back to the server.

Leave any comments below if you have issues. Don’t be afraid to look at the FAQ from WinSCP3′s website too. Also, I encourage you to subscribe to my blog (for free, obviously). Then, you can get an e-mail every time I update it. You can subscribe for the semester and then unsubscribe when the class is over; I won’t be offended at all

Also, please leave comments on the posts, otherwise I don’t know if anyone is using them (some of you have left comments already – Thank you!)!

Update: Also check out my follow-up post, as promised.

OK, quick post for my classmates.

Open up PuTTY and go to magpie just like you would access your own account. Once you are logged in, type in “cd ../nxs77/public_html/mysql/class2/”. The ‘ls’ command will show you the files in that directory (type in “ls” and hit enter). If you want to copy them all to your public_html directory, type “cp * ~/public_html/”. They are now available in your home directory. If you want to edit them (surely you do, he did part of the assignment for you), type “nano [file you want to edit, without these brackets]“. For example, if I want to edit ‘index.html’ I would type “nano index.html” ‘nano’ is the same thing (essentially) as what Nikhil uses in class (‘pico’). So, a few quick hints: CTRL-O saves, CTRL-X exits, there isn’t really anything you can do with the mouse, so you will have to move the cursor around with your up/down keys on your keyboard.

Later, I will post a guide (or a link to a good one if I can find it) on how to edit the files on your computer in something you might be more familiar with (like Notepad).

Feel free to ask questions in the comment form below.